Stolen Innocence

Stolen Innocence

Bernadette Walsh

Published by Bernadette Walsh, 2015.

This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

STOLEN INNOCENCE

First edition. January 23, 2015.

Copyright © 2015 Bernadette Walsh.

ISBN: 978-1507024553

Written by Bernadette Walsh.

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Stolen Innocence

Sign up for Bernadette Walsh's Mailing List

Further Reading: A Safe Distance

Also By Bernadette Walsh

About the Author

CHAPTER ONE

––––––––

My mother, never a large woman, now weighed no more than a twelve-year-old child. I favored my father’s side, the Lenihans. "A real farmer’s daughter," my mother would say every year as the pediatrician marked the shameful statistics in my chart: eightieth percentile for both weight and height. Cheeks burning, I would close my eyes and imagine myself at my grandfather’s farm in Ireland, surrounded by my Lenihan cousins whose long limbs and bright red hair mirrored my own. I would close my eyes and wish I was anywhere but trapped in the exam room with my mother and her perfectly coiffed blonde hair and sharp blue eyes. I’d wish I was anywhere rather than Cold Spring.

But now my mother was the one trapped in Cold Spring Harbor. The living room she’d so lovingly restored to all its nineteenth century glory, whose original moldings gleamed with decades of the housekeeper’s polish, was now her prison. The room we children had been forbidden to enter except at Christmas and Easter reeked of antiseptic, her treasures pushed aside in a jumble to make room for a steel hospital bed.

My mother wanted to spend her remaining weeks in her own home and not in the well run hospice facility I’d suggested. My sisters and brothers acceded to her wishes, not realizing sickness and death were such a messy business. Although, how would they know? With their graduate degrees and five-bedroom colonials and well groomed children, life’s messiness was for other people to take care of. Housekeepers, nannies. People like me.

My eldest sister, Marybeth, had assumed I would care for Mama full time, not giving a thought to my own patients. She’s changing bedpans anyway, I overheard her say to my sister Eileen. Why should we pay someone else to do it? For once in my life, I held my ground. Twice during the week, I covered the hour gap between the day and night home healthcare workers’ shifts and I stayed with Mama each Sunday morning. It was more time than I had spent with my mother in years. It would have to do.

I spent the first ten minutes of my sentence examining my mother’s inert body for sores. I carefully checked the pressure points: shoulders, buttocks, heels. That done, I spread out on the brocade couch and read The Harbor Sentinel, its pages festooned with the happenings of Cold Spring Harbor: a Girl Scout bake sale, a local fishing competition and photos from the historical society’s annual gala. I recognized a classmate from grammar school who hadn’t aged well, another tall balding man who’d played lacrosse with my brothers and in the place of honor at the center of the page — the Senator and Mrs. Mannion.

The Senator’s thick mane of hair was entirely white and his shoulders slightly stooped, but otherwise he looked as I remembered him. Mrs. Mannion hadn’t fared as well, with deep grooves carved into her cheeks that even makeup and the newspaper’s grainy print couldn’t hide.

Almost involuntarily, my gaze was drawn to the framed photo on the mantle. The Mannions and my parents at another nameless fundraiser, a glass of champagne in my mother’s hand, every highlighted hair lacquered in place. Despite everything that had happened, that picture encased in the finest Waterford crystal remained in its place of honor so that every visitor could see how far Margaret O’Connor Lenihan had risen in the world.

As if in a dream, I walked to the fireplace and picked up the picture frame. How many times had I entered this room, my sisters’ eyes on me as I pretended not to notice it? That photo triggering memories of the Mannions I’d successfully managed to suppress for weeks, even months, at a time.

Ah, who was I kidding? The Mannions were never far from my mind. Not really.

The photo slipped so easily from my hand. Its delicate frame shattered against the fireplace’s slate. A shard of glass sliced through the Senator’s fine head of hair. My mother stirred in her bed but the morphine rendered her unconscious of my most recent crime.

