The Parting Glass

by Gina Marie Guadagnino

  “Aye, aye,” he said distractedly. “I’d not thought—”

  “You never do,” I said, and, pulling away, I slipped back across the alley and into the house. I shut the kitchen door quietly and turned around to find Mr. Buckley standing in the door from his pantry, in his cap and robe.

  “I say, Miss Ballard,” he hissed loudly, his whispered voice ringing on the flagstones. “What on earth are you doing out-of-doors at this time of night?”

  I froze, icy fingers closing over my heart before a sudden terror and inspiration propelled me toward him, clutching at the front of his robe. He started back, reeling from the impact as I fell against him.

  “Oh, Mr. Buckley!” I cried. “I was in such a fright! There was a terrible large rat in the privy, sir!”

  “Now then, Miss Ballard,” he said, stepping back from me and straightening his robe. “It’s only a rat. What on earth were you doing in the privy at this time of night?” I colored deeply and looked down, and he coughed a bit and said, “Well, never mind that now, never mind. I’ll have Eben set one of the mousers on it in the morning.”

  “Oh, I wish you would, sir,” I said. “It was a nasty creature, and I was nearly scared out of my wits. Thank you, sir.” And, bobbing a curtsy, I fled up the stairs, leaving Mr. Buckley alone in the dark kitchen below.

  Pride that dines on vanity, says another proverb, sups on contempt: it neither promotes health nor eases pain, while it is certain to create envy and hasten misfortune.

  —The Duties of a Lady’s Maid

  It was Thursday again, and Charlotte, still weak from her ordeal, had not dined out all week. I brushed her auburn hair until it shone, rubbing oil into the ends so that they would not split or fray. I helped her into the bed, smoothing the sheets over her, and shut the door. She had said nothing to me, and so I had left my window unlocked, though it irked me to do so. I waited on the floor of the carriage, picking idly at my cheese for only about a quarter of an hour before I heard Johnny open the stable door. We walked in silence for several blocks; I stole glances at him, his face screwed up, his hands jammed into his pockets.

  We said nothing until we were nearly to Mulberry Street, and then, just outside the door of the Hibernian, Johnny turned on me.

  “What the fuck was the matter with her, Mar, if it wasn’t the cholera?” he said fiercely. “She looked weak as water, but she wouldn’t tell me a word.”

  I turned to go into the tavern. “If she hasn’t told you yet, it’s not for me to say.”

  He grabbed me roughly and shoved me up against the wall. “Goddamn it, Mar!” he growled. “I’m weary to death of all your sniping and your snideness. If you have something to tell me, you’d best fucking say it.”

  “Take your hands off me! I’ll not say a fucking word! Why should I answer to you, you fucking git? Sure and I’ve done enough for you and her, more than you’ll ever know, and do I have to answer to you for it all too?”

  “Goddamn it, Mar! Either talk sense and do it now, or shut the fuck up.”

  “Go to hell, Johnny!” I said, and he struck my face. I cried out and went for his eyes, and he howled as I sunk my nails into his flesh. He flailed back blindly, and his balled fist connected with my nose. I felt something give and crack, and then the hot, metallic tang of blood filled my mouth. I pushed him over and we were down on the pavement, my fingers still going for his eyes, when I felt strong arms lifting me away from him. I kicked uselessly at the air as Dermot hauled me bodily into the alley.

  “Mother of Christ, let me go!” I wailed, but the words came out broken and garbled, and Dermot sat me down heavily on an upturned crate. Men’s raised voices echoed from the street as the pub’s regulars came out to gawk at the disturbance.

  “For fuck’s sake, Mar,” he said, taking out his handkerchief and handing it to me. I mopped at my face uselessly, for the thing became sodden in a matter of moments, and Dermot went in through the alley door to fetch a flannel from the bar. He held my face up to the light that spilled from the open doorway, turning my head roughly this way and that, and then, before I could protest, he had locked my head into the crook of his arm and was giving my nose such a wrench that I screamed out. He released me, and I ran questing fingers over my nose, out of which blood and snot were flowing freely. He inspected me, then nodded once, satisfied. “Should mend clean now.”

