“’Tis why yeh woke some of ’em already, when yeh brought that leamh’s soul to the mound a few days past?”
“That one is one of the few left who truly believe in us, and I thought he deserved to come with us—and he can tell us what the leamh world is like now, and what they might do. Yeh should talk to him, Fionnbharr. The world has changed much since yeh last rode.” She pulled her cloak more tightly around herself as a cold gust from off the ocean swirled around her. “An’ I feel it changing faster with every year,” she added, “and I like it less.”
“Yet yeh stay in it.” His voice mocked her.
“I’ve made promises. Yeh know that.”
“Promises. Aye. Yeh were always so good at keeping yer promises.” His sarcasm bit at her, but she said nothing. “Yer half-leamh yerself now,” he continued, when she didn’t respond. “Yeh’ve had too many forms and too many names, and now yeh have the smell of ’em. When I knew yeh with another title, yeh would have killed those who stood in yer way without another thought, and yeh would have laughed as yeh did it. This Maeve that stands before me now . . .” He pointed the tip of his spear toward her. “Yer telling me what I must do. Can yeh do what’s needed, or have yeh become too mortal yerself? Can yeh deceive yer bard the way yeh know yeh must?”
“I can,” she told him. “And Fionnbharr of the Mound, can yeh do what’s needed when I call?”
“If it means we can finally follow the others, then aye, we can.”
Maeve nodded. “Good.”
“I still smell death on yeh, Maeve-of-many-names. Yeh sure yer not just a mortal?”
She smiled at that. “Death drives us all, mortal or not,” she told Fionnbharr. “Some to run from it, some to seek it.”
He laughed at that, and with the laughter, he plunged the base of his spear into the mound. There was a flash and the sound of rolling, distant thunder. Maeve blinked, and when she opened her eyes again, Fionnbharr was no longer standing on the mound.
“Stay awake,” she said to the night, to the hawthorn. “There will be death and a need for you to ride out soon enough.”
6
There’s a Chicken in the Pot
“WELL, THE HOUSE still looks the same,” Colin said as they drove up. The tall, three-story dwelling was wedged between two others across from a small park. The house had been heavily renovated and restored by the Doyles when they’d purchased it in the late 1980s, and they’d added a black wrought iron fence with stone pillars along the sidewalk. To Colin, the fencing and general appearance of the house’s facade had always felt cold and imposing, an attempt to intimidate any visitor.
That had always seemed to match his father’s outward appearance as well.
Aunt Patty greeted Jen and Colin as they entered, hugging each of them warmly. “Where’s Aaron?” Aunt Patty asked Jen.
“He knows we’re going to discuss Dad’s situation, and begged off—said it should be a private family matter. Rebecca didn’t come either?”
Patty nodded. “Like Aaron, she thought this should just be a family matter. Your Aaron’s a smart boy. I think you might have a good one there.”
“So far I think so, too,” Jen answered. “Where’s Mom?”
“Making sure the table’s set. We’re still waiting for Tommy and Carl.”
“That Harris guy is going to be here?” Colin asked, and Patty pursed her lips as if she was tasting something sour.
“Tommy wanted him here, evidently,” Aunt Patty told him. “After all, he is—was—your Dad’s campaign manager, and what we decide here will certainly affect that.”
Jen nodded. “I’ll go in and see if Mom needs help with that table.”
“Make sure I’m sitting next to you,” Colin said to Jen. “Between you and Aunt Patty would be ideal.”
“I will.” Jen went off down the corridor. Colin lingered with his aunt. There was an 8x10 portrait of his father in a frame sitting on one of the tables in the front room. He stared at it, seeing his father as he remembered him, the smile on his face looking somewhat artificial under the stern eyes.
“It’s a lousy homecoming, isn’t it?” Aunt Patty commented behind him. “I’m sorry, Colin.”
“Not your fault.” He stared into his father’s eyes.
“He loved you. Your mom does, too.”
“Yes, and they both showed it so well.”
