Irish Above All

by Mary Pat Kelly

  The novena had become so popular that Ed set aside twenty city buses to pick up people at churches all over the city to take them to the big basilica on Jackson Boulevard each Tuesday. The Servite priests there put on especially good services.

  I remembered how Aunt Máire used to tease Granny Honora about her pilgrimages to every church in the city during the Civil War. Granny would light candles in each one, traveling miles and miles. Walking. No city buses to take you in those days. She’d begin in St. Bridget’s, then on to St. James, Holy Family, Immaculate Conception, downtown for Holy Name, St. Barbara’s Lithuanian Church, St. Jerome where the Croatians went, St. Joseph’s with an Italian congregation, St. Agnes in Brighton Park, praying that her sons would come home and safe. “Didn’t save my Johnny Óg,” Aunt Máire had said to me.

  Best not to think about that. Can’t ask Rose, What will these women do if their prayers fail? Gold star mothers, the women who’d lost their sons were called. They were given a banner to hang in their front windows. More and more of these appearing in the city. Little comfort, I thought. But I said none of this as I ate my chicken salad. It was here in the Walnut Room that I’d taken Margaret to convince her to consider marrying my cousin Ed. Nearly twenty years ago now. Neither of us with any idea of what was in store for her. No sense that she’d be the First Lady of Chicago in charge of every variety of women’s war relief committee with her own son serving in the Navy and a husband running back and forth to the White House.

  “I think you and Mike are right to get married now,” I said. “Mike’s a smart fellow. He’s brave, but not reckless. He’ll be okay.”

  “Mike said there are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old bold pilots,” Mariann said.

  We laughed but I thought about what it must be to land on an aircraft carrier. Imagine trying to touch down on a platform rocking in the ocean. Mariann was explaining that Mike had told her the planes had hooks and they had to catch a steel line stretched across the deck, or else they’d go over into the ocean.

  “The worst part is when they have to land at dusk,” she said. “It’s hard to see the difference between the sea and the sky.”

  “Does Mike think he can learn to do this?”

  “Yes, he does. He told me he has no intention of dying and that I was really going to enjoy living in Brooklyn and that New York City was an incredible place. I did have a good time there when I went to visit him last month, though Mike wanted to go to some cowboy play on my very first night in town. He’d met a fellow whose wife had a part in the show and gave Mike tickets for opening night. I told him I wasn’t going to waste my first night watching cowboys. The musical was Oklahoma!.” She shook her head. “If only I’d known.”

  We laughed—please God, Mike would stay in Brooklyn. The next Tuesday I started going to the novena at Our Lady of Sorrows.

  * * *

  “What is so rare as a day in June?” Sister Ruth Eileen would quote that to us when the sun finally came back to Chicago. We would smother our classroom May altar with the lilacs that had just managed to bloom during the month dedicated to Our Lady. Sister told us May festivals represented Irish monks’ effort to Christianize the Celtic Feast of Bealtaine, which marked the beginning of summer.

  “An optimistic people, our ancestors,” she’d said, “as the good weather often didn’t arrive until July.”

  But I’d learned from Peter Keeley that temperature didn’t matter. What was being celebrated was the Earth’s flowering. The great goddess asserting her power. The seed potatoes planted in March were now tall green plants with purple flowers. Life returning. Except for the years when the green turned black and the great goddess had seemed to desert her people.

  But that was another story. Because today we had our victory. Today Michael Joseph Kelly, who carried the name of the great-grandfather who died struggling to keep his family alive, was standing at the altar of the Lady Chapel in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in his white naval officer’s uniform, waiting for his bride, with another flyer standing next to him and three more in the side pew—each one so young-looking. Mariann’s brother Father Frank Williams stood at the altar under the statue of Our Lady of New York. He was staying at the cathedral rectory along with her other priest, brother Father Charles. The Viatorians were teachers, and both were training to become college professors. I’d been surprised when I heard Mariann call Father Frank, who was quite distinguished looking, “Snooky.” This was his family nickname. She told me that he’d been involved in show business working for NBC Radio before he entered the order. While he was a student at St. Patrick High School he’d sung in the choir and appeared in all the school plays. When Rose and I had gone to dinner at Mariann’s father’s apartment in Austin, where she and two brothers lived, Father Frank came to help with the cooking and entertained us with songs from Show Boat.

