“Hey, sunshine!” John said, spotting Michael.
John, the music teacher, now retired, had come down from Idaho with Nancy—their first time back at the house since his mother’s ninetieth birthday, three years earlier.
Michael brightened. “Hi, there he is!” The two brothers hugged. “I think you shrunk a couple inches, buddy.”
“Well, maybe a little bit,” John said.
“No, I’m sure you did,” Michael said. “You were always taller than me, weren’t you?”
“Well, yeah,” said John. He’d fallen off a ladder two years earlier and endured a long, painful recovery. “Three back surgeries, four knee surgeries, three ankle surgeries. I was one step above an invalid for the last two years.”
“Hey, I got some ladder work if you want to do it,” Michael said with a smile.
John and Nancy had come to town in their RV, a retirement splurge. Entering their golden years in Boise, they had some creature comforts now: an antique piano they meticulously restored themselves, a koi pond in the backyard, and a small arbor where they grew grapes for wine they made in small batches and labeled. They used the RV to travel the country, making trips to Colorado somewhat more feasible. But they had built a life apart from the Galvins, in part by design and in part, they said, by necessity. “Margaret and Mary have probably taken the brunt of all of it as far as taking care of those who are mentally ill and seeing to their needs,” John said. “And they have the money to do that.”
Now that he was here, John was already feeling a little put out. He had rehearsed a piano piece for his mother’s service, only to learn he would not be able to play it. Lindsay had planned a gathering outside, in a meadow. He’d wished they’d put together something more formal for his mother—even though rationally he understood that he had no real right to feel that way, given that the timing of the funeral was arranged around his previously scheduled visit to Colorado Springs. Still, it was unsettling, not the closure he wanted. John found himself in a narrative that was unfamiliar to him, one he could not control. This is the way it works, a lot of the time. If you’ve left town, like John, you can hold on to your truth. To come home is to run the risk of being contradicted. Even the people who leave, like John, can feel almost rejected.
John decided a long time ago to live his own life the best he could, but he never saw a role for himself in caring for his brothers. “I try to see Matthew and Peter if they’re available when I go down there, maybe once a year,” he said. “But my oldest brother, Donald, well, you couldn’t have a conversation, basically.”
* * *
—
MATT DECIDED NOT to come to dinner; he had fared well enough during lunch earlier that day with Lindsay, but seeing everyone at Hidden Valley Road seemed difficult for him. Peter was not invited to dinner; for him to mix and mingle with family the night before the funeral seemed like too much—too exhausting for him and everyone around him. But the next day, both Matt and Peter would be at the funeral, Matt skulking in the background, sweating uncomfortably, and Peter beaming in front of everyone, the closing act of the service, playing “My Favorite Things” on his recorder to a round of applause, and then, for an encore, reciting a rambling, customized version of the Nicene Creed: “I believe the one God the Father Almighty maker of heaven and earth….”
Mark Galvin came in from Denver for the funeral-eve dinner—the eighth son, the onetime hockey star and chess prodigy, and now the youngest Galvin brother who was not mentally ill. Bald with a goatee and a wide frame, Mark resembled no one else in the family, except perhaps in the way he talked. He and John and Michael all spoke high-mindedly about politics and music and chess—cultured in the fashion their mother had always hoped. He had retired from managing the university bookstore—a state job with a pension that he’d started collecting. In his retirement, Mark had turned his car into a private taxi service, doing regular business at two of the fanciest hotels in Boulder, the St. Julien and Boulderado. This new career had caused him to cross paths with some people that Mimi would have loved to hear about, like the artistic director of the Boulder Philharmonic, who hired Mark to take her guest artists to and from the airport. “I’ve got tickets to Vivaldi in January,” Mark said. “I’m driving Simone Dinnerstein”—the world-class pianist—“back to the airport from Boulder, after getting free tickets in exchange.”
Mark had felt alone in his family for decades now, the other hockey brothers dead or sick. Some days his entire childhood seemed like a blank to him—an impulse to move on, perhaps, or to stop hurting. A few of the more vivid memories, however, hadn’t faded. Mark had an excellent recall of the massive blowup between Donald and Jim on Thanksgiving, forty-five years earlier—and Donald picking up the dining room table and throwing it at Jim. “A madhouse,” Mark said, shaking his head.
* * *
—
OF THE WELL siblings, only Richard and Margaret didn’t come to the dinner on Hidden Valley Road. Richard seemed to be avoiding a confrontation. He had recently launched an email salvo against Lindsay over the subject of Mimi’s will, arguing that Lindsay should not be the executor, only to get pushback from all the other well siblings, who came to Lindsay’s defense.
In Lindsay’s opinion, Richard was just upset not to be included in the will. Lindsay said that Mimi had made the decision to leave him out only because Richard had already accepted money from Don and Mimi several years earlier, to help him through a rough patch. “My father couldn’t stand Richard,” she said. She could not deny, though, that Mimi had thought the world of Richard, laughing and gossiping with him whenever he visited. “She would play us against each other to get what she wanted,” Lindsay said. “That’s a trait I have to work very hard not to have.”
When Michael used to watch Richard cozy up to Mimi this way, he’d almost laugh. “He wants so much to be like his father and feel on top of the world,” he said. “I think he tries too hard.”
To hear Richard tell it—over lunch one day, a few weeks later—he clashed with Lindsay because it seemed to him that all she ever wanted to discuss was the sick brothers. “I got so upset. I said, ‘Mary, I want one dinner to talk about the moon, the stars and the skies without talking about mental illness.’ It just became so depressing for me.”
Richard seemed to take more after his mother than his father, determined to speak about pleasant subjects only, like his trips to Pebble Beach and Cabo, and his business deals in Dubai. Like Mimi, Richard also was convinced of the value of having a pedigree, being raised from good stock. This much was clear when he told stories about his father that were unlike any that anyone else in the family told. In Richard’s version of his father’s life, Don Galvin wasn’t the second-in-command of the USS Juneau—he was the captain. Don Galvin wasn’t just a briefing officer at Ent Air Force Base—he had a personal relationship with President Eisenhower. Don Galvin wasn’t just the first executive director of the Federation of Rocky Mountain States—he founded it. Don Galvin didn’t get his Father of the Year award from the Knute Rockne Club—the award came directly from President Nixon. Don Galvin wasn’t just the president of Colorado Springs’ local ornithological group—he “brought Audubon to the West.”