by Tom Murphy
“I walked out of the house with you, but as I held you wrapped in a blanket, I saw a door open in back. It was your mother coming around from the back of the house, and she met me on the sidewalk out front. She stood between the house and the corner, looking at me in the dark with the same determined eyes she had trained on me the day she had finished the marathon, but now she expected integrity from me as I had expected it from her.
“‘Please,’ she said. ‘I want to keep my baby.’
“‘But your father,’ I said.
“She shook her head, crying, ‘I want to keep my baby,’ she said, blocking me, her face swollen with tears, as we stood in the light of a lone streetlamp. ‘Please don’t take my baby away.’
“She was thin and frail, hardly the lean, wiry figure who had finished the marathon, but as I looked into her eyes, so pained, I could see Mrs. Gallagher at home preparing the crib, and I knew I had only to make it past her, get around her, just three more feet, and Mrs. Gallagher would have what she had always wanted and I would be free to spend time with my boys.
“‘Please?’ the girl said again. Then she said the words I have never been able to put out of my mind, no matter how many times I have walked to the shore at Castle Island and stared out at the sea.
“‘Please do the right thing,’ she said.
“I looked past her to the corner, and I answered with words I have regretted my whole life, ‘Your mistake is not my problem,’ I said.
“And so, Bridget, I made you pay for what I did that night. Your whole life you have been a reminder to me of how weak I am. I deprived you of a mother and a life with her and I have deprived you of accomplishments at every turn. I have blocked you, Bridget, so I would not have to consider what I had done to you. I did not give you the support you deserved because I never deserved you in the first place. I was foolish. No man can hold back the sea, nor the flood of emotions that I have held back for so long, trying to forget how I took your life from you. But I tried to make things right with Ellen. I want you to know that. I tried to do right by Ellen, training her and offering her encouragement, so she might have what I denied you. But in the end, as time whittles down, what I really want to do is do right by you. But I don’t know how to do that, Bridget, except to say…” and he paused as the air conditioner made the only sound.
“I’m sorry.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Reporters jammed the hospital lobby swarming around Ellen when the hospital released her the next morning.
“Ellen, are you going to run Boston?” Several called in unison.
Jack answered for her. “We have six weeks to go before the marathon. We’ll let the doctors decide if she’ll be ready to go by the third Monday in April.”
“How are you feeling?” several asked.
“The car that hit me stopped rather than ran off,” she said with a big smile. “So I’m making progress with my accidents. I’m feeling fine. Thank you.”
“What about Pop’s lie?” Steele asked as he moved to the fore with a cameraman and thrust a microphone toward Ellen.
Jack moved between Ellen and Steele with fire in his eyes.
“Why don’t you go f…” he said, but he caught himself before finishing the sentence, as Bridget squeezed his arm. The family continued to push through the front door and in another moment they were outside and in the car—Ellen, Bridget, Jack and Pop—and off they went.
I stayed behind to collect Ellen’s things, when I saw Tim Finn. He was sitting in the coffee shop behind the lobby in his jean jacket with his gray ponytail under a baseball cap. He waved to me by raising his cup.
I waited to make sure all the news reporters were gone, including Steele, then I went in and sat down across from him.
“Thank God it was only a superficial wound,” he said.
“She wants to run Boston. But the doctors will make that call. She has a big bruise on the side of her left leg.”
“She’ll run. She comes from tough stock.”
“That she does.”
“Speaking of lineage, Bridget’s mother wants to see her.”
I looked at Finn, and leaned forward. “Tell me.”
“I’ll introduce you to someone who can give you the answers.”
I nodded, OK. “Where?”
“Take your car, follow me. There’s a Brigham’s on River Street, next to Osco’s. She’s waiting for us there.”
I did not need an introduction, since I recognized the gray-haired lady from the school cafeteria.
“Colin, meet Delia Delaney,” Tim Finn said, as we joined the tall, broad-shouldered woman in a booth at the back of the ice cream shop.
“Hello, again,” I said, smiling, and I extended my hand. She had a firm grip and she was all business as she jumped right into her story.
“Margaret’s with me. She’s been here since October. She was living in St. Louis when she contacted me. She said she wanted to see Bridget, her child, while she still had time.”
“Time? What do you mean?”
“Margaret has lung cancer. She doesn’t know how much more time she has.” She paused before continuing. “I was shocked. I didn’t even know Margaret was alive after the attack in El Salvador.”
“None of us did,” Tim said to me.
“What happened?”
“She was Mother Superior at her mission in El Salvador in the 70’s. You knew that, right?” Delia said.
“Yes.”
“The army didn’t like her putting herself in the middle of their fight against the rebels, saving their enemies’ babies, and so they made Margaret their enemy too. One day a rogue group from the army attacked her mission and killed four nuns they suspected were arranging the adoptions. It was big news. Margaret was listed as one of the four killed, but they burned the building and we never had a burial for Margaret.”
“I don’t understand. How did she survive?”
