Barrington Street Blues

by Anne Emery

  “I shall accept whatever greetings you wish to send my way, Edward.”

  “Oh, I’ll think of something. You can count on it.”

  “Of course, we want him to ourselves for a couple of days. He’s coming to New York for his anniversary Mass and a family celebration.”

  “Shouldn’t be hard for us to upstage that.”

  “You haven’t met his family, Johnson. I have. It would take some doing to upstage that crowd. When is it exactly, Brennan?”

  “Weekend after next.”

  “But it’s never too early to break out the celebratory cigars,” Patrick said, reaching into his pocket and offering them around the table. Ed and I declined. Pat handed one to his brother, fired it up, then lit his own. They puffed contentedly on their stogies until we heard a strangulated cough behind Brennan’s chair.

  “Monty. Hello.” I turned to see Doctor Swail-Peddle standing behind my chair, with a tall, gangly woman in tow. Both were fanning smoke away from their faces.

  “Hi, Gareth.”

  “I brought the diary and my notes.”

  “Great.” I took the papers from him and put them on the table in front of me. “Are you going to join us?”

  “Well . . .” He looked at the tall woman with an expression of concern. She wore a long denim jumper over a thick grey cotton shirt. Her frizzy brown hair was tied in a ponytail and half-hidden by a scarf. She had the same enormous eyeglasses as Gareth.

  “This is Penelope Swail-Peddle. My wife. Penelope, this is Monty Collins. I don’t know these other people.”

  “Here, Gareth. Grab a couple more chairs. This is Brennan Burke, his brother Patrick, and Ed Johnson.” Johnson nodded and picked up his glass. The Burke brothers, as if choreographed, clamped their cigars in their teeth, half rose from their seats and held out their right hands to the newcomers, who shook, then sat down.

  The waiter put a draft in front of Penelope, and she looked up at him. “Do you have cranberry juice?”

  “‘Fraid not. Coke, Seven-Up.”

  “Oh, I don’t want all that caffeine.”

  “No caffeine in Seven-Up.”

  “Or in draft,” Ed chimed in.

  “Seven-Up then. I guess. What are you having, Gareth?”

  “I’m going to have a beer!”

  “Gareth . . .”

  “It’s all right, Penelope. It’s just one.”

  “That’s what my father used to say.”

  “Mine never said just one!” Johnson announced. “How ‘bout your old man, Brennan?”

  “Sure, he’d settle in for a few if he was going to be takin’ a drop at all, at all,” Brennan answered in an exaggerated Irish brogue.

  “Penelope is the child of alcoholic parents,” Swail-Peddle explained.

  “Aren’t we all!” Ed exclaimed. “That describes half the population of the western world.”

  The Swail-Peddles exchanged a look. Then Penelope announced to her husband: “I didn’t wash my hair again today. Five days now.”

  “Are you okay with it?”

  Brennan was not okay with it; he looked at her as if a cockroach had crawled out of her ponytail. But Penelope assured us she was feeling good about herself.

  Gareth questioned her gently: “But Penelope. The head scarf? Does that say maybe you’re not okay with it?”

  “I just like scarves, Gareth. Sometimes a scarf is just a scarf!”

  I saw Patrick smile at that.

  Gareth turned to us. “Penelope is going to visit her parents tomorrow. We’ve been doing some work around it.”

  “You’re going to see your parents,” Brennan said to her.

  “Yes.” Her hand went up to her hair.

  “I guess they’ll be telling you to wash more than your hands before dinner.”

  Two pairs of humongous spectacles turned to him in shock.

  “That’s not very helpful, Brendan,” Gareth admonished him. “Is that your name?”

  “Close enough.”

  “Penelope feels that her parents put too much emphasis on bodily cleanliness. Bodily denial, one might say.”

  “Little girls have shiny hair and big, bright smiles!” Penelope sang to us in a voice heard round the room. “And they never bite their fingernails!”

  We all looked as one towards her hands, which quickly disappeared beneath the table.

  “Penelope’s parents were very controlling,” Gareth told us.

  “And shaming,” she added.

