What Matters Most

by Luanne Rice

  “I can see why,” the woman said. “Lovely houses.”

  “A superb place to live,” Seamus said, driving along, heading south, wondering how long it would take to find her, what she looked like, whether they’d recognize each other. His dream was that one day she would come to the Greencastle, climb into his car. Or maybe, at some point in one of his drives, he would spot her walking along the road.

  If that ever happened, he would pick her up. His fare would be out of luck, have to find another way back to Ballsbridge. Seamus would just drive her away, and they’d never stop.

  He’d never let her go again, never.

  Dublin Bay sparkled on their left, and his passenger opened her window, flooding the car with the scent of salt air. The smell of the sea filled Seamus with longing—so deep, bottomless, reminding him as it always did of the beach where he’d thrown away everything that mattered.

  But he drove the American woman along, pointing out the yacht harbor at Dun Laoghaire, the Martello tower at Sandycove where James Joyce wrote part of Ulysses, the Forty Foot where men used to swim nude but now open to all, and the sea air blew through the car, and pieces of his heart rattled in his chest.

  At the Greencastle, the generous breakfast buffet was laid out in the dining room. Long tables overflowed with egg dishes, French toast, bacon, sausage, smoked salmon, raspberries, pineapple, pastries, croissants, Irish soda bread, and pitchers of juice, and Tom went down the line filling his plate and wondering what kind of breakfast Bernie was having at the convent.

  When he returned to the table—right in the center of the elegant room, the best table in the place—a waiter pulled back his chair and handed him his linen napkin. He asked for coffee, even though all his cousins were drinking tea, and the waiter filled his fine china cup.

  Sixtus, Niall, and Billy were all in their seats, dressed for work in dark suits, smiling at him and reminding him of how all Kelly men looked alike—blue-eyed, troublemaking, fun-loving devils. Some had dark hair, others red, but the family resemblance was all in their bright, lively eyes.

  “Jesus,” he said, looking around, “haven’t you ever seen anyone eat breakfast before?”

  “Don’t they feed you in America?” Sixtus asked, nodding at Tom’s plate.

  “Hey,” Tom said, “your hands are so soft, you’ve forgotten what it’s like to work. Gives you an appetite, you know?”

  “Are we going to hear about this again?” Niall asked, pretending to be exasperated. “How we’ve sold our souls to work in offices, and you’re the one true heir to Tadhg Mor O’Kelly?”

  “Tough guy,” Sixtus said, shoveling bacon and eggs onto a slice of buttered toast. “That’s what we’ve got here.”

  “Oh, he’s not so tough,” Billy said. “I did see him cast a glance down the square toward the Rutland Fountain.”

  Tom reddened, surprised Billy would have noticed. It was true that the part of Merrion Square history that interested him most was that the fountain had been installed in 1791 to be used by Dublin’s poor.

  “Jesus,” Sixtus said. “The boy with the big heart, that’s what Bernie said of you once. She’s a romantic, never mind the fact she’s a nun. For the rest of us, you’re just a bit nuts.”

  “A big heart is one thing,” Billy said. “I just hope he’s avoided the Kelly heart.”

  “Oh, enough with that,” Sixtus said. “Your bypass was a hundred percent successful. Tom, see to it Billy does his treadmill every morning while you’re visiting, will you?”

  “Seriously, are you okay, Bill?” Tom asked.

  “Other than being brokenhearted over having such cruel brothers, I’m fine.”

  Tom laughed, shaking his head. He avoided his Irish cousins’ ribbing, living in the United States. Although they visited only every few years, to see him and Chris Kelly and the rest of the American contingent, when they got together, the jokes and laughs came back strong—Hibernian humor with an edge.

  “What brings you over here, anyway?” Niall asked. “You and Sister Bernadette.”

  “Does she need a bodyguard now?” Billy asked. “That’s the only explanation that makes sense. What’s the nunnery coming to, that they let a Sister cross the Atlantic with the likes of you?”

  “Or any man, for that matter,” Niall said. “In our day, there was no fraternizing whatsoever.”

