St. Patrick's Bed (Ashland, 3) Read Online Free

forties—he and Anna Mae weren't married until 1943. My sister Judy came along in 1939. And I forgot to mention my cousin Jacquie, who was born in 1928 and spent most of her youth at Maxwell Avenue, raised by Nanny and my mother, after Jacquie's mother's marriage fell apart (her mother was Berna, my father's sister, who married in 1926, before my father did).
    My parents had nine children, but only five of us survived. There were a couple of stillbirths and twins that died at birth. Mom only named one of them—Anthony, in 1931. He was her second baby, the first boy, and she carried him around in a secret place inside herself as long as I knew her. There was even a statue of St. Anthony on a dressing table in her bedroom, which I used to study as a child. When you lose something, you pray to St. Anthony, she told me. He's the patron saint of lost things. Then the story would come out. St. Anthony, I came to understand, stood for the other babies too—and for everything else my mother had lost.
    Nineteen thirty to 1949. She had babies for nineteen years, from age twenty to thirty-nine. By the time my brother Dennis and I appeared in the mid- and late forties, the place had virtually cleared out. In comparison to the thirties, the house must have seemed either like a ghost town or like paradise. Nanny, my father's mother, was still there though, a fixture as I grew up, sitting in the green, cloth-covered chair in the living room, watching The Edge of Night every afternoon on the RCA black-and-white TV. She didn't die until 1974, age eighty-nine.
    The house had three bedrooms. The basement was full too. The place was crazy.
     
    Like I said, when Mom died, Dad lasted a year in the house alone. Then he sold it, moved to a senior citizens' apartment on Yonge Street. He was there for three years—1985 to '88.
    In the spring of '88, I went to see him and made a pitch.
     
    "Jeanne and I are going to buy a house together. Here, in Toronto."
    Dad now occupied the green, cloth-covered chair, only now it was in his apartment at Fellowship Towers. The arms were more frayed than ever. He was watching TV. He always watched TV.
    "Oh? You getting married?"
    I was married a long time ago. It ended after three years. My one and only try. Fran. I shrugged. "Not yet. We've talked about it. Probably. But right now, we just want to do this."
    "Mm." He pondered. "Adam?"
    "He'll start high school here."
    He looked at me. "It's a big step."
    "I know."
    "Living together."
    I nodded.
    "Don't see what's wrong with people just living together. Couldn't do it in my day." Then he thought about it. "Well, you could do it. But it wasn't easy. Most people looked down on you, like you were doing something really wrong."
    "Like Berna." I mentioned his sister. She had died in '78.
    "Like Berna. Ma nearly had a fit." He shrugged. "Doesn't matter now, does it?"
    "No, it doesn't."
    "Where you going to buy? Got a place picked out?"
    "That's what I wanted to talk to you about."
    He waited. Even though he was looking at me, I knew he wasn't seeing much of me, just like he wasn't seeing much of the TV. His eyes were going. Macular degeneration. Still, he managed to get around. Good instincts, I thought. Good sense. Radar.
    "You could come to live with us."
    He paused, surprised. Then: "Nah. Wouldn't work. Besides, I like it here. It's a good spot."
    "I know that. The thing is, though, we could do each other a favor."
    He sat back.
    "Jeanne and I can buy a place of our own. That would be fine. But if you come to live with us, we'd buy a bigger place so that you could have your own quarters, as separate as possible. You just pay us the same rent as you're paying here. Your finances stay the same. Hell, they'll be better. It'll include food too. Room and board."
    He was quiet, thinking.
    "Meals . . . We'll work it out. We'll work everything out. It'll be a work-in-progress."
    A long silence.
    "What do you think?" I waited.
    "What's Jeanne think of it?"
    "She likes the