Irish Crystal

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “If I had to face that sister-in-law in court”—he had laughed—“I’d resign.”

  “It would be the wise thing to do.”

  His father, however, was not in such a playful mood.

  “All this attention,” he had begun, with a wry grin, “will not help our business. Would you trust your will to a firm that almost blew up twice?”

  “I would,” I had replied, “especially if they were smart enough to survive. I’d figure they were very ‘cute’ indeed, as we say across the sea.”

  Then he began to talk about his wife, who was clearly the favorite subject of his conversation.

  “Estelle,” he told me, as if in confidence, “is a remarkable woman. When I married her, she was a child. So was I, as far as that goes. We both had a lot of growing up to do. She was in her thirties when she blossomed. I’m not sure I’ve grown up yet. She had a very difficult childhood. I think she married me to escape from her family. In part anyway. My childhood was no picnic but it was a lot better than hers. For the first years of our marriage she had to try to catch-up with me. After that I’ve been the one who’s played catch-up. I admit that it’s kind of fun chasing after a woman like Estelle.”

  His face softened and his eyes glowed. I wondered if me own man ever felt that way, except maybe when he was starting to ride me—a terrible thing to think. Especially since it isn’t true!

  “Wouldn’t she be enjoying it too!”

  “Ah, Nuala Anne, aren’t you the perceptive young woman! Still, she’s very vulnerable, though one wouldn’t notice it.”

  “Only if one were blind,” says I, reverting to me fishwife self.

  “Her personality is pasted together, understandably. Stress and strain threaten it. She’s threatened now.”

  “Och,” says I like I was Sigmund Freud hisself, “a woman can be vulnerable and tough at the same time. That one of yours is as tough as they come. She has a powerful will to live.”

  He cocked his eye at me and smiled.

  “Takes one to know one, I suppose.”

  Didn’t me face grow very warm just then? So I didn’t say anything at all, at all.

  “I can’t figure out for the life of me who would want to dispatch us so violently. None of us have serious enemies. In our kind of law we don’t make serious enemies. The Feds are talking about the mob being involved. We don’t deal with the mob. If one of them came in and asked us to help with their taxes, we’d argue that our platters were full. But they wouldn’t come. They know who and what we are and they go to their own anyway. I know some of their lawyers, but only on a nodding basis. Why would they go after us? We don’t own anything in Las Vegas.”

  “It’s not them fellas,” I said.

  I almost called them gobshites, but the atmosphere was too dignified for such Irish terms.

  “Are you sure?” he asked, his eyes widening.

  “I am … Could it be an old grudge from the past?”

  “From my father’s day or my grandfather’s? Perhaps. They certainly made their fair share of enemies. But they’re all dead as far as I know. Maybe their children would want some revenge, but why now? It’s been a long time.”

  “They didn’t get along very well, did they?”

  A pleasant-looking matronly administrative assistant brought in a teapot.

  “Would you pour for us, Nuala Anne? The Irish always do it with so much more grace.”

  “’Tis because we had nothing more to do with our time than be graceful,” says meself.

  He was pleased with me grace, I could tell by the look in his eyes still. He was thinking of another graceful woman, which was fine with me. A man drinks in another woman with his eyes, not because he really wants her but because he wants another woman who isn’t available at the moment.

  “Black Bart and Long Tom did not get along at all. I think that Dad found it hard to be a father because he had no one to imitate. He joined the army in the late thirties to get away from his father, whom he described often as a lecherous old crook, not inaccurately from what I’ve been able to gather. Yet when Dad graduated from Loyola Law after the war Bart knew it was time to transform the firm. The rules were changing, the implicit rules about what you can get away with in this city and what you can’t get away with. He and Dad fought all the time about how to do it and Dad usually won, though, from what he tells me, Bart would claim credit.”

  “Your grandfather fooled around?”

  “Constantly … Dad didn’t like it but didn’t try to stop it.”

  “How did you get along with your grandfather?”

  “I might just as well not have existed. He wasn’t rude, he wasn’t crude. I just didn’t exist.”

  “That bothered you?”

  “Yes it did, but Dad was easy to work with most of the time, so it wasn’t so bad … Occasionally when Dad went into his moods, war stuff I guess, he would explode. Never at me, never at Mom—he would have been afraid to do that—always at Granddad. Those were scary times. He’d get drunk and curse and fire people. Mom would straighten him out. He wouldn’t apologize, but he never complained when I rehired the people he had fired.”

  “Your family life must have been difficult?”

  “Not when Mom was alive. My mother was a wonderful, patient, loving woman. I learned a lot about women from her, though probably, given my life since then, not enough. She wasn’t very good at expressing affection, which made it unanimous around the old house on the River.”

  “Both your father and your grandfather left the firm, didn’t they?”

  Wasn’t I trying to get at their family life, which did not seem to have been very good? I couldn’t get it out of me head that there was something back there that might be at the root of the problem.