  “What in the hell are you talking about?” Ed demanded. Penelope looked down at her fingers. Her husband put his hand under her chin and gently raised it. “Do we look away? Or do we make eye contact and say: ‘I am here. I exist’?”

  “What’s the problem, Penny?” Johnson asked.

  Her husband answered for her: “Penelope’s parents were verbally abusive. And that can cut just as deeply as physical abuse.”

  “Oh yeah? I wish somebody had told that to my old man. ‘Hey, Vinny. Put your belt back on. You don’t have to beat those kids! Just call ‘em names instead.’”

  “Naming can be harmful!” Penelope protested. “It takes a long time to learn to love yourself after a lifetime of that!”

  “Take a page out of my book, Pen. I know I’m a flaming asshole. But I’m okay with it.” The Swail-Peddles sat looking at each other in stunned silence.

  “Another round?” Pat said.

  “Couldn’t hurt, Paddy.”

  “Bring it on.”

  “Guess who I saw today, Collins,” Ed announced. “Mavis Campbell. And was she tanked! Over at O’Carroll’s. Little wonder ole Dice took a header, looking forward to forty more years of liquor bills for her. She mentioned you. She knows we’re in the band together. I won’t tell you what she said, since we’re in such sensitive company. Good old Mavis, still knockin’ ‘em back. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that woman sober. Don’t want to. You’ve heard the phrase: You’re dirty when you’re drinkin’. Well, from what I hear about Mavis, it’s the other way around. Steer clear if she’s running low.”

  “Gareth, is anything the matter?” Penelope asked, her brow furrowed with anxiety. I looked at the psychologist. He had spilled some of his beer, and his hand was not co-operating in wiping it up.

  “No, of course not. I guess all this beer doesn’t agree with me.”

  “No reason to spill it, Gary,” Ed commented. “That’s a deadly sin in this place. Wouldn’t you say so, Brennan?”

  “It’s a mortaller for sure.”

  “So, what do you want for your anniversary?” Ed asked. “Coupla hos?”

  “That would be grand, Edward. Just the thing.”

  “Pardon me, Edward, but I see a number of sex-trade workers in my practice and —”

  “Me too, Gare, me too.”

  “And I find the word ‘ho’ demeaning.”

  “Lighten up, Gary.”

  “Excuse me for a moment. Where’s the wash — where are the toilets?”

  “You mean you’ve never been here before?” Johnson squawked. I pointed Gareth in the right direction, and he made a hasty retreat.

  “When I first started coming here, Paddy, women weren’t allowed,” Johnson said. “And it took the Midtown a while to warm up to the idea when the law was changed. They took their time about installing a women’s toilet. I remember as if it was yesterday: these two girls came in, and every eye in the place was on them. The waiter went over and said: ‘We don’t have a ladies’ washroom, so you may want to go somewhere else.’ One of the girls said to him: ‘I came here to drink. If I wanted to piss, I’d go to the Pic.’ Another place nearby. It was great.”

  Brennan leaned towards Penelope, saying something we couldn’t hear. She put her hand over her mouth and laughed. Then Brennan tapped on the shoulder of a pretty young woman at the next table, said something to her, and both women shared in the humour. Patrick pushed a glass of draft in Penelope’s direction, and she reached for it. The hand was withdrawn, and the laughter di
ed, when she saw her husband approaching.

  “Can we talk?” Gareth whispered to me.

  “Sure.”

  “Privately.”

  “Okay. Let’s step outside.”

  “I have to speak to Monty about a confidential matter. I’ll be right back.” He looked uncertainly at the men at the table, as if wondering whether his wife would survive their conversation without him there to mediate.

  When we got outside, Gareth said: “I just remembered something about my diary. I’m so busy these days and I have so much on my mind I didn’t think of it earlier. But I was in the process of preparing my diary for you. Finding the relevant passages relating to Corey Leaman. I was whiting out some references to other patients, you know, deleting things that would be confidential about others in the centre. And I was in the middle of this and there was a —” he managed to get a few hairs from his beard into his mouth, and proceeded to gnaw on them “— there was a crisis at home, and I never finished doing the deletions. I just remembered now. Give me the whole bundle; I’ll finish editing and bring it to you right away.”