  I glared up at him balefully. “Why’d you pull me off?”

  Dermot wiped his brow. “You were in a fair way to sink your nails into his eyes, and there’s folk here that wouldn’t have taken too kindly to that.”

  “Don’t take your meaning.”

  “I mean”—Dermot sighed—“that while you’ve been drinking yourself sick and gadding about with that colored streetwalker—oh, aye, I know all about that—your brother’s been talking more than horse rearing and politics. He’s been making some friends who mightn’t care to see you gouge out his eyes, and I mean more than Quigley and O’Mara and your other wee man there.”

  “MacBride,” I said automatically, rubbing at the blood on my face and succeeding only in smearing the sticky mess about further.

  “Aye, MacBride, right so.” He looked down at me. “Look here. You’re a right mess, Mar. I’ll bring some hot water down the cellar, eh? Get yourself clean.” He held out one of his hands and hauled me to my feet. “Boyo’ll be sleeping elsewhere tonight.”

  I let him guide me down the cellar stairs to my pallet, and waited dully while he brought me a basin and his shaving mirror. I was a pretty sight; both eyes had begun to ring in a ghastly greenish purple, with sticky smears of blood covering my nose and chin and mouth. Blood had run down my neck and dripped from my face and stained the neckline of my dress. Upon inspection, I found the stains had begun to seep into my shift, so I took both dress and shift off and soaked them until the water ran red, and I had to stand at the head of the stairs wrapped in the coverlet and holler up to Dermot for a fresh basin. He brought it quick enough, and a pint glass of whiskey besides, which he cautioned me to drink slowly. I rinsed and wrung my frock and shift, hanging them before the fire to dry, and sat sipping my whiskey and staring into the flames for a while before Dermot came down holding a set of his shirtsleeves and an old moth-eaten wrapper. He turned his back while I dressed, and then, sitting next to me on the pallet, our backs up against the brick wall, he produced a bottle of whiskey, which we sat and passed back and forth between us in silence.

  At last he said, “I told you both when this first started I didn’t want to hear about the cause.” He looked at me and nodded at my surprise. “Oh, aye, I know well enough that whatever this foolishness is has been going on for well nigh over a year now.”

  I sniffed, which rather hurt in light of recent events. “How’d you know it was the same foolishness, then?”

  Dermot shrugged. “ ’Cause since then, he’s always buying the drinks, and ’cause that’s around the time you started puking out back in my alley. Before that, you could always hold your liquor. I’ve got eyes, Mar. He’s guilty about something, and you’re angry about it, and, fools that you both are, you’re sniping and rowing with each other instead of talking it out like civilized creatures. He’s hurt you bad, Mar, that much is plain, but for all he knows he hurt you, he doesn’t know how he’s done it. Isn’t that the way of it?”

  I sighed impatiently and made to speak, but he held up a big hand and said, “I still won’t press to know the cause, if you’re unwilling. It’s just there’s only so much watching you can do when a lass makes up her mind to drown and will not clasp on no matter how much rope you throw her.”

  I shrugged. “Then, aye, that’s the way of it, and if he can’t see how he’s hurt me he’s a bigger fool than I ever dreamed of.”

  Dermot passed the bottle back to me. “Hadn’t you better tell him then, if he’ll not see it on his own?”

  “Fuck that,” I said, taking a swig and handing the bottle back to him. “Besides, it’s bigger than the two of us, and it i
sn’t mine to sort him out. Thanks for everything, Dermot.”

  He rested a hand on my shoulder and nodded. I lay down on my pallet and drifted off.

  You should strive to subdue in your mind all idle repining that it has not been your fate to be placed in such a rank, and that Providence, undoubtedly, for wise purposes, has ordered it otherwise.

