Irish Above All

by Mary Pat Kelly

  “The monks are assembling to chant Lauds.”

  “Do you want to join them?” I asked.

  The monastery had been his refuge. Peter didn’t answer but he reached back, took my hand, helped me walk through the snow. We were close to the fort now. I could see the rocks that made up the walls. The moon picked out bits of mica, a kind of glitter. We walked through the arched entrance. Inside, the snow had blown away, leaving an opening. We stepped into the center.

  “Look up,” Peter said. “See the moon is directly above us. Every culture has had a moon goddess but our ancestors never liked anything clear-cut so we have a few. Some say the moon belongs to Áine, the queen of the fairies but it’s the cailleach I favor. Of course she has many dimensions. Do you remember our lessons, Nora?”

  He certainly was a professor. Here we were surrounded by moonlight, two pilgrim souls finally united and he’s going on about Irish mythology. But hadn’t I always been a good student? Besides I understood the cailleach a lot better now at sixty-five than I had at thirty-five when he’d been teaching me at the Irish College.

  “She’s the wise woman,” I said. “Though I know her name can be translated as the hag, but she’s the old one who the Shannon was named for and the Seine and—”

  “Very good,” Peter said. “I thought she might be waiting for us out here because winter belongs to her. In some tales she grows younger as the months pass, emerging as a beautiful woman in the springtime.”

  “Is that when she met Niall at the well?”

  “You remember,” he said.

  “Of course. Now don’t tell me. I know the story. Niall was the youngest of all the king’s sons.” I tried to imitate the singsong cadence of Peter’s voice as he’d presented me with the tales that were my heritage. “He and his brothers were out hunting and they came to a well in the forest. Always a fraught symbol,” I threw in.

  “Very good, Nora,” he said.

  “A cailleach old and ugly stood there holding a golden cup, also significant.”

  He nodded.

  “She’d give them a drink if each one kissed her. Well, the older fellows turned her down flat, but Niall had a kind heart and he was thirsty, so he gave her a peck on the cheek and drank the water. As he did she whispered to him, ‘I will give you the sovereignty of Éireann.’” I paused.

  “Because…,” Peter said urging me on.

  “Because all the Irish goddesses represent sovereignty. That’s why Ireland is named for a woman,” I said.

  “That’s right,” Peter said. “But there was a catch. Remember?”

  “Yes,” I said. “When Niall was made king he’d have to marry her.”

  “Which he agreed to,” Peter said. “Because he thought there was no chance for him to be king, not with all those older brothers.”

  “But they elected him,” I said, remembering Pat Nash and the Gaelic origin of Chicago political structure. “The night before his coronation, who should show up only the cailleach.”

  Peter nodded.

  “Now if I recall when a prince gives his word he can’t renege or disaster will follow,” I said.

  Peter nodded again.

  “Poor Niall,” I said. “To be married to this shriveled-up crone, but he agreed to the wedding then put his head in his hands. When he looked up he saw a beautiful young woman. Probably shocked him.”

  “Probably did. Not expecting her to appear after all this time,” he said. “Thought that she was living a much different life.”

  “And she thought he was dead.”

  “And did she explain?” he asked me.

  “Oh she did,” I said. “The woman explained that for twelve hours of every twenty-four she could be her gorgeous self. For the other twelve the cailleach. And she asked him which period he would prefer. Which was a dilemma for him. Did he want a wife who was beautiful at night for himself alone or was it better that she show her real self during the day so all the other men could see what a prize he’d married. And he couldn’t decide,” I said. “Some men are like that. They equivocate.”

  “And did he tell her how unsure he was?”

  “I think he took her hand,” I said and reached for Peter’s, holding it in both of mine. “And told her, you choose. And just like that the spell was broken,” I said. “Because he acknowledged her sovereignty.”

  “She was her own lovely self,” Peter said.

  “And still the cailleach,” I said.

  “No separation for the Celts,” he said. “No past or future, natural or supernatural, all one in some mysterious way. Spring waits in winter, and a long time ago is never very far away.”

  I tugged on Peter’s hand, stepped forward, and looked right into his eyes.

  “Oh, Peter, I know why you never became a monk. It wasn’t because of me. You’re a pagan.”

  “Maybe I am,” he said.

  “Well, then Chicago will suit you down to the ground.”

  * * *

  So. I’m not saying I didn’t have a bit more convincing to do, but I kept talking as the moon slowly moved away and the darkness faded. A red sun pushed up from the horizon, illuminating the archway and turning the snow pink. I could hear the birds. Peter started to talk about the connections between Grianán and Newgrange. I stopped him.

  “We’ll be the folks who live on the hill,” I finally said to Peter.

  “What?”

  And God forgive me, I sang him a bit of Bing Crosby’s hit song.

  Someday we’ll build a home on a hill up high,

  You and I shiny and new,

  A cottage that two will fill

  And we’ll be pleased to be called

  The folks who live on the hill.