  Sixtus signaled for the waiter to pour his tea, and looked over at Tom, eyes glinting. “I’m thinking Bernie’s after congratulating me on the job I did for Regis. It was a thing of beauty, my argument. You should have seen me before the judge—”

  “Who was up?” Niall asked.

  “Hanrahan,” Sixtus said, and Niall rolled his eyes. “Anyway, it was poetic, the way I presented Regis Sullivan’s case. She’s no murderer, her father’s no murderer, Ireland ought to be ashamed for what they put that family through. If only John and Honor had asked for Kelly help six years ago, none of it would have happened. But the good news is, Regis is off the hook, and they’re all home safe.”

  “Thank you for that, Sixtus,” Tom said, on behalf of Bernie’s family. It was hard to believe that just the day before yesterday he and Bernie had seen John, Honor, and the girls at the Dublin airport, their paths crossing only briefly. He knew that it was John’s homecoming, after six years in prison, that had sparked so many events this summer, including Regis’s memories about the killing, and leading Tom and Bernie to travel here now.

  Sixtus nodded regally, sipping tea. His chest was all puffed out; like Tom, he took pride in his work. It was just that Tom did a different kind of work; he’d turned his back on Kelly riches, feeling they got in the way of his deep roots to a family of fighters and farmers.

  “Now, seriously,” Sixtus said. “You’re staying at Billy and Liza’s, so they’ve probably already heard it. But tell me and Niall: what’re you doing here?”

  “Sister Bernadette has some business to attend to,” Tom said, giving his cousins the line he and Bernie had agreed upon. “And I decided it had been too long since my feet had touched Dublin soil.”

  He tried not to look at his watch. Bernie had called him an hour ago, saying her meeting with Sister Eleanor Marie was right after breakfast; she hoped to get the information she needed for them to get started, and he’d told her he would meet her at O’Malley’s Pub, by the serpentine in St. Stephen’s Green—one of their favorite meeting places from long ago—at eleven, giving them both enough time to get free.

  “What kind of business?” Sixtus asked, eyes narrowing.

  “Something to do with the convent, the order?” Niall asked.

  “Or,” Sixtus said, squinting even more, “something to do with Great-Grandfather Kelly’s land?”

  “It’s not Kelly land anymore,” Tom said. “It belongs to the Sisters of Notre Dame des Victoires and Star of the Sea Academy.”

  “A waste,” Sixtus said, shaking his head. “Giving a beautiful mansion like that to a bunch of religious ascetics who can’t appreciate the stone carvings, or the Italian marble, or the parquet floors, or the French doors, or the bronzes, or the brass hardware, or that exquisite library…”

  “I think the young ladies who attend school there appreciate it,” Tom said. “And don’t be so sure the nuns don’t as well.”

  “Acreage like that on Long Island Sound would fetch quite a nice sum,” Niall mused. “If we could sell it, divide it up and build luxury homes—with a golf course.”

  “Divide it, nothing!” Sixtus said. “I’d keep it for myself. I can just imagine our cousin Chrysogonus gnashing his teeth every time he pulls in the drive to do legal work for the order, wishing Francis X. had had the foresight to keep it for his family. That must burn Chris right up. What’s the point of becoming the most successful family in Connecticut if you can’t own the best piece of property in the state?”

  “Religious orders don’t pay taxes,” Billy said glumly. “You should see my annual tax bill.”

  “Maybe you and Liza can start a s
ect of your own,” Sixtus suggested. “You with a collar and her and the girls with black veils. It would solve your tax problem.”

  Billy waved him off, but Niall laughed at the image. For Sixtus, the moment of humor passed.

  “So, Tom. If it’s not land business, what brings Sister Bernadette to Dublin? She was here as a young woman, wasn’t she? That was the year you came over, too; researching family roots, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” Billy said. “I’d forgotten about that. The year you lived across the Liffey in an apartment you wouldn’t let anyone visit. We all thought you were here to join the IRA.”

  “We don’t know for sure he didn’t,” Sixtus said. “Our American cousin, the biggest revolutionary among us. So caught up in the myth of our family suffering and the poverty we came from, the Great Hunger, fighting the establishment, wasn’t that it, Tom?”

  “Something like that,” Tom said.

