by Kate Kelly
“No, Ma. I’m running late.” Michael answers, coming from the bedroom, his seventeen-year-old frame filling the doorway, his white shirt starched and bright in the late afternoon light. “I’ll eat something at the tavern. There’s always…” He is interrupted by a knock at the door, hesitant but immediate, its rapped rhythm foreboding in its insistence. Daniel will always remember this scene, a tableau etched in his mind: his brother frozen in the doorway, the pencil in his own hand dangling from his fingers, and the look on his mother’s face in that moment. She must have known, must have felt the knowledge hammer through her with each rap of the door. Michael moves to the door, and Annie’s right hand, still holding the dishcloth, moves to her chest, her eyes wide with precognition.
Opening the door, Michael finds an unfamiliar man on the doorstep. His face is flushed with effort, his eyes hooded with discomfort. “Is this the Kenny home?”
“Yes,” Michael answers, confused by the strong emotion emanating from the stranger.
Annie moves to the door, placing her hand on her son’s arm, gently moving him aside. She, not her son, will take this news. “This is the Kenny home, and I’m Mrs. Kenny.”
The man pulls his cap from his head and crushes it in his hands, the information he has run all this way to impart frozen on his tongue. His eyes dart from Annie’s level look.
“Speak up, man.”
Nothing. The silence lengthens, extrapolates; Daniel’s heart quickens with every moment.
“Where is Joseph?” Annie asks, the question a command that he can finally respond to. “He’s on his way, Mam. That is, they’re bringing him, Mrs. Kenny.”
“They’re bringing him?” Annie repeats, knowing but not wanting to hear what is coming.
The man looks at her, beseeching her to forgive him for his part in this tragedy, then speaks to his shoes. “They’re bringing his body, Mam.”
Annie turns, moves to the kitchen table, and stumbles into a chair, the dishcloth still clutched in her fist. The man, his hand extending toward her, follows her into the small room, unable to stop the torrent of words now loosened from his mouth. “There was an accident.” He clears his throat. “The shunting of the rail car it … it happens sometimes, you know. Well, it happens too often really. We was filling the car, the crates were being loaded….”
Annie hears his voice, the undulations, the hesitations, the running on of his story, but her mind is blank, preparing itself. She knows the lifeless body of her husband is being carried through the streets and home to her.
“I ran ahead to let you know. You’ll want to be getting the priest.”
“Ma?” Michael moves toward his mother, wondering if this is just a bad joke, unable to process the information.
Annie turns her attention to the man standing awkwardly in their kitchen, his despair as obvious as the day’s grime covering his face. “I’m grateful to you Mr….”
“O’Sullivan. Gerald O’Sullivan.” He bows his head.
“I’m grateful to you, Mr. O’Sullivan. Go on home to your family. They’ll be waiting on you. We know what to do.” Standing, she accompanies him to the door. “And thank you again for your kindness.” Closing the door quietly, she takes a moment before turning to her boys. “Michael, son, go and fetch the priest and tell McGovern’s that you won’t be in tonight. Danny, get the bucket from the back closet and fill it with warm water. I’ll need some linen as well….” She continues speaking, moving to the bedroom. The room is small but neat, full of the familiar smell of bodies and talcum powder. Moving with purpose, she takes her best linen from the bottom drawer; it was carried all the way from Ireland, a wedding gift from her Aunt Biddy. The finest of Irish linen, she thinks, feeling its texture against her arm as she carries it back to the kitchen. It was meant for a prosperous home, and now it would be used to bury her husband.
By the time Joseph’s body arrives—carried in an improvised litter by four men, dirty and tired from their day’s work but still compassionate in their cumbersome yet valiant way—Annie has cleared the kitchen table, lit lamps, and found as many candles as she can. The kitchen glows in a perversely welcoming way, and Daniel thinks it looks more like a celebration than a place to lay his father’s unnaturally still body. Annie, in her preparations, seems to have forgotten Daniel, but as he stands against the door frame, half hidden by the darkness of the back room, she turns to him.