  I explained to him how when I’d first heard the song, I’d pictured us together in spite of him being dead. I realized I’d never really accepted the fact that he was gone and hadn’t I been right? We had to take the chance being offered us. But still he resisted. Then I remembered another of Peter’s lessons. The story of an Irish heroine, Grainne, who was said to have taken the man she fell in love with by the two ears as if he were a calf and told him they were in love and to get married. And I did the same to Peter, holding on to his two ears until he laughed and said.

  “You are Nora Críonna. You are the girl that makes them stir. I’ve missed you.”

  And that was that.

  Marty Berndt got us a visa and a place on the ship. Father Abbot solemnized our marriage with Delia and Major Jones as witnesses and the monks chanting the “Salve Regina” in our honor. We drove back to Derry. I thought Cyril would try to stop us, but he decided having Peter and me far away in Amerikay was better for him and got us a marriage certificate at the Guildhall. However, Peter’s name on the certificate was Peter Caplis. Cyril produced a passport to match. “Better to be safe than sorry,” he said.

  DECEMBER 21, 1945

  “Well, Nonie, you never disappoint,” Ed said to me when we finally got back to Chicago, just before Christmas.

  Peter and I were sitting in Ed’s sitting room watching the snow fall on Lake Michigan. Margaret and the two boys were at their new winter place in Palm Springs, California. Pat was happy in her convent. I had told Peter about Agnella and promised we’d see her in the spring—he was delighted. He had translated a manuscript by Erigina in the Vatican library. But now I had to explain to Ed why I wouldn’t be able to accompany him on the campaign trail this spring.

  “Don’t worry, Nonie. I’m not running.”

  “Probably smart, Ed,” I said. “Go out on top. None of us are getting any younger. Peter and I lost so much time and you and Margaret need to be together.”

  “I’m not leaving by choice,” Ed said. “They will drop me, Nonie. Lots of people are mad at me for insisting on open housing. And when we didn’t get the UN headquarters, I lost any chance.”

  Peter looked questioningly at me.

  “Ed wants Negro people to be able to live anywhere they want to in this city,” I sai
d.

  “What’s wrong with that?” he asked.

  “Nothing. It’s the right thing to do but some of our countrymen have forgotten where we came from,” I said.

  “Strange, isn’t it, Nonie?” Ed said. “Nobody poorer than us Irish when we arrived in Chicago, Granny running from starvation, desperate for a better life for her children, just like the people coming up from the South, wanting the same things we Kellys did. All the Irish staggered off those coffin ships with nothing and now—well Joe Kennedy always said, ‘Give an Irishman a quarter and he becomes a Republican.’ Time to quit,” he said. “Spend time with Margaret and the kids in Eagle River.”

  I took Peter to meet Mike and Mariann and Mary Pat. Nice to have them next door to Marge and Tom and their baby daughter Kathleen. Tom sang “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen” to her as a kind of lullaby.

  16

  NOVEMBER 1960

  A happy ending to the Kelly story except Ed didn’t have much time. Dead in five years. Only seventy-four.

  Peter and I are well into our eighties now. We live up here in Wisconsin in the cottage bought with the money Ed left me. Plenty in his estate. Over a million dollars. Stocks and bonds, real estate and paintings. Though Margaret had said there was a safety deposit box with a million dollars that had somehow disappeared. She accused the executor of the estate of stealing. They made Margaret out to be a mad woman, and I’d say the stress of the case shortened her life. Dead at fifty-six.

  But here on Medicine Lake we flourished. After Ed and Margaret died, the place on Eagle River was sold. Our cottage became the place my nieces and nephews, their children and Ed’s kids gathered every summer. Mariann’s two priest brothers became chaplains at the nearby camp set up by Ray Meyer, the De Paul University coach. So we saw a lot of both Father Williamses. The local doctor, Michael Byrne, said that if Peter walked three miles a day, ate fish, vegetables, and potatoes, his heart would be fine. And it is. We grow what Peter calls “pratties” and vegetables, and he catches walleye pike in the lake.

  I have my city pension and Peter gets a bit from the Irish government. We don’t need much. I’ve gone back to the kind of photography I practiced in Paris. Landscapes full of lights and shadows. I sell them at a gallery in Eagle River. The most popular are my seasonal pieces that show Medicine Lake reflecting the trees on the shore—pines and maples, oaks and balsams. Sometimes touched with the new green of spring, or in summer’s full leaf, or blazing red and gold in autumn. Though some prefer the cailleach scene where the branches are bare but still alive, holding on as we are.

  Peter writes some lines for each photograph. Ancient Irish text with a bit of the Ogham alphabet, explaining how every tree corresponds to a letter. The gallery owner said those are the most popular with buyers since most of the visitors to the Northwoods are Chicago Irish and the added context helps.

  A cozy place. When Ed’s house was sold, I bought the handmade carpet and had it cut to fit each room. No big expenditures for us except the radio we bought to follow the presidential campaign. And we will find out tonight if the dreams of Ed and Pat Nash and all those Irish aldermen and precinct captains down through the generations will come true. Will John Fitzgerald Kennedy become president of the United States? The election was over. We were waiting up for the results.

