died delivering your dad and me, she had to step up to the plate and help raise us, too. She was in her sixties by then, and now here were these two babies to do for. She was smart, though. Got her prison gals to pitch in and help. Couple of ’em even wet-nursed us, my father told me.”
“Nursed by convicted felons,” I said. “Maybe that’s why Daddy made all those trips to the pokey.”
I’d expected my remark to draw a laugh from her, but it fell flat.
“Now, at first, Lydia balked at the idea of someone so young and untested as this wet-behind-the-ears college boy being put in charge of the farm operation, just because his mother had finagled him the position as part of the land purchase. See, Lydia’d promised those politicians up in Hartford that once it got going, the jail would pay for itself because of the farm production. What those gasbags up there cared most about was the business side of things, see? How it’d impact the state budget. Not whether or not a bunch of troubled girls got fixed. Got on with their lives. So the state gave her five years; if the place wasn’t breaking even by then, they’d shut it down. Grandma knew that the whole ball of wax depended on the farm operation, okay? And she knew, too, that several of those politicians who’d opposed her were itching to see her fail. They didn’t like the idea of a woman running things, see? Figured they’d give her just enough rope to hang herself. Lydia suspected they’d saddled her with this young Quirk fella to ensure her failure. Nothing she could do about it, though; it was part of the deal they’d struck with the widow.
“But Alden surprised Grandma. Turns out, young as he was, he was a damn good steward. Practical, shrewd. Worked like an ox. And he was good with the prison ladies, too. They liked him, so they worked their fannies off for him. Course, he was a good-looking son of a gun. I’m sure that didn’t hurt. See? Here he is.” She passed me a picture of a strapping young guy in overalls behind a team of plow horses. “You resemble him, don’t you think?”
I shrugged.
“Well, if you can’t see it, I sure as hell can. Your father resembled him, too. I got Popper looks, but your dad was all Quirk, same as you.”
The robust farmer in the photograph looked nothing like my scrawny, straggly-haired father, and I told her so.
“Well, you gotta remember, kiddo. You only knew your dad after the booze got him. That goddamned war was what turned him alcoholic. Him and Ulysses, the two of ’em. They were high school buddies. Me, my brother, and Ulysses were all in the same class.”
I said I hadn’t realized that. Or if I’d known it, I’d forgotten it.
“Yup. The two of them, Ulysses and your dad, went down to the recruiting office and enlisted right after we graduated. I had wanted to go to college myself. To study anthropology—maybe go out west and work with the Indians. I used to find arrowheads out in the fields every once in a while—from when the Wequonnocs hunted out here, I guess—and that’s what got me interested. Grandma Lydia was all for me going; she’d gone. Studied sociology. And little by little, me and her were wearing my father down on the subject. But after my brother enlisted, that was that. If Alden wasn’t gonna stick around and help Pop with the farmwork, then I was gonna. Somebody had to. So I stayed put, and Alden went off to see the world and fight the Koreans.”
“I never heard much about his war service,” I said.
“Well, I never did either. After he came back, he wouldn’t talk about it, not even to me. Whenever I’d ask him about it, he’d close up like a clam. Get huffy with me if I pursued it, so after a while I just shut my trap.” I watched her eyes water up as she remembered it. “Something happened to him over there, because he came back different. Damaged, you know? And that was when he started drinking hard.”
“No such thing as psychological counseling back then, I suppose.”
“I don’t know. But Alden wouldn’t have signed up for it if there was. First month or so he was back, he mostly stayed cooped up in his room. And then when he did finally get out of the house, he mostly went off to the bars.”
I opened my mouth to ask her some more, but Lolly shook her head and passed me another picture: her beloved grandmother, seated behind her desk at the prison, her young farm manager standing to her left like a sergeant-at-arms. “Look at the two of them with those matching Cheshire grins,” I said. Lolly took back the photograph, squinted, and grinned herself.
“Little by little, he won her over, you see? She began to trust him. Rely on him. They swapped ideas, solved problems together. Became almost like business partners, I guess. And then, of course, it turned into a different kind of partnership. Lucky for us. Me and you wouldn’t be sitting here if it hadn’t.” Observing that made her chuckle, and those watery blue eyes of hers recovered their sparkle. “To hear Grandma tell it, widow Quirk was fit to be tied. First the state of Connecticut steals her land away from her so they can build a prison. Then the prison matron steals her son out of the cradle. Course, nobody’d stolen anything. The state had paid her for that property fair and square, and Grandma and Grandpa just plain fell in love. I tell you, the gossips in town must have had a ball with that romance! Grandma was already middle-aged—a confirmed old maid, or so everyone assumed until they got hitched. Married each other right down there by the lake, with all the prison girls in attendance. Nineteen eighteen it was. Grandma was well into her forties and Grandpa was still in his twenties. It was sad, though. We’d gotten tangled up in World War I by then, but Grandpa’d dodged that bullet—got a farm deferment from the government. Then he ups and dies of influenza. They’d been married for less than a year. When Grandma buried him, she was pregnant with my father.”
“Alden Quirk the Second,” I said.
“That’s right. Alden Jr., speak of the devil.” She passed me another picture: Grandpa Quirk, a boy in knickers, on the lap of a sober-faced Lydia.
“She looks more like his grandmother than his mother,” I said.
Lolly nodded. “She’d started late, and then had to raise him by her lonesome. And then, like I said, after our mother died, she pretty much raised your father and me. It’s funny, though: I heard her say more than once that making prisoners and little children toe the line was a cakewalk compared to dealing with her mother-in-law. Adelheid Quirk—Addie, they called her. Stubborn German girl. She was a pip, I guess.”
“So Addie was your great-grandmother?” I asked.
“Right. On my father’s side. Went to her grave blaming Grandma for her son’s death. Thousands and thousands lost their lives during that flu epidemic, but she held Lydia P. Quirk personally responsible.”
Walking along Bride Lake Road that morning, I smiled as I recalled that Christmas visit of ours three or four years ago: Aunt Lolly and me warmed by brandy and picture passing, by her desire to tell me the family stories and my desire to listen to them. “You gonna remember all this stuff?” she’d asked me that day. “You want a piece of paper to write it down?”
“Nah,” I said, tapping my finger against the side of my head. “Got it all in here.”
She nodded in approval, then called into the kitchen. “Hey, Hennie Penny. How about another slab of that apple crumb pie of yours?”
“Thought you said you were stuffed,” Hennie called back.
“I was. But all this reminiscing’s brought my appetite back.” Turning to me, she asked if I wanted more pie, too, and I said I did. “Make that two pieces. And two cups of joe if there’s any left.”
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