“Come see your father, son.” She holds out her hand toward him, a bridge between the living and the dead. “Come, Danny. He’s still your Da. He’s with the angels now. Don’t be afraid, there’s naught here to be frightened of. Come and say goodbye and bless him on his journey.”
Taking his mother’s hand, Daniel steps into the light, studying his father’s body for any sign of movement. Annie holds her son by both shoulders, her body warm and comforting against his back. Leaning forward, she pushes the hair from Joseph’s forehead, gently, as if he were sleeping and she afraid to wake him. Daniel can see the sweat and dirt of the day on his father’s face, the lines like fine cracks emanating from the corners of his eyes. Breathing in, he closes his eyes, holding the scent of his father, memories toppling like falling buildings. It is overwhelming. Letting out his breath he realizes that he is crying, the insulating effect of shock withdrawing to make room for sorrow.
He is reeling, dizzy and frightened standing before his father, his mind desperate to escape. It is the feel of his mother’s hand stroking his head, just as she had his father’s a moment ago, that holds him in place, the familiarity of her voice breaking the last of the barriers. “It’s all right to cry, Danny. Crying heals the heart.” She lets him cry, turns him to her, kisses the top of his head. He can feel her arms around him and the wetness of her tears, the trembling of her body. His eyes closed, his head against her chest, he can hear her heartbeat and feel the darkness of her despair tightening around his own. But no moment can last forever. She moves to part them, but he is afraid to let go, to move on. Holding him at arm’s length now, she says, “Look at me, Daniel.” Reluctantly, unsure of what this new world will look like, he finds her eyes. Her look is fierce, defiant. “We’ll keep each other strong. Won’t we, Danny?” She nods her head, her eyes hard on his own until he nods as well. Pushing the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand, he lets out his breath.
“Now, can you go to my top drawer beside my bed and find the fine soap I have there? I want to wash your Daddy with the soap he bought me for my birthday.”
The moving and the doing, as Annie knows, helps them to focus—“keeping the banshees at bay.” She talks to Daniel, reassuring him, already telling stories about the man his father was.
When Michael returns, he finds his mother gently washing his father’s body. With Daniel’s help, she has stripped him down and laid the linen across him. Joseph’s arm is resting on her shoulder. She wipes him with gentle caresses, singing and humming under her breath. His face is clean and pale, his hair pushed back to reveal his high forehead, his small ears. Michael stares. His father, so vulnerable, looks like a child whose mother is readying him for mass on Sunday. He is no longer the worn, over-worked man Michael sees when he thinks of his father. Stepping closer, his eyes never leaving Joseph’s face, he reaches out to touch the still, pale cheek and then stops.
“Yes, Michael.” He hears his mother’s voice coming to him from far away. “It’s all right. Give your father a pat on the cheek. He loves you. Let him know you love him too.”
His father’s cheek is cool and smooth; the stubble of new growth below the cheek bone catches at the back of Michael’s fingers. “I can’t believe he’s gone. I can’t believe he’s gone.” It is all he can find to say and then, “Ma?” The questions in that one word. Annie shakes her head, knowing what he means but not knowing how to answer, not knowing what the future will hold for them all.
Placing Joseph’s arm on the table, she runs her hand along
its length. She studies Joseph’s face, unimaginably motionless and pale, but still the face of her husband. “What did the priest say?”
Michael pushes his words out, his throat constricted with grief. “He’s coming. I couldn’t find him right away.” Still looking at Joseph, he continues. “He was making calls in the neighbourhood. He’ll get his things at the rectory and be here directly.”
Annie nods and continues her humming. Occasionally she sings songs from her youth, and finally, when the songs are not enough, she breaks into speech. “Joseph Michael Kenny, what have you gone and done?” she scolds him in a playful manner. The washing and preparing of the body have been a soothing comfort, these last interactions with her husband, an intimacy she will never again know.