  I had to explain to Peter the ins and outs of the electoral college.

  “It will all come down to Illinois. To Chicago really,” I told him. “Now let’s see if Ed Kelly and Pat Nash can shower the ballot boxes with grace.”

  Peter fell asleep at about five in the morning, and so I had to shake him awake with the news.

  “He won, Peter,” I said. “He won.”

  “God help him,” Peter said.

  “Christ before him, Christ behind him,” I started. “Let’s say St. Patrick’s prayer.”

  “It’s really a pre-Christian invocation that calls on the strengths of Heaven, the light of the sun, the radiance of the moon, the splendor of fire, the speed of lightning.”

  “Even better,” I said.

  See, I told you. Peter is a pagan. More so now than ever in this place where we live so close to lightning and wind, the moon and the stars. Our Ojibwe cousin, Patrick, reappeared and he and Peter have found all sorts of correspondences and connections between Irish and Ojibwe mythology. They are collaborating on a book about the similarities, with Erigina thrown in for good measure, which I told Agnella in one of our weekly letters.

  “Now that’s a book I’ll be able to sell,” the gallery owner said.

  Peter and I have become something of a tourist attraction ourselves. Driving around in Ed’s 1939 Packard, which is still perfectly good. Me dressed in trousers. A style that has become so common that the Town and Country shop in Eagle River carries a great variety.

  “The professor and that Kelly woman” they call us. And when the roads are too icy our neighbor does the messages as Peter says, and keeps us in firewood.

  A good life and as I say, we don’t need much. Peter is writing a compressed history of Ireland to send to Jack Kennedy.

  “I think he’d appreciate that, Peter,” I said. “He is interested in his Irish heritage.”

  Peter and I had both gone to Chicago a few years before when the Irish Fellowship Club hosted the young Senator Kennedy. He’d compared the struggle of Iron Curtain countries with Ireland’s long fight for independence. And quoted the lament for Owen Roe.

  Sheep without a shepherd, when the snow shuts out the sky,

  O why did you leave us, Owen.

  Why did you die.

  But there were no laments that morning, November 9, 1960. Our youngest president, I told Peter. Forty-three.

  “About the age I feel inside,” he said.

  “I’d say I’m still twenty-one.”

  “The cailleach growing younger,” he said.

  Except I’m happy enough for life to narrow. Deep rather than wide. So a few weeks later, when I found the impressive square white envelope in my post office box, I took my time opening it. Embossed on the corners the return address read “The Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, Washington DC.”

  And underneath, written in a kind of calligraphy, “Nora Kelly, Three Lakes, Wisconsin.”

  I waited to get home to open the envelope with Peter and read the invitation to attend the inauguration of John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

  “Well,” he said, “you’re going of course.”

  “I’m not,” I said. “I’ll send my invitation on to Mike’s oldest girl. Mary Pat’s the type will figure out how to get herself there.”

  Peter and I listened to Jack’s inaugural speech on the radio, sitting before the fire, sipping Jameson. Peter nodded his head as Kennedy called for peace and cooperation. Both of us struck by the phrase that would become famous. “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

  And his conclusion. “Here on Earth, God’s work must be our own.”

  Peter had never asked much for himself and I suppose neither had I. And yet we had everything. And now the election of John Fitzgerald Kennedy had healed our own people’s suffering.

  Peter was delighted with the intertwining of Irish history.

  “Think of it, Nonie,” he said to me. “On one hand, he’s a Kennedy descended from Brian Boru, and on the other a Fitzgerald whose people were the Norman conquerors who defeated the High Kings. And now the two strands are joined together.”

  “Wonderful,” I said, and looked up toward heaven and winked at Ed. I was thinking of more immediate battles. Of the “No Irish Need Apply” signs. Of Big Bill Thompson’s ethnic slurs. Even FDR’s comments about temperamental Irish boys. Here was healing, no question. A happy ending.

  Kellys Abú. Thank you, God. We are Irish above All.

  ALSO BY MARY PAT KELLY

  FICTION

  Special Intentions

  Galway Bay

  Of Irish Blood

  NONFI
CTION

  Martin Scorsese: The First Decade

  Martin Scorsese: A Journey

  Home Away from Home: The Yanks in Ireland

  Proudly We Served: The Men of the USS Mason

  Good to Go: The Rescue of Scott O’Grady from Bosnia

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  MARY PAT KELLY is the author of numerous books, including Of Irish Blood and the bestselling novel Galway Bay. As a filmmaker, her credits include Proud, starring Ossie Davis and Stephen Rea; three award-winning PBS documentaries; and work in television for Good Morning America and Saturday Night Live. She wrote the book and lyrics for the musical Abby’s Song (now the animated film Shirah of Bethlehem). A graduate of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods College, Kelly received her Ph.D. in English from the CUNY Graduate Center and was elected president of the Irish American Writers and Artists. Named one of the top 100 Irish Americans by Irish America magazine, she was born and raised in Chicago and lives in New York with her husband, app developer Martin Sheerin from County Tyrone. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Prologue

  Part I. The Family

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4