Mom and Dad were pleased. Nuala’s charm and goodness overwhelmed them.
“She’ll settle him down and make something out of him,” I had heard Mom say to George the Priest.
The worthy cleric had exploded in laughter. “Not a chance, Mom. That one likes him the way he is.”
“Well, she does seem to be a bit of a handful.”
“Like someone’s own mother?”
“She doesn’t look a bit like Ma.”
Which was Mom’s way of conceding the point.
Nuala did indeed like me the way I was and forswore all intentions of remaking me. “Don’t mess around with your identity, Dermot Michael,” she had told me sternly. “It’s not healthy.”
This from someone whose persona changed with the room she was in and the clothes she wore and the hour of the day.
While my life was looking up, through the combined operations of Lady Luck and my guardian angel, Jarry’s was going down. He never did return to the Exchange even when his suspension was over. Rather he hung around the bars at that end of the Loop and talked to traders, always exuding an aura of mystery as a man with many irons in the fire, many deals cooking, many big payoffs in the offing. I saw him occasionally at a distance before I retired, and he looked painfully seedy. I felt sorry for him. I heard that he spent a lot of time at the racetracks and in Vegas and had become a cocaine addict.
Then Nuala and I encountered him the day after I managed to persuade her to take an engagement ring, though she insisted that it was “too big altogether”—not that she was willing to give it back to me so I could buy a smaller one.
We were walking down the beach in the hot and humid Sunday afternoon of the Labor Day weekend. As in every resort across the land, people were trying desperately to squeeze the last fleeting moments of summer out of the three days, a bittersweet and melancholy exercise usually, but not for Nuala or myself. We were engaged now and foolishly we thought it would always be summertime as long as we had each other.
Our stroll was a triumphal procession for Nuala, as women of all ages swarmed to investigate her diamond. Somehow she had managed to learn everyone’s name, especially the small-girl contingent to whom she had told stories for much of the summer.
“It’s gorgeous, Nuala, simply gorgeous!”
“What a marvelous ring!”
“It’s almost as pretty as you are!”
“Isn’t it huge?”
“Ah, sure it will do now, won’t it?”
Ignored in the celebrations, I felt that they should at least acknowledge that I had paid for it.
“Isn’t it too big altogether?” I would say. “But she won’t let me take it back for a smaller one.”
Some would laugh. Others would simply ignore me. I had better get used to being odd person out for the next couple of months. Years. Decades.
“Aren’t you Yanks terrible fat?” she said as we progressed along the beach. It was stated as an interrogatory sentence, but, like so many Irish questions, it was a declarative statement of fact. When Nuala liked something about the United States she always said, “we Americans.” When she was displeased with us, she would begin with “You Yanks” and sometimes “You friggin’ Yanks.”
“Are we now?”
“And don’t you eat too much altogether? Would you ever see so much obesity on an Irish beach?”
“Would I not?”
“Isn’t the trouble that you eat too much and drink too much and don’t exercise at all at all?”
“Tis,” I said with a sigh.
Note that I had followed all the rules of Irish conversation in that exchange.
Then I added, “There’s a genetic basis for obesity, Nuala Anne.”
“Sure, Dermot Michael, aren’t the genes here the same as at Bull Island or the Forty Foot or Salt Hill? Besides, aren’t you well enough educated to know that in most cases genetic propensities interact with environment? No one is fated to be fat. Not even me asshole brother’s asshole wife Melissa.”
If I had ever learned anything about genes and environment, I had forgotten it. I wasn’t sure where Melissa and her husband fit into the family tree of the McGrails of Carraroe, but I knew they were the only ones about whom Nuala had strongly negative views.
“Tis true,” I sighed, signaling that once more I had been routed in a discussion, although I had in this case taken a politically correct position.