I left the remains on the floor and retreated to the kitchen, settling into the window-seat that had been my refuge for much of my childhood. A tepid mug of coffee in hand, I stared out onto the well tended garden and the partial water-view that had been my mother’s pride and joy. When the afternoon aide relieved me at one o’clock it was all I could do not to run out the door.

I hopped into my Honda and roared through the tranquil streets of Cold Spring Harbor and then the wider, less genteel avenues of neighboring Huntington until I reached the highway that would take me south. As a traveling nurse, summer was my busiest and most lucrative season. Desk jockeys who earned their fortune doing God knows what on Wall Street, men like my father and brothers, would as soon as summer hit pummel their aging and unfit bodies. Rounds of golf, jet-skiing, and ill prepared 5-Ks resulted in the slipped discs and blown out knees that paid my rent. These titans of Wall Street in their luxurious summer homes were by turns condescending, distant, overly-friendly, flirty even. But they were conscious and paid in cash, unlike my usual roster of aging cancer and stroke victims. Plus, their season was a short one. By Labor Day, they would either recover or move back to their opulent Park Avenue apartments. So, as I placed on the dashboard the medical pass that allowed me to use the service road onto Fire Island, thus avoiding the slower ferry, I thought of what my grandfather Lenihan said every summer we visited him. "Have to make hay while the sun shines." I rolled down the window and allowed the hot air to kiss my cheeks as I pulled into the driveway of a simple salt box whose ocean frontage on Wegman’s Bluff belied its multi-million dollar price tag. Time to make some hay.

My newest patient had left the front door unlocked. As usual, the paperwork the agency sent me was incomplete — they hadn’t even gotten his name correct. Scott Ma..., they rest of the name fell off the page. Under diagnosis it said simply knee. Not knowing exactly what I would find, I brought my large medical bag in with me.

Hello, I called out to alert him I was there. I’d surprised enough men in solitude and didn’t want to get off to an awkward start with this one.

Five? They’re insane!

Like many oceanfront homes, the living area was on the second floor with spare bedrooms on the first. I climbed the stairs to a large combination kitchen/living room/dining room with floor to ceiling windows that faced the beach. A dark-haired man, shirtless, with a phone in one hand and a cane in the other, limped across the bleached wood floor. I don’t care what research says. Two point five is as high as I’ll go.

He continued to drag his bandaged leg across the living room as if it were an errant child. I don’t give a fuck what Richard says. I swear to God if I weren’t stuck out here I would shove that spreadsheet up his ass. No more than two point five, Gary, you hear me?

The man turned and threw the phone on the couch. Who are you?

Without waiting for me to answer he sprawled on a white couch, reached for his laptop, and started typing furiously. Not looking up, he said, Shush, give me a minute.

I stood there and shifted from one foot to the other as he made me wait. When he’d finally stopped typing, I said,  I’m Maura Lenihan, from the agency. He looked up at me, his eyes an aquamarine blue that seemed incongruous with his hard physique and rough manner. As usual whenever I met someone new, I held my breath for a moment. I steeled myself against any flicker of recognition in his eyes, but his expression didn’t change. Relieved, I exhaled and then read my paperwork. I’m sorry, the coordinator has terrible handwriting, I showed him the paper. You are Mr. Ma..

His glanced at it and then looked at me, his blue eyes opaque. Matthews. Scott Matthews, jet skier extraordinaire.

I allowed myself to smile. And your orthopedist is?

Seligman.

You’re lucky, he’s the best out here. I crouched down and lifted the dressing to find the the telltale stitching of a recent knee surgery. When was your surgery?

Last Monday.

And you’re walking on it already?

He smiled, erasing any evidence of the former cursing Wall Streeter. He looked young then, younger than me, anyway. Scott Matthews couldn’t have been more than thirty. I’m a bad patient. Always have been, which is probably why my mother arranged for you to come and make me behave.

I don’t get paid enough for that. You should be healed enough in two weeks to be more mobile. Is that what Dr. Seligman told you?

He said closer to four. I’m diabetic. He stretched out his hand. So this is my new office, for awhile anyway.

The tide crashed onto the beach and the distant cries of the gulls spilled in through the open sliders. It’s peaceful, I said.

