Stories From Westlake Village

It's hard to say what got the O'Reilly sisters on the booze. Whatever it was, it started a long time ago, and by the time I got around to writing this they were polishing off three bottles of wine a night.

They lived together in a two-bedroom bungalow without any men around. A man might say that was one of the reasons for the boozing and would probably not consider the fact that they were identical twins, which I think was a greater reason. Imagine, being condemned to seeing yourself as others see you day after day. People have been driven to drink for far less than that.

Tessie O'Reilly was a widow, and her sister Kate was a spinster. They had lived together long before Tessie got married, and except for the brief period of Tessie's honeymoon in Boston, they had never been apart.

Very few people took the time to console Tessie when Patrick met his untimely end. There were few at the wake and fewer still who dropped in extend their sympathy after the funeral. The fault was ours; we should have been more considerate, but the facts surrounding Patrick's demise were impossible to take seriously. In short, he fell asleep on the beach and was drowned by the incoming tide. Tessie and Kate had gone back to the car to get another six-pack, and in that short space of time, poor Patrick washed out to sea. When they returned with the refreshment, they found Patrick and the blanket missing. They assumed he had awakened and, finding himself alone, was wandering about trying to find them.

"He ain't the brightest, Kate. Could be he's lost. You go this way and I'll go that -- holler if you see him."

So Kate went one way and Tessie went the other. It was Tessie herself who heard a little girl shout to her father as he was in the process of trying to open a rented umbrella.

"Look, Daddy -- there's a man rolling in the water."

"Jesus Christ." Her daddy said as he pulled her away. "Get up here on the blanket and don't look, O.K.? Jesus Christ -- where the hell's y'mother?"

"She's up in the john, Daddy."

Tessie and the little girl's father rolled Patrick out of the breakers about the time the life guards arrived on the scene.

"Stand back! -- stand back!! Give him air!! We'll handle this." Reassuring words -- punctuated with much whistle-blowing. The gathering crowd stood back as the lifeguards attempted to revive Patrick. Nothing worked. They didn't have Med-e-vac in those days, and the only doctor on the beach was an elderly lady dermatologist.

Patrick's name was Hogan, Pat Hogan. It's a fine Irish name to be sure, but Tessie didn't have it long enough to make it set. Before a month had passed, it was back to Tessie and Kate O'Reilly again. Before a month had passed, his clothes were off to St. Vincent De Paul, and his Toyota pick-up had been sold to Greg's Auto Repair. So far as their neighbors could tell, Tessie's loss did not appear to be insurmountable to her or her sister. Pat had simply floated into their lives one day and floated out the next.

They say the booze, in one way or another, harvests all Irishmen -- and all Irish women as well, I presume. The booze is not a scythe; it doesn't mow its victims down. It sets up situations the boozer cannot cope with, such as drowning. If it doesn't get them that way, it will go underground and attack the drinker's liver or the well-being of his family. I am fond of the bottle myself, so I do not embrace this philosophy wholeheartedly. Yet I must confess it bears the ring of truth.

The passage of time is a great healer. Tessie and Kate were alone together as they had been since birth, and the simple people of Westlake Village quickly forgot that there was once a Patrick Hogan. Tessie worked as a teller in a branch bank within walking distance of their modest home, and Kate worked for the local Water District. You could safely say they were condemned to live with each other. From my patio vantage point in the summer, I often had the uneasy sensation that they were really one and the same person -- sharing two bodies.

They were the odd couple of the village. They grew to look even more alike than they had been as children. They wore each other's clothes, and it was obvious that neither would buy anything the other couldn't wear. I had seen a hat on one of them, for instance -- a brown straw hat with fruit on it -- cherries, perhaps -- or a yellow velvet affair with a floppy brim. A dress, in a peculiar shade of green -- a watery, whitish green that I've seen on Chevrolet Impalas -- or a brown dress with a wide orange sash. In the winter there was a brown overcoat with a Mouton collar and a black one which looked like a wet cat. There were occasional black overshoes and a lavender umbrella with a broken rib.

Common sense would dictate that when Kate was in the Water District Office and Tessie at the bank, they were both dressed differently, but I suspected that their clothes were interchangeable and chosen blindly before they started off to work in the morning.

When I encountered one of them climbing over my fence on her way to the liquor store, I was never sure whether it was Tessie or Kate. . . . Yes, they did that. My house was on a direct line between theirs and the liquor store. To be fair, I should explain that at the time I had a split rail fence which was easy to climb, and "the girls," as we called them, preferred to vary their route to avoid disclosure. They continued this charade by depositing half of their empties in my trash. It added a bit of color.

I generate very little trash. Widowers really have nothing to throw away, so I had no objection to sharing my garbage can with the O'Reilly girls. It has often been said that a person's trash shows what they're made of. Tessie and Kate's tastes tended toward Mountain Lake Red, Taylor's Sweet Vermouth and a variety of frozen fish and beef dinners. Mine displayed prune juice containers, banana skins and the occasional scotch bottle. Seeing it all together, a passerby would have assumed a well-adjusted, all-American family lived inside.

The citizens of the Village paid them very little heed, and in spite of our common garbage, I too, hardly noticed them. From time to time I would see them in church going through the ritual of the Mass with angular grace, and usually a quarter beat ahead of Father Stan. I would see them at the supermarket, usually at the frozen food chest. Once I saw Tessie (or was it Kate) alone at the video rental store rummaging through the adult film section. I thought they had themselves under control -- I really did, so I was utterly unprepared for what happened.

