Page 21 of It's a Love Story

A woman who must be the mother of these twins comes out and throws her arms around Dan. Her hair is the same shade of black with a single white stripe along her face. This is not a perfunctory greeting hug. Dan’s face is in her hair; her arms encircle him like he’s the thing that will keep her from drowning. I don’t know what it’s like to have a child, and I don’t know what it’s like to live that far away from my mother. But I am self-conscious for all of us as this hug draws on.

Aidan seems unfazed and carries our suitcases around the hug into the house. She takes Dan’s face in her hands. “You’re thin, Danny. You look terrible.”

He turns to me. “Mom, sorry, this is Jane Jackson. From work. Jane, this is my mom, Maureen.”

“Call me Reenie,” she says, taking both of my hands in hers. She is the source of the wide navy blue eyes. “You’re so pretty. Danny didn’t say. But of course you are. Danny always likes a pretty girl.”

“Thank you,” I say, trying not to make it sound like a question. “And thank you for having me. I know it’s a big week with the anniversary.”

“Well, of course. Danny hasn’t brought a girl home in years. What was her name? Esme? Ethel?”

Dan is the tiniest bit flustered, and I like it. I like seeing him take a few steps off his high horse and squirm a little like the rest of us. “Elizabeth. Her name was Elizabeth. And Jane is not my girlfriend. Like I told you on the phone, she works at the studio and needs to be at the festival this weekend. That’s all.”

“Oh, all right, if that’s how it’s going to be,” Reenie says with Dan’s trademark eye-roll. It’s more playful on her. “Come meet everyone.”

Everyone. How many people could possibly be in this little house? She leads me inside into a neat entryway. There’s a staircase carpeted in seagrass and children. There are four of them, between three and seven, I’d guess. Dan dives into the pile of them like they’re a ball pit at Chuck E. Cheese. When he emerges, he has one on each knee, and one hanging from each arm. He seems to have bathed in them, and some of his hardness washes off. He catches me noticing and quickly lowers the two on his arms to the ground.

“I’m Sammy,” says a little boy. “Who are you?”

“Rude,” says Reenie, giving a fake swat. “This is Uncle Danny’s girlfriend, Jane.”

“I’m not . . .” I start.

“It’s a bit of a madhouse around here this week,” says Reenie. “Come.” We pass a wooden table with a framed photo. Five nearly identical boys, in ascending height order with the twins in the middle.

“Who?” I say to no one.

“These are the boys,” she says. “It was the Fourth of July. This is Brian, Finn, the twins, and baby Connor. Can you tell which one’s Danny?”

The children rush past me toward the back of the house as I pick up the frame and look at the boys. I had no idea Dan had so many brothers. I study the twins. Hair brushed identically. Matching blue-and-white-striped shorts and red sweatshirts. One is grinning into the camera; the other is staring at something in the distance. I point at the starer. “This one.”

“Ah, you know him well,” she says and laughs. “Come.”

“Five sons and four grandchildren,” I say almost to myself. It’s impossible to imagine it.

“Oh, I have seven grandchildren, plus one on the way,” she says and leads me to a rustic but neat kitchen where pots are bubbling on the stove. She rushes to stir something, and Dan rests his hands on the back of a spindled kitchen chair and takes a breath.

“Are you ready for this?” he asks.

I look down at the farmhouse kitchen table. It’s three long planks of wood with a lazy Susan in the middle—salt and pepper, hot sauce, sugar, Splenda, honey, and a tiny votive candle. Someone’s thought of everything.

“Ready for what?”

“My family.” He says it quietly, like it’s a secret, like he doesn’t want his mom to hear.

“So far, they’re a lot nicer than you, but if you insist, I’ll reserve judgment.”

“All right,” he says and opens the door to the patio. The sound that greets us is deafening. At first I think we’ve walked into a children’s birthday party, balls and screams flying across the lawn. Then I think they’ve invited the town for a barbeque to welcome Dan home. But all the men in this small crowd look similar, and I realize they’re all Finnegans. I feel like I’ve walked into a fashion shoot for a l aid-back, high-end men’s clothing line. All of them with their sharp jaw lines and sculpted muscles pressing against cotton in a way that suggests they’ve just gotten off a fishing boat or a rowing machine. “Here we go,” Dan says.

A long table is set with white napkins and jelly jars full of yellow daisies. There’s a picnic blanket on the grass for the kids. Beyond the grass is an expanse of potato fields. Perfectly straight lines of dark green bushes converge in the distance. Some kind of shed covered in ivy blocks a portion of the view, and I wonder if I am the only one who wants to tear it down. This field would be completely Zen without that eyesore.

A leaner version of Dan crosses the patio to greet him. “Ya ugly fuck! How are you?”

I turn to Reenie for an explanation, and she just beams. Dan is a lot of things.Ya grumpy fuck,sure.Ya pretentious fuck,okay. But ugly, for sure no.

“I’m good.” Dan hugs him. “Good to see you, ya old bastard.”

The old bastard laughs. “I’m Brian,” he says to me and pulls me into a hug. “I’m the oldest, which is why I get so much respect.”

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