  “Bart walked out one day after one of Dad’s explosions. I was working there as a clerk. Dad called him every foul name I had ever heard, most of them probably applying. Bart told him to go kill a few more Japs and get it out of his system. Dad tried to strangle him. Joe McArdle, a partner in those days, and I pulled him off. Bart walked off and never came back. His lawyers cut a very hard bargain with us for his share of the firm. Unfair, I would say. But Dad gave him whatever he wanted, he was so glad to be rid of him. There were undercurrents beneath undercurrents in the office till then. After Bart left, Dad smoothed things out and our billings grew rapidly. He was a hell of a good lawyer, still is, I suppose. Never blew up at me. Went out of the office and had his tantrums. I don’t know who he might have offended during those times. Then my mother and grandfather—Elizabeth and Bart—died in the same year. Dad told me suddenly that he’d had enough Chicago for one lifetime and wanted to move to Florida. I could take over the firm if I wanted it. I was in my early thirties with a couple of kids and an unhappy wife, but I didn’t want anyone else to buy it. His price, unlike his own father’s price, was very reasonable, given inflation. We signed the deal, down payment and long-term note. We shook hands and he left the office, never to return. He flew to Florida the next day without saying good-bye and never came back to Chicago. We bought a condo near his, not nearly so elaborate and see him sometimes when we are down there.”

  “Sometimes?”

  “Some years he’s away. Some years he didn’t want visitors. I think all the little kids got on his nerves, though he was always charming to them … You have to understand, Nuala Anne, that we Currans are long on charm and long on moods. I was too until Stelle cured me of them.”

  “How did your father get along with her?”

  “He told me not to marry her because she was an emotional mess. He was right, but I’m happy now that I ignored his advice. He is always polite and courteous to her, just as he was to my mom. She doesn’t much care for him.”

  “You have paid off the loan to him?”

  “Rather easily because of the Jimmy Carter inflation. We didn’t pay off the loan on the house. It was too small to bother with. He had plenty of money when he left Chicago and still has, I’m sure.
He didn’t stand to gain much when River House blew up … I can understand the reason for your questions, Nuala Anne. Indeed they are very perceptive: My father and grandfather were unusual characters. Heaven only knows what mischief they may have done in their lives, either here or in Ocean Reef, how many women one or the other may have seduced. We may well be paying a price for their misbehavior … I’m inclined to think they covered their tracks pretty well. I’ve told Commander Culhane about them. I expect that he’s checking with the Florida police.”

  “Do you think he remarried?”

  “Not to my knowledge. I suppose that there would be records if he had. He was only a couple of years older than I am when he went to Ocean Reef. He was a big handsome man with a romantic history and, as I’ve suggested, the dangerous Curran charm. Many women, even much younger ones, would have found him irresistible. My hunch is that after Mom’s death he was not interested in another marriage.”

  “Wouldn’t he have been a dangerous predator then?”

  He pondered that question with an expression of pain.

  “I wouldn’t say that. I try not even to think about it. But you’re right. I think he might even enjoy preying on foolish women, still avenging himself on the Japanese. I doubt that there are heirs down there. If there are, they are entitled to his money. We don’t need it and probably wouldn’t take it under those circumstances.”

  “No reason, though, why they should seek to kill you?”

  “Only for revenge of a sort. The police will have to sort that out.”

  “You reported the attack on River House to him?”

  “Certainly … He just laughed and said the old dump should have been blown up long ago.”

  “And the second attack?”

  “He kind of snorted and said I’d better be careful.”

  “So there was not much love between you and himself?”

  He paused to consider that question as I refilled his teacup.

  “A man always wants his father’s affection and respect, I never received much of either. Still, I loved him. I respected what he had done with the firm. I respected his heroism during the war. His Medal of Honor was one of the priceless things lost with River House … We Irish are not much good at expressing affection. I think I’ve learned something about it, especially from Estelle.”

  “And your relationship with your own kids?”

  “How can one tell that. Our kids all seem happy. Trevor is a little strange. No one likes his wife. But he does his thing here at the firm and makes no trouble as long as we leave him alone. He’s very good at it. Jack is an imp, but a very bright imp, as you may have noticed. He pays me the great respect of making fun of me. He’s a dead ringer for Bart, his great-grandfather. Except the mischief in his smile is not mean. So for that matter does my son-in-law Gerry Donovan make respectful fun of me. He figures quite correctly that I enjoy it. It makes for a happy office. They both seem to be proud of my legal abilities, as I am of theirs. Deirdre is her mother all over again, though much more of an adult than Estelle at the same age, something that Estelle tells her often. Deirdre refuses to believe it.”

  “And the two younger ones?”

  “Marie Therese is the brightest of all of us. She’s gone into investment banking to prove she can do it. She’s also going to law school at night. We hope she joins the firm, but, being who she is, she will only after she’s proved her worth.”

  “Fair play to her,” says I.

  “You Irishwomen always stick together!”

  “Only in self-defense.”

  “Father Rory?”

  “He’s the most mysterious of all. It was his decision to be a priest. I had hoped he’d be a Jesuit, but he decided against that. So we sent him to the North American College. He led his class and was ordained in Rome. I began to hope that he might become a bishop, maybe even an Archbishop here in Chicago. The city needs new blood after all these years of Sean Cronin, who has not been the leader he might have been.”

  Only with great difficulty did I refrain from rising to the defense of my Cardinal Sean.

