Ask Again, Yes

When Anne was 12, following her mother’s suicide (she drowned herself on Christmas Day in the rough waters of the Irish Sea off Killiney Beach), she lived with a neighbor who sexually abused her for more than four years. Initially, she didn’t understand what the man was doing to her. “It was a bit like a hug except Anne didn’t hug back and he was trembling, clutching her tighter and tighter as the trembling became more violent. Something was happening to him under his clothes” (266). Now, working and supporting herself, Anne makes the four-hour trip to New York to catch a glimpse of her son after he moves in with Kate, first into an apartment and then, after Peter becomes a police officer, into a house in Floral Park.

Anne cannot figure out why her son fell so deeply in love with so plain a girl as Kate, but she feels sure that Kate loves her son. The pain of her estrangement deepens when Kate and Peter become parents: first a son, then a daughter. For months, Anne must content herself with glimpses of her grandchildren; she is sure Kate would never allow her to meet the children, much less watch them. One night, Anne carelessly falls asleep in her car as she watches their house. Kate comes out and solicits her help: Peter’s drinking is out of control.

Kate, by training a scientist, is baffled by her husband’s steady decline into alcohol abuse and hopes Anne might be able to provide critical data about Peter’s childhood. His drinking makes no sense to her. He disappears for long stretches down into the basement and drinks alone. He has a solid career, a loving family, a beautiful home. Kate showed him autopsy photos from a young man who had died from liver damage brought about by alcoholism, but nothing seems to work. The Gleesons are concerned.

Recently, during a routine arrest, Peter accidentally discharged his weapon; Kate is certain he had been drinking. Although her father offered to take her and the children back in Gillam, Kate refused abandon her husband. She reached out to Anne, inviting her to come to the house for lunch in two weeks’ time, after she has had a chance to prepare Peter for the reunion.

Peter faces disciplinary action. During the department’s grueling medical review of the shooting incident, Peter recognizes the seriousness of his drinking problem. He believes the drinking is rooted in his discontent with how thin and routine his life has become, how disappointed he is in a life of going to work and paying bills, how this was the very world he had dreamed about years ago. Gesturing to a mountain of soiled laundry topping the wicker hamper, he bitterly taunts Kate, “All your dreams have come true” (309).

As the day of Anne’s visit looms, both Kate and Peter worry. When Anne arrives, Kate sees that although Anne is older now and appears frail, her face is shining. Peter, Anne senses right away, has been drinking. Anne recalls what her therapist had told her: “We repeat what we don’t repair” (325). The conversation with Peter is difficult and halting, but Peter at one point recalls a tender moment from his childhood when Anne carefully, lovingly removed splinters from his legs after he fell from climbing a telephone pole. He watches now as Anne dotes over her grandchildren.

Following the departmental disciplinary hearing, Peter, his career in ruins, agrees to take early retirement. When Kate makes clear she will not tolerate his drinking, he commits himself to a rehab facility for treatment. Leaving for New Jersey is difficult for Peter, but Anne offers to help Kate with the house and the children. On the drive to the detox facility, Kate asks Peter what his plans will be after being released, certain that his life needs a new direction. “How many people,” she asks hopefully, “get a chance to start over again?” (343).

As Anne watches the kids while Kate drives Peter to New Jersey, Francis makes a surprise visit. She has not seen Francis since the night of the shooting. She offers to leave, but Francis is now beyond hate, beyond anger. He asks her to stay. “It was hard to fathom that this tiny woman was the same person he’d been angry with for so many years” (346). The two talk through memories of what happened that night. Anne apologizes, acknowledging how little that does, but Francis responds, “You didn’t know what you were going to do that night any more than I did” (352). That, they both see, is the difficult and complicated truth. They both feel immensely unburdened.

After Kate returns, the two spend a long night talking about their families, about Ireland, about their childhoods. “They sat stiffly at first, Francis in the armchair, Anne on one end of the couch, but then they relaxed into the memories” (354).

Peter returns from his 30-day detox program. His family welcomes him with a party. He feels awkward yet stronger and ready to reengage the world. Kate struggles with his return; she wants to tell him, despite everything, how fortunate he is that he is not alone, that he has a wide and supportive family, but she says nothing.

After several weeks, the two hesitatingly make love one night. It feels different initially to Peter. He tells Kate that he wants to start a new life: He wants to work with kids and to teach. A small Catholic high school hires him to teach history and to run their track program. Although Peter relapses some during the weeks leading up to his first day of classes, he feels determined to maintain his focus on his recovery.

In the classroom, Peter realizes what he has never acknowledged in his own life: History was not a study of the past; “it’s about our daily lives; it’s now, living inside us” (370). He comes to love the classroom. When the school year ends, Peter and Kate, celebrating their wedding anniversary, renew their love and agree not to wallow in regret or waste any more time with anger. Kate comes clean about how often she had seen Anne before making contact with her, and Peter understands in a moment of tenderness that his mother has always loved him. Kate and Peter affirm their commitment. Kate smiles when Peter asks whether, knowing what they know now, she would have ever agreed to marry him years ago. Kate squeezes his hand and says, with tears in her eyes, “Then and now, I say yes” (376). 

A year passes. Anne, now happily a part of her grandchildren’s lives, receives word of Brian’s death. Through his lawyer, Brian sends a padded envelope addressed not to Anne but to Francis. The families gather to open the mysterious envelope, which contains the prayer card to St. Michael that Brian carried in his policeman’s cap 40 years earlier. The package also contains three photographs, each stained with sweat, indicating Brian had continued to wear them in his hat: the photo of Anne, the photo of Brian and George, and a third photo of Peter in kindergarten. Brian included no note, but the gift reminds Francis of the enduring power of family and the abiding energy of love.