  “Only make believe,” he’d sung and I’d thought, oh yes let’s make believe for a while. Let’s pretend Mike and Mariann are simply a couple in love planning a wedding, a home, a life in the usual way. Not surrounded by war and darkness and … But I’d stopped myself as we all sang along with Father Frank.

  “Might as well make believe I love you for to tell the truth I do.”

  And then I’d sung what had become my party piece, “Has Anybody Here Seen Kelly?”

  Now, as I looked at Mike waiting at the altar of the chapel, I thought of all the girls marrying soldiers and sailors and marines. I understood Mariann’s brother Jim’s concern. Why didn’t all these young women wait until the war was over? Why take the chance that they’d be widowed?

  Mike’s best man, Jerry Boucher, up there grinning, had just gotten married himself. Mike had stood up for him. A most impressive wedding, Mike had told me, in the big Jesuit church on Park Avenue, St. Ignatius Loyola. Jerry’s wife came from one of the most prominent and richest Irish-American families in the country. Her grandfather Murray had been Thomas Edison’s partner, and her mother’s father, James Farrell, had been president of US Steel. Many bridesmaids and gorgeous music, Mike had said. Mariann told me the bride’s dress was covered in handmade lace with a six-foot-long train. Beautiful, she said and Joan, the bride, was a very nice girl for all her family’s millions, and was making the same leap of faith as Mariann. Joan’s family’s money and position couldn’t ensure that Jerry would survive. Mike told me they’d lost another member of their squadron just the week before. Gone off on patrol looking for submarines and had never come back. They didn’t know what had happened. He could have run out of gas. His instruments might have failed. Or he could have merely gotten lost on the huge ocean. Sometimes your sense of direction deserts you, a kind of vertigo sets in, Mike had said.

  There were still rumors that the squadron was going to be transferred to the Pacific. They probably would have been gone by now except the Japanese had sunk so many of our big aircraft carriers there were no places for them.

  At the party we all attended the night before, I talked to a young fellow named Denis Barnes, who’d graduated with Mike from Pensacola, then served in the Pacific. We were standing in the cardinal’s parlor, which Cardinal Spellman had offered to Father Frank. The cardinal was the military vicar for the US and had a soft spot for servicemen. No wonder cardinals are called princes of the church—the rectory looked like a castle, with thick carpets and scarlet damask upholstery on the overstuffed chairs and couches. There was plenty of food. I’d noticed the young flyer standing by himself and walked over. He told me he’d just come from the Pacific where he’d met survivors of Guadalcanal and Corregidor. He did not have a good word to say for General Douglas MacArthur or the US Congress and went on about how ill-equipped and outnumbered the troops were who were expected to defend the Philippines. This was the first really negative word I’d heard from any of these young fellows. But this boy was angry. Thousands of soldiers had been told to surrender to the Japanese. MacArthur had got away to Australia leaving his troops there to die under brutal conditions in Japanese pr
isoner of war camps.

  “Roosevelt wants the country to concentrate on the war in Europe,” he said. “But the Japanese Navy is beating us in the Pacific. We were able to do some damage at Midway but then the Navy got sold a bill of goods with this new plane SBD2. We call it the Beast. Just try to get up and off in that thing with bombs stuck under your wings. You see you have to dive low over a Jap ship to drop your payload while you’re dodging ack-ack or fighting off their planes, the Zeros. Most times our bombs never hit the target. Six of us will take off and maybe four will return. Finally the captain of the carrier threw all those planes off the ship. So what do you think of that?” he said. He didn’t wait for me to answer but walked away. Poor kid, I’d thought.

  “War,” a voice said behind me. “You’d think we would have learned.” An elderly priest handed me a glass of champagne and we’d walked to a corner dominated by a gigantic oil painting of the Sacred Heart. He lifted his glass as if to salute the image. “The Lord tried to take all suffering onto Himself but mankind seems bent on reclaiming it. Doing in each other.”

  I lifted my glass and took a sip.

