Installment Thirty-Two

Forget everything I wrote before about missing the social life of the globally mobile.

I attended an afternoon tea yesterday at the Official Residence (OR) of the Irish Ambassador to Canada. It was enough to remind me how much I had despised all of it.

The tea, mind you, was delicious.

I accepted the invitation because I was curious to see what all the fuss had been about. The Irish OR had been renovated to the tune of seven million dollars, making it the biggest diplomatic home in town. Naturally, it's in my old 'hood, Rockcliffe Park.

It's just a house. Okay, it's a big house, especially for a country with an envoy to Canada also serving as Ambassador to The Bahamas and Jamaica. Talk about from the sublime to the ridiculous, at least weather-wise.

I wasn't quite sure why I was invited except for my new tenuous connection through Deborah to one of their staff. Upon greeting houseguests of the Ambassador's wife though, an elderly retired diplomatic couple, the connection became clear: they had known my late parents.

So I sipped daintily from my cup and tried not to daydream about the tea parties my mother used to create for me as a child in my bedroom. I suppose it was her way of thumbing her nose at all the diplomatic crap she had to endure. We would dress up (gloves included) and if my father was around, he would play butler. As sweet as those memories are for me, I felt sad.

I was so stuck in my own reverie that I almost missed over-hearing a snippet of conversation that made me practically drop the tea cup from my hand.

Someone (who can ever remember names at these events?) was talking about Sean. My ears perked up.

"So tragic about his parents," the speaker was saying between bites of savories (a food group I once actually believed were created solely for diplomatic functions.)

"I don't know the story about them. Why is it so sad?" It was another woman asking the question, of course. Men wouldn't be caught dead at one of these functions, except for retired ones, desperate for a dose of stiff protocol.

"You never heard the horrible story? His mother died quickly from cancer while they were on a diplomatic posting and his father never forgave the Irish government for not allowing him to bring her home soon enough to see Irish doctors. Not that it would have made any difference."

I knew that part of Sean's history and was starting to tune out and scarf down a few more bites of free food when I realized the conversation wasn't over.

"And then poor Sean was left to raise his younger sister after his father did a runner. Imagine being so angry with your father that you actually change your name!"

WTF?

"Sean is his Christian name but O'Sullivan was his mother's maiden name."

"What's his real last name then?"

I plugged my ears. Unfortunately, at the same moment, everything I had stuffed into my face too fast started marching back up my throat. Only in the nick of time did I manage to excuse myself to the Ladies and barf into a newly renovated powder room.

I never did hear the rest of the conversation. But it wasn't necessary.

It had been obvious from the moment I first laid eyes on Sean that he had to be Gabriel Kelly's son.