Beach Wedding(6)

I noticed the wineglasses weren’t filled with wine but beer. Even before one was set down before me, I knew which kind.

It was Pabst Blue Ribbon, our dad’s favorite.

“So, if you guys would stand and raise a glass with me,” Tom said as he turned and faced the ocean.

We all stood and followed his lead with glasses of our father’s signature drink raised out toward the sea. The table was completely silent now. The only sounds were the wind and the waves beyond in the dark.

I looked around the table at the candlelight flickering off the tear-filled faces of my brothers and sister and my mom.

“Thank you, Dad. We love you,” Tom called out to the dark, softly rushing water. “Rest in peace, Dad. I got this. We all got this now. You really can rest in peace.”

“Amen,” I whispered in the dark as Viv squeezed my other hand.



6

We woke up the next morning and headed out early for bagels in the village. There was, of course, a huge breakfast buffet set up at the house, but this morning, I had something important to do.

“Where are we now, Mommy?” Angelina called out from her car seat behind me as we pulled onto the Montauk Highway.

“We’re going to see where Daddy grew up,” Viv said.

“This is so boring,” my daughter whispered around the straw of her juice pack, and we laughed.

Ten minutes later, I pulled over five blocks in from Shinnecock Bay on a quiet narrow street in the Hampton Bays.

And puffed out a long nervous breath.

I put the transmission in Park and sat looking at 167 Donellan Street. Its bay window, my mom’s favorite cherry blossom trees still there in the front yard. To the left was the strike-zone panel on the garage door that we threw things at all childhood long. Tennis balls, Spaldings, Wiffle balls. I couldn’t believe how tiny the split-level looked.

It was the first time I’d been back to my old house since high school. After my dad died, I went to Villanova on a track scholarship and majored in journalism, and basically stayed there. After freshman year, I didn’t come home for Thanksgiving or even for Christmas, and I spent summers working and living at school.

I’d meet my mom and family in Manhattan from time to time, but for whatever reason, I couldn’t come all the way back.

But that wasn’t really true.

I actually did know the reason.

My dad’s death when I was seventeen had hurt too much, and I just couldn’t face it, face my mom, all that pain, that loss.

And I used that excuse for all it was worth.

I spent the summer of my junior year interning as a crime reporter doing ride-alongs with the Philly PD. Once I graduated, I decided why report on crime when I could actually fight it? And one cop test later, that was all she wrote.

“Okay, we saw it, Daddy. Now it’s beach time, right?” Angelina said.

I looked back at her, smiling. She was geared up to go swimming again, already in her bathing suit and matching pink star-shaped sunglasses.

“Soon,” Viv said. “Did you eat your bagel?”

“Well,” she said. “Most of it.”

“What about Tina?” I said, referring to Angelina’s imaginary friend who had decided to come on vacation with us. “Did Tina eat hers?”

“She has a little bit left, Daddy. Tina, finish up now, please,” Angelina whispered.

I exchanged a smile with Viv.

During last night’s feast, I’d been planning to mention to her the unsettling conversation I’d had with my brother, but as the amazing courses and wine flowed, I hadn’t gotten around to it.

I looked back at my old house.

Probably because I was still attempting to process it myself.

“So, this is it. Where it all began,” Viv said, taking off her own sunglasses.

“Picture if you will, Viv, four crazy little freckled boys in increasing size and one crazy little freckle-faced girl, slapping hockey pucks at each other, climbing trees, playing football, and daring each other to do wheelies up and down this driveway and street here.

“Then further picture the sudden screams and many hurried trips to the hospital for broken fingers, ankles, and stitches in our trusty brown Buick Electra station wagon, piloted at panicked speed by the intrepid Rosemarie Rourke.”

As we sat there, I remembered the roaring sound of Dad’s little rattletrap MG as he came in from work or shanghaied one of us for a trip to the hardware store.

“Now, please fasten your seat belts and keep all extremities inside the vehicle,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “Day in the life of a Hamptons townie, location two, coming right up.”



7

A silver, streaking LIRR commuter train hammered southbound across the railroad bridge over North Main Street behind us as we arrived before a two-story sun-faded brick building back in Southampton ten minutes later.

“Ladies and gentlegirls, may I have your attention?” I said, gesturing expansively at the building. “Behold, Our Lady of the Hamptons, the old alma mater. This schoolyard here was the site of many Rourke knee-skinnings, bullyings—both as victim and perpetrator—and truly bewildered nuns. This is also the former location and frequent parking spot of the aforementioned brown Buick Electra as our ever-suffering mother, Rosemarie, was called in to try to plead down the latest Rourke act of mischief. As our D-A-U-G-H-T-E-R is present, I can’t even go into what Tom did there when he was raising the flag on the roof pole one time when he was in eighth grade.”