  “And the Cardinal resists continuing his ecclesiastical career?”

  “He seems to think that Father Rory needs more seasoning, whatever that means. So he’s sent him to the Cathedral to work for that truly strange little coadjutor Archbishop.”

  “Ah.”

  “I don’t know what to make of him. Sometimes he disappears like he’s not even there.”

  “I’ve heard that said of him.”

  Blackie Ryan is the only detective in Chicago who might, mind you I say “might,” be better than I am.

  “Father Reide says he’s a brilliant philosopher, but I detect no signs of it.”

  “He and Father Rory do not get along?”

  “Quite the contrary, they seem to get along just fine.”

  Good for Father Rory, I thought to myself. I wanted to be there at the next family dinner where Blackie would be present and dominate in his own ineffectual little way.

  That reminded me of my final and most important question, which scatterbrain that I often am, I almost forgot. Me Dermot would be very upset with me if I had.

  “Your trip to Cortina was a bit of a surprise to the family was it not?”

  “Well, it was a surprise to us. Father Rory called us from Rome with the news that he had been assigned as Associate Pastor to the Cathedral and that he would have to postpone the College of Ecclesiastics for a year or maybe a couple of years.”

  “He seemed disappointed?”

  “One can never tell with Rory. I was certainly disappointed. Estelle was less so. She told me that it was foolish to think our family could take over the Catholic Church, and not worth the effort anyway. Father Rory said that he had heard the skiing was still excellent up at Cortina and suggested we come over for the weekend. We both thought it was a good idea, for perhaps different reasons. So we made reservations and flew over, thanks be to God. Otherwise, we would both be ashes.”

  He shivered, as well he might have.

  “Sure, you wouldn’t be leaving without telling your family?”

  “They all thought we were going to have a quiet time at River House over the weekend. However, when we change our plans, we always notify them, beginning with the oldest that’s available. He or she is supposed to call the next oldest and so on down the line. I phoned Trevor from O’Hare. There was no one home, so I phoned Deirdre and asked her to pass the word on to the others.”

  “So, if someone had access to your plans before Rory called, they would not know, unless they were part of your family or your travel agent, that you would not in fact be in the house.”

  He sighed, not nearly as loudly as I do or even as me man does when he’s making fun of me. I like it when he makes fun of me because it means he loves me.

  “That’s what worries me. The bomber believed we were in the house. Indeed earlier in the week we had planned one of our family dinners, but we canceled it because Stelle and I needed some time alone, either in the house or somewhere else if the opportunity arose. So the bombers might have thought that all of us were there … They were doubtless surprised to find out that all they got for their troubles was an old house. Our angels were working overtime.”

  I found myself fading, not sure what question to ask next. I had collected a lot of information about the family problems of three generations of Currans. I wasn’t quite sure what it all meant. I wondered if John Curran was filtering it all through his own perspective. Yet it did seem likely that he and Estelle, after their second love affair had begun (and maybe before), had begun to break the cycle of pathology that had haunted the Currans for a century. None of this gave me any clues that would reveal who had driven the car bomb up to River House.

  Or maybe it did. I sensed that I had missed something, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

  I thanked John Curran for his patience and assured him that everything would be all right. Weren’t we working for his angels?
>
  He was polite and as always charming but I could tell he was doubtful.

  You blew it, Nuala Anne, and yourself a friggin’ eejit. You should have left this part of the job to poor Dermot, who is good at it, much better than you. He’d remember every word of the conversation with John Curran and I was confused about what he had said and what I was reading into it.

  You’re a focking gobshite and yourself thinking that, because you enjoyed your little tête-à-tête with himself, you can carry the spears as well as pick the insights out of the air. Spear carrying isn’t easy and you should let Dermot do it. You didn’t have a clue all morning. Sure, maybe you’re not so fey anymore. That would be all right too if you weren’t trying to save lives. Should someone kill the Currans won’t it be all your fault?

  Outside the rain had stopped temporarily but weren’t the clouds still streaming towards Lake Michigan the same way they’d come up over Galway Bay. Crowds of people were rushing into the buildings, like bees trying to return to the hives when the light was fading at the end of the day. I glanced at my watch. One-fifteen already. Late lunch hour crowd.

  The lawyers would still be lingering at the bar association talking their usual bull shite. The commodities traders would be dashing to Traders Inn for their first drink of the afternoon. The movers and shakers would be taking their time over at the Chicago Club because no one checked out the time they came back from lunch. I was getting to know Chicago pretty well.

  I removed me cell phone from my purse. It was blinking. A call I’d missed. Maybe kids were sick … Maybe there was something seriously wrong with the tiny one …

  I pushed the voice mail button.

  “Hi, Nuala, Peter Murphy here. I thought you’d like to know that the li’l critter came right on time—12:15 P.M., Thursday afternoon like you said. He and his maw are doing just right fine. Easy delivery, if there are such things. No need for the Caesarian like we feared. We’re calling him Johnpete like we’uns planned.”

  Wonderful! I knew my prediction was right. They always are when it comes to babies. So I was still fey. I just shouldn’t try to be better at Dermot’s work than he is.