  —The Duties of a Lady’s Maid

  Ihave memories, of course, from the steerage hold on the ship Peregrine, though I have learned, over the years, to push that hell down into the darkest recesses of my mind, where it belongs. There was seasickness, naturally, and scurvy as well, and no end to the reek of sick and shit, which sloshed about the floor. As a scullion and a groom in a big house, we were hardly what you would call gently reared, but even a life of blacking grates or mucking stalls was no preparation for the cramped, dark bunk on which we huddled while the sea pitched and heaved. All around us, voices cried out in the dark, praying for God to deliver us from the fickle ocean, punctuated by wailing, feral cries, and, sending shivers of horror down my spine, the keening for the dead. For death lurked all around us in the dark, as people died of empty bellies, of vermin, of disease. We survived, as others did, by divesting the corpses of what food or valuables we could before they were sewn into shrouds and tossed into the maw of the sea. I would dream at night on my foul bunk that I, too, had been sewn into a canvas tube and dropped down into the ocean. The water would fill my lungs, blackness would fill my eyes, and I would be screaming as Seanin shook me awake. Much of the voyage seems to me now as a fever dream—distorted and nightmarish and with no respite on waking.

  When at last we disembarked, the land rose up in a sickening wave and I fell facefirst onto the muddy cobbles of New York. Mrs. Boyle’s watered silk morning dress, which Seanin had pilfered from the laundry for me to wear on our journey, was now fetid and crumpled, torn and spattered with the grime from the street. Seanin scrambled to my side, and in helping me to rise was nearly struck himself as a carriage clattered by, splashing filthy water on us as it passed.

  It was Seanin who found the shabby waterfront inn where we spent our first night in America, but it was I who nicked us new clothes from the laundry and dragged him into skipping out on the bill in the early hours before dawn. Seanin’s shirt and pants were a bit larger than was fitting, but I fairly swam in the broad taffeta monstrosity I had stolen. I cursed bitterly the poor light in the hall and the slippery temptation of the fine taffeta as I pinned and hiked the wretched frock as well I could before we shimmied out the window and off down the stable roof. Having inquired as to our route the day before, we walked the two miles straight up through the Sixth Ward, all innocent of the geography of our new home. It was July, and the still, humid air was thick with the rank smells of fish, rotten meat, human sweat, and excrement. In the pale light before dawn, we made our way through the ward, the streets quiet as, from within the ramshackle buildings, the residents had just begun to stir.

  The day broke on us cutting across Spring Street toward the Hibernian’s perch on the corner of Mulberry. Seanin kept looking back over his shoulder nervously, as though he expected to be clapped into irons at any moment for the stolen clothes on his back.

  The Hibernian was closed, of course. Seanin licked his lips nervously and said, “We ought just come back later, Mar.”

  I shot him a withering look and began pounding on the door, the bolt and chain rattling as I did.

  “Quit it, Mar!” he said, trying to pull me away.

  “Fuck it,” I said, still banging. “I’ll not stand about in the street all morning, nor walk back through that blight we just come through.”

  A roar issued from inside the tavern, and I left off my assault on the door as, through the thick, green glass, we could make out a figure approaching. The chain was pulled back, the bolt pulled, and a furious-looking man dressed only in his nightshirt glared balefully down at us.

  “For fuck’s sake,” he bellowed. “What’re you on about, you wee mad bitch?”

  I stared up at him. “Sure and I expected better welcome from Colleen O’Brien’s son.”

  His eyes went wide, and he shook his head, snorting. “You’ll not be those snappers from up Ballyboyle Manor? It’s barely daybreak! Get in, get in with you!” He ushered us into the tavern, shuffling behind the bar and pulling two mugs of ale and setting them out on the counter, running his hand through his hair. “Christ, but it’s early for a tale of woe. Sit and have a drink. A fellow’ll need his trousers and his wits both to deal with the likes of this shite.”

  He shambled off up the stairs, muttering darkly to himself, and Seanin turned to me. “Do you suppose he’ll help us?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “You’re the one what had Colleen write him.”

  “The way Colleen keeps on, you’d think the sun shone out his arse.”

  “Well, he don’t seem to have taken a shine to us, that’s certain.”

  “She’s the only person left to help us who knew someone in America. And I told you not to keep up that banging.”

  “Seanin O’Farren! Will you keep your fecking self still while I sort out the angle here? You give me a pain.”

  Seanin shrugged and took a swig or two of liquid courage while I sipped slowly, a plan forming in my head.

