A BIRD FLIES NORTH

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"In point four miles, turn left on Oak Avenue," said the voice coming from the GPS. "Turn left on Oak Avenue. Drive point three mile and arrive at number 118 on left."

Ron was driving while Starling looked out the passenger side window.

"The neighborhood doesn't look much different than it did when I was a kid," she told him.

Oak Avenue was an older street, lined with mature trees, mostly red maples and blue spruces. The houses were large, single-family colonials with well-tended yards. Each one had a driveway and garage - a big plus for city dwellers.

"Arriving at 118 Oak Avenue, on left."

Starling's heart sank when Ron pulled into the driveway. The lawn and shrubs were so overgrown that they looked like they hadn't been trimmed in months, if not years. The house was badly in need of a new paint job and a couple of shutters had fallen off of their rusty hinges and lay on the ground.

"It looks like it's been neglected for years," Ron said. "I thought Michelle's lawyer was supposed to hire a maintenance company."

"He was," answered Starling. "That's one of the things he told me I was paying him for."

The house wasn't any better inside. It was dark and gloomy. Starling turned on the light, but it didn't help much. She stood in the foyer for a few minutes, taking it all in....the dull, dusty wainscotting; the wallpaper that must have been at least a half-century old; the cobwebs in the corners; the chandelier that was hanging lopsided with exposed wires. 

Starling and Ron walked through the other rooms of the house, which were all in the same shape as the foyer.

"Your dad told me that this was a nice house," Ron said.

"It was," she said with sadness. "It was beautiful when my Uncle Jack and Aunt Brenda owned it. I guess Michelle really let the place go."

"Didn't she have anyone to help her?" Ron asked.

"Not really. She'd been living here alone since Uncle Jack gave her the house and moved to Florida. She wouldn't have called him and asked for his help, anyway. They hadn't been on speaking terms for several years before his death. She didn't even go to his funeral, even though they brought his body back to Albany for the services. I think I was the only one in the family who was still speaking to her when she died. That's why she left everything to me, although it doesn't look like she was doing me any favors. It's going to cost a bundle just to get the place in shape to sell. Plus there's a couple of years worth of property taxes due and I still have to pay that sleazebag lawyer his fee."

"Don't get discouraged yet," Ron told her. "Wait and see what the realtors says. What time is she coming?"

"3:00," she answered.

"In the meantime, let's go find someplace to have lunch," Ron suggested.

"Let's find a place with a bar," Starling said. "I could use a drink."

 

They found a bar that served burgers and sandwiches and settled into a booth in the back. Starling picked at her burger and fries while she drank a couple of glasses of wine.

"I'm glad my father asked you to come with me," Starling told Ron. "I really didn't want to come alone."

"Oh, he didn't ask me. I volunteered. There's so much I don't know about your father, even after all of these years. I thought coming to his hometown might provide me with a little insight into why your family is so....."

"Weird?" she asked him. "Dysfunctional?"

"Okay, you said it, not me! I also wanted to come because I felt bad for you, and a little angry at him, when he refused to come with you."

"It didn't bother me. I didn't expect him to come. The only reason he ever came back to Albany was to visit my grandfather or Uncle Jack. He'd visit my grandmother occasionally, but he usually tried to avoid her. He was never comfortable, always on edge, when he was around her. He'd start twitching and stuttering whenever he knew he was going to see her. It was very strange."

"What was she like?" Ron asked.

"My grandmother? I hardly knew her. We usually only saw her at Christmas. She wasn't the pie-baking, send you five dollars on your birthday kind of grandmother. Michelle was the only grandchild that was close to her. My cousin, Mark - Michelle' brother - says it's because they were both so much alike. 'Two peas in pod' he called them. I'm not really sure what he meant, but I know that they were both heavy drinkers. Probably alcoholics."

"I really wish I had gotten to meet her," Ron told her. "I don't think she knew about me, though."

"No, she didn't. She thought my dad had married another woman."

"She must have wondered why she wasn't invited to the wedding, though. Don't you think?"

"I doubt it. She never came to any of my father's weddings. She didn't come to any of mine, either."

 

     They returned to the house about an hour before the realtor was due to arrive and began sorting through the contents. Starling had told her cousins to go through the house the week before and take whatever they wanted, and there didn't seem to be anything of value left. She decided that she'd call Habitat For Humanity and let them take whatever they could use. She'd hire a dumpster to get rid of the rest.

The doorbell rang promptly at 3:00 and she left Ron in the den where he was browsing through the bookshelves, and went to answer the door and let the realtor in.

Liz Murphy was a well-dressed, petite older woman who shook her hand firmly when she introduced herself. Starling led her inot the dining room and offered her a seat.