  “All I know is, you kept to yourself. You and Bernie Sullivan. The family all thought you were living together—but my mother couldn’t bring herself to think it. ‘He wouldn’t live in sin, not Tom Kelly.’”

  “Isobel thought you’d eloped and were secretly married,” Niall said.

  “Nope,” Tom said. “She wouldn’t marry me.”

  “Were you living together?” Billy asked. “Come on, you can tell us after all this time. You certainly never invited any of us over, and it couldn’t have been because you were afraid we’d see your bachelor quarters. We were all living the single lives ourselves then!”

  “On the other hand, we never saw you two together after a certain point,” Niall mused. “Did she break up with you earlier than we thought? Christ, we never saw Bernie at all! Mother invited her to have holidays with us, but she chose the nuns instead. Guess she already knew she wanted to join the convent.”

  “Another waste,” Sixtus said. “What a pretty girl she was. You lost out, Tom. And you made us Kelly men look bad. The day a Kelly can’t convince a girl to marry him instead of taking religious vows is a sad day indeed.”

  “I’ll agree with you there,” Tom said.

  “So. Once and for all. What’s her business here in Dublin?” Sixtus asked, signaling the waiter to pour him more tea.

  Tom’s heart kicked over. He was certainly not going to tell his cousins Bernie’s reasons for being here, and he wished they’d just stop asking. So he decided to join them at their own game, the sort of teasing that kept them from talking about anything real.

  “Give me that,” Tom said, grabbing the silver teapot, burning his hand on the hot handle. “You need a servant to pour yourself some morning tea? Don’t tell me you make poor Emer wait on you this way…. Jesus, Six. You’re getting too soft. What would Tadhg Mor O’Kelly have to say about that?”

  “He got you good there,” Niall chuckled, peering over at Sixtus.

  And then Tom’s cousins spun off into family myth, legend, and one-upmanship, and Tom knew that he had just bought himself and Bernie a little more time.

  Three

  The meeting with Sister Eleanor Marie had been postponed twice that day: first until after lunch, and then until mid-afternoon. Both times Sister Bernadette had come to Eleanor’s office, waiting in the chair outside, only to have Sister Theodore clump heavily into the hall to tell her Sister Eleanor Marie was on the phone and to please come back at the next appointed time.

  The worst part was that Tom was waiting for her; they had arranged to meet at O’Malley’s Pub. But then Bernie’s meeting was postponed, and she couldn’t get hold of him. U.S. cell phones didn’t work here in Ireland, but she didn’t know that until she had dialed his number ten times, imagining him waiting there, just off St. Stephen’s Green, alone and impatient.

  She had felt a slow burn start, or rekindle, after the first dismissal, and it deepened now. Sitting in the armchair, staring at the closed door, she had a sense of déjà vu. A statue of Mary stood in a small, delicate alcove cut into the wall. Bernie turned toward it, praying to know what to do, what to say, when the time came. She had always felt Mary’s love and guidance, but right now her own emotions were churning so hard, they blocked her from hearing any answers.

  Hearing footsteps from inside the office, she straightened up. The door swung open. Sister Eleanor Marie stood there, tall and thin, her dark eyes glowing behind silver wire-rimmed glasses. She stared at Bernie, and through her; Bernie had the sense of being read up and down, inside out. Rising, she was grateful that Eleanor Marie didn’t attempt to hug her.

  “Welcome back to Dublin, Sister Bernadette Ignatius,” Sister Eleanor Marie said in her Boston accent. “Won’t you come in?”

  They sat across the desk from each other. Bernie took in the office with a quick glance: books in rows of glass-fronted bookcases; a simple mahogany desk, its surface clear of everything but blotter, pen, writing pad, and a loudly ticking brass clock; a cross on one wall; an icon of Our Lady on another; wooden file cabinets visible through an arched and wrought-iron gated door behind the desk.

  The sight of those file cabinets made Bernie tingle. She knew, from her own experience as Superior at Star of the Sea, that the secrets of every nun’s life were contained in a file. Bernie considered them precious—the biographies of her Sisters’ lives, the families they had left behind, the secular hopes and dreams they’d traded so mindfully for a life of prayer, adoration, and hard work.

  “Well, Sister,” Sister Eleanor Marie said, sitting erect at her desk, “what brings you back to Ireland?”