There is little or no noise outside the apartment; the neighbours are all too aware of the presence of death and are paying respect in the only way they can, with their silence. Later they will do so with food, and finally with words.
“Michael.”
“Ma?”
“Take Daniel and yourself to Mrs. O’Neil’s. Tell her what has happened. She’ll feed you, and she’ll want to come and sit watch.”
Michael doesn’t move. Annie turns, her voice soft. “Go now, son. You’ll be needing your strength for the days ahead.”
Nodding, Michael reaches for Daniel and they move to the door.
“Ask Mrs. O’Neil to bring more candles.”
“I will, Ma.” Looking back at her from the doorway, he adds, “The priest should be here any minute.”
“There’s no rush.” Annie answers. “Your father has made his peace with his maker, and he was never too keen on Father Donavan anyhow. What was it that he called him?”
“Father Do again.” Daniel answers, smiling at his father’s joke, trying to remember the man he was, not the one lying on the kitchen table, so lifelessly unreal.
Annie laughs. “That’s right, Father Do again. If ever there was a perfect name for a bumbling priest.”
DANIEL FINDS IT DIFFICULT to remember anything about his father’s wake and funeral. It is all a blur: the apartment, always busy, the women crying and then cooking, the men drinking and then crying. McGovern’s sends a keg of brew, or so Dean and Vincent say, bringing it over and tapping it with expertise. Neighbours and friends who are quiet and confined at first, slowly grow to fill the room with hesitant laughter, with stories of Joseph and the things he said, the things he did. Then, his favourite songs fill the apartment, sung with such feeling, ringing with such life, a celebration—death in the midst of life. Or is it life in the midst of death? Daniel can’t decide which, but either way it makes him angry; if feels like an affront. The confusion Daniel feels frightens him, unmoors him. Here is death stealing his father’s life, taking everything and leaving nothing, nothing but loneliness, nothing but Daniel’s own self. Here is death, taking one soul and injuring another.
Annie treats death like a visitor in their home. Not a welcome visitor, but still worthy of the deferential treatment a visitor is due: never invited, but begrudgingly respected. and while death dwelt—courageous. There is nothing else for it, Annie knows, but to find strength in dignity, to put the dead to rest as peacefully as possible. Life goes on no matter what. Her mother and father, her young brother, her daughter and now her husband have all passed on; this life is truly a vale of tears. So, she sings, in the face of death, the songs Joseph loved. She tells stories of their life, their young love in the hills of Wicklow, of a young Joseph, no older than his own son, who courted a young Annie Marlow after seeing her at the county fair, following her home, determined to make her his own.
Daniel listens as he falls asleep, immersed in the stories. This is how Daniel comes to know his father, as he comes to know death: through his mother. He will continue to face death like this, automatically falling into the rhythm and tempo of his mother’s dignity. In the streets of Chicago, where death comes to men in mills, in shipyards, in rail yards, to people on the street hit by carts, trams, vehicles. In the fields of France, where men die in unimaginable ways, bleeding to death, drowning in ditches, choking on gas. Later, in his own home, where babies die in childbirth, and children from disease. Annie teaches him how to go on, how to steal back from death, to move forward, taking one step after another until moving and living and continuing become natural, and the dead are at rest.
3.
“NAN, HERE, LET ME HELP you with that.” Lisa takes the oversized purse from Ruby and continues, “Why did you bring such a big purse?”
“I’m an old lady, Lisa. I can’t travel light anymore—between bottles of pills, spectacles, tissue, and well, you know, ‘old lady candies,’ I need the room.”
Lisa smiles at the joke. Her grandmother has always carried candies in her purse. When she and Jacklyn were young, Nan would produce them like magic, scrounging in the bottom of her purse, a wizard with a bag of tricks. Humbugs were the typical offering, but sometimes lemon drops or mints made an appearance. But Lisa and Jacklyn agreed that humbugs were the best, and they always called them “old lady candies.”
