Chapter 1

When I was a teenager, I wanted to grow up to be a curmudgeon.

Mission accomplished! I’m only forty-five. All the kids on the block are afraid of me and none of them dare walk on my lawn!

I’ve been a “widower” for a year. DAMN Cancer!

The goddamn, fucking, ovarian cancer robbed me of my partner and my reason for living. I didn’t have a reason to smile anymore. I didn’t have a reason to do anything anymore. I did seem to have the ability to get out of bed and take a shower every day. Feeding myself seemed worthwhile, so I drug myself to Cho’s Market, the old, way too expensive neighborhood grocery store. At least they had

good produce. I know Tom Brady says not to eat them, but I LOVE tomatoes. I can get the deep red, juicy ones in the winter at Cho’s. Those tomatoes are nearly as good as the ones I grow in my garden, just smaller.

You’ll never catch me going to a Mega Mart or any other big box store. I do drive twenty miles to Murphy’s to pick up two bottles of Jameson’s Irish Whiskey every week. That’s what I’ve tapered off to.

For about the first month after Mary died, I was not doing much but drinking. When I realized I was drinking a bottle a day, I tried to pull myself out of the grave I was digging for myself. It was winter, and I couldn’t dig in my garden, damn it, so I just sat in front of the fire. I built the fireplace for Mary, so looking at it made me sadder. I just sat and drank.

I got a pretty generous early retirement package from the small liberal arts college where I taught Irish and Early English literature for over twenty years. I guess they thought they owed a “legend” something. I was a popular teacher. I used my reputation as a crazy Irishman to draw in students. My rolls were always full, and the administration liked that. I approached teaching as “performance art,” so students never thought my classes were boring. The students gave me good end of course comments. The administration liked that.

Now the administration didn’t want a crazed, drunken Irishman teaching the kiddies, so the college didn’t pressure me to come back to work.

Did I mention that my thinking is non-linear, and I don’t always put things in chronological order? Just imagine you are reading a stream of consciousness writer and fit new information in as you discover it.

Mary taught poetry. Sometimes there was some overlap. We always talked it out, so I never contradicted anything Mary said about Irish poets. I usually judged English poets HARSHLY, and sometimes I did talk smack about them, while Mary treated them more gently.

Once I overheard two students talking. One said, “If you take English Lit 101 & 102 from Mrs. Dr. Doyle and then take English Lit 201 & 202 from Mr. Dr. Doyle, you won’t recognize the same writers. Of course, if you answer Mr. Dr. Doyle’s questions with, ‘It was just another thing the British stole from the Irish,’ you’ll usually be fine.” It was irritating and amusing at the same time that students thought what I intended as a joke was something I believed and the most significant thing I taught.

In the spring I started drinking my coffee on the porch in the morning, and my Jameson’s any other time. I got tired of mosquitoes trying to carry me away, so I enclosed the porch with screening, so I could drink in peace.

At this time in my life I looked a lot like pictures of George Bernard Shaw, except that my hair is still red. I used to keep myself neat and well-trimmed like pics of Bram Stoker, but after Mary died, I let my hair grow long and I didn’t trim my beard. I definitely looked like a monster movie Wildman.

While I was drinking my coffee, I noticed a red-haired girl walking to school across the street from my house. She looked like she was around ten. She was wearing a school uniform that reminded me of how Mary dressed when I first met her.

We were around ten when we started clumsily flirting with each other in the little Irish town where we grew up. Mary Ryan stole my heart before we had even gone through puberty.

My parents wanted to make sure everyone knew I was Irish, so they named me, Flynn Doyle. It took me several years to charm Mary enough for her to admit she actually liked me. As I got more education, I realized I was smarter than I looked and I started to excel at school. I also improved my ability to talk to Mary. When we graduated with our Bachelor’s degrees, we married.

I went to work and Mary continued at University until she completed her doctorate. We switched roles, and Mary worked, teaching at the University while I worked on my doctorate. When we both could add PhD to our name, we applied for US visas, and went to America with dreams of teaching at Harvard or Yale. Instead we ended up in Southridge, Minnesota, teaching at St. Carloff College. We never moved. We became American citizens and thought we would live in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes forever.

I wanted to get mad at the little girl for disturbing my morning coffee and my memories of life with Mary, but I couldn’t help myself, I was smiling. Then the little girl waved at me, and I found myself grinning like an idiot.

I didn’t seem to be able to get mad at the girl, but I was able to growl at myself. I managed to get pissed off enough to drink two more shots of Jameson’s than usual by that time of day. When the red-headed girl was due home from school I was totally pissed at myself and thoroughly sloshed.

In the afternoon, the red-haired girl walked on my side of the street. Kids seem to be attracted to my house. It is built from limestone, and it’s really a pretty normal house built in the 1920s, but kids think it looks like a castle because of one circular tower. It’s built on the north-west corner of the house. Instead of a battlement, the tower has a conical roof, much like the towers of Cinderella’s Castle at Disneyland.

I wasn’t surprised she wanted a closer look. I never imagined a kid would want to talk to me. They all just wanted to see the inside of the tower. Usually my “Crazy Irishman” impersonation scared them away. Uncharacteristically, I was inclined to show the girl the castle stairs and the room at the top of the tower.

She walked up the walk to the front door and peered through the screen. “You know the poison you are drinking doesn’t help you. It just makes you feel sadder,” She said.

“I didn’t ask for your opinion, did I?” I said, in as nasty a voice as possible.

“No, you didn’t, but you should have, Dr. Flynn Doyle.” She said with a giggle.

“Why aren’t you afraid, like all the other kids? I could be a crazy person or a bad man, with evil intentions, who would do terrible things to you,” I said.

“I’d have to punch you in the nose if you tried to do anything to me that I didn’t like. Of course, we both might be surprised by the things I like,” The girl said.

“Are you going to be polite and invite me in to sit and talk, or are you going to keep being rude?” The girl said.

“Well, back fifty years ago, that might have been acceptable, but these days, it could get me in trouble. You need to go home. You have to bring your mother up here to meet me, and give her permission, before I can invite you in.” I said.

I was confident no mother on earth would give her permission for her ten-year-old daughter to visit a crazy, drunken Irishman.

“Aren’t you going to ask my name?” The girl said.

“Since you already know my name, it’s only fair that you tell me yours,” I said.

“It’s Mary. My name is Mary Flynn. Pretty funny that my last name is your first name, isn’t it? Well don’t go anywhere Dr. Doyle. I’ll be back with my mom in two shakes of a lamb’s tail,” She said. The girl giggled, and then she was gone.

I poured myself another shot of Jameson’s and was sipping it when Mary came up my walk holding the hand of a busty, chubby woman. By the amount of gray in her red hair, I guessed she was about my age.

“Good afternoon to you Dr. Doyle!” The woman said cheerfully, in a heavy Irish accent.

“Hello,” I said gruffly. “Mrs. Flynn, is it?” I asked, exaggerating my brogue.

“Ah, and you’re not as big a monster as you think,” She said.

Against my better judgment, I invited them to join me on the screened porch.

I staggered to the kitchen and made tea for Mrs. Flynn and poured a glass of squeezed, homemade lemonade for Mary. I brought the drinks and a plate of oatmeal cookies out to the porch. I sat down with my Jameson’s and I turned to face Mrs. Flynn.