Our Lady Of Greenwich Village

by Dermot McEvoy

  “Yes, I would,” said O’Rourke.

  “Would you ask Maggie, Monsignor,” said Sweeney with a gesture of his hand that served as a dismissal, “to bring us some coffee?” Burke bowed and exited.

  “Dagger John,” said O’Rourke with excitement as he pointed to the portrait of John Joseph Hughes on the wall.

  “You recognize the first Archbishop of New York?” said the surprised Cardinal.

  “He’s one of my heroes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because he didn’t take any—” O’Rourke stopped himself just before he said it, “Guff.”

  The Cardinal smiled. “He was a hard man,” he said.

  The archbishop was called Dagger John because, according to legend, the cross he always made after his signature looked like a dagger. Others said the name emanated from the long stiletto-like crucifix he liked to fashion.

  “He was a very good man,” said O’Rourke. “He was basically a Fenian in vestments.”

  “You make him sound like an extremist.”

  “For his day, your Eminence,” said O’Rourke, “he was. His extremism built St. Patrick’s Cathedral on the coppers of Irish scrubwomen. His extremism in defense of our people in the face of Protestant hegemony led to the creation of the Catholic school system, the hospitals, and the universities.”

  “Fordham University was his,” agreed the Cardinal.

  “I love the story about those Catholic bigots,” said O’Rourke, “the Know-Nothings coming to New York City in the 1840s, thinking arson.”

  “Archbishop Hughes,” said the Cardinal proudly, “knew how to handle them.”

  “Yes,” said O’Rourke, “he said if one Catholic church was torched, he would burn the city to the ground, à la Napoleon, making New York a second Moscow. He put the fear of Jesus into the Protestant hierarchy.”

  “The fear of Jesus,” replied the Cardinal with a smile, “can be truly marvelous to observe.”

  There was a knock on the door, and an older woman entered with a tray holding a silver coffeepot and cups. The Cardinal gestured to a couch and the coffee was put on a table in front of it. “Thank you, Maggie,” said the Cardinal as she poured their coffee. Finished, she quietly exited the room. “He was a good looking man,” said Sweeney, “with a fine head of hair.”

  “Did you know he wore a toupee?” O’Rourke asked before taking his first sip.

  “Who?”

  “Dagger John.”

  Sweeney raised his eyebrows in surprise. “No!”

  “Yes!”

  “He must have been a vain man,” said the Cardinal.

  “No,” said O’Rourke, “he was just a man.”

  The Cardinal stared at O’Rourke in response to his cryptic answer. “It’s a shame,” he said, “that I am to be put in charge of disassembling Archbishop Hughes’s work.” O’Rourke nodded. “With the faith of our fathers dwindling, I am forced to close some of Archbishop Hughes’s churches and schools. That is why I wanted to meet you. To thank you for your help.”

  “Help?”

  “For your support of St. Bernard’s School down in the West Village. It was a generous endowment. Without your money I would be forced to close that wonderful old school.”

  O’Rourke turned red. “You weren’t meant to know about that.”

  “I know,” said Sweeney, “but Monsignor Burke let it slip. He did not mean to betray your trust. It just happened.”

  “I may have to take a little Fenian justice to the good monsignor,” said O’Rourke lightly.

  The Cardinal felt comfortable with this man, whom he expected to dislike. “I want to thank you for these columns,”said the Cardinal, holding two recent “Eye on New York” clippings out for inspection: Reilly’s “Oops, It’s Opus Dei” and “I Am Your Worst Nightmare” columns.

  “Cyclops did those,” said O’Rourke, “not me.”

  “But I understand you were the man behind it, using a private detective to find out about Father Costello.”

  “The Reverend Doctor Costello,” corrected O’Rourke.

  “Yes,” said the Cardinal with a chuckle, “how august. I should never have taken Costello’s advice and done that man’s radio show,” said the Cardinal. “I was such a fool. Monsignor Burke was right. Bourne is a bigot.”

  O’Rourke nodded. “You should listen to Johnny Pie more. He is a man with his finger on the pulse of this great city.”

  Johnny Pie, thought the Cardinal with a smile. “I also want to ask you for your forgiveness.”

  “Forgiveness for what?”

  “Because I judged you without knowing you. It was hubris on my part,” confessed the Cardinal. “Perhaps, knowing now what I know, I shouldn’t have endorsed Congressman Swift.”

  “There are worse people than Jackie Swift in this world, believe me,” said O’Rourke. “Anyway, your endorsement only helped me.”

  “How so?”

  “Your condemnation might seem like a negative, but it’s really a positive.”

  “In what way?”

  “With gays, liberals.” The Cardinal nodded. “If they knew I was here, it would cost me votes.”

  “You are a manipulator of people,” said the Cardinal.

  “As are you,” replied O’Rourke, though not in a threatening way.

  “We share a profession, I think,” said Sweeney, as if something was bothering him.

  “What is it, Eminence?”

  The Cardinal shrugged. “I get such bad advice sometimes.”

  “Like I said, listen to Monsignor Burke.”

  “You’re right,” said Sweeney. “Unfortunately, I’ve been listening to Father Costello and Vito Fopiano.”

  “They are frauds of the same stripe. They have no respect for anything that is just or decent.”

  “The same has also been said about you,” said the Cardinal squarely, but not sharply.