He felt Patty’s hand on his shoulder, and he turned to her. Her head was tilted, her gaze now edged. “You’re being too harsh on them, Colin. Especially with your mother. She’s really hurting right now, more than you can imagine.”
He wanted to apologize, to tell Aunt Patty that she was right and he understood what she was saying, but the words were jammed in his throat and something else slipped out. “Love is a lousy word,” he answered. “We have way too many definitions for it, and nobody knows what it really means.”
“Too many definitions for what?” The door had opened again, and Tommy and Carl Harris stood in the doorway. They were both dressed in suits—Colin had worn jeans and a button-down oxford shirt. Tommy cocked his head in Colin’s direction.
“Nothing,” Colin told Tommy. “Nice suits. Don’t you guys ever take a day off?”
“There are no days off in politics,” Tom answered. “At least, that’s what Dad always said.”
Yes, and look where that’s got him . . . Colin smiled, holding back the comment. “Do you wear them to bed, too?” he asked, but Aunt Patty stepped in before Tommy could answer.
“I think dinner’s about ready. Why don’t we all go in?” She allowed Tom and Harris to precede them, and took Colin’s arm as they passed. “You know, you have the most open face in the whole family. I can practically see what you were thinking,” she whispered.
“Sorry.” Then: “And sorry for what I said before, too. I know you’re right. I do, it’s just . . .”
She patted his arm. “No need to apologize. Like I said yesterday, I’ve always told Mary you were more an O’Callaghan than a Doyle.”
“And how did Mom react to that?”
Aunt Patty laughed, causing Tom and Harris to glance back at them. She waved them on. “The same way I’d react if you suddenly informed me that you wanted to be just like your father, may God take his soul.” She wagged a finger in Colin’s direction. “But I’ll deny ever having said that if you tell anyone.”
Dinner was another memory made solid. Colin could recall dozens of dinners much like this one around the same table, with only the menu and the ages of the diners changing. Even the absence of his father was normal. During his childhood, dinner had always been his mother’s affair, his father only making cameo appearances. Tom Sr. would often be working late: preparing a case, at a community meeting, or out of town entirely in Springfield after he’d been elected to the State Senate and the legislature was in session.
It was Mom who prepared dinner, who set the table, who made certain that everyone was seated, that any guests were properly introduced around, that the blessing was intoned before the first bite of food was eaten (and woe betide anyone but a guest trying to filch a roll or take a bite beforehand), and who directed the conversation around the table from her chair nearest the kitchen as if she were a conductor in front of an orchestra, wielding a fork rather than a baton. Colin had often wondered how she managed to get everything on the table and hot at the same time; but she always had. When Colin was still a young child, with the law firm’s continued success and both state and national politics taking on more of a role, the Doyles had retained the services of Beth, the housemaid who put in a half-day’s work every weekday, but the kitchen was still largely his mother’s domain, even if Beth helped set the table before leaving for the day.
“So, Colin,” his mother began after grace had been said and the first dishes passed around, “now that you’re back, I’ve had Beth make up your room for you until y
ou go back to the university.”
Thanks, Mom, Colin wanted to say. But I don’t want to stay here. “Mom,” Jen broke in before Colin could answer, “Colin and I haven’t had much chance to talk yet. I thought he could stay at least a few more days at my place.”
“Actually, Mom, that sounds good to me,” Colin added quickly. “Jen’s place is right on the ‘L’ so I could get around pretty easily. I don’t mind staying there, since it’s no bother to her, and she has the extra room.”
“Oh.” The single, flat interjection contained entire decades of commentary. His mother drew in a long breath through her nose. “I’m just rattling around in a whole empty house with far too many extra rooms, but I suppose that’s fine, then. After all, you’ll be going back to Seattle soon enough, I suppose. You’ve that dissertation and defense to get ready, I’m sure. Another Dr. Doyle in the family; your father would be so proud.”
He ignored that. It’s not the time to tell them. Not here. The others around the table were carefully not watching him, paying too much attention to their plates. Confusion drowned him under a roiling tsunami of doubt.