  “I was in France during the last war,” he said.

  “I was too,” I said.

  “I was a chaplain.”

  “I was a nurse. Well, kind of a nurse and a photographer. There for the battles.”

  “So you know,” he said.

  “I do,” I said.

  “They don’t,” he said, gesturing at the young flyers and their girls.

  “That fellow does,” I said, pointing at Denis Barnes.

  “I volunteered to be a chaplain again,” the priest went on. “But they rejected me. You’re too old they told me. But I said that I was the same age as the commander-in-chief.”

  I laughed.

  “I’ve appointed myself assistant to the cardinal in the military vicarate. I write to the chaplains. Try to get them extra supplies. Even cash to give to the boys for emergency leaves. Things like that.”

  “Good,” I said.

  “It’s something,” he said, and pointed over at Mike and Mariann. “And I like to make the cathedral available to them.”

  “So it was you. I suppose my cousin Ed called you.”

  “Ed? Ed who?”

  “Ed Kelly, the mayor of Chicago.”

  “No. No. Mike and Mariann just rang the rectory bell. The housekeeper got me. I met with them and found them a slot. Nine o’clock in the morning is a little early but that’s really when the Lady Chapel is at its most beautiful. Morning light pours through the stained glass windows. And when Mike told me his last name was Kelly, well … I knew I had to find him a place. You see it was Eugene Kelly gave the money to build the Lady Chapel at the end of the last century. What a man he was. A self-made millionaire and very generous. Born in County Tyrone not too far from the home place of Archbishop Hughes, whose vision built this cathedral. Can you imagine all those Irish ragamuffins who’d run for their lives from starvation and oppression telling the muckety-mucks in this city they were going to build a gothic cathedral right smack on Fifth Avenue?

  “Of course Fifth Avenue then wasn’t what it is now, north of the real city in acres of mud. But we Irish did it. We were the lowest of the low and yet we managed to erect one of the most magnificent churches in the world. Of course everybody wasn’t poor. We had our successes like Eugene Kelly.

  “Be sure to notice the middle window in the Lady Chapel. You’ll see the Kelly coat of arms,” he said.

  “The tower?”

  “Yes,” he said, and patted my hand as if he’d given me a great gift. “Your crest up there in blue and gold. Unfortunately there wasn’t room for the motto.”

  “Turris Fortis Mihi Deus,” I said.

  He nodded.

  “And do you think it’s true?”

  “True?”

  “Will God give Mike strength? Will my nephew survive?”

  He didn’t say anything for a minute.

  “Ah well, as to that our ancestors did,” he said. “And here we are.” He drank the rest of his champagne.

  Yes, I thought, here we are.

  He was right. The morning sun did make the colors of the stained glass brighter. I found the Kelly crest stuck right in the middle of the last panel on the left, and kept my eye on the tower until the music began. Then I turned to watch Mariann come up the short aisle. Only about a dozen pews on each side, but an impressive setting for her as she walked slowly up, her hand on her brother’s arm—a sailor. His uniform wasn’t as fancy as Mike’s. Just the standard navy blue. Here comes the bride.

  Oh Mare, good for you. No long white wedding dress for her. She was dressed in a kelly green suit. A fitted jacket flared at the waist, a straight skirt. She wore a big round, white pinwheel hat with a green band. Showing our colors. No ordinary time. No need for bridal gowns and fuss or the pageant of a virgin being given away by her father to her husband. Women as chattel. Bound in long skirts. A costume of subservience. Better this radiant girl walking shoulder to shoulder with her brother. Meeting her husband on equal terms. In a suit she could wear to work on Monday. Not quite the dungarees and bandana of Rosie the Riveter but making a similar statement. She was ready for whatever would come.

