“No question. But your prize money is yours. There are things you need and want, and you should have them.”
“I have lots of years to save.”
“You think you do, and one day, you wake up and you’re seventy-eight years old and you’ve been patching and stretching for so long, you don’t know any other way to live. I don’t want that to be your fate, Mary.”
“I’ll be fine, Dad.”
Mr. Bennet’s expression softened. “Always positive. I wish I were like you.”
“My playwriting teacher taught me never to make any assumptions about any character. Let them live in the scene and see where they take you.”
“That’s not easy to do. You write drama. I wrote nonfiction. History. The drama in history lives in the facts. You have to create the world and the characters from nothing. I think that’s much more difficult.”
Mary could not find a way to tell her father that she didn’t write from nothing; she wrote from experience, the stories she heard in this old house, with her sisters and mother. With him. The hilarity and pain that ensued, all of it, Mary hoped, were in her play. There was even a good man who couldn’t catch a break but found his happiness in raising his children. It was as if life in the outside world, including his career and ambition, were secondary to the family inside the house. But a father who does not achieve his dreams breaks a daughter’s heart, because it might mean that her dreams won’t come true, either. Mary wished her father had been rewarded for his contributions as a writer. Life had not been fair to Mr. Bennet.
Mary sat, leaned on the desk, and placed her face in her hands. She looked at her father, grateful for all of the one-on-one time she had with him. Mary had made a list of questions to ask her father, but that day, she was particularly curious about his artistry. When his eyes met hers, she asked, “Dad, why didn’t you ever write another book?”
Mr. Bennet leaned back in his chair. “I didn’t think I could write a better one.”
“You said all you had to say?” Mary asked.
“I didn’t say that.” Mr. Bennet sipped his iced tea. “I didn’t have the confidence to try again. It takes a level of belief in yourself to write. The page is filled with the person you are. Yourobservations. Your point of view. Your research. It’s all very personal, in my estimation. How a writer sees things is who he is.”
“It’s your identity.”
“In a way. And—it frightened your mother to be married to a writer. It seemed like a flimflammy way to live and bring up a family. And it was. That’s why I took in copyediting jobs and tutored. We never knew when the money would land, if it did at all. It affected her nerves. The instability of it all. When you’re an artist, a writer, a playwright, what have you, you cannot be tethered to anything but your work—the desk, the lamp, the paper, and the pencil are your life. And I fear if they aren’t, the work is probably not very good.”
“If the book had been a bestseller, we would be having a different conversation,” Mary assured him.
“Do you think so? Or do you think that maybe I would have gotten a swelled head, grown out my sideburns, and left this old house for something new?”
“You’re not the type, Dad.”
“I often think I can’t take another no.” The ancient desk chair creaked as Mr. Bennet sat back in it. “But I do. I wish I had something to offer my children at this stage of my life—I wanted to leave you all something so you wouldn’t end up like your mother and me.”
“Everything isn’t about money,” Mary said quietly.
Financial anxiety seemed inborn in her. Mary couldn’t remember a time when the topic of money didn’t rattle her, and yet, she had to put on an act like it was the last thing on her mind. Mary wished she were wealthy and believed it would solve all their problems. There was never enough; her mother made sure her disappointment was obvious to her father, as if criticizing him would help him make more money. But Mary could see that his struggle was as much as he could handle—you couldn’tadd ambition and personal growth to his piles of obligations. All her father could do was push through, and Mary, a pragmatist, was just like him.
“My cousin the minister once said something in a sermon that actually made sense. He said, ‘Money is always a problem, whether you have a lot, or a little, or just enough to get by, it’s always a concern,’?” Mr. Bennet shared.
“For Mr. Collins, it’s a love affair,” Mary said wryly.
MR. O’DONOGHUE
Whenever Mary sat on the stoop and watched folks walk down Jane Street, she observed them as though the action that unfolded before her was a movie and she were in the scene. She had a small peek into the lives of strangers through their conversations as they passed. Stoop sitting had made Mary Bennet a good listener, an essential skill in writing dialogue. Sometimes she rushed inside to fetch her playwriting notebook when a good line was uttered. Her favorite: A man, whose girlfriend’s arm was laced through his, said, “Beth, the easiest person to cheat on is the one who trusts you.” Mary recorded it exactly as she heard it. That line ended up in the play that had won her the prize.
Mary never tired of Jane Street, regardless of the weather or the season. The rectangle of blue sky overhead was precious. New Yorkers evaluated how much sky they could see from their windows as though it were valuable real estate. Jane Street had various charms through the seasons. In autumn, the leaves on the trees that lined the street were turning orange and red, moving in the breeze like feathers. The cobblestone street had fissures and pits that caused a yellow cab to buck on the surface as it passed.Cobblestones were meant for horses, not cars, Mary reminded herself. She buttoned her jean jacket and turned up the collar against the wind. Mary checked her phone. The paving company was due to arrive any moment. She closed her eyes and enjoyed a few moments of solitude. Sometimes she was weary from going up and down the stairs, taking meals, clearing the dishes, and doing the laundry. It was as if she were the lady of the house caring for boarders, and sometimes, when her mother was particularly cranky, needy children.
The work van pulled into an empty space in front of the brownstone. A handsome Irishman and his apprentice emerged.
“A parking spot is always good luck.” The man waved at Mary. “Kiernan O’Donoghue. This is my son, Kevin.” Kiernan had sandy hair and a strong build. The son looked just like his father, a more slender version with a thicker thatch of hair. “You Mary Bennet?”
“Yes, sir.”
Kiernan and Kevin went to the back of the van and opened the service doors as Mary studied the name of the paving company painted in emerald green on the side of the vehicle:The Lucky Shamrock Paving Company, Sunnyside, Queens.
Everything about the company seemed uplifting: its name, location, and the level of attractiveness of the stonemasons. Mary stuffed her phone into her back pocket. She crossed her arms across her chest and waited.
