Matt's Romances

When I was a little kid, I thought Matt was the most handsome man I knew. It was true that I hadn't seen very many men at all until we moved to the Valley when I was 5 years old, but by all accounts and from old photographs, Matt would seem to have had it all as far as movie star looks went. He was tall for his time, about 6 ft, 2 in. or more, lean and muscular, with Kennedy-like thick wavy brown hair. He owned a car, had a good job; I think he worked at Behr-Manning, besides his free-lance radio repair side business. I can remember he would seem so happy to see us, and would lift us up in the air---it seemed so far up---and he would encircle our waists with his big powerful hands. (Well. maybe he only did so once or twice when I was probably 2 0r 3, but I remember it.) After his brother Timothy's death, Matt became the sole support of the family, his mother, Helen, Ma, and Agnes. I think their sister Marguerite died in 1918, during the flu epidemic. Maybe because of the Irish tradition, or maybe because he had bartered his youth for adult responsibilities, Matt was catered to. Helen of course would do all the cooking and house work after Ma and Agnes married and left Cooksboro, and Nanny was pretty much crippled with arthritis in her hips and knees. They called it rheumatism then. I can remember Helen felt responsible for clearing the driveway of snow so Matt could drive in when he came home from work. I understood he would "have his teeth out" if that wasn't the case. I assumed that meant a grimace---not happy.
Then, as now, women would evidently pursue an eligible man, or one they only perceived as eligible. For Matt would not be available until his mother's death. I don't know whether Nanny extracted that vow from him or whether he voluntarily so pledged, or if it were just an understanding. But even I knew that was the way it was. His first girl friend that we heard about , or woman, as so they referred to her, was named Helen. That really confused me then, and it didn't help that it was a secret romance; everything about it was spoken in whispered conversations. Agnes seemed to have an inside track somehow; I think that Helen may have been Matt's co-worker, and maybe Agnes or Tommy knew someone who knew her. Anyway, it seemed an on-again, off-again relationship, easy to understand now with Matt in his 40's and not free to even speak of a romance. The 3 sisters, Helen, Ma, and Agnes seemed receptive to that woman named Helen, but the Matriarch was not one to be confronted. And so somewhere in that time period entered ------Ann Burke!!!