  I thought of my own marriage ceremony. A few minutes in another small chapel that had been tucked into the back of the Irish College in Paris where Father Kevin had blessed Peter and me. Another young man who’d gone off to battle. A war the Irish had won. They’d beaten the Black and Tans. Wrenched their freedom from the English but then they had turned on each other. Peter killed. Not by the enemy but by one of his own. Ah Peter, I thought, how I wish I could turn to you right here and now in this chapel. Hold your hand as Mike and Mariann make the same pledge to each other that we promised. Love, faithfulness, for richer or poorer, in sickness or in health, ’til death does us part. But not for you the easeful death of old age, the happy death prayed for on the nine First Fridays. St. Joseph, patron of a happy death, dying in comfort with Mary and Jesus looking on. Yours was death by rifle shot, and Mike could fall out of the sky or be cut down by antiaircraft fire.

  What had Denis said? Inferior planes, loaded with bombs, diving toward Japanese warships, was that what was waiting for Mike? Stop it, Nonie, I told myself. Stop it. Rose had her handkerchief out, longing for John Larney, I supposed, in the same way I was mourning Peter Keeley. I smiled at her. Sat up a little straighter. We had a job to do here.

  “Mame,” I whispered to her. She nodded. We were standing in for Mame. Mary McCabe Kelly, Mike’s mother, Rose’s sister. Maybe for Mariann’s mother too, another Mary. I looked up at the statue of Our Lady. You should have taken better care of your namesakes, I said silently. You should have … But just at that moment I heard the opening notes of the Ave Maria. The singer was somewhere in the cathedral, her voice amplified by the stone walls, the vaulted ceilings. Alright, alright, I thought, I’ll say the prayer. I’ll hail you, Mary full of grace. But you’d better take care of these two or you’ll have Rose and me to contend with.

  After Jerry Boucher, Denis Barnes, and two other members of Mike’s squadron held up their swords to make an archway for the newly wed couple. The bride and groom walked down the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral under this canopy of steel, bright in the sun. We stood at the bottom watching and I couldn’t resist tossing a small handful of rice at the couple. Wars and weddings bound together at least since the Greeks fought the Trojans. I remembered the story Father Kevin had told me about a Roman emperor who had forbidden his soldiers to marry on the principle that a man with a wife held back on the battlefield. A young priest named Valentine had defied the emperor, performed the ceremonies, and was murdered himself for his disobedience. Mike and Mariann stood on the bottom step. She looked up at him from under her hat. Such love. So young. Twenty-two and twenty-six. Dear God, let him be careful, please.

  Father Chuck, the scientist priest-brother, lined us up behind the couple and began taking pictures
using color film, he’d told me. I was happy to turn the photography over to him. I stood next to Rose directly behind Father Frank, still in his vestments. We all faced the office buildings that were called Rockefeller Center. I could almost touch the statue of Atlas holding up the sky in the center of the buildings. Sister Ruth Eileen had told us the story of Atlas. She believed that all Western literature was rooted in the ancient myths so I knew that Atlas had been a Titan who’d fought the gods of Olympus and lost. His punishment was to hold up the sky forever though the sphere this fellow balanced on his shoulders looked a lot like the Earth. We haven’t learned much as a species. Here were Mike and his pals who could actually climb into the sky. The dream of flight realized and yet their airplanes were weapons of war. Atlas and St. Patrick squaring off. Two sides of humanity.

  We walked together east on Fiftieth Street toward the Waldorf Astoria, where the wedding breakfast was to be held. A procession of joy that made the people we passed smile.

  “God bless you,” one woman called out to Mike and Mariann. “God keep you.” Mariann waved her bouquet of white roses at the woman.

  Father Frank had invited the elderly priest from St. Patrick’s to join us. His name was Tom Leonard and I found myself sitting next to him. He was an easy man to talk to. When he was a chaplain during the last war, he’d visited Paris and gone to the Irish College but he didn’t remember Father Kevin or Peter Keeley. He said that the cardinal had studied in Rome and was familiar with the Irish College there.

  “You have to remember,” he said, “the popes had intended that the French would control the church in America. All the early bishops came from France. We Irish were Johnny-come-latelys, but doing alright for ourselves now. There are some in Rome who regret that we’ve taken over, but Cardinal Spellman is a man who understands the ins and outs of the Vatican and is not above reminding fellows in the Curia that the Holy See depends on contributions from the American church. The cardinal set up a special fund to support the scholars working in the Vatican library. A good few came from Ireland. Now that’s a life I enjoy. Books and peace,” he said.