“You know, I’d love to hear you play music again, Colin,” Aunt Patty cut in. “It’s been a long time since I last heard you, and you had such a gift for music. Do you still play gigs in Seattle?”
“Not as much as I’d like, but yeah, I still play,” Colin told her. He turned to her, thankful for the change of subject, but uneasy with the shift to his music. “There’s a strong Celtic music scene there, and I’ve learned some old songs and variations on them that I’d never heard, and new ways to approach the material that I’d never considered.”
“Immersion in another culture can change the way you think.” That was Tommy, and when Colin glanced across the table to him, his brother gave him a quick wink, almost as if he knew what Colin was holding back from the conversation. “I don’t think you can avoid that. I know that when Dad and I were in Paris for a two-week conference a couple of years back, it completely altered my attitude toward how food is prepared and presented. Speaking of which, this chicken’s delicious, Mom. Did you do something different with it?”
As the talk around the table turned to the meal and its preparation, Colin shot a look of gratitude to Tommy, and Jen softly kicked his shin under the table. She leaned over to him. “You see, Tommy inherited Dad’s ability to deflect Mom. You and I just let ourselves get dragged into those arguments with her.”
“And you’ll get into another one if the two of you don’t keep your voices down,” Aunt Patty commented softly from the other side. “Remember what she’s been going through these last few days, and will be going through in the coming ones. This hasn’t been easy on anyone, and especially not for her.” Then she smiled toward Colin’s mother, a bite of chicken on her fork.
“You really need to give me your recipe, Mary,” she said, more loudly.
“Leave the dishes,” Colin’s mother said. “Let’s go into the back room—I had Beth set up the coffee urn, there’s cake, and I brought up a bottle of your father’s whiskey from the office, too. We can . . .” Colin saw her hesitate as moisture visibly filled her eyes. “. . . talk about what we need to discuss more comfortably there.”
The back room had been a combination rec room and library when Colin had lived here. It hadn’t changed a great deal. The books were still there, hardbacks arranged in colorful rows along the shelves. There was a new flatscreen TV, much larger than the television that had been there when Colin left for Seattle. The game console that had sat next to the television back then seemed to be missing, and the board games were stacked on the top shelf, something for Beth to dust. The two tables that had filled the center of the room were gone, replaced by large, plush leather chairs and a small couch under the window, all arranged in a rough conversation circle around the room. His mother and Aunt Patty took the couch after getting coffee and a plate of the cake. Tommy half-filled a tumbler with whiskey: Connemara Cask Strength, Colin noted. “Colin?” Tom asked, lifting his glass. “Jen?”
Jen shook her head. “Sure,” Colin told him.
“Ice?”
“Neat, please.”
Tommy handed Colin a glass heavy with amber liquid. He swirled it around, sniffing the fragrance that held just a touch of peat smoke. He sipped. “Thanks,” he said. Tommy nodded, then took a chair next to Harris, who was also nursing some of the whiskey. Harris leaned over to talk earnestly in Tommy’s ear, with Tommy shaking his head. Jen sat in the chair next to Colin. For several seconds, no one said anything, the air filled with the clatter of forks on plates.
It was Tommy who spoke first.
“Everyone’s spoken to the doctors, and now Colin’s had his chance as well,” he said. Colin thought he saw Harris make a moue of distaste as Tommy spoke. “Sad as it is, we all know what we’re looking at, and I’m sure we all have opinions as to what’s the best thing to do. But personally, I don’t think it’s a group decision. Mom, it’s yours to make, and I think I can speak for everyone when I say that we’ll stand by that decision, whatever it is.”
Colin saw tears gathering in his mother’s eyes again as she set down the cake, untouched, on the coffee table in front of the couch, and the sight made him feel guilty for not wanting to stay here with her. As difficult as the situation was for him or for Tommy and Jen, it was entirely life-changing for her. For over four decades, she and his father had been making a life together, and even if it wasn’t a life that Colin would have wanted, it was the one that they’d chosen together. Their marriage had worked for them and made them happy as a couple from everything he’d seen. And now that life was threatened.
