“I don’t remember her being sick,” she said.
Harriman crossed himself. He had argued with her folks, Maddie found out years later, about their keeping the cancer a secret. Let Maddie grieve in advance, he said. It’ll help her when the time comes. At the wake, he wanted to tell her; but how could he? He wasn’t her da. Instead, he said, “You’ll feel anger for a long time. First, at yourself. You’ll remember every little fight, whether it was about staying out late or skipping Mass. And you’ll blame yourself for all the unhappiness you think you caused her.
“When you get over that,” he continued, “you’ll feel anger at your da for all the arguments and disagreements they had. You’ll blame him for making her life miserable. That’s not the way to grieve. If you do, you’ll lose your da in the bargain.”
She had rested her head against his shoulder that afternoon in the small chapel in Moynihan’s and asked, “Have you picked a reading for the eulogy?” and he said, “The Stolen Bride:
O’Driscoll drove with a song . . . ,
And never was the piping so sad,
And never was the piping so gay.”
He hugged her that day, that Uncle George, and told her to take good care of her da because she was all he had.
Now, at Behan’s, this Uncle George, not that Uncle George, was all she had and she needed his hug more than at her ma’s wake, her da’s, her daughter’s, a hug she knew he would not give, now or ever. In a few days it would be Easter, another Easter; or, in the words of the poetess, Easter Again. “Who now cares,” the poetess asked, “Whether Guelf or Ghibillin . . . ?” Bobby Sands for one. From Robert Emmet to Bobby Sands. A direct line. From Robert Emmet to Bobby Sands to Mary Ann Devlin. A direct line. She wished she had Bobby Sands’s courage, his conviction, his passion, his fearlessness in the face of death. She pushed her plate away.
Harriman finished his oatmeal and started on his coffee. Maddie knew she was invisible to his eyes. “Remember an attorney name of Michelle Furey?”
He shook his head.
“She helped set up the Elizabeth Fund. She says she represents the estate of some Dublin priest. Father Gabriel Finn. Says he left me an inheritance. I’m going to a reading of the will in a bit.”
“Father Gabriel Finn?”
Maddie nodded.
“A Gabriel Finn celebrated the Mass at Seamus’s funeral, said a few words over your grand da. Long time ago.” Harriman finished his coffee and dropped a few dollars on the table. He started to say something, then clenched his jaw and shook his head. A dollop of moisture in one of his eyes trapped the light from the ceiling fixture. He wiped that eye with his knuckle. Standing, he stumbled, regained his balance, and walked quickly away, struggling to contain his tears.
Maddie felt as abandoned as a martyr whose life, whose sacrifice, had been long forgotten. The thought that fate might have cast her to be that martyr frightened her. She couldn’t silence the voice inside her head bullying her to defend Levy for her da and grand da, hectoring her that whether Levy was guilty or innocent was as irrelevant as the number of grains of sand on Southie’s Carson Beach. Ugolino, her inner voice tormented her, is but a lazy rationalization to conceal your true motive from yourself. Revenge, proclaimed her inner voice as if it were a declaration of independence. But, Trish asked, what was she guilty of? And Katie, a bitter old crone who belonged in a nunnery cracking the knuckles of heretics? Jail runs in our blood, her inner voice scolded, and Clancy, childless Clancy, was the jailer.
Clancy had laid a curse on the children of his two brothers and their children and their children’s children if any there be. She and Trish, Elizabeth and Bumper, were its latest victims.
The heat blurred her vision. The letters of her name in the newspaper headlines quivered on the page like the signatures of her namesakes in the Kilmainham register, Dublin’s ancient prison to which her da had dragged her years earlier. Jail runs in your blood, her da had said at the time. What she did not understand then, what she did not want to understand then, she now did. Her inner voice cheered.
-2-
Michelle Furey’s office was in one of Boston’s many office buildings constructed when twelve to fifteen stories was considered a skyscraper and people did not trust the novelty of elevators. Built with gas lights, the building had been retrofitted for electricity twice, first when electric lights replaced gas lights, then again when the demand for electricity caused by the explosion of office equipment overwhelmed the capacity of the original wiring. Clean and reasonably well maintained except for the granite exterior, which had been blackened by more than one hundred years of soot and pollution, it had survived into a charmless old age, its rents a fraction of those in the newer glass-sheathed buildings whose ornate lobbies offered fancy florists, newsstands that sold The Economist, and cafés where tuna sandwiches were served on baguettes rather than white bread.
