Little Lovely Things, page 1
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Books. Change. Lives.
Copyright © 2019 by Maureen Joyce Connolly
Cover and internal design © 2019 by Sourcebooks
Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa
Cover image © Peggy Saffrie/Arcangel Images
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60563-4410
(630) 961-3900
sourcebooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Connolly, Maureen J., author.
Title: Little lovely things : a novel / Maureen J. Connolly.
Description: Naperville, Illinois : Sourcebooks Landmark, 2019.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018026443 | (trade pbk. : alk. paper)
Classification: LCC PS3603.O54726 L58 2019 | DDC 813/.6--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018026443
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Part One
—
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part Two
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Part Three
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Reading Group Guide
A Conversation with the Author
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Cover
To my mom, Lenore
“Gory at thasp, keener fortha karabd.”
“Laugh at death, but weep for those who die before their time.”
—anonymous Irish Traveller saying
Part One
1991
—
When Claire Rawlings thought of her family, it was more with the mind of a geologist than a physician—the sweeping drumlin of Andrea’s collarbone, the narrow plain of Lily’s sternum, the sculpted features of Glen’s face. Her dreams, too, were crowded with images of rocks and continents gliding, meeting at ragged seams, and then drifting apart.
This night, the first Saturday in September, with a heat wave stalled over greater Chicago, Claire woke sitting upright, pillow crushed to her chest. A mosaic of impressions, foggy and frenetic, competed for clarity in her brain. Something vague about the girls. Her nightgown, twisted and damp, clung to her body, even as a chill ran along her skin. She turned toward the landscape of her husband, dark against the pearlescent glow of the window. Claire could smell him more clearly than see him, the musty scent of heated skin and sweat-tinged bedclothes.
“You were calling out,” Glen said, shifting to his side. Their boxer mix, Gretchie, who was curled into a tight cashew between them, groaned at the disturbance.
Claire touched her hand to her temple. In addition to a minor headache, fragments from that dream were hide-and-seeking in and out of her consciousness. A yellow sky. A pond covered with treacherous ice. She’d go check the girls. But first, she leaned over her husband, peeking under the forearm that was thrown across his face as if he were shielding himself from an unseen onslaught.
“Room air conditioner,” Claire whispered, as if a magical incantation would cause Glen to lose his frugality, his fear of falling short of money before she completed her medical program. She was in the final phase—all clinical rounds, with only five more months to go. Slipping carefully from bed, she left the sleeping duo in peace.
In the hallway, the house seemed to sigh in the layered light—darker near the ceiling, softer near the window. Built in the late sixties, pretty much everything inside, including the kitchen linoleum floor, remained original. In the surrounding yard, saplings had grown into mature maples and oaks. Claire often imagined this house longed for unfettered sunlight as much as it did for upgraded appliances.
Outside the girls’ room, Claire’s thoughts went to her pregnancies—the rich awareness of fetal cells inside her, dividing like wildfire, each one blossoming from a small bud into a perfect being. Two beautiful daughters, three years apart. As she entered the doorway, a snapshot from the dream flashed in her mind—this time, icy stalagmites gleamed in the distance and two small figures appeared on the pond. And then nothing. Momentarily losing her breath, Claire steadied herself against the dresser.
She could just make out near her hand a spray bottle where bits of plant material—most likely dandelion—hung in shadowy suspension. Monster repellant: jetted each night into every corner, the closet, and under the bed before lights-out. This was all four-year-old Andrea, in so many ways Claire’s binary star—stubborn, feisty, and exhaustingly curious. She now lay silently on top of the covers, her valance of short brown hair matted with perspiration.
Across the room, fifteen-month-old Lily slept soundly in her crib under the window. Beneath her quartz-pink lids were crystal-blue eyes shaped like sideways teardrops. And that froth of yellow hair! Always a struggle to get into a ponytail.
Claire glanced again at Andrea’s concoction slightly aglow in a thin shaft of light. A crescent of lemon peel was barely discernible in the murk. She smiled. These materials had been gathered and assembled with Andrea’s characteristic attention to detail. But could this be evidence that my daughter might be feeling insecure? Even with in-home day care and Glen’s teacher’s schedule, the girls wanted Mom. No. She shook her head. She wasn’t quite thinking right. This was just the heat and the perennial lack of sleep, shifting her already active imagination into overdrive, scuttling her thoughts into frantic insects. Just last night she’d almost delivered a dose of Tylenol to Andrea before realizing it was Lily with the teething pain.
Andrea was fine; both girls were fine.