“We don’t know,” Delia said. “But she did. She was late to a meeting at the convent, or something like that. In any case, the US government was eager to keep her survival secret, too. They knew certain generals would want to try again, especially if they thought there was a possibility Margaret could testify against them in a world court on war crimes. Killing four nuns, the world pays attention to something like that.”
“I’m sure.”
“So State put the DEA on it, since the rogue generals making mayhem were involved in drugs, too. The DEA set Margaret up in St. Louis with a new identity to protect her. She became a school principal for her career. I only learned all this when she called me last fall to ask if she could come to Boston and stay with me while she reconnected with Bridget.”
“You let her come?”
“Yes. She watches Bridget on TV every night and she watches Ellen, too. Often she’ll go to the practice field in Hyde Park where Ellen trains and sit in the stands to watch her.”
“Then things got hot,” said Tim.
“Hot?”
“The Runner in Red story,” said Delia. “Bridget was getting close to solving that, and that raised a red flag with the DEA. They know all about Margaret’s background, how she was the first woman to run a marathon in America, but they needed to keep the story alive that she was dead in order to continue to protect her.”
“Explain.”
“Some of the generals who planned the attack on her convent are still active. They’re part of a new drug ring down there that’s quite lucrative for them. The last thing they need is to have Margaret alive to testify against them. You can imagine how that crowd would lose if people found out that a nun they tried to kill in 1979 for protecting babies is still alive.”
“Wow,” I said.
“That’s why Clinton wants to get her out of Boston.”
“Clinton?”
“He’s the head of the DEA in
this region these days, the guy who oversees the operation against the rogue generals and the drug cartel.”
“I know Clinton. I met him once.”
“He’s upset that his team in St. Louis let Margaret give them the slip. He didn’t know she was in Boston, but he came to me after you visited our school and put a camera in Margaret’s face.”
“Our school?”
“That day you came to the Washington Irving Middle School. I went out the back door, but you went upstairs and put a camera in Margaret’s face.”
“Margaret? She works at the school?”
“She was the principal, until Clinton and the DEA took her undercover again.”
“The lady who told me ‘All my children are special to me.’ That was Margaret, Bridget’s mother?”
“Our regular principal suddenly took medical leave in October. Downtown needed somebody to fill in fast. Because Margaret had years of experience in St. Louis I was able to get her into that job. It was good for her, since it gave her a chance to work with children again.”
“I was face to face with Margaret?”
“Yes, and that made Clinton nervous that a TV station had her on tape, showing her as alive as can be. That’s not something the DEA wants the rogue generals in El Salvador to know about.”
I didn’t know what to say, and I looked at Finn.
“It’s complicated,” he said.
“You think?!?”
“But that’s only half of it,” said Delia. “That’s Clinton’s motivation for protecting Margaret. She doesn’t care a whit about her own safety. If you knew Margaret, you’d understand that. But Clinton convinced her that if it ever became known she was alive, the forces that hurt the children when she was the Mother Superior might start a whole new round of carnage to pressure her to keep quiet. That’s what Margaret cares about, the impact this could have on others, and that’s why she’s willing to do what Clinton says, to keep others from getting hurt.”
A tee-ball team of little girls in blue Dorchester Plumbing t-shirts poured in for ice cream following their game. We let them order and make their noise, then we picked up once it was quiet again.
“What do you want me to do?” I said.
“We don’t have much time,” Delia said. “Clinton wants to fly her out tonight. He wants to get her back to St. Louis. Then he plans to change her identity again and move her to a new city. Start all over again to keep the story going that she’s dead.”
“She leaves tonight?”
“Clinton has her booked on a flight at 8 pm. But he agreed to let her have a meeting at the gate with Bridget before they board. A short meeting, but it will give Margaret the chance she’s been waiting for her whole life and I’m sure Bridget would love that, too, to meet her mother.”
“Can you be the middleman?” Tim Finn asked me.
“Sure,” I said without hesitation, but I had one more question, this one for Finn. “Tim, are you Bridget’s father?”
“No, her uncle.”
He had a photo in his wallet of the 1951 D.A.A. championship team. He tapped the image of a tall, crew cut blonde fellow standing next to him in the picture. “That’s Ben, my brother. He took a fancy to Margaret after her gutsy run in the ’51 Boston Marathon.”
“Where’s Ben now?”
“Cambodia, May, 1970. He was a Marine Colonel when his chopper went down with our other brother from the running team, Jimmy.”
“She’ll be proud to know that her father was brave,” Delia said.
I paused to absorb the fact of that loss, then I said, “I don’t get it. A simple thing like a girl gets pregnant, and so many lives get damaged.”
“Margaret was mortified,” Delia said. “You have no idea how angry Poppa was with her.”
“Still, I don’t get it. All the lives that have been damaged or destroyed.”
“The power of shame,” Tim said. “It was a different time, a world long gone.”
“What do you need me to do?” I said.
