Page 1 of A Very No Strings Halloween
ONE
Billy
THE BLAST OF US
“Here’s to you, at ninety years, you old devil,” my cousin Nolan says, his whiskey glass raised in a toast to our grandad. “May your joys continue to be as deep as the Irish Sea and your troubles as light as its foam. And may your bloody foot stop givin’ you hell, wherever you may roam. Happiest of birthdays to ya, Grandad. Cheers to you, Granny.” He gives our eighty-nine-year-old granny a little wink, and she giggles and blushes.
Fucking Irishmen. Guy gets away with everything, and I get smacked upside the head every time I open my mouth since I was old enough to talk. Whatever. He’s my best friend, so he gets a pass. I watch as Nolan and his wife, Cora, and their two kids go over to give Grandad hugs. Granny’s face just lights up whenever she sees her great-grandkids. It’s a beautiful thing.
“Thank you for travelin’ from New York, you with your busy lives,” Grandad says to them, tapping at his own heart. “Means the world.”
Then my cousin Declan gets up to give his toast. Declan’s a lawyer in New York and a handsome motherfucker in a suit, so all eyes are on him now. He’s got his arm around his wife, Maddie, who’s holding their baby, Ciara. Then his little brother, Eddie, and his wife, Birdie, from LA, get up. Both of those Cannavale guys with their dueling fake Irish accents. Eddie’s an actor, so truth be told, his is a little better—but everyone in this place has stars and shamrocks in their eyes just ’cause these guys do Irish accents.
What the fuck is wrong with a Boston accent, huh?
Why doesn’t anyone appreciate the guy who’s always around when you need him?
Where is the gratitude for Billy?
There is so much love in this room. It’s beautiful. Honest to God, my heart is so full of love for everyone in this big, cluttered pub that’s decorated for drunk Irish soccer fans all year long and for Halloween in October and half of November. There’s a six-foot animatronic psycho clown thing they bring out every year that’s creepy as shit.
But the scariest thing about this room is how much I’m thinking about a certain someone who isn’t even in it.
And the second scariest thing about this room right now is the fact thatnoneof the love that’s circulating around it is aimed at me.
I’m the guy who rented out my family’s favorite Irish pub for the night and invited everyone Granny and Grandad O’Sullivan doesn’t hate, from second cousins in Toronto to my pop’s old babysitter in Dorchester. I’m the one who flew Nolan’s parents and his brothers here to Boston from Ireland. Grandad didn’t want me to fly his brothers out, though. “Feck ’em,” Grandad said. “I’ll see them in hell when we’re dead.” Butfortypeople I flew out to Boston from around North America—onmydime. Forty. Has anyone toasted to me yet tonight? Nay, they have not.
Why?
’Cause I’m the only single man left in this entire O’Sullivan clan. From the Cassidys and the Cannavales to the Donovans from Rhode Island. I’m the only bachelor left, hence I must not be responsible and thus worthy of thanks. Doesn’t matter that I won the lottery and quadrupled my winnings in investments over the past two years. Doesn’t matter that all their kids love me or that I make the best sandwiches anyone has ever tasted. Does anyone remember that I brought the entire room to tears with Neil Diamond’s “Play Me” at karaoke night during our last family reunion? Or that I’m the only guy who personallyhandwrites Christmas cards to everyone in our entire extended family on every continent every year? Nay. They do not.
You set off one firecracker in one toilet at one Thanksgiving dinner when you’re twelve and you’re labeled the troublemaker for life. It’s been, like, five years since I blew anything up. Not counting the thing that happened at the water park that time because it was not on purpose and was not my fault.
This is horseshit is what this is. When my brother, Mark, finally wraps up his long, boring speech and his family goes over to pay their respects to Grandad, I get up on the little stage and take the mic off the stand. Time to show these cocksuckers how it’s done.
“Yeah, Mark, itisinteresting to know all the historical events that were happening around the world when Grandad was born. Wicked interesting.” Do I sound like I mean it? I’m doing my best despite being lulled into a coma from his speech. “But it’s not just how long you live—it’s how much life you live in those years that counts. Am I right? The O’Sullivan clan has always had, shall we say, an adventurous streak. It’s what inspired Grandad to cross an ocean with his bride and settle in this country for a fresh start. It’s what gave him the stones to ask Granny for a date in front of her parents when she was fifteen.”
There’s some rustling in the crowd. What? Not like I saidgonadsorwank tanks. I used the classy term.
“One of my favorite stories about Grandad is the time my pops got interested in hot-air balloons. Because not only are the O’Sullivans adventurous, fun, and dedicated to livin’ life to the fullest—wenevahdo anything halfway. Grandad could’ve read him stuff from some boring book like Mark just did.” I gesture toward my brother, who does not look pleased. But he looks displeased fully, with his whole heart and soul and face, like a true O’Sullivan. “No, Grandad didn’t do that. He spent weeks in the backyard with my dad buildin’ a hot-air balloon. Because that’s the other thing about O’Sullivans…we’re very good with our hands.”
I waggle my eyebrows for effect. But lest I be accused of being unable to read a room, I drop it. Tough crowd.
“Sure, my grandad let Pops go up in the hot-air balloon alone. Should he have used a stronger rope to tether it to the ground? Mark’s boring historians would most likely say yes. Did the rope snap? It did. Did nine-year-old Oscar O’Sullivan float off over the streets of Boston for an hour? He did indeed. But did Grandad chase after him the entire way, never taking his eyes off him? Fuck yeah, he did. Even while being repeatedly whacked in the back of the head by my granny’s purse. Even as she screamed at him to get their son down—so loudly, legend has it, that Irish American fathers from South Boston all the way toWorcester were frantically looking up, trying to find their sons so they could retrieve them from the sky.
“Pops learned about hot-air balloons and the need for strong ropes to match the forces of drag and wind shear. He learned all that in a way my brother’s boring books could never teach anyone—the absolute terror of being trapped in a runaway hot-air balloon. But Pops didn’t just learn—he lived. Thanks to Grandad. So here’s to ninety years of living life to the fullest!Sláinte!”
Mic drop.
And here come the cheers.
More for Grandad than for me, but it’s cool.
I just wish a certain someone could have heard that story. She would have appreciated it. But that is neither here nor there. Because she’d never want to be here.
I take my seat at the table again, and my dad shakes his head at me. Half frowning, half grinning, in that way of his. You can never tell if he’s amazed by your awesomeness or your stupidity until he either pats you on the back so hard you feel the palm of his appreciative hand there for an hour or he smacks you up the side of the head. “You had to tell ’em the hot-air balloon story.”
“It’s a wicked good story.”