His cellphone chirped. He grabbed it, and before he answered his mouth twisted in a wry smile. Yeah, peaceful. Then Mr. Matthews began a tirade against poor beleaguered Gary.

I gathered the tools of my trade — fresh bandages, ointment, scalpel — and placed them in my bag as my new patient shouted about points. I mouthed at him, I’ll be back tomorrow at two.

The breeze from the open sliders blew papers from the coffee table. I retrieved them from the floor and handed them to him. He took them with his free hand and then winked at me.

Most people can wink effortlessly, but Mr. Matthews wasn’t one of them. The wink seemed to require every muscle of the left side of his face to contort. It was funny, and almost against my will, I smiled back at him. Then my smile froze. That wink was familiar.

And who is this?

Mrs. Mannion smiled, her legs tan and lean in her tennis whites, a sad contrast to my fish-white chubby thighs poured into my sister Eileen’s hand-me-down plaid skirt. She leaned in to kiss Mr. Mannion, and ruffled his thick black hair. I swear, Brendan, you never listen. This is Maura, the daughter of one of your mother’s friends. She’s going to help out this summer.

While you play tennis?

She laughed, Yes, while I play tennis, among other things. Be nice and say hello to Maura.

He smiled, and reached out his hand to me. Hello, Maura.

My hand was engulfed in his strong grip and my face burned with embarrassment as I sputtered out,Hello, Mr. Mannion.

His handsome face twisted, almost in a grimace, as he winked at me.

I hurried across the bleached floorboards, down the narrow staircase to my waiting Honda. My skull throbbed with a familiar ache, as if my head rebelled against any stray thoughts about that summer traveling through its synapses. Twenty years. Wasn’t that long enough? Move on, Maura. Isn’t that what my sister Eileen always said? Move on.

If only it were that easy.

Mr. Matthews was my last appointment of the day so I was free to return home. Home. What a strange word to describe my two bedroom rental in the Laurel Gardens complex. Laurel Gardens. More like Loser Gardens. The two years I’d spent there after I’d broken up with yet another boyfriend seemed like an eternity.

Laurel Gardens was aggressively manicured. Its gated entranceway with two formidable brick pillars promised security, refuge from the eighteen wheelers and minivans that endlessly barreled down Jericho Turnpike. Less than five years old, the complex had all the modern amenities: high ceilings, granite countertops, even a clubhouse at its center where the divorced dads and the few women in the complex under fifty would gather to celebrate their newly single status. Next to the clubhouse was a small pool that on Wednesdays and weekends filled with sulky children forced to vacate the large colonials still inhabited by their mothers to serve their allotted time with their overly cheerful dads.

Despite its stainless steel appliances and bay windows, Laurel Gardens was an overpriced dump with kitchen cabinets that never closed right. Its thin walls could keep out neither the cold nor the endless stream of ESPN from each neighbor’s big screen TV, typically one of the few possessions the divorced dads were allowed to move into their nine hundred square foot cells. Still, for most this was a temporary stop until they moved on with their lives. Few stayed for more than a year or two.

I pulled into my assigned parking space and found my next-door neighbor, Rob — I think that was his name — once again waxing his pick-up truck with care. Rob was often home in the middle of the day and I never saw him dressed in a suit so I wasn’t sure exactly what he did for a living. He’d only been in Loser Gardens for a few months so he still had that hopeful glow as if he really believed things were going to work out for him.

Hey, Maura.

Hi Rob.

Bob.

I winced. Oh, that’s right. Bob. Sorry.

Bob was somewhere in his early forties with silver strands making their way through his baby fine blond hair. He was tall, with strong arms and a kind smile. When I could be bothered, I wondered how he wound up in Loser Gardens and what had caused him to leave the mother of the twin boys who on Saturday afternoons assisted with the constant car washing and waxing.

He smiled. No problem. Hey, there’s a wine tasting at the clubhouse later. Will I see you there?

I don’t think so, Bob.