  “The break of day comes at too early an hour to contemplate business best conducted in shadow.” Dermot took up his customary place behind the bar and regarded us skeptically. I was sure we made a sorry pair. “Well, now then.” He ran his hands again through his thick, graying hair. “So it’s work you want, eh?” He chuckled, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Don’t know what kind of coin for what manner of work you’re used to in the Old Country, but this town ain’t for the soft.”

  I tossed my head with a confidence I did not feel. “There’s none’s as called us soft before. If there’s work to be had, we can do it. Meself and me brother too. We’re used to hard work up at the big house on the estate.”

  “Well, it’s plain you’re used to dirty work,” he said wryly. “What can you two do?”

  I chewed my lip a moment, calculating, before replying in the ubiquitous, mumbling lilt of the underclasses, “I were a lady’s maid at the Boyles’ big house in Donegal. And me brother were head groom.”

  He chuckled at the audacity of this, as well he might. “Go on. You never were.”

  It had been an absurd claim, but his casual refutation of it infuriated me into stamping my foot at his laughter. I raised my chin, and, breathing in deeply, took the time to look him in the eye and hold his gaze before putting my plan into action. “I was the personal maid to her ladyship, and dressed her hair, and drew her bath, and laced her stays, and buttoned her gowns, and every other goddamn thing.” My voice had changed, the heavy country accent that came naturally to me melting away and taking on the clipped, respectable qualities of the ton. I’d straightened my posture, holding myself erect, and adopted a look of mild disdain for the public house in which we all stood.

  Dermot raised an eyebrow, his only outward concession to any shock he felt at this transformation. “Christ, lass. Where’d you learn to do that, then?” I said nothing. It was the result of hours of work and careful study—a contributing factor that had landed me in the scrape that sent Seanin and me over the sea. “And you, lad? Can you do it as well?”

  Seanin shook his head mutely.

  “Well, any good with horses, even?”

  “Oh, aye, sir. Done nothin’ but, m’entire life.” He was turning his cap nervously in his hands.

  The publican chuckled. “Right then, I’ll be the judge of that. But you’ll keep your mouth shut and your ears open until you learn how to talk more like herself, right so? We’ll not need to erase your accent altogether, only iron it out a mite, if you take me meaning?”

  It was plain from the expression on Seanin’s face, looking bewilderedly to me then back to Dermot, that he did not.

  Raising his glass toward me, Dermot said, “Y
our sister has the right of it. There’s not much sympathy for the Irish here, you’ll find. This town’s run by Prods of all stripes, and if you want to get ahead, you’d do well to keep the country out of your voice as best you can.” He took a meditative sip of his pint. “Might not be the worst thing in the world to change your names, either. Show up calling yourself O’Farren and they’ll never hire you on, so.”

  “Oh, aye, sir.”

  I elbowed Seanin in the ribs, but not unkindly. “You don’t say ‘aye’ in American. It’s ‘yes,’ you feckin’ fool.”

  “Well now, Lady Muck,” said Dermot, clearly amused by this exchange. “Did your last mistress write you a character?”

  “Lost it on the ship.” I fell to chewing my lip again, playing for time, but Dermot said nothing, all too clearly waiting to see how I meant to account for myself. “Supposing,” I said, not quite meeting his eye, “if you knowed of a scrivener, I could write her ladyship for another?”

  Dermot said nothing. He poured himself a pint as he studied us carefully. I kept my features schooled, though I burned with shame, knowing how he must see us. My collarbones stood out too sharply against my skin, which had turned sallow in the ship’s hold. My lips and knuckles were red and raw. My eyes were sunk in my face, which I knew had grown pinched, and the bit of flaxen hair that protruded from my bonnet was dirty and lank. He looked from me to my brother, who was, if anything, bonier and more unkempt than myself. His skin was gritty beneath his obviously pilfered clothes, which, though rumpled and ill-fitting, were still new and clean.

  None of these contrasts escaped Dermot, who jerked his head toward me. “Where’d you find that gown, then?”

  “ ’Tis mine,” I declared boldly, hardening my jaw with a mindless determination.

  Dermot snorted. “ ’Tis now, sure enough. But I didn’t ask that. I asked where you found it.”

  “And I told you. It’s all me own. My own. I made it. Made it my own self.”