“Before you put that away, honey, can you take out my book and glasses?”
“Sure, Nan. The bus will get us to Union Station in about an hour and a half, so make yourself comfortable.”
“Well, that would be quite a trick at my age! I can’t remember the last time I felt comfortable.”
Ruby moves out of the aisle and takes the window seat, placing her cane against the arm rest. She smiles at Lisa as she slides into the seat beside her. “You know, I really don’t need this cane. Sometimes it just feels like more of a nuisance then anything. And that’s not vanity talking either; God knows I’m too old for that.”
“I know. I have to say, for your age you’re pretty spry. I hope I inherit your genes.” Taking her grandmother’s hand, Lisa continues: “But don’t you think it’s reassuring to have it, since the stroke and everything, just in case you get dizzy or something?”
“It was only a small stroke, nothing to worry about!” Ruby shrugs her shoulders and settles into her seat before turning back to Lisa and continuing. “Well, it does help when I’m feeling tired I suppose, and that seems to be happening a little more often these days. When I was your age, my energy seemed boundless. And now? Well the spirit is willing but the body is weak. I guess that just happens. Youth slips away.” Looking out the window and smiling to herself, she adds, “Much like the years.”
The doors close and the bus begins to back up slowly, the gears and engine groaning like an old man complaining of his stiffness. Ruby closes her eyes, and the sounds and smells take her back to some of those lost years, to her youth in Montreal. When she studied vocal training under LeLiberté, she would travel by bus and train to Toronto once every month to study at the Conservatory of Music. How many times she felt the same feelings, heard the same sounds. The bus feels different somehow, brighter with more metal and chrome, more modern, less opulent. That’s how most things feel these days, she thinks. Even the seat, as she readjusts herself, feels harder, less inviting, less roomy. She was hardly aware of her surroundings back then, straining forward as she was toward the future, her career, the excitement life had to offer. Her father took her to the bus station every month, and every time she was excited to be heading to Toronto, toward opportunities yet to be realized.
“Have a good time, Jewely. I’ll pick you up tomorrow night,” Daniel says, kissing Ruby on the top of the head. “Say hi to Bob and Sophie for us, and tell them your mom and I will be down soon for a visit.” Daniel raises his voice over the slight distance between them as his daughter rushes with youthful enthusiasm up the stairs. Feeling pulled between worry and pride, he follows her progress into the bus and along the aisle until she finds a seat by the window and waves to him. Bob is a long-time friend of both Daniel and Jeanie. He knows his daughter is in good hands, but sometimes when he looks at Ruby,
he can’t help seeing the child she once was. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow night!” he calls, hands cupping his mouth. I must be getting old, I’m repeating myself like an old man, he thinks.
As the bus pulls away, Ruby watches her father and the other people at the station recede into the distance. Daniel keeps waving even after the bus disappears around a corner. Ruby looks at the money her father has slipped into her hand—a ten-dollar bill. He is always so generous, willing to give her anything. Her thoughts stay with her father for a while, lingering on the invisible bond they share. And yet, as close as they are, there always seems to be another Daniel Kenny, a man she can never know. He has always been a loving father with her and her brother, a good husband, and a successful business man, and yet she has caught him sitting, when he thinks no one is around, lost in thoughts that seem too deep for such a joyous man. She remembers vividly as a little girl of five or six, finding him for the first time in his study, sitting at his desk, papers strewn around. He was sitting perfectly still, his eyes focused on something she couldn’t see. The stillness around him somehow evoked a fear that she rushed to extinguish.
“Daddy, what’s wrong?”
“Ruby, where did you come from?” Startled out of his reverie, Daniel is almost curt with her. “I mean, I was daydreaming and I didn’t know you were there.”
“What were you daydreaming about? You seemed so sad.” Taking her father’s hand, she asks again, “What were you daydreaming about?”
“Nothing, sweetheart.” Cupping her chin in his hand for a moment, his smile moves from his mouth to his eyes.