School had just closed for the summer, and my daughter and her husband had driven off on a rainy Thursday for a week's vacation in the Adirondacks. They left their dog, Samuel, in my care -- a large dog, a setter, I think, and we were not fond of each other.

Contrary to all accepted patterns of dog demeanor, he would growl at me in my own house. He paid for this behavior by spending his first four days tied to an apple tree in my back yard. When there was nothing better to do, I would go out and sit with him in the shade of the same apple tree. From this vantage point, I could see the O'Reilly bungalow.

Neither Tessie nor Kate had climbed my fence on their way to Angelo's "Wines and Liquors" in four days. As a fellow imbiber (though of a lesser caliber), it seemed to me they were long overdue. I checked my trash can and noticed they had not been eating or drinking either. Had they found another can more attractive than mine? I doubted it.

Gourmands and boozers do not change their habits unless it's absolutely necessary. Perhaps they were reluctant to climb the fence while Samuel stood guard, but I doubted that, too. It would take more than an Irish Setter to keep them away from Angelo. Add to this the strange behavior of Samuel himself. He seemed edgy, and in spite of our mutual wariness of each other, tried to get in my lap. He is a sizable animal and not usually given to displays of affection. All the while he would stare at the O'Reilly bungalow with his tongue slavering, then he would look back at me and whimper.

He wasn't much help, but his mood set me thinking. I decided to put the useless animal back in the house and check on the O'Reillys. In spite of my age, I approached the house by the same route they took to get to Angelo. I didn't like the looks of the house at all. One bedroom window was open four inches or so from the bottom, and it seemed highly unlikely that it would have been left open if they were away. I tried looking inside but all the blinds were down to the sill.

I walked around to the front of the house and saw four morning newspapers on the front porch. The windows there were closed so I tried the doorbell. I could hear it ring inside. But there was an awfully eerie silence. The only noise was the high pitched whine of Syd Livingston's hedge clipper across the street. I walked over to him and shouted, "Syd -- SYD!" He switched it off and looked at me dully through his protective goggles. "You seen anything of the O'Reillys?"

He looked up at the afternoon sky and thought a bit. "Can't say I have. Leastways not in the last few days. Guess they're away."

"Back window's open."

"Maybe they forgot."

He didn't share my concern apparently. Maybe I was only imagining things. Fidgety, I went back home the way I came. Samuel growled at me from his bed under the stairs.

"What do you think, Samuel? Think I should forget it?" No answer from Samuel; he just looked at me suspiciously. Then, with utter disdain, he began licking his private parts.

It was getting on to four o'clock. I mixed myself a scotch and water and looked out my bedroom window at the O'Reilly bungalow. When you're in this state of mind, it doesn't help to discuss the pros and cons with man or beast. I sat down in the chair next to the bed and dialed 911. The young lady was sympathetic, I'll give her that -- but the situation was not critical. It didn't require emergency response. In short -- "We'll send a man around."

Patrolman Leahy arrived around nine. Samuel and I were getting ready for bed; he was afraid of the dark and, in spite of our mutual antipathy, preferred to sleep with me. The sight of Patrolman Leahy, with his bright buttons and leather boots, reduced him to a shivering shell of a dog.

We went through a lengthy itemization of questions and answers before Leahy decided to act. The over-the-fence route to the liquor store -- the garbage cans -- Samuel's behavior -- the newspapers on the porch -- even the bizarre tragedy of Pat's demise.

"I gotta check it out," Leahy said. This meant he had to go back and sit in his patrol car for twenty minutes talking to headquarters on his radio. Then he drove off and came back with someone sitting next to him in plain clothes. Another patrol car eased up behind him.

"Hadda getta cawdawda," Leahy said. "We're drivin' around to da frontada house. We'd like yuh duh come widdus -- y'know em, right?"

"I'll meet you over there, soon's I get my coat -- s'cuse me, but what's a cawdawda?"

"Oh, -- we just can't bust into somebody's house widdout havin the authority of the court. Hadda get a judge outta bed and sign a cawdawda."

Marveling at their efficiency, I got my coat and took the short cut by way of the back fence and arrived at the front of the house about the time they did.

After the slow process of ringing, then knocking loudly, one of them used a tool I'd never seen before. It simply removed the lock with its deadbolt from the front door leaving a hole where it had been. The door was opened, and that's when I got a whiff of what had been bothering Samuel all afternoon.

Yes, they'd done it all right. Both of them decided to leave the world just as they entered it -- at the same time. Patrolman Leahy explained it to me. Each was in her own bed with a liter of Mountain Lake Red and an empty prescription bottle.

"Alcohol and sleeping pills," he said. "It's the ladies' way out -- no pain, no strain . . . know this guy?" He held out two pictures of Pat Hogan. "They wuz each holdin' his pitcher -- his pitcher's all over the house -- y'know 'im?"

At that late hour, the significance of the pictures was slow in coming. Had Pat had been a husband to Tessie and Kate? As well as I knew them, I couldn't tell one from the other -- perhaps Pat couldn't either. He was supposed to be Tessie's husband but there was no visible difference between them . . . was there? None that anyone could see. He may never have known which of them was which, and being the only man in each of their lonely lives -- they kept their secret to themselves.

And that day at the beach....?!