Chapter 1
Sometimes I wonder about the things that had happened to us in the past.....why they happened, when and where. I don't particularly like talking about those early years, those years where I was stuck with one foot in one door and another in the other, one foot in the door of foolish teenage boy and the other in young adulthood. Part of me had also wondered in those early years, "Good Lord, what the hell is wrong with us?". I'm one-hundred percent certain that people thought in the back of their heads, "Good Lord, those Brennans! They're just as bad as those Kennedys!"
In a way we were.
I don't like to call my father, "Father" or my mother, "Mother". For their sake as well as mine, my siblings and I will only call them "George Senior" and "Ellen." To me, that's all they are, two strangers who I wouldn't think twice about speaking to on the streets. It's a hard story to tell, a story that is as bitter as old tea and one that makes me grimace every time I try to tell it.
Much of our story began when our ancestors came through Ellis Island from the coast of Ireland, but I don't want to trouble anyone with trifle details about our heritage. You know the drill.....immigrant family comes from impoverished beginnings and whisks themselves off to the United States where they strike it rich. Well, that did happen when our grandfather, Frank Brennan, struck it rich in the banking business. Outside of work, Grandfather is one of the best men I've ever known and the only one that me, or my siblings, will ever call "Papa".
I remember waking up one sunny morning in the spring of '36, the very first warm day of the year and on the brink of summer. Oh it was glorious, waking up to the humidity and the birds chirping outside. I was nineteen, due to turn twenty in July and so hopeful of everything around me, that I had completely forgotten all of my troubles from the previous year. I couldn't wait. Every year on the Sunday before Memorial day, was the day we would all pile in the car and head for Papa's estate, with no Senior and no Ellen to bother us for an entire summer.
I had gotten up that morning, readying myself as best I could and washed the sleepy grime from my face, scrubbing the sandy brown hair that all of us Brenann kids had been blessed with at a young age. All of us looked so alike that anybody on the streets could tell who we were, the same sandy brown hair, perfectly straight teeth and hazel eyes that had been passed on through the family for generations.
I couldn't wait. Any excuse to leave and I would take it.
I heard a knock at the door, dreading who was behind it. "Come in."
Much to my relief it was neither Senior nor Ellen, but Papa's valet who had worked for him for years. "My good sir," he announced. "Your grandfather has sent for you whenever you are ready."
"Thank you Pierce," I told him politely. "I'll meet you outside in a few minutes."
When he left, I hurried to get ready. Papa had always had a rule in the family that it was far better to do your best and be on time than to be lazy and make people wait. Truth be told, I hated being late as well.
As I shuffled out the door, I prayed to God that I wouldn't run into Senior or Ellen. The day was far too beautiful to waste on the likes of them, them and their snippy society attitudes and Senior's rhetoric about ambition and goals. Oh I had goals alright. I was desperate to carve my own path, just like the rest of us kids, desperate to do something meaningful with my life and with purpose.
"Thanks Pierce," I said as I clambered into the back of the car. "I appreciate it."
"Young man, you know I would do for you as your grandfather has done for me all these years," he said with a satisfied smile on his face.
We pulled out of the drive, leaving the family estate behind us. I myself was excited to leave and spend the day among relatives who would have been happy to have all of us under one roof. Were that the case, most of us would have gone to live with Papa years ago, but Senior and Ellen had seen to it that the opposite had come about.
The drive was utterly beautiful, the shady and sunny wooded areas of upstate New York in their fullest green and all the colors of late spring and early summers. Growing up we had spent far too much time in the city until Senior was finally convinced that a country estate would be much better. Thank God for Grandma Agnes and Aunt Gertrude. They were always the ones who could put the prodigal son in his place.
Pierce drove down those dirt roads, eager to get back to the place he knew best. I peered out that window from the back seat of the old sedan, looking for the familiar landmarks that indicated we were near "The Hills."
Up one long stretch of road and then another, until at last the place came into view. The huge stretch of marble house was nearly covered in creeping and climbing roses that stretched from the ground to the eaves and the garden filled with all the flowers that Grandma Agnes and some of the house staff had planted. In the center of the drive was the fountain where all of us kids and cousins used to throw pennies and dimes and in the winter we would slip, slide and skate all over the place, free to be silly and carefree. At the Christmas parties every year, when children would come from the local hospitals and poorhouses, Papa would let them play with us, our antics sometimes getting the better of us. I didn't care if in those days that Senior and Ellen thought we were too good and too high in society to play with children from the working class. Papa had said time and again it would be good for us to do so, for he knew once what it was like to be poor and without a penny to his name.
We pulled to a stop and Pierce opened the door. As I stepped out into the bright sunlight, a single thought crossed my mind.....welcome back George.....