Furey’s office shared the sixth floor with a hodgepodge of small businesses whose common feature was that they operated behind outer doors with smoked glass windows reinforced with wire, opaque but translucent, on which the name of the current tenant had been hand stenciled in black, often without sufficient effort to obliterate the names of prior tenants. Common lavatories flanked the elevator, men to the right, women to the left. Incandescent bulbs rather than fluorescents lit the hallway.
“Law Offices of Michelle Furey” proclaimed the door to her suite, the same proclamation when she and Furey first met to discuss the incorporation of the Elizabeth Fund. “Please Enter” read the invitation stenciled in the lower right corner nearest the door knob, the same invitation. At that time, Maddie had paused to imagine such a door proclaiming “Law Offices of Mary Ann Devlin.” Or, should it read “Law Offices of Maddie Devlin?” Now, she paused, again imagining a door with her name on it. What was indecision but cowardice in disguise. She envied those who had the courage to fly solo.
Maddie knocked. When no one responded, she entered a small anteroom with a secretary’s work station, a Remington manual typewriter rather than an IBM Selectric, three plastic chairs, and a small coffee table covered with magazines that looked abandoned rather than selected. There were three interior doors, two closed, one open revealing a conference room smaller than those at Suffolk County Legal Services, with chairs so closely crowded around a circular table that their occupants rubbed shoulders and knees.
Furey did not look a day older than when Maddie had first met her, still a petite woman with delicate features, her hair in curls and ringlets the color of the night sky, her eyes as green as the Irish countryside in May. Pushing her chair back from the table, Furey bounced into the reception area. “Maddie! It’s been way too long.” That voice rumbled, again, in Maddie’s bones. She still had thin lips, severe, barely peeking out from her mouth, a pair of horizontal parentheses too fleshless for lipstick. Pale, she looked as if she would scatter like the filaments of a milkweed pod if she were to step into the draft of the window air conditioner. She wore a loose-fitting sleeveless blouse that made modesty of her breasts. At first meeting, Maddie had guessed their ages were comparable; but, now, Furey glowed with a youthfulness Maddie no longer shared. Judging by the firmness of Furey’s upper arms, Maddie thought their workout routines must be similar, though hers, Maddie’s, to be less successful. Both then and now, to Maddie’s surprise, no wedding band or engagement ring graced the third finger of Furey’s left hand. Perhaps they had divorce in common as well. She wondered if Furey had a child or children.
To Furey’s left, an empty chair, then a priest, Father Bartell Darcy, Maddie assumed. The priest sat with his hands resting on a scuffed leather satchel fat with files. He was athletic, sturdily built, with the ruddy skin of someone who had just stepped off the football or rugby pitch. His hands were rough and calloused, the hands of someone who worked outside, a farmer or construction worker or fisherman. Sitting beside the priest was Maddie’s aunt, Katie Devlin, and her cousin, Bumper’s mother, Trish Sullivan.
“
Who invited that goddamn Sassenach?” Katie Devlin’s words exploded from her mouth like the swears of an Irish hurler who has been fouled. Hot weather fashions did not favor her. Her pendulous breasts spraddled her chest as invitingly as plastic bags stuffed with used clothing for a church rummage sale.
“I did,” Furey said. “She is named in the will.”
“Let’s go, Trish, before she piles another dozen stones on Seamus’s grave.” Katie tried to stand, but the legs of her chair had interlocked with those of Trish’s and she could not push back from the table.
“The terms of the will require all the beneficiaries to be present when it is read,” Furey said. “If not, everyone forfeits their inheritances.”
Father Bartell, sitting opposite Trish, raised his hand in a sign of benediction. “May God turn the hearts of those who don’t love us,” he said to Katie. “I am Father Bartell,” he said to Maddie. “Please, sit.” He gestured at the empty chair between Attorney Furey and himself.