As we walked, I was pondering the latest wisdom served up by George the Priest. “God is not merely love,” he would say. “God is forgiving love. Men and women have to remember that. Love IS forgiveness. When husband and wife forgive one another, they mirror God to each other. They mirror God all the time of course in their passion for one another, but especially in forgiveness, and most especially in passionate forgiveness.”
This fervorino was not explicitly intended for meself and herself and was part of his Saturday afternoon homily on the dune during his vacation. But since George rarely misses an opportunity to lecture me, I knew that he had us in mind even if we were not yet formally engaged.
“Brill, your rivrence,” Nuala Anne had informed him after Mass. “Sure, won’t me husband, assuming I’m lucky enough to find one, have to play God a lot of the time?”
“Brill” is short for “brilliant” in Irish, as in “dead friggin’ brill.”
This in a stage whisper so I could hear her.
“The man will need the patience of a saint,” I observed.
“Too bad there are no saints around.”
Down in flames again.
The couple ahead of us as we ambled along the sand were perhaps in their late thirties, both attractive and in good condition. As I watched them the husband extended his arm around his wife’s shoulders, cautiously and tentatively, I thought. For a moment she did not respond. Then she wrapped her arm around his waist and patted his back affectionately. Finally she snuggled closer to him. I was probably the only one who noticed their little byplay.
This was what George the Priest had been talking about, a small, undemonstrative exchange of affection in which all the power of forgiving love had exploded. God probably was the only other one besides me and the two lovers who saw it happen, not counting any lurking angels. If George were right, God enjoyed it even more than I did.
YOU JUST WANT TO SLIP YOUR HAND UNDER HER SWIMSUIT, PLAY WITH HER TITS AND THEN FUCK HER, the Adversary sneered at me.
“That would certainly be nice,” I replied piously. “But I’ll let him do it. I have a woman of me own.”
MY OWN, he corrected me. YOU’RE ALREADY TALKING LIKE SHE DOES.
To defy him, I stretched out my left arm around Nuala’s waist and permitted my fingers to press ever so lightly against her rock-hard belly muscles. She responded in kind and snuggled closer to me.
“Wasn’t I wondering when you were going to do that?” she murmured. “Aren’t we engaged now?”
“Woman”—I sighed loudly—“we are indeed. But that makes me wonder …”
“Wonder what, Dermot me love?”
“Whether a woman who is already spoken for should be lollygagging down the beach in such a revealing outfit.”
She stiffened in our semiembrace and turned towards me, chin in the air, eyes glinting fire, ready for a fight.
“Och, Derm, aren’t you having me on? And fair play to you, too! Usually I’m the one that starts the argument for the pure fun of it … Besides I’m just practicing for Copacabana if you take me there on me … our honeymoon.”
“You would be overdressed in Brazil … Do you want go there on your honeymoon?”
Then I heard for the same refrain which would recur constantly in the weeks ahead.
“Whatever you think best, Dermot.”
Then she added. “Couldn’t I buy one of them sinful Brazilian things and wear it here?”
“You could indeed, Nuala Anne, and cause a riot.”
She giggled.
“Wouldn’t that be fun now?”
&n
bsp; I tightened the pressure of my fingers against her belly. She sighed contentedly.
Then we met Jarry. I almost didn’t recognize him. Not quite fat enough to merit Nuala’s strictures on obesity, he was still seriously overweight, no longer the lean, slick quarterback. His face was pasty, his eyes bloodshot, his red hair unkempt, his smile crooked, his skin red from too much sun. He smelled of beer and sweat and was carrying a can of Red Dog in his hand.
“Dermy Boy,” he said, extending his hand in my direction. “What’s happening? Who’s the babe?”
In the euphoria of having won my woman, I removed my arm from Nuala and shook his hand.
“Good to see you again, Jarry … Nuala this is Jarry Kennedy. I went to school with him … Jarry, this is Nuala Anne McGrail, my fiancée.”
“Hi,” herself said with notable lack of enthusiasm.