"Do you mind if I take a look around first?" Liz asked. I'd like to get a better idea of what the house is worth before we decide on a listing price. You can show me around, if you'd like, or you can wait here and familiarize yourself with the paperwork that we'll need to fill out."

"I'll wait here," Starling answered. "And, by the way, my stepfather's roaming around somewhere, so don't be suprised if you run into him."

Liz returned to the dining room about fifteen minutes later, with a two-page list of suggestions and repairs that she felt needed to be addressed before the house was ready to be listed.

"And this is just the inside," Liz told her. "The yard needs some professional landscaping and the whole exterior needs to be painted, although I'd recommend having it sided. It will cost you more, but it will be worth it. You'll get it back when it sells. I've been selling real estate for forty years, and I know what you need to do to get top dollar for the property. Houses in this neighborhood can sell for between $350,000-$400,000, provided that they're in good shape. I don't hink you can get more than $225,000 for this one, though, considering the condition it's in."

"That'll have to do," Starling said. "I'm not going to put any money into it."

 

Starling and Liz sat at the table to fill out the listing contract and addendums.

"Do you have the deed and property tax statements?" Liz asked.

Starling sorted through her files for the documents. She found the deed, but couldn't find her copy of the tax statement.

"That's okay," Liz told her. "I can look it up on my laptop."

She removed her computer from her briefcase and began searching for the tax records while Starling finished signing the pile of forms.

"According to the tax records," Liz said, "you inherited the house from a Michelle O'Brien, and it was previously owned by a Jack O'Brien. Was that Jack O'Brien from Stuyvesant Street?"

"Yes."

"What a small world! I grew up on the same block, just three houses up from the O'Briens. Jack was a couple of years older than me, but I knew him well. Everybody knew Jack. Are you Jack's daughter?"

"No, Jack was my uncle. And he died a few years ago."

"Your uncle? Oh, then you must be his sister's daugher. I forgot he had a sister. I never knew her. I don't think I ever even knew her name."

"Her name is Gina and she's not my mother. My father is Jack's brother, Kevin."

"Kevin? Kevin O'Brien is your father?"

"Yeah. You sound surprised."

"Well, I guess I just never pictured Kevin as an adult, for some reason. Now where are we on that paperwork..."

 

After the documents were signed, Starling said goodbye to Liz and went looking for Ron. She found him in the den, sitting in Uncle Jack's old barcalounger. He was so engrossed in whatever he was reading, that he didn't hear Starling enter. She startled him when she sat down on the chair across from him.

"You look like you just saw a ghost," she teased him.

"I feel like I just met a ghost," he said. "I've been reading your grandmother's memoirs."

"Really? My grandmother wrote her memoirs? I can't imagine that they'd be very interesting."

"Here," Ron said and handed her a small paperback. "Read this when you get home, but let me borrow it back when you're done so that I can finish it. Oh, and I wouldn't mention it to your dad."

"Why not?"

"You'll see."

 

 

 

 

THE PARKVIEW BIOGRAPHY PROJECT

Contributors:

 

MAE BECKER

 

CHRISTINA DiBELLA

 

IRENE HAMILTON

 

MARY ROSE RUSSO

 

HAROLD SINGLETON

 

MARIA TSOKANIS

 

 

This book is dedicated to the families and friends who have shared our lives. We hope you cherish the memories that we now share.

 

A special 'Thank You' to all the staff members here at The Parkview Retirement Home and Rehabilitation Center for their encouragment and help in putting together our autobiography project.

Chapter One

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     

The only reason that I’m writing this story is to get that pain in the ass, Ms. Karen Williams, off my back.  Ms. Williams is the Activities Director here in God’s waiting room, or as it’s officially called:  Parkview Retirement Home and Rehabilitation Center.  Only no one ever gets rehabilitated.  Ms. Williams’ job is to try and keep us active enough that we don’t have time to notice what a hellhole this place really is.  She’s been trying to find me a new hobby ever since I’ve been here, and she says watching TV doesn’t count.  She wanted me to join one of her stupid clubs, but I don’t know how to knit or play bridge and I’m not interested in learning.  I might like to play a little poker now and then, but these morons in here only play with Monopoly money.  What the hell fun is that – playing for little colored pieces of paper?  She practically forced me to sit in on one of her book club meetings once, but it didn’t work out.  Even if I was interested in reading a book, I wouldn’t want to hang out with those smug eggheads.

     Well, after bugging me for ages, she finally wore me down and convinced me to take a computer class.  I’ve got to admit that I’m glad I did.  I never used to understand how people could sit in front of a computer screen for hours at a time, but now I get it.  Here in this dumping ground for unwanted old people I’m just Mary Rose Brennan-O’Brien-Russo-Sanchez, inmate.  But in chat rooms and on message boards all over the world I’m Margo29, exotic dancer.