“I’m Maddie Devlin.”
“She’ll plant horns on your head,” Katie warned Father Bartell, “and sow worms in your innards.”
“We’ll have none of those old country curses in my office,” Michelle Furey said.
Father Bartell patted the crown of his head. “Slow-growing horns.”
“Don’t play the fool, Father,” Katie said.
Father Bartell undid the straps of his satchel. “I administered Last Rites to Father Gabriel Finn and heard his last confession. When Father Gabriel was young and fresh from the seminary he heard the last confession of your uncle, Clancy. On his death-bed Father Gabriel violated the Seal of the Confessional. Clancy had confessed to him Michael was innocent of Seamus’s death and that he had sworn a false oath against his brother because of an inheritance he did not receive. He made Father Gabriel promise to get the Irish Times to print a correction. Being fresh from the seminary, Father Gabriel didn’t think he should violate the Seal of the Confessional. As he aged, his promise to Clancy ate at him. On his own death-bed, he gave me these.” Father Bartell spread on the table photocopies of the original article from the 1916 Irish Times branding Michael Devlin a traitor, and Father Gabriel’s letter to the editor recounting Clancy’s confession. “I promised Father Gabriel I’d deliver his letter. The Times agreed to print a retraction.”
Father Bartell placed a thick document on the table. A blue ribbon extended beyond the bottom of the last page. “Clancy confessed a second sin to Father Gabriel, carnal knowledge of a married woman. Maud O’Donnell. I tracked her down in a nursing home. She remembers it like it was yesterday. She was the one who made Clancy go to Father Gabriel. This is her affidavit.” He tapped the cover page with his finger.
Maddie held the document by its edge as if it were a holy text made fragile by age. She read Maud O’Donnell’s affidavit, then read it again. She brushed her fingertips against the raised lettering of the notary public’s seal. The gold leaf on which the seal had been impressed looked authoritative, magisterial. No rational person could deny the truth of an affidavit with such a seal. She passed it to Trish. Katie attempted to intercept it, but Trish pushed her aunt’s hand aside. Trish’s lips moved as she read. When the time’s right, Maddie decided, she would insist her grand da be disinterred and reinterred beside his brother Seamus. She would insist he be honored with the celebration of a proper funeral Mass. She would invite Trish to stand beside her at the graves of their grand das, Devlins both, one family under God. And Katie, too, but she doubted Katie would rewrite the past even if the rewrite was a true war story.
“That is the inheritance Father Gabriel left each of you,” Father Bartell said.
“I disclaim,” Katie said. “That’s the right word, isn’t it, when you refuse an inheritance?”
Michelle Furey opened her mouth to speak, but Father Bartell silenced her with a wave of his hand. “Is ira a cardinal or venial sin, Ms. Devlin?”
Katie flashed a smile that showed she, too, once shared the beauty of the Devlin women. She loved showing off, especially in front of men of the cloth. To her, both Father Curry and Boston’s cardinal were ignorant men who recited cant from memory. Jesus had told her so. Over her Princess phone.
“Some ira is considered to have value. The desire for revenge is ethical if it is reasonable and proportional, such as ira caused by a gross injustice against an innocent person. It becomes sinful when it exceeds reasonable limits, such as exacting vengeance on one who does not deserve it or from an improper motive. In that case, prudence and justice, cardinal virtues, demand the desire for revenge be renounced.”
“You know your doctrine,” Father Bartell said.
“I know where this is going.” Katie glared at Father Bartell, then pointed at Maddie. “Behold the devil’s maidservant, Babylon the Great, the Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the Earth, here to cleave your tongue to the devil’s. Trish. Come along, dear.”
“No, Aunt Katie,” Trish said. “For Father Gabriel to do what he did, for him to violate the Seal of the Confessional, tells me what he says is true, that Uncle Clancy lied, that Uncle Michael did not kill my grand da. It’s over, Aunt Katie. It never should have been, but it was, and now it’s over.”
“You cooked this up, Maddie.” Katie spoke through clenched teeth. “You and your doxie lawyer tricks. Don’t be such an eejit, Trish. Don’t fall for the devil’s fast talking guile. He’s blinding you so you’ll forgive Maddie getting the Jew off scot free for murdering your son.”
