Midnight Mutterings | Kilkenny

||| MIDNIGHT MUTTERINGS by JACKIE BATES |||

One of our favorite Orcasites sent a message from Kilkenny, Ireland, where she was passing through on an extensive trip. Her note made me think of a Kilkenny story of my own from decades ago. I did visit Kilkenny, Ireland, long after the story I’m going to relate, but this story is not about a town in Ireland, though it was beyond charming. It was about a family I knew slightly.

My bio shows I moved a lot, and this story takes place when I had moved from California to Charlottesville, Virginia, back to the Bay Area for the summer, and then to Ellensburg,WA, across the mountains for four years, and then to Seattle. I bought the first house in my life in Ellensburg at age 35, and a year so later, bought a house in Seattle, where I hoped to live someday. I rented that house to friends, who generously allowed me to visit on my frequent visits to the big city. When that day came, I sold the Ellensburg house at a modest profit. It was a lucky time in real estate in those days in the seventies and eighties, and I thought I might invest in another house with those profits. But this is not just a story about real estate. It’s about Kilkenny, specifically Joseph Kilkenny, and his family. I am using his real name here, assuming no one in that family is alive now and surely not reading The Orcasonion.

I don’t remember how I found out about the Kilkenny House, but it wasn’t through a realtor as the house was a private sale by the family. Maybe there was a sign in the yard and someone told me about it. There was a rare, big snowstorm the morning I went to see the Kilkenny House in the University District on 20th Ave., just north of the University of Washington campus. Because of my four years in Ellensburg, I was an excellent driver in snow and ice, which cut my competition. I headed up the steep viaduct in my little blue Toyota Corolla station wagon.

When I arrived at the house on 20th, I was the only prospective buyer. The house had been rented for some time to several separate adults who seemed to have rented rooms and shared the kitchen, living and dining rooms, two bathrooms, and partially finished basement, in a casual, but not particularly warm way. Apparently no one was in charge. The house was fully furnished with what I considered lovely old furniture from the current owner, who was the mother of Joseph Kilkenny who was her legal guardian as she was incapacitated and lived in a care facility. I never met her. Joseph Kilkenny met me at the door and we went inside where the renters stared at us without comment while Joseph Kilkenny showed me the house. He had apparently received several calls from interested potential buyers who couldn’t get to the house because of the weather.

The price was very reasonable, and Joseph seemed anxious to sell. I had the cash from the sale of the Ellensburg house and we agreed to meet later in the week to work out terms. I no longer remember exactly where we met weekly for the next several weeks, though I do remember the room and Joseph’s ‘attorney’ who was a family member, and may have been an attorney.

In those meetings, she took advantage of the table we sat around and did her nails, with polish remover, files, tissues, and bottles of polish. This was before the time of complicated multicolored nails, and she worked steadily looking down at her task through long false lashes which seemed precariously attached. She brought some legal papers of the sort you can buy anywhere, and had a deed, which is how I came to know that son Joseph was his mother’s guardian, and some history of the house that seemed to have been in the Kilkenny family for decades. She gave me copies of everything.

In the first of the four weekly meetings we had, the odd thing was that Joseph seemed a bit vague, almost as though he didn’t really recall having met me at the house days before. But he was friendly enough and his signatures matched the earlier ones as we signed things. A friend’s lawyer boyfriend went over the papers as did another lawyer who was a friend of mine from California when our families lived the the same court in student housing for several years. His young family moved directly to Seattle after law school and he had helped me with the legal aspects of my two other house purchases, only one of which involved a real estate agent. So I was confident that everything was in order, even if the circumstances were more vague.

Our little group had three more meetings, until the sale was final, with all papers in order and the house was mine, along with the rag tag renters.

On the second meeting, Joseph Kilkenny was friendlier and more in charge, though he seemed less certain about the details of Meeting One. His lawyer did her nails and helped Joseph with some details of Meeting One. I began to wonder if there was an alcoholic, or some other influence on his memory, but he didn’t seem inebriated and I got no whiff of alcohol.

At the third meeting he seemed more withdrawn and I started to wonder if he was following his mother into early dementia. While he was clearly older than I was, that seemed unlikely. His ‘lawyer’ relative seemed unperturbed and we had everything almost done, and planned final signatures to happen in what was to be the fourth and last meeting.

I was a few minutes late for the final meeting, and unprepared for the shock of what was to come. I walked in and there at the table was the ‘lawyer,’ already engaged in her nail routine. Also seated and looking at the papers, Joseph glanced my way. On his right was another Joseph, identically dressed, maybe a tad less self-assured, but otherwise identical. Yes, the Kilkenny boys were middle aged identical twins, with identical handwriting. Joseph was indeed his mother’s legal guardian and James was his identical twin. I never found out why Joseph was in charge. Perhaps, he was the elder twin.

Later, I ran into the next door neighbor, whom I had briefly met before who said she had wondered If I knew they were twins, but couldn’t think how to tell me. She said they were grown up in that house and were well known for their alcohol use in their youth, which explained why the concrete driveway was missing it’s raised edge in several places. She said they had never married and had no children, that she had known their mother slightly, who had lived alone in the big house after her boys had fledged. I still have a dresser from that house in my cabin at Obstruction Pass.