She’ll be alone here, and I’ve just told her I don’t want to stay here to help her. I’m really showing lots of empathy for the person who gave me life . . .
“This is all so horrible and so sudden,” his mother began, and Patty stroked her arm. “If I thought there was any chance that he might recover, any chance at all . . .”
“Then keep him on the vent, Mom,” Jen put in. “It’s not a question of money, and it’s not going to hurt Dad to do that. You can take all the time you want or need to make your decision, and maybe in the meantime Dad will come out of it. I know that’s what Father Frank told you the Church would want you to do.”
“Is that what you’d do, Jen?” Colin’s mother asked, and Jen shook her head.
“No, Mom,” she husked out. “Honestly, I’m afraid it isn’t. I know what the Church teaches, but . . . I think Dad’s already gone. I’d have them turn off the machines.”
He saw his mother give her a faint nod. “I didn’t think so,” she said. “The doctors are saying that even if he does wake up, he won’t be the same person. Tom always said that this was what scared him the most, having his body continuing to live when his mind was gone. He always said he’d rather be dead . . .” Her voice shivered and broke on the last word. Aunt Patty hugged her. Across from Colin, Harris nodded vigorously. “If there was any hope at all, I’d say let’s give him a chance to recover, but . . .” his mother half-whispered, but again she was unable to finish the thought and her voice trailed off.
The silence that followed seemed to last minutes. Colin could hear the ice cubes chime against the glass Tommy held. Colin took a sip of his own whiskey and a long breath.
“I feel the same way Jen does,” Colin spoke into the quiet of the room. “Dad’s already gone. When I was in his room, looking at him . . .” He shook his head. “Mom, I’m sorry, but I think the doctors are right; he’s brain dead—and that’s more a real death than the physical one. We’re just keeping Dad’s body here artificially. I’m glad I got the chance to say good-bye to him, but—” He brought his shoulders up in a helpless shrug and sipped at the whiskey again, letting it burn the words in his throat.
“Then you’re all in agreement.” She looked at each of them in turn. Her eyes were dry now. “W
hat the doctors want to do are the tests to declare him officially brain dead, then to . . . to. . . .” She struggled to say the words, closing her eyes and taking a shivering breath before she could speak again. “. . . harvest his body for organs before they remove him from the ventilator. You’re all in agreement with that?”
“Yes,” Tommy answered. “Because that’s what Dad would want us to do. At the very least, he’d want his death to help others.”
Colin nodded in agreement, as did Jen. Aunt Patty continued to stroke her sister’s arm.
“I don’t know if I could make that decision on my own,” Colin’s mother said. “I still don’t know; I’m still not certain. I can’t decide tonight and I can’t decide right here. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry, Mom,” Jen told her. “It’s okay.”
“I know. And I know that the way you all feel isn’t wrong at all, no matter what Father Frank might suggest. It’s just . . . Let me sleep on it, and I’ll talk to Father Frank tomorrow after Mass, and then see the doctors again afterward. I can make the decision then.”
With the statement, the atmosphere in the room seemed to lighten perceptibly. Colin noticed the evening sunlight slanting in through the window, catching floating dust specks in its brilliance. He took another long sip of the whiskey.
“I’ll let the party officials know tomorrow after you make the decision,” Harris said. “After all, Tom here has decided that he’ll run in his father’s place—no matter what the outcome or the choice you make, Mrs. Doyle, it’s obvious that Tom Sr. isn’t going to be able to continue his campaign. We’re obligated to hold another quick primary election to officially replace him on the ballot, but it’ll just be a formality.”
The sun seemed to slip behind a cloud again. The room darkened. “Carl,” Tommy snapped. “Shut the fuck up.”
“What?” Harris said, looking startled. He spread his hands, the ice cubes rattling in his whiskey glass. “You know that no serious candidate would run against you. You have the sympathy vote all locked up.”
The Crow of Connemara Page 5