“Yeah,” he replied with a barely civil nod.
“What are you doing these days, Jarry?” I asked him.
“Usual stuff. Making tons of money here and there. Not much time to spend it.”
“Not back on the floor of the Exchange?”
“Nah. That’s for peasants; too much work … Hear you’ve turned to writing storybooks? Not much money in that, is there?”
“It depends … A lot of work, but I like it better than the floor.”
“Yeah … I imagine you would. You sure lucked out … If it were luck.”
His sneer turned ominous on that last phrase.
“Luck it was.”
“So you say. Ever get over there?”
“Avoid it totally.”
“Yeah, well be on your best behavior. The feds don’t like people who make a lot of money on mistakes with other people’s money.”
Although temporarily not in physical contact with my affianced, I could sense her muscles tightening next to me.
“It was all on my own mistake,” I said, remembering with a shiver the terror and emptiness I had felt when I realized my mistake.
“Yeah, well, that’s what you say … Anyway stay away from the feds, know what I mean?”
“I’m not afraid of them, Jarry.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll see what happens … You take care, kid”—he sneered again at Nuala—“this guy is bad news for babes.”
My love’s lips had tightened as had her eyebrows, warning of an approaching thunderstorm.
“Fock you,” she whispered softly. “Me Dermot is too nice a man to do anything to you. If you try to hurt him, you’ll be sorry for the rest of your life, which might not be very long.”
Jarry recoiled in terror, as though her words had been a tempered steel blade thrust into his gut.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, gulping his Red Dog and staggering away. “You’re as nutty as he is.”
“Nuttier,” she called after him, her voice icy. “And far more dangerous.”
This was a Nuala persona that I rarely saw, the deadly alley fighter cum wicked witch.
“He’s a bad ’un, Dermot Michael,” she said, still sounding deadly. “But don’t worry about him. I won’t let him take you away from me.”
“I think you scared the hell out of him, Nuala.”
She smiled complacently. “I hope I did.”
We continued our stroll down the beach. I went over the “mistake” that had earned me three million dollars. By mistake I had sold when I had intended to buy on a client’s account. The client never complained because he got his contracts at the price he had ordered. He congratulated me on my good fortune, though he said he was not sure he’d give me an order again.
The CFTC was all over me, as they often are when a minor and unimportant trader makes a huge gain. After looking over my paper trail, they concluded that I had been damn lucky, which was an understatement; as one of their lawyers said, I probably wasn’t smart enough to cheat everyone.
A tax lawyer in Cindy’s firm dealt with the IRS under stern injunction from my sibling and myself to play it straight. The Service went over everything with a fine-tooth comb and refunded twenty-five thousand dollars.
I had committed no crime. I was clean. But a lot of people hate commodity traders because they seem to make so much money so easily. Coyote could be lurking out there in the jungle waiting for me. Jarry’s warning made me feel guilty and unclean.
The sky was still cloudless. However, as Nuala and I continued our victorious parade down the beach, I felt a dismal cloud edge over my life. Jarry would certainly try to ruin my life, probably before our wedding.
My mistake was not to take Nuala’s threat to Jarry seriously.
Like the man who said to Grace O’Malley, “What do you mean, you’re going to capture my castle before nightfall?”
4
“YOUR RIVRENCE, I’m a nine-fingered shite hawk!”
Nuala turned around in the front seat of my Benz 190 (one of the last of its breed but still a Benz and still in excellent shape) and accused herself to George the Priest. For reasons that escaped me, she treated him like he was forty years older than I am and not a little less than ten. He was the source of wisdom (though not as much as his boss, the little bishop) and I was not to be trusted in serious religious matters.
“It’s a bird I’m not familiar with,” George replied easily. “Can you describe it to me?”
“I’ve never seen one meself,” I observed—and was ignored by both of them.
“It’s the kind of bird who lets two assholes ruin a perfectly good Sunday afternoon and a nice weekend retreat.”