  “No problem. It’s just on the table in there. Take it back and work on it. Why don’t you get some White-out tape to cover the irrelevant passages and make a photocopy for me.”

  “They wouldn’t read it, would they?”

  “Who?”

  “That man Johnson. And his friend Brendan. You said you left it on the table.”

  “They probably didn’t even notice it.”

  “You know, Johnson has serious issues.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “And I suspect he’s in serious denial about them.”

  “Oh, I doubt that.” I couldn’t resist a bit of mischief. “What do you make of the other two?”

  The psychologist was chuffed to be asked for his professional opinion. “Well, the milder-looking one. Patrick? He strikes me as a bit of an enabler.”

  “A what?”

  “Someone who enables an addict, say an alcoholic or a person addicted to drugs, to continue with the harmful behaviour.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Well, there we were, everyone around the table, on the verge of crisis. My wife traumatized by the uncaring tone of the conversation. And Patrick’s solution? Not more open dialogue, not working through it, but another round of beer! And then I saw him pushing it on her when I was away from the table.”

  “Oh, I think Pat is just in a social mood tonight. Being away from the office, seeing his brother, having a good time. Sometimes a round of draft is just a round of draft.”

  “It would be my guess — and I could be wrong — that he does not have much to get away from at his office, wherever it might be. Nice person, but not too much going on.”

  “I see. What about Brennan?”

  “A bit of a sexual opportunist, I’d say.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “Didn’t you notice? He didn’t pay one bit of attention to my wife until I was out of the way. Then, as soon as my back was turned, he intruded into her personal space. I shudder to think what he might have been whispering into her ear.”

  “It couldn’t have been anything too dubious. She was laughing.”

  “Laughter is a nervous response in Penelope.”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do. Everything about Brendan’s manner made me uneasy. That eye, for one thing. Looks like an injury from an altercation. As they say, I wouldn’t care to see the other guy! I can easily picture this Brendan as the aggressor. My impression of him being something of a sexual opportunist was given ample support when he went right along with Johnson’s offer of sex-trade workers for his twenty-fifth anniversary.”

  “It’s just a joke about the hookers. Believe me. Let’s go back inside.”

  The Swail-Peddles left us shortly after that.

  “Who are those two flakes?” Johnson asked.

  “It’s about work.”

  “After seeing that pair, I’m glad I get my treatment from the bartenders of Halifax, not the psychologists.”

  “Gareth’s a bit of an odd duck. They’re not all like that.” I turned to Patrick. “What did you think of them, Pat?”

  He shook his head. “I’m off duty.”

  “Off duty as what, Paddy? What do you do?”

  “Patrick is a highly respected Manhattan psychiatrist, Johnson. It might be worth your while to commute there once a week.”

  “No shit. Are you really?”

  “I’m a psychiatrist and I work in Manhattan. How much respect I get is open to question.” He leaned forward and peered at his brother. “Let me take a closer look at that eye, Bren.”

  “Leave it, I told you.”

  Patrick ignored his protestations. “There’s some old bruising there and a laceration that hasn’t quite healed. And you never had that much of a downturn at the outer corner of that eye.”

  “Looks good on him. Gives him the appearance of a tragic Irish hero,” Johnson put in. “Women will love it.”

  “Close it, then open it for me. Again. Open it as wide as you can. Now, raise that eyebrow, the way you always do when you’re making a point for the rest of us. Well, you can still do that to great effect. But there’s a slight downturn to that eyelid, and I think there’s some nerve damage. It may repair itself over time. It must have been quite a blow. What happened?”

  “It was nothing.”

  “You see? No respect. My patients think I’m a fookin’ eejit who doesn’t know where black eyes come from. Of course, I’m admittedly naive about what really goes on in the life of a priest in Halifax, Nova Scotia.”