“It is your tongue that cleaves to the devil’s, Aunt Katie,” Trish said. “I grew up on hatred, yours and my da’s, but I won’t grow old on it and I won’t die with it.”
“May the devil give you an Aussie kiss, Maddie!” Katie bulled her way out of the conference room, elbowing the back of Maddie’s head. Maddie did not remonstrate with her.
“I have a plane to catch,” Father Bartell said. “The documents are yours. If you have any questions, Attorney Furey knows how to contact me.”
“I apologize for my aunt,” Trish said.
“Old hatreds die hard,” Father Bartell said. “Pray God will heal her.”
Michelle Furey escorted him to the door. When she returned, Trish asked, “Is there somewhere Maddie and I can talk?”
“You can use this room. I have a will and trust to finish drafting.”
Maddie and Trish sat opposite each other at the small round table, the documents between them. Heat crowded the room, shrinking it, slowing the second hand that marked time on the wall clock so that it took two minutes, three, maybe four, to make a complete circuit. “It’s awkward,” Trish said at last.
Maddie’s inner voice, silenced by this unimaginable new information, remained mute. Outside, the wail of a police siren grew louder, peaked, then faded into silence. Horns sounded as traffic returned to its normal pattern. A pigeon lit on the window sill. Maddie knocked on the glass to scare it away, then said, “Let’s not ignore the elephant on the table, Trish. Me defending Avram Levy.”
“Is Aunt Katie right?”
“I’m not a doxie lawyer.”
“So why are you defending him? Do you, did you, hate me that much?”
“Not you. Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Why, Maddie? Why?”
Maddie’s inner voice stirred. “My boss forced me to cover the arraignment. Since then it’s like . . . I don’t know, like I’m in a trance. Hypnotized. It’s like an out of body thing. I’m floating up there watching myself like I’m dead.” She shushed her inner voice. “I don’t know why, Trish. I really don’t.”
“I need to know.”
“If I knew, I’d tell you, no matter how painful.”
“For you or for me?”
The self-control that enabled Maddie to hide her reaction in court when the judge ruled against her fled like a coward from the battlefield. Her head slumped. Her shoulders sagged. Her hands seized up into fists. Her mind abandoned her vocal chords.
Trish hoisted her pur
se onto the table and removed a spiral notebook. “This is Charles’s. He recorded every chess game in it.” She squeezed it to her breast as if it were her son, then slid it across the table to Maddie. “Go to his last match. It’s a complete game. The opponent’s name left blank. Whoever recorded those final moves, maybe he killed Charles.”
“Where did you get this? Charlie take it from the crime scene?” Maddie studied the chess notations. “These are just letters and numbers, more like printing than writing. Can you identify them as Bumper’s handwriting?”
“Except for the last few notations. Those aren’t his.” Trish covered Maddie’s hand with hers. “If the Jew didn’t do it, Charles’s killer is still out there.”
“He has a name, Trish.”
“I don’t want an innocent man convicted and I don’t want a guilty man to get away with it.”
“Can I take this? I’ve worked with handwriting experts. There are two or three I want to show it to.”
“They won’t destroy it, will they?”
“I’ll make sure they don’t.”
Trish nodded.
“One problem,” Maddie said. “There may not be enough here. Graphologists prefer working with complete sentences, several if possible. Whatever the conclusion, same person, different person, with such a skimpy sample, a few letters and numbers, a good attorney would destroy the expert on cross-exam. Without more I doubt there’s enough here to stand up in court”
Trish withdrew into her chair.
“But it’s something to go on, something worth investigating.” Maddie closed Charles’s spiral notebook. “Does Charlie know what you’re doing?”
“No.”
“Don’t tell him. Don’t tell anyone. If it’s not Levy, the real killer might get spooked and figure a way to cover his tracks.” Maddie made room for the notebook in the zippered central compartment of her purse. “It never goes away, Trish. I still cry myself to sleep on her birthday. I can’t tell you how many times I thought about killing myself so I could be with her. It got worse after my ma and da died. More people to join in the next life, fewer to hurt in this one.”
The Fire This Time Page 7