  “I’m here for a very personal reason,” Bernie said.

  Sister Eleanor Marie’s eyes glinted behind her glasses, and she flashed a smile. “You were always very attached to your ‘personal life,’” she said. “To your family. Even after all these years, haven’t you learned that human bonds are purified through separation?”

  “I live it every day,” Bernie said, simmering.

  Again, the quick, hard smile. “Do you? At a convent where you have so much history as a young woman? With your brother and his family living on the grounds? You must be stronger than I. I had to banish my own illusions of self, Sister. Joining the order here in Dublin, far from my native Boston. Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem.”

  “‘From shadows and images to the truth,’” Bernie translated. “My truth has always been love.”

  “To your undoing, I dare to say.”

  Bernie stared across the desk. “Dare to say whatever you want, Eleanor. You and I are equals now. When I first met you, you were the Novice Mistress. You led me through my first year. Now we’re both Sister Superiors. I’m not here as a supplicant. I’m here as a colleague.”

  Eleanor Marie stared, and Bernie felt a shiver go through her bones. What was it about this nun that had always reminded her of a devil? She had such rage in her, simmering just below the surface. Bernie remembered her first year in the order, surrendering each day to grief. While her fellow novices had comforted her, helped her travel from shadow to light, Eleanor Marie had seemed to savor Bernie’s pain.

  “You make yourself clear, Sister,” she said now, giving a clenched smile. “What can I do for you?”

  “I want to know where he is.”

  “He?”

  “My son,” Bernie said.

  “You have no son.”

  “How dare you?” Bernie asked.

  Eleanor Marie’s glasses reflected the lamplight, her eyes were like dark coals in the grate of a stove, banked and burning steadily. “You made your choice,” she said. “You gave him up. No one twisted your arm. No one forced you to hand him over. As a matter of fact, I recall that you were very eager. You had had a vision.”

  Bernie fought to keep from clawing her face. She wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of seeing her look at the icon of Mary. The details of Bernie’s vision were well known to everyone in the order; it had been investigated by no less than the “Miracle Investigator,” an expert in Marian apparitions from Rome.

  “From t
he moment you gave your child to adoption services, you relinquished all rights to him.” Eleanor Marie paused, her smile becoming harder and wider. “I must say, I’ve been expecting this visit for two decades. I never expected you to weather the years without this happening.”

  “This?”

  “Your weakening. I knew from the time I met you that you were not strong enough for this life. Of all the nuns I have overseen through their eight years as novices and postulants, the endurance and surrender and letting go of earthly bonds, you were the one who held on most tightly. Frankly, from the time you left Ireland to join the order in Connecticut, I have been expecting you to walk through the door and ask this question.”

  “Is that why you’ve kept me waiting all day?”

  “All day?” Eleanor Marie asked coldly. “What is ‘all day’? You and I live a life of the eternal. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The ordeal of our daily trials is meant to bring us closer to Him, and to eternity.”

  “Don’t lecture me,” Bernie said. “My spiritual life is between me and God. Not you. Give me my son’s name.”

  “His name is Baby Boy X.”

  “I want my file.”

  “Your file is church property. You have no rights to it. Not just for your own protection, but for that of the order—and even more seriously, and your ego is so great you’re unable to see this—but for the sake of the child.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Have you thought about him at all?” Eleanor Marie asked. “This young man you gave up one day after his birth? Walked away from his life and didn’t look back for twenty-three years? I am the guardian of his life.”

  “Guardian of his life…” Bernie trailed off. For a moment she took the words literally. Had Sister Eleanor Marie somehow become her child’s guardian? She knew that the order maintained an orphanage and several Children’s Homes throughout Ireland. After she gave birth, she’d spent the next twenty-four hours in torment, trying to discern what to do.

  First Eleanor Marie and then—more reassuringly—a different nun from the hospital, one of the nursing Sisters of their order, had promised Bernie that if she decided to give him up, the Sisters would take care of him personally. He would be cared for as if he were their own, and he would be placed with a wonderful family right away, within days. There was a long waiting list of good Catholic couples, desperate for a baby. He would be loved and adored by a family, raised and nurtured as if he were their own son.