On this particular
Good Friday, three women take turns sitting with Grandma while she gets drunk and slips farther and farther into her memories of Ireland. Grandma doesn’t go to mass on Good Friday anymore, which scandalizes the family. She tells everyone she is giving Jesus a good Irish wake, but really she is mourning the loss of her first love who died in an Irish rebellion on Good Friday.
Helen is the first to sit with Grandma. She fusses around, trying very hard to manage Grandma’s emotions. She only reluctantly pours liquor into Grandma’s glass, and stares out the window waiting for her relief. Grandma amuses herself by telling Helen a tale about how if one looks through the window and
sees a ghost walking from the West, that person will die during that year. Grandma’s morbid humor
shows when she teases Helen about whether or not her time is up yet. Her vulnerability also comes through. She wants Helen to stay, and then she wants Helen to go away. What she really wants is to be understood and not emotionally alone.
Instead of Loretta coming to relieve Helen, Patsy shows up instead to see what is taking her mother so long. Helen sees her opportunity, and leaves Patsy to wait with Grandma. Patsy is the family
rebel. She stays out all night with her atheist
boyfriend from the nearby college, even though she is only seventeen. With Helen gone, Grandma encourages Patsy to drink with her and asks her about her boyfriend. When Patsy admits that her boyfriend is not a good Catholic but a rebel, Grandma knows she has found a kindred spirit at last.
Grandma puts on Irish rebellion music, and tells Patsy to dance a jig while wearing her green
shawl from Ireland. Grandma tells the story of the shawl, about how she wore the shawl for her rebel boyfriend when they made love, right before the British army killed him.
Loretta finally shows up. When she sees Grandma in her drunken reverie, she angrily turns on the lights and sends Patsy home. Patsy, who had been somewhat afraid of the old woman before, now enthusiastically kisses her goodbye. Loretta and Grandma argue, and we know Loretta will spend the rest of the night misunderstanding Grandma.
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