Claire wiped her hand across her eyes. They were moister than they should be. The headache was growing more insistent, and fatigue flushed through her limbs. She dropped quietly onto the rocker patterned with Mother Goose characters. The bedroom door squeaked open, and a square black nose followed by a sleek dog body padded in. Gretchie sniffled Claire’s hand and then collapsed with a satisfied grunt next to her chair. Leaning back, Claire inhaled the clovery sweetness of her daughters. Her beauties. Still so much a part of her very body. Along with Glen and Gretchie, this family was the closest thing to a single perfect organism.
A shiver of contentment raced through Claire’s veins, overshadowed only by a strange feeling left by that dream.
Chapter 1
Claire
Thwap, thwap, thwap.
Claire woke bleary-eyed to the sound of neighborhood sprinklers through the open window. Swords of sunlight cut through the tree cover into her eyes. Her back grumbled at the angle she’d struck in the Mother Goose chair: ninety degrees south for her lumbar region, twenty degrees north for her neck. The girls’ beds were empty. A brief ember of panic stirred until Glen appeared in the doorway.
“Can you hurry, Claire? I have to be at the field in thirty minutes.” He helped as assistant coach to the high school’s football team on weekends for extra income. “Lily’s dressed.”
“Andrea?”
“Nope, but eating Eggos.”
“One for two.” Claire tilted forward and groaned. “I’m hurrying.”
“You okay, hon?”
She nodded. It was her turn to take over their shared routine. She dragged herself to the bathroom and into the shower, where the hot water goosefleshed her skin.
Glen appeared in a cloud of steam to hand her a towel and then pointed to her stomach. “Claire?”
She looked down. A faint rash was splayed across her abdomen like a pink Canis Major
“Might be,” she spoke slowly over the din of the water, careful not to convey concern, “a slight reaction.”
“Reaction?” Glen’s voice tensed. “To what?”
“Hep C vaccine.”
A new strain of the virus was invading healthcare facilities like mad, messing with patients’ livers or kidneys. The residents had been put on an accelerated vaccination schedule. Two doses, back-to-back.
Glen’s gem-blue eyes filled with worry.
“Don’t do that, babe.”
“What?”
“That oversensitive thing. It’s nothing. I’ll take a Benadryl.”
“You should call in.”
“You know I can’t do that.”
“Or you won’t.” He paused before smiling. “Laid a T-shirt and shorts on the bed for Andrea.”
Claire dried off, dressed, and hurried into the kitchen where Glen blew three kisses before disappearing out the door. Sunlight blared across the worn flooring, promising another scorching day. Claire convinced herself she was feeling okay, even as a new ache spread into her jawline. It was now seven thirty, and caught in motion, there was no time to slow down and reconsider her schedule.
“Dog-dog!” Lily wriggled in her high chair, her unbrushed hair fluffy as a dandelion in seed. She looked at Claire and thumbed a mound of syrup off her tray, which threaded its way to the dog’s waiting muzzle. “Ta-dah!”
“Lily, no!” Claire groaned. “You too, G. No!”
Gretchie’s monk-brown eyes swam with guilt as she snuffled the amber goo with her blunt snout.
“Andrea, can you help?” Claire turned to find her older daughter standing next to the parakeet cage, still in her Curious George nightgown. Andrea wedged a finger into the gap of her missing front tooth and wiggled, attempting to loosen the remaining one. With her other hand, she stuffed a neat little triangle of waffle through the wires of the cage. Soldier-gray Butkus scooted along his perch, his right wing flaring awkwardly like misfolded origami.
Bau-auck! Bau-auck!
Claire rubbed her temples with her fingertips. “Andrea! Don’t! He doesn’t eat waffles.”
“Why not?”
“It’ll make him sick. That’s why not.”
“How?”
“Honey.” Claire sighed. “It just will.”
She almost said, He’ll choke on it, that’s how. He’ll gobble it down and it will glom into a wad in his gizzard and he’ll end up at the bottom of his cage, feet pointing to heaven, Xs for eyes, strangled on a frozen pastry. But she chose her words carefully around Andrea, the daughter with mercurial eyes and moods to match. You could never tell which way she took things: sometimes indifferent, other times overly concerned, like an old man in a little girl packet.
Butkus snatched the morsel—his sharp beak too close to Andrea’s finger—and gobbled it down in one smooth motion. He then scooted quickly back to the center of his perch to stare at Claire accusingly with one white-rimmed eye.
Bau-auck! Bau-auck! His scratchy little voice pierced the air with a strain of verbal awareness. Hurry up!
“Okay,” Claire responded in a falsetto tone, the one she used on Glen when he pissed her off. “Thank you, Butt-Kiss.”
“What did you say, Mommy?”
“Nothing, honey. Please hurry!”