He stopped waxing and his eyes met mine. I’d fended off so many of the divorced dads’ advances over the past two years, my responses had become automatic. Most of them were tools, and I didn’t feel even the slightest bit guilty about blowing them off. Some of them had recognized me, which made them even more persistent. But Rob, or rather, Bob, was different. He seemed genuinely nice. Still, the last thing I needed was to get involved with one of the apartment complex’s walking wounded. With my track record, the last thing I needed was to get involved with anyone.

Someday, I’ll convince you. You’ll see.

I smiled at him and dug the keys out of my purse.

Don’t count on it, Bob.

CHAPTER TWO

I buried my head in the pillow, but my cellphone’s ring was relentless. I finally grabbed  it. What?

Maura, thank God you’re there, my sister Marybeth said. It’s Mama.

One eye open, I croaked, What about Mama?

The aide called in sick. I swear those people are so unreliable.

And you’re calling me because?

Why do you think? I need you to go over there.

You know it’s my busy season. I haven’t had a day off in two weeks.

Silence.

Marybeth shared my mother’s steely resolve and could always out-wait me. As usual, I caved. Where’s Eileen or Rory?

Eileen’s daughter has a dance competition and Rory is out of town on business.

And Tommy?

Come on, Maura, Tommy can’t handle Mama.

I sat up, now wide awake. See, this is exactly why she belongs in a facility.

Never, Marybeth snapped. I’ll never put Mama in a home. We’ve talked about this.

Then you take care of her, I snapped back.

The twins have soccer. Come on, Maura, I’ll make it worth your while.

I don’t need your money. You can’t buy everyone you know.

Again, silence.

I sighed. It’s only going to get worse. If you all want her at home, you’re going to have to make her a priority over baseball and dance and soccer. You can’t expect me to always take up the slack. I have a life too, you know.

I could almost hear Marybeth roll her eyes over the phone.

A half hour later, my unruly curls trapped in a ponytail, I opened the front door of my mother’s house.

My mother’s thin reedy voice cut through the house’s still, humid air. Is that you, Marybeth?

No, it’s me, Mama.

Eileen?

Always her last guess. I shouted out, Maura.

My mother’s body was soaked in sweat: the house’s temperamental central air must’ve kicked off again. The saline drip was low and her eyes wild with unaccustomed consciousness and the sharp bite of pain. She must’ve been alone for hours.

How many times have I told you not to wear your hair up like a cleaning woman? my mother asked, her voice raspy from disuse. Surely to God, the sisters wouldn’t approve. I’m not spending good money sending you to St Catherine’s so you can look like a scrubber.

And we were off. Rather than inform her it was no longer 1993, I said, It’s summer, Mama.

What time is it? Kate Mannion will be looking for you. Honest to God, Maura, it was hard enough getting you this job. Move along with you, now, and do something about your hair.

Mama looked up at me, her thin face ravaged from time and pain. She’s sick, I told myself. Confused. Have pity on her. Find something to love about her as you do your other patients. But beneath the mass of wrinkles I could make out the remnants of the face she’d always shown me: lips pursed in irritation, eyes clouded with the knowledge that her youngest could never measure up. It was difficult to summon any love for that face.

I’ll leave in a few minutes, Mama, after I finish the dishes.

I’d picked the wrong lie. The dishes aren’t done yet?

Mama surprised me and finished almost an entire bowl of oatmeal. Last week, water dribbled down her chin and she was unable to swallow. Usually, once the ability to swallow was gone it was only a matter of days, but I’d seen turnarounds like this before with a few of my patients. Patients too scared or stubborn to lose themselves in death’s sweet embrace. People with unfinished business.

But what unfinished business had my mother? My father was long gone: a swift heart attack had taken him away the month before I graduated high school. Four children and more than a dozen grandchildren who adored her. As for the fifth child, well, she’d written off that mid-life mistake a long time ago. Maybe even before the Mannions had hired me that summer.

The layers of sweat sponged off her wasted body, my mother slept sound, aided no doubt by a full belly and the healthy dose of morphine I added to her IV. I tucked clean sheets around her thin limbs. Near the end, this seemed to give patients comfort. I pulled the sheets tighter around my mother, swaddling her like the baby I’d never held. She made a low mewing sound, almost like