The Sweeney Sisters Page 21
Tricia welcomed the silence in the boathouse. She had always excelled at tasks that were focused and intense, but today, she needed to be alone with
her thoughts. The sudden death of her father and the unexpected arrival of this new sister had thrown her ordered world into chaos. Her strength was wrangling facts and details into order and shaping them into a narrative she could spin, but people had always given her issues, especially when they did anything out of character. That was a factor she couldn’t work into her equation. Her father, a man who had spent a lifetime spinning tales, had died without a word, leaving his greatest secret unspoken.
And this secret, this Serena, looked to be a formidable person. For the last two nights, Tricia had crawled into her childhood bed with her laptop and researched Serena. She had no doubt that Serena had done the same and was months ahead of what she called, in her business, “discovery.” She started by reading Serena’s archived articles, including a whole series on Cambodia-Thailand relations, which was a real snooze. Then she moved on to analyzing Serena’s social media, depressing in its geopolitical focus except for a clear love of CSI, Serena Williams, and musical theater, the latter of which seemed out of character. In the Class Notes section of the Vassar Magazine of spring 2014, there was mention of several journalism awards she’d won for a Slate piece about the Catholic Church sex-abuse scandal and the International Criminal Court’s refusal to investigate, and a recent trip to Greece with her mother, Class of 1973, but no picture. Finally, Tricia dug up a Tucker family photo from the summer of 2005 in the local newspaper, of a library fundraiser, where Birdie Tucker was being honored for her twenty-five years of service and philanthropy.
There were the Tuckers in black tie, all three of them smiling for the camera. In the middle was Birdie the honoree, stick thin in a well-cut bright pink dress that made her look even tanner and her lipstick even frostier, her hair secured in the classic helmet-head pageboy that had served the local women well for decades. To the left was Mitch, stuffed into his tux with some sort of cummerbund that featured penguins drinking martinis and appeared to be needlepointed, if that was possible. Serena stood to her mother’s right, tall and regal, in a gold diaphanous one-shoulder dress with simple drop earrings and her hair slicked back in a bun. Tricia’s first thought was that she loved what Serena was wearing.
Then, she thought: Of course. The library.
Her father had been actively involved in the library from the moment he had arrived in Southport. It made sense, as he was already a well-known writer and the Pequot Library was a cultural beacon in the area, as their
website said. It was a special spot, both architecturally and intellectually. It was certainly a community hub for books, theater, a dancing school, adult education classes, and afterschool programs. But Pequot had a veneer of prestige that few public libraries in small towns could match. It had extensive rare book, manuscript, and historical archive collections, assembled by notable local women in the early nineteenth century and still vibrant today. Prominent authors made it a stop on any national book tour and local authors supported the library efforts whenever possible, serving as honorary chairs of benefits, working the summer book sale, donating signed first editions or “Lunch with the Author” to auction efforts.
William Sweeney was one of those authors. He loved libraries, all libraries, having taken refuge in reading rooms during his rough childhood as a place to escape the brutality of his home life. But he particularly loved Pequot Library and his support was genuine. The question of how he and Birdie Tucker crossed paths beyond the view of their respective spouses became clearer to Tricia as she studied the photo.
Definitely, a one-night stand after some fundraiser.
Liza welcomed the silence in the kitchen. The last week had been too much
—too sad, too unexpected, too stressful, too exhausting. She needed a few hours of quiet to process everything that had happened. She was happy to let Tricia take the work in the boathouse. Being in her father’s office was more than she could stand emotionally. Some of her happiest memories were of hanging out in the boathouse when she was younger, doing her homework alongside her father who was pounding away at his keyboard.
He was a physical writer, standing up, sitting down, hitting the keys with gusto and intention. He allowed Liza to sit at a little table and chair in the corner, plowing away at the tediousness of workbooks and flash cards while he wrote. The other sisters were too noisy (Maggie) or too young (Tricia), so Liza felt special to be allowed into the sanctuary.
When she was older and her father worked on the weekends, she’d read on the couch or do her SAT prep alongside him, not that she was very attentive to either. By then, her mother was sick and Liza was more interested in boys than books, but she loved the winter afternoons shared with her father. Now that was tainted, knowing Serena was probably sitting in her room, just on the other side of the hedgerow, reading or writing away and doing a better job than she.
Let Tricia unearth the memories, Liza thought. I’ll deal with sending the thirty-year-old couches to Goodwill. There was nothing in the house Liza wanted or even deemed worthy of passing down to the twins—well, almost nothing. There were a few pieces of art, some books and signed first editions, her mother’s fondue pot and an ancient Salton yogurt maker, maybe some of the pillows or blankets for sentimental reasons. But the furniture was heavy, worn and scratched; any china or glassware was reduced to mismatched sets of three or four; the lamps and fixtures were nothing special. Maybe there was a rug or two that was worth the effort, but Liza already had a rug-addiction issue, with several perfectly fine Turkish beauties rolled up in her attic. I’ll leave the rugs here for the staging and then Maggie can have them, Liza thought, because her mind worked in to-do lists that extended into the abyss. Either Maggie can use them or sell them and keep the money. Another habit Liza couldn’t break, trying to save Maggie from financial ruin, like she’d been doing since they were in college and Maggie took her housing money for the semester and bought a stupid VW Bug. Liza made up a fake student fee and told her parents she needed the money or she wouldn’t be able to register. She cashed the check and sent the money to Maggie, who had moved off campus at RISD, an experiment in living and education that only lasted about six weeks after Liza bailed her out. But she owned that car for years.
And now she drives the car our father bought her, Liza thought. Has she ever paid for her own car?
Liza poured her fourth cup of coffee for the day and walked through the house with a pad of sticky notes and a pen. Her first order of business would be to collect the sure things for the junk man. The only helpful gesture Whit had made in the last few days was calling 1-800-JUNK-GUY
and scheduling a pick-up at the end of the week. “Everything in that place needs to go. Get rid of it. Don’t let anyone talk you out of that, Liza,” Whit had advised while he was packing his bag last night. “Please, I don’t want all that stuff ending up in my garage.” Ah, Whit’s real reason for the call to the hauling company: to make sure Sweeney junk didn’t become Jones junk. Liza had been too drained from the conversation at Cap’s office to protest. Plus, Tricia was in total agreement. “Liza, don’t overthink this. We have more important issues to deal with than dining sets from the eighties.
Clean house and move on.”
Liza wasn’t really that kind of person, though. She didn’t move on quickly; she didn’t let go easily. She suspected she’d never understand her father’s betrayal of her mother. Yesterday’s bombshell was taking hold in her psyche and she didn’t see herself getting over it anytime soon.
She wasn’t deluded that her father was a role model of morality; God knows there had been enough days when she’d pulled up to Willow Lane to drop off something only to run into some woman coming out the side door.
And she assumed similar behavior went on during their marriage. But, like Maggie, she was surprised that a few years after the wedding her father had cheated on Maeve, and the fact that he’d conceived a child on the side made it a hundred times worse. She could feel the anger and resentment building inside and knew from previous experiences that this was not a healthy way to process negative information. At least, that’s what her yoga therapist had been preaching.