~ The Madness Of Maura McGee

by

Annie Taylor

My mother had finally gone mad. Or so Aunt Jill claimed. I reread the last paragraph of her letter, though I knew the words by heart.

One question remains: what is to become of Maura? As her only child, the ultimate decision rests solely in your hands, Danica. Your entire family can only hope and pray for your immediate return to her side. Clearly, we are in need of our own miracle during this season of miracles.

Godspeed,

Jill

A miracle. At last, my Aunt Jill and I agreed on something.

The Greyhound bus engine droned in my ears. I crumpled the letter in my fist, then smoothed it out again, giving God one last chance to right the wrong. So much for miracles.

Aunt Jill’s slanted handwriting still flew across the page, on the wings of my mother’s illness.

I traced the curlicued J of Aunt Jill’s signature with my finger, remembering, as a child, how I had loved to watch her write her name. Now I gazed at black ink on the stark white sheet of paper and shuddered, her words drifting, running together like the jumbled thoughts in my mind.

Metal tire chains clattered against bare spots of pavement, and I closed my eyes, losing myself in their rhythm. Going home, going home, going home, they sang. It wasn’t any use. Fear clenched my stomach anew, worry tied it in a knot, and I was drawn back to the letter.

I could almost hear Paul’s voice. Fear, my husband would have said if he were here, was a noble emotion. After all, fear plus action equaled bravery, and even the smallest acts of bravery changed the world. But worry, he’d have said, now there was a useless emotion if ever there was one. And he’d have been right.

Worrying about Mother accomplished nothing, and so just for one moment I let her go. I tried to push away the thoughts of Aunt Jill, too, but like Aunt Jill herself, they forced themselves upon me. How well I remembered the last time I had seen Aunt Jill.

“Danica,” she had said, her Easter hat still pinned firmly to her head. “You’ll come back for Christmas criunniu, aye? For your mother?”

I shrugged my shoulders as if to say, “maybe yes, maybe no,” but there never was any question. She knew--we all knew I would be back for the gathering, letter or no.

And we all knew I would come alone.

My eyes slid from Aunt Jill’s letter to my left hand. A white line of skin circled my ring finger, a painful reminder to me--a neon sign advertising my failing marriage to the rest of the world. Without my wedding band, I felt utterly naked. Without Paul, utterly lost.

As confident as my family was that I would return to my mother’s side, they also realized I’d eventually have to go back to California to face Paul and the unfinished business of our ill-fated love. There was no alternative, for I, Danica Magee-Cohen, was a dyed-in-the-wool Irishwoman.

Three qualities that Aunt Jill taught me from the time I was small defined who we Irish were: we were generous to a fault, loyal to our clan, and foremost, in Aunt Jill’s estimation anyway, courageous in the face of fear. Generosity was the easy part.

Loyalty and courage--that is where my difficulties lay. In my case, fulfilling every responsibility meant that I would be torn in two opposite directions, each seven hundred miles apart.

For in order to be courageous, I would have to confront Paul. This marriage would end once and for all, or we would work through our problems and together, find some middle ground. I suffered no illusion. This act of courage would consume me.

Yet, I still had an obligation to my family. They would call. I must answer. Loyalty to clan ran as deep and as strong as the blood through our veins. And Paul, after all was said and done, was not blood family. Yes, I would come home for Christmas, and any other time I was called upon to do so.

Some days, it was hard being Irish.

Oregon in the winter is ugly. People who say differently are deluded. I pulled my old jacket tighter about myself, glaring at the cold, thin light of dawn. Big windshield wiper blades slapped back and forth across the front of the bus. It wasn’t quite raining, and not snowing either. Rather, it was slushing. Pine boughs bent beneath the weight of wet snow to the point of breakage. They dropped their heavy burdens and sprang back into place.

The sky was a mournful shade of gray. Snow piled up on the sides of the highway was gray. Even the face of the snoring woman beside me was gray. In L.A., where Christmas Eve looked like any other day of the year, everything was still green and growing. The cactus on the balcony of my apartment was covered in tiny yellow flowers. Yet here I was, slogging through this mess in a Greyhound bus, of all things, on my way to Mother’s cabin.

The slap, slap, slap of windshield wipers mesmerized me, and the Ghost of Christmas Past--or more accurately, of Three Christmases Past--dropped in for a visit.

I drove all the way home, alone once again, to announce that I would marry Paul Cohen the following summer. It rained the entire way, the fog so thick once I crossed the border into Oregon, I could barely see the red tail lights ahead of me. Paul had his first major gallery showing that weekend, a last-minute surprise for both of us, but he insisted that I not miss Christmas with my family on his account.

I arrived at the cabin hours late, my hands clenched around the steering wheel for so long and so hard, they ached. My head pounded, but I pretended to be fine when I saw the worried looks on everyone’s faces. As a diversion, I suppose, my big announcement was the first thing out of my mouth.

“Cohen. Paul Cohen?” Aunt Jill rolled his name around in her mouth and off her tongue. “Can’t you find a decent Irishman to marry in all of California?”

“Follow your heart, Danica,” Mother whispered, and Aunt Jill snapped, “For all the good that’s done you, Maura dear.” Mother looked at me with sorrowful eyes and said, “She’s right, you know.”

Mother took Aunt Jill’s advice about everything, and expected me to do the same. It was a source of angst for Mother that I was constantly at odds with Aunt Jill. She once said it was because, in many ways, Aunt Jill and I were alike; same stubborn streak, same quick temper, same need to be right all the time. I still bristled to think of it.

Me like Aunt Jill? Nothing could be further from the truth. That wasn’t the way I was inside, stubborn and ill-tempered, only the way I was with Aunt Jill. I loved her, yet I resented her, resented her intrusions, her overbearing ways. What I resented most, I hadn’t realized until now, was that Aunt Jill was nearly always right. But she had been dead wrong once.

At last year’s Christmas criunniu, which Aunt Jill insisted should still take place in spite of Daddy’s recent passing, Mother informed us all of her intention to sell the cabin. Aunt Jill talked her out of it on the spot. I swore I’d never speak to Aunt Jill again, but she took me aside.

“One day,” she said, “you’ll want to bring little ones of your own up to this lake. Remember all the summers you spent up here, Danica, with your mother and father and cousins? How many people did we manage to fit into this cabin, do you recall?”

Offhandedly, I didn’t remember. And frankly, I didn’t care. What Aunt Jill and the rest of my family didn’t know was that Paul and I were already separated, a “trial separation,” Paul insisted. Filling the cabin with the next generation of children was the furthest thing from my mind.

Was I the only one thinking clearly? Managing Daddy’s considerable estate, the house in town and the cabin as well would be a daunting undertaking for any sane person, and now that Mother...