     Well, if I thought finding a hobby that I actually enjoyed would get Ms. Williams off my back for long, I was wrong.  She came to me one day and said,   “We need a new blogger for our website, Mary Rose.  Since you enjoy spending so much time on the computer, I thought I’d offer it to you first.”

     “A what?”

     “A blogger.  A writer.  We need someone to write about their life here at Parkview.”

     What life?  I do manage to get out of bed and get dressed every day, which is more than a lot of these geezers here bother doing.  I watch some TV.  I spend some time on the computer.  I eat whatever slop they offer three times a day.  I go to bed.  There’s not a hell of a lot to write about there.

     So Ms. Williams found someone else to write her blog, but she still didn’t let up on me.  She decided that we should all write our life stores down “as a gift for our families and future generations,” as she put it.  Let me tell you what I told her about my family:  hell, they aren’t much interested in me now while I’m alive, I doubt they’ll be any more interested in me after I’m dead.  Of course, all those book club snobs thought it was a great idea.  Not me, though.  I thought it was a stupid idea and I still do.  But all the people who agreed to participate get extra time on the computers so I decided to join in.  And you want to know the worst part?  We have to choose a member of our family to read our stories and then add their own comments.  I picked Jack to read mine, because his was the only email address that I could remember.  I’ll probably be sorry I did, too, because he never has anything good to say.  Jack’s my oldest child, and I love him dearly, but sometimes I don’t like him much. 

     After I thought about it for a while, I started to like the idea of telling my side of the story.  There’s a lot of gossip and lies floating around out there and this will give me the chance to set the record straight.  So, I’m not doing this for my family, or for future generations or for Ms. Williams.  For the first time in my life I’m doing something just for me.  It’s about time, too.  Even if I do think it’s a stupid idea.

 

     I was born right here in Albany, but on the other side of town on Stuyvesant Street.  The name of the street came from the Dutch who lived there first, but it was mostly Irish when I was born.  When I was a kid, most of my relatives lived in that same neighborhood.  Over the years they all moved or died until there was none of them left but me.  Now it’s a real melting pot down there.  There’s probably more blacks than whites and there’s a bunch of Spanish speaking people, too.  A lot of people from the Middle East moved in for a while, but they don’t seem to stay too long.  There used to be a lot of Russians in the neighborhood during the early eighties.  At least I think they were Russians.  They all pretty much kept to themselves and didn’t mix with anybody else, although you always knew which houses they lived in because they were loud and they seemed to yell at their kids a lot, too.  It didn’t make any difference to me who lived there, though, because I got along with all of them, except the Russians.  Like I said, they kept to themselves.

     When my parents bought the place, it was just a small, one-story, two-bedroom house with an outhouse out back.  My father added indoor plumbing and a second floor with three more bedrooms and a second bathroom.  They thought they’d need the extra room, because they planned on having a big family.  Life never turns out the way you plan, though, and I ended up being an only child.  My father also built a screened porch on the back of the house and put the stairway to the second floor out there.  He figured that way it had its’ own entrance and after all his kids were grown he could put a small kitchen in and rent it out as an apartment.  That plan didn’t work out, either.  That screened porch sure did come in handy, though.  When the weather was really hot we used to sleep out there, and when it was really cold we used it as cold storage.  Mostly for my father’s beer.

     The house sat pretty close to the sidewalk – we didn’t have any front yard.  Nobody did.  But we had a nice size backyard where my mother used to raise chickens.  You could have small animals in your yard back then.  It wasn’t like it is now with all the regulations and ordinances.  Hell, the Reilly kids who lived next door used to get a pet lamb every Easter.  And they used to have leg of lamb every Christmas.  Anyway, my mother used to love those chickens, and I hated them.  I used to throw pebbles at them when she wasn’t looking.  Now, chickens may not be the brightest animals in the world, but those damn chickens knew enough to stay away from me.

 

(I have to remember to ask Ms. Williams what the hell all these red and green squiggly lines are).

 

     My father worked as a security guard for the railroad, so even when times were tough he had steady work.  We weren’t as well off as the people that lived up on the hill – ‘lace curtain Irish’ my mother used to call them – but we weren’t as bad as the folks my father used to catch sneaking onto the trains.  He said they were trying to get to someplace - any place - that was better than where they were.  Things were bad all over the country then, though. There wasn’t any better place.

     My mother didn’t have a job.  Most mothers didn’t back then.   She cooked and cleaned and raised those damn chickens.  She tried to raise me, too, but I was always the independent type.  She wanted me to be just like her, but I wanted more out of life.  I was determined that I wasn’t going to live at the bottom of the hill all my life.  Ha!  Look where I ended up.  Like I said before, life don’t generally turn out the way you plan.