We were on our way to Oak Park Country Club for the second act of our “September Song” drama. Joe and Cindy were riding in their own car, and my parents and the Laurence McGrails were coming in my dad’s seven-year-old Lincoln Town Car.
“A seven-year-old Lincoln, is it now, Nuala?” her brother had said as we had approached the cars. “And an ancient Mercedes?”
“Both classics,” I had replied in a barefaced lie. “Dad’s car is already worth more than he paid for it.”
“At least the Bears won,” I said as Nuala continued her consultation with George the Priest on our way to the club.
“I don’t think the afternoon was wasted at all,” George replied. “I thought our victory was total.”
“They’re both too friggin’ thick to know that they lost. They’re trouble, your rivrence. Won’t they be on the phone before the day is over, telling all the family what terrible folks the Coynes are? They spoiled my sister Nessa’s wedding and they’ll spoil mine if they can. Fockmall! I won’t let them do it.”
The one-word sentence does not refer to a shopping mall but is a contraction of “Frig’em all!”
“Will they pay any attention?” I asked as I turned onto Thatcher Road.
“They might,” she said sadly. “I’m supposed to be the wild, crazy one in the family.
“There are some members of the clan, myself certainly included, who would be proud of the charge. Wasn’t there once a sign in a bar on North Avenue which said, ‘No Coynes allowed?’”
Nuala giggled.
“Can’t I believe that!”
“There’s no reason to be afraid of them,” George continued in the fullness of his priestly wisdom.
“How did they spoil Nessa’s wedding?” I asked.
Nuala turned back to face me, acknowledging again that her fiancé was driving the car.
“The wedding was in Carraroe, though both Timmy and Nessa live in Boston. They’re both strong on the Irish language and culture. Didn’t your man go around complaining to everyone about how crude the ceremony and the dinner were and how much they were embarrassing their Yank friends? Wasn’t poor Nessa in tears the whole day long?”
“Nessa is a warm and tender-hearted woman.”
“Isn’t she the sweetest girl in all the world? … And I’m not, God knows that’s true. But they’ll find ways to get at me, just like they have today.”
“Not twice,” I said grimly.
&
nbsp; Laurence and Melissa were crude caricatures of themselves. Yet I knew enough Irish-Americans who with much less excuse were every bit as bad. Some of them lived on our own block.
“If you got into a fight with them at the wedding, that would make their day.”
“They’re sad, pathetic people, Nuala Anne,” I reassured her. “They only have power over us if we give it to them.”
“Tis true … Sure, Dermot, aren’t you right all the time?”
Thereupon she patted my arm affectionately.
“Occasionally,” I murmured contentedly.
“What will they say in their phone calls?” the priest asked.
“Won’t they call everyone and say that they are advising against the wedding? As though they had any right to give advice.” Her voice rose in rage. “Or we have an obligation to listen to their advice! It’ll upset me ma and me da something terrible. And on a phone line you pay for, Dermot!”
“Will your parents believe Laurence?”
“They respect his opinion because they think he’s a great friggin’ success. But they love you, Dermot Michael, they really do!”
“We’ll work it out,” I assured.
“You can count on that, Nuala,” the priest said. “Today is just practice.”
I had attended far too many Irish weddings where there was open warfare between the families. That would be fun, but it wouldn’t help much.
We turned into the country club, the attendant took my car, and we waited for the rest of the entourage. I had prepared for Laurence McGrail with more care than I had told Nuala. If my tactics did not smash into his thick skull, nothing would.
“A nice little club, Nuala,” he said as he glanced around, “not especially elegant, but the course looks to be challenging in its own small way … Does your young man play golf?”
“A little, now and then,” I said modestly.
“His handicap is three,” Nuala lied.
“Three is it?” Her brother’s eyebrow shot up.
“Our club in the Palisades is much larger,” Melissa commented.
Irish Whiskey Page 5