Before I got to the TV station I called Stan and asked him to get the out-takes from the video I had shot at the school in Dorchester.
“We don’t usually keep tape for stories we don’t do. I can’t promise you your tape is still around,” he said.
I asked him to do his best and I told him to meet me in the parking lot with the Beta cassette if he could find it. “And order me a truck.”
“A truck?”
“A truck with a monitor where I can play the tape, but make sure the tape you give me is the only copy. Sorry if I’m being cryptic, but call Bridget, too, and ask her to meet me in the parking lot ASAP.”
“These are cryptic times,” he said, and I understood all over again why Bridget valued his friendship so much.
“What’s going on?” Bridget said, as she slid in on the passenger side of the truck which I had parked behind the maintenance garage.
“Anybody see you?”
“No, what’s up?”
“You remember this,” I said, and I popped in the cassette from Stan, which he had found. It showed the footage I had shot at the Washington Irving the day we had gone looking for Delia Delaney.
“Yes. But we didn’t do that story. We did the girls in track shoes.”
“Good thing we didn’t do the story. Otherwise, we would have exposed your mother to real danger.”
She looked at me crookedly. “What’s going on, Colin?”
“That’s your mother,” I said, and I pointed to the monitor and the shot of the elderly woman in the floral dress who covered her face and started crying as I peppered her with questions.
I could see Bridget gasp, and she sat back in her seat. Then she leaned in close to the monitor and stared at the woman with the deep blue eyes. “That’s Margaret?”
“Yes, we were close that day. But you’re going to get another chance.”
She looked at me, crookedly again, and I told her about my meeting with Tim Finn and Delia.
“Delia said Margaret wants to see you at the airport tonight, but you have to promise me one thing, Bridget.”
She nodded. “What?”
“You have to promise me you won’t do anything to compromise her. She’s in danger, and you can’t do anything that might reveal who she is.”
“I promise.”
“You gotta promise me, Bridget!”
“I promise,” she said, and she looked at her watch. “It’s 6:30. Let’s get to the airport. We can take my car.”
“One thing I gotta do first,” I said, and I removed the tape from the cassette player. I pulled the tape out in a long string, destroying it.
“Now we can go,” I said.
The line to pass through screening at Logan International Airport on that busy Saturday night looked like the finish line of a marathon. The crowd jammed the three metal detectors leading to the American Airlines gates like clogged shoots at the end of a race.
Jack, Ellen, and Pop came from the other direction as we arrived. They had been at Pop’s house when Bridget called inviting them to share the special moment with her.
“How much time we got?” Bridget said to me.
“There’s half an hour before they close the doors. We’re good,” I said, and I waved to Jack, Ellen, and Pop to follow us.
We got through screening and ran to Gate 32 at the end of the concourse, where I saw Clinton standing with a large group of elderly men and women. The group had a banner, “St Louis Garden Club,” which served as the rally point for the group to gather around before their flight.
“St. Louis, Flight 67, boarding at Gate 32,” came the call over the PA.
Smart of Clinton, I thought, to hide Margaret among a group of elderly Garden Club passengers going to the same destination. Many of the ladies had blue hair and the men were mostly paunchy and bald.
I scanned the crowd for Margaret and I saw her standing behind Clinton. She blended in perfectly in her brown coat and gray wool knit hat. I looked at Bridget, who was scanning the group. I watched her eyes, filled as they were with anticipation to be this close, feet away from the person who would provide the missing element in her life, the woman whose face—once she saw it—would fill a hole she had carried for a lifetime.
Then she saw her!
Bridget’s eyes opened wide as she found Margaret’s eyes in the Garden Club crowd and Margaret found hers. They locked in on each other and smiled, at the same moment there came a commotion in the corridor behind us leading to the gate.
“Hold the flight!” Steele said as he came running with a cameraman. Behind him, Roman and Junior came running, too.
“Oh, Christ!” I heard Clinton say.
I saw Bridget take a step toward Margaret, and I stepped in front of her to block her.
“No,” I said.
“I must.”
“You promised!”
She looked into my eyes. “This is my mother, Colin. I need to touch her.”
“Touch her and you’ll leave a hole where your soul used to be,” I said, as Steele and his cameraman ran up to us. Steele ordered his man to point the camera at Bridget and pull in tight on her eyes.
“Bridget, who’s your mother?” Steele said, as Bridget continued to stare at me, pleading almost.
At the gate Clinton worked quickly with the gate agent to gather the Garden Club crowd and board them.
Bridget glanced at me one last time, then took a step toward the group as Clinton waved his arms like a pinwheel to corral the elderly travelers. He moved them swiftly toward the airplane door as Steele directed his cameraman to follow Bridget.
“Follow her eyes,” he said. “Stay on her eyes!”
Bridget looked to the side to avoid looking at Margaret, and Margaret did the same, except for one brief moment when their eyes connected, and I saw the pain and longing and loss in both their expressions.
“Who’s your mother, Bridget?” Steele said. “Show us the Runner in Red!”