  For my part, I didn’t know where to look. And I certainly did not want any eye contact with Patrick at that point; he would know the truth in an instant. I thanked Christ in heaven above that Johnson refrained from making any comment about the fact that I had made no comment. The conversation finally turned to other matters, the brothers regaling Johnson with tales from their early years in Ireland and New York. The party broke up at closing time.

  I drove the Burkes to the rectory. Brennan hopped out, but Patrick stayed behind, prompting a curious look from his brother. Patrick gestured for him to keep moving.

  “What’s troubling you, Monty?”

  I thought I had presented a fairly trouble-free countenance over the course of the evening. “Oh, there’s nothing —”

  “Uh-huh.” I felt his eyes were able to see right through me. “Well, I’ll be back in my office next week. Feel free to call me there or at home. Any time. Here’s my card. Or talk to Brennan. You rarely see the priestly side of him, I suppose, but he can be a very good man to talk to.”

  “He’s too close to the situation.”

  “Which may explain why you clocked him in the eye.”

  A good rule of engagement when being interrogated is not to deny anything the other person obviously knows. So I didn’t even try. “He told you, did he?”

  “No. Typically, he gave me the brush-off when I asked him about it. But it doesn’t take a respected Manhattan psychiatrist, or an Inspector Morse, to deduce that when Monty Collins refrains from making a smart-arse remark about his friend Brennan’s black eye —”

  “I know. Is the eye going to get better?”

  “Probably. If not, it gives him a certain air, doesn’t it? It’s not just the eye, Monty. I get the impression you’re off kilter. But I’ll let you go. Call me if I can help.”

  “Thanks, Pat. I really do appreciate it.”

  It was in fact tempting to seek Patrick’s help. But he couldn’t make the problem go away. Nor could he get me out of the event that was looming the next night. It was an event I wanted to avoid, because Maura was going, but could not avoid, because Ken Fanshaw was putting it on.

  †

  The event was a black-tie charity dance at the Hotel Nova Scotian for Fanshaw’s new shelter for homeless kids. My first opportunity to see him in the same room with some of the people he
was purporting to help. Young people he had assisted over the years were going to be servers; others, those still living on the streets, were going to make short speeches or presentations early in the evening. Would there be any veterans of the Colosseum on hand? If so, how could I tell? As for MacNeil, I planned to situate myself so far from her that I’d be able to ignore her entirely. I knew her escort for the evening, an old friend of hers from Cape Breton, a guy I had always liked. My date was Monique LeBlanc, from the office. Her boyfriend, Alyre, had no interest in dressing up and making small talk in a language he barely knew, with a bunch of people he didn’t know at all. I could understand that.

  I picked Monique up at her apartment on Victoria Road. Alyre was flaked out in front of a baseball game on television, an Alpine brew in one huge hand, the clicker in the other, and a jumbo bag of chips on his lap. He looked at me, in my dinner jacket, with pity. Monique was ravishing in a simple, modest dress of pale yellow silk, which set off her big brown eyes.

  “I was going to say I’d have her home before midnight, Alyre, but I’m not sure I’ll want to let her go.”

  “Keep her. It’s a double header.”

  “You’re a handsome roué yourself, Monty,” she teased. “I’d better watch myself, out with a more experienced older man.”

  “I’ll be the suavest guy there. Just imitate everything I do, from the way I order a martini to the way I wink and cock my finger at everyone as I work the room. You can’t go wrong.”

  When we arrived at the Nova Scotian, we saw our place names with those of Vance “the Undersigned” Blake and some other bores from the office. I switched our cards to a table reserved by a group of Mounties. If they were anything like the RCMP guys I had met over the course of a lifetime, they would be the most enthusiastic partiers in the room. I didn’t know what to expect of the band Fanshaw had hired; they promised to give us a sample of music from the 1930s right up to the current hits of 1991. As it turned out, they weren’t bad on the old stuff, up to around 1955; after that, the dance floor pretty well emptied out until break time. The recorded music brought people to their feet in droves. I had a few dances with Monique and the other women at our table.

  I was accosted by Felicia Morgan, who was tarted up in a black outfit that put me in mind of a spiderweb. “Monty! I’m so glad you could make it.”