     The only things I hated more than my mother’s chickens were those other tough old birds – The Sisters of Mercy.  Don’t let their name fool you.  There was nothing merciful about those nuns at St. Anne’s School.  Of course, they weren’t too fond of me, either, because I had a mind of my own.  And I paid a price for that.  Every year I would ask to be Queen of the May.  That was the girl who led the May Day procession and got to wear a crown of flowers and carry the statue of the Virgin Mary.  And every year they would pick some other girl.   Usually it was one of the O’Toole sisters.

 

     “Mary Rose,” Sister Mary Alice said to me one year, “you have to earn that privilege.  It’s only for girls who pattern themselves after Our Blessed Mother by being humble and obedient and trying not to sin.”  Then she gave me one of those looks that all nuns seem to give.  They look at you like you’re trying to hand them a turd or something.  Well, I didn’t argue with her or make some smart-ass remark like I normally would.  Instead, I decided that I would be the most obedient and humble girl in school and then they would have to let me be Queen.

     I started keeping my desk neat and turning in my homework every day.  I stopped giving Sister a hard time and even treated her with respect.  At least to her face.  I’d say “Yes, Sister Mary Alice,” whenever she asked me to do anything and I was always the first one on my feet whenever Father O’Heaney came into our classroom.  I stayed after school every day to help wash the blackboard and clap the erasers.  And I managed to stay out of trouble for over two months.  So when the day came that the principal, Sister Mary Philomena, was going to make the announcement I was pretty sure that I’d be chosen.  At the very least I figured that I’d be one of the girls in the procession who get to carry a basket of flower petals and scatter them on the sidewalk.  But guess what!?  Once again they chose one of the O’Toole sisters to be Queen and I was chosen to be a sweeper.  A sweeper!  Those are the girls who follow the procession and sweep up the petals from the sidewalk.  Well I sure showed those nuns.  I stayed home from school that day.

  Boy, I hated those O’Toole sisters as much as I hated the chickens and the nuns.  I got my revenge on them, too.  But that comes much later in my story.

     Now I have to email this to Jack.  He’s supposed to read it and add comments if he wants.  He shouldn’t have anything to say about what I’ve written so far, because all this stuff happened long before he was even born.  But, knowing Jack, he’ll find something wrong with it.

Yours truly,

Mary Rose

 

 

Ma,

Since when is your last name Sanchez?

Jack

Chapter Two

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

     I asked Ms. Williams why all those squiggly red and green lines were showing up under the words that I typed.  She said that the computer was showing me that I had spelled something wrong, or that I said something the wrong way.  I don’t mind the computer fixing my spelling, because I’ve never been much good at that myself,  but I don’t appreciate it trying to tell me how to tell my own story.  It’s my life.  I lived it my way and I’ll tell it my way.  Oh, hell, there’s those lines again.  Anyway, I could see those book club eggheads rolling their eyes and snickering.  I’d like to ask them why, if they’re so much smarter than me, we all ended up in the same dump.  The more time I spend with these losers the more I think about my old friends and how much fun we used to have.

 

    

When I was growing up I had lots of neighborhood friends and school friends, but my two best friends were Jeanne Coogan and Gracie McHale.  Jeanne was mostly just a school friend, because her parents were real strict and didn’t let her run around much with Gracie and me.  If she wanted to go to the movies with us, her mother had to come, too.  After a while, we stopped inviting her, which didn’t bother her parents any.  They thought that me and Gracie were a bad influence on her.  They kept her sheltered all through her childhood, but when she graduated from high school they sent her away to college!  For what, I don’t know.  Girls back then didn’t need college.  Hell, I didn’t even finish high school and I turned out alright.  Jeanne’s parents must have ended up sorry that they made her go, too, because she met a medical student, married him and never came back.  She moved all the way to California.  Instead of coming home to visit, she used to send her parents plane tickets every year so they could all go on vacation together.  I can’t imagine they were too thrilled about having to travel all over the world just to see Jeanne and her kids.  One time they had to go all the way to Greece!  Can you imagine?  I could have gone to Hollywood myself, but I chose to sacrifice my dreams to stay and help my mother.  People used to tell me that I was pretty enough to be a movie star, and I was.  I probably should have gone, too, because I don’t think my mother ever appreciated the sacrifices that I made for her.

     Gracie, unlike Jeanne, had a lot of freedom.  I think it was probably because after raising eight babies, her mother was just too damn tired to keep track of all of them.  My mother always said that it was because Gracie’s mother was Italian, and

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 17.01.2017
ISBN: 978-3-7396-9355-2

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Widmung:
To My Husband, Tim, with love