Claire lifted Lily from her high chair and grabbed the Benadryl from the cupboard. She took only one dose because, Christ, she had to function on rounds today.
Auck! Auck!
Damn bird.
Within twenty minutes, Claire was leading Lily outside across the driveway to their ’91 Taurus wagon, a gift from Glen’s parents to help in this final surge until Claire became a doctor. Smattered with the detritus of Happy Meals and Goldfish, the interior was now a disaster zone. She set the day care bag on the seat and rummaged in the glove box for her wraparound sunglasses, the kind that pretty much blocked all light. She slipped them on her face, then opened the back door.
Lily, bright as a button in her shorty overalls, climbed eagerly into her car seat. Claire barely registered the goofy-eared stuffed rabbit, clutched against Lily’s chest.
“Good girl, sweetie.” Claire lingered a moment, absorbing her tiny framed daughter, before turning to call through the open window. “And-rea-ah…we’re in the car.”
Behind her, the house door slammed.
“You’re next, honey.” But Claire’s mouth rounded with surprise when she pivoted toward her older daughter.
“Charm dress today? Who said? Daddy?”
She could tell by Andrea’s sheepish look that Glen had done no such thing. Claire ran her fingers along the soft, blue fabric. A childhood keepsake, it was sewn by Claire’s mother, whom she had lost to pancreatic cancer in high school. The real charm was that within the hem, Claire’s mother had hidden a small religious medallion—a depiction of the Virgin Mary—for protection and good luck.
Claire peered over her sunglasses and met her daughter’s copper penny eyes. A remorseful pout appeared beneath the Milky Way of freckles across her nose and cheeks. She stuck a finger into her mouth and wiggled her wobbly front tooth.
“We’ll talk about this later,” Claire said and pointed to the open door. But Andrea stepped back and refused to climb into her booster seat when she spotted the turquoise bunny swinging from her sister’s plump hand. Lily lifted him high and pulled one of his springy legs. Boing. His ears flopped in unison as he bounced.
Andrea’s finger popped from her mouth as she jutted her bottom lip. “Jumpers is mine!”
Technically true. Glen had brought the bunny home, his face flushed with pleasure, after Claire announced her first pregnancy. But Claire wasn’t about to mess with Lily after her recent bout with teething pain. Eyeing Andrea, Lily leaned forward against her shoulder harness and squeezed the bright-orange carrot attached with Velcro to his paw.
Crrrunch.
The sound of compressed cellophane ripped through the air.
Andrea stiffened.
“Honey,” Claire spoke slowly. “If you don’t mind Lily with Jumpers, then I don’t mind the charm dress.”
Andrea spent a full five seconds measuring the situation, shifting her gaze between Claire and Jumpers, back and forth—Mommy to bunny—and back again. Then she looked down at her dress. To Claire’s relief, her daughter finally capitulated and climbed into the car. Claire strapped Andrea into her booster seat and quickly shut the door. She got behind the wheel.
It was almost eight o’clock. She’d need to step on it. Heading down sleepy Crestview, they passed bungalow-style houses and sycamores whitening with age. Claire grimaced at her face in the rearview mirror; even the dark lenses of her sunglasses couldn’t disguise the shadows edging her slate-blue eyes. Her normally glossy brown hair seemed lifeless today, an unruly mass of dry tendrils left over from an aging perm. Only last week, Glen had expressed mild dismay at the attention and money spent on Claire’s hair. Time and money. They were desperate for both. She wondered how he would do in this heat at the football field. Hopefully, they’d call practice early. This stress, this frenetic rushing around, would all be gone when she officially became an MD.
“Muh-uh-meee!” Lily cried, writhing against her straps. Only five houses down and already they were pulling to the curb.
“What, honey?” Claire jerked the Taurus to a stop and torqued around to face the girls. Jumpers lay on the seat next to Lily, empty-pawed, appealing with doleful eyes.
“Lily hurt Jumpers.” Andrea kicked the back of the passenger seat.
“Where’s his carrot?” Claire’s stomach stirred. A sour taste surged in her mouth.
Lily sobbed as she pointed to the floor.
“Shh, shh. I’ll get it.”
Claire unbuckled and jackknifed over the seat. Her head thrummed and stars flickered at the edge of her vision. She managed to grasp the orange triangle submerged in a shadow and struggled upright with the toy in hand. Lily snatched the carrot eagerly back into the chub of her fist. Andrea’s eyes enlarged as she fought back tears.
“Here, sweetie.” Claire shuffled through the day care bag and extracted a Pop-Tart. “Take this.” She held it out still in the packet. “It’s strawberry, your favorite.”