  O’Rourke measured his words carefully. “Your Eminence, I have tremendous respect for you and the Holy Mother Church.” The Cardinal nodded. “We are in very traumatic times. The country is in the hands of people like Jackie Swift and Rupert Murdoch and Bourne-in-the-Morn and I, as a Catholic and a Democrat, have a duty to challenge them and their philosophy. These are the new Know-Nothings, Neo-Know-Nothings, if you will.” O’Rourke gave a little laugh, then the smile left his face. “I wish you would put their feet to the fire sometimes.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You take great delight in dropping the hammer on politicians like me,” he said quietly, “but you give reactionary Republicans a lot of rope.”

  “That’s not true,” replied the Cardinal.

  “Yes, it is,” said O’Rourke.

  “Give me an example.”

  “You always jump on politicians who are pro-abortion, but you never condemn politicians who are pro-execution.”

  “Give me an example.”

  “George W. Bush. He’s fried 152 souls as governor of Texas.”

  “I didn’t realize it was that many,” replied the Cardinal.

  “Does the number matter?” Sweeney shook his head vigorously. “Half may have been guilty, Eminence, but I’ll guarantee that at least a quarter were innocent and another quarter were imbeciles. And my calculations are conservative.”

  “Maybe I should have been more robust in my defense of life,” admitted the Cardinal. “But that does not prove your point about me being prejudiced against politicians like you.”

  “How about when George W. Bush went to Bob Jones University, desperate after he lost the New Hampshire Primary to John McCain earlier this year?” asked O’Rourke. “I didn’t hear you say a word. You gave comfort to the enemy.”

  “Why is Bush the enemy?”

  “Because of anti-Catholic moves like Bob Jones University,” said O’Rourke.

  “Perhaps we should move on from Bob Jones,” replied the Cardinal.

  “Just remember, Eminence, that these Neo-Know-Nothings are the same group that Dagger John Hughe
s fought. They haven’t changed in 150 years. They still hate us.”

  “Isn’t hate too strong a word?” asked the Cardinal.

  “I don’t think so,” said O’Rourke. “The only thing these guys worship is money, plain and simple. I may not be much of a Catholic, but nevertheless I was born one, and I’ll die one.”

  “What does your Catholicism have to do with your politics?”

  “Everything,” said O’Rourke with a small smile. “At my advanced age, I finally realize that being a Catholic has been the most awesome influence of my life.”

  “How can that be?” asked the Cardinal incredulously. “A good Catholic can’t be for abortion.”

  “I am not for abortion,” said O’Rourke, and he thought of Sam and their baby. “Being pro-choice does not mean I’m pro-abortion. Personally, I find it abhorrent, but I also believe in the strict separation of Church and State,” he said firmly, but quietly.

  “But the Church teaches against abortion.”

  “Yes,” said O’Rourke, “but the Church also teaches the sanctity of free will.”

  “Then free will has taken you in the wrong direction.”

  “That is for God to decide,” said O’Rourke, standing his ground.

  The Cardinal remained silent for a second. “You are a difficult man,” said the Cardinal. He looked at the coffee in his cup, which he held like a chalice. Unconsciously, he swirled the remaining coffee around in the bottom of the cup like it was sacrificial wine. Finally, he spoke. “Yes, you are a difficult man, a difficult Catholic, even. But I think, perhaps, that you are a good man, too.” He stood up. “I’ve enjoyed our meeting.”

  “I’ve enjoyed it also,” said O’Rourke as the Cardinal softly touched the back of his jacket, moving him toward the door.

  “May God protect you.”

  O’Rourke looked at Dagger John’s portrait one last time and smiled. “Isn’t it is a terrible thing, to fall into the hands of the living God?’” he said.

  The Cardinal stared at O’Rourke then opened the door. “Monsignor Burke,” he called down the hall. “Could you show Mr. O’Rourke out?” With that he turned and reentered the study. He walked up to the painting of Dagger John Hughes and exhaled. The eyes of the Cardinal locked on the painting and he wondered if the Archbishop actually had worn a wig 150 years ago. Then the Cardinal began to laugh—hard.

  “Your Eminence,” said Burke, rushing back into the room with alarm. “Is everything alright?”

  “Yes—” The Cardinal stopped because he had almost called the monsignor “Johnny Pie.” “Yes, Seán Pius, everything is alright.”

  Burke raised his eyebrows because the Cardinal almost never called him by his Christian name. “What did you think of him?”

  “It is a dangerous man,” said Declan Cardinal Sweeney, “who knows history and can quote scripture.” He looked up once more at Dagger John Hughes. “I think, Seán Pius, I may want Wolfe Tone O’Rourke on my side.”

  After his meeting with the Cardinal, O’Rourke came out of the chancellery on Madison Avenue and started walking west to catch the Sixth Avenue subway down to the Village. As he passed the cathedral’s side door on 50th Street, he stopped. He hadn’t been in the cathedral since Bobby Kennedy’s funeral and he didn’t want to visit now. It was a place filled with bad memories, but for some reason he couldn’t tear himself away. He stood looking at the cathedral’s bronze door, afraid to go into St. Patrick’s because of what might be waiting for him. Finally, as if being beckoned by some siren, he walked up the few steps and into the church that had meant so much to so many New Yorkers, including himself.

  He stood in the back, thinking about his last time here. It was in the early morning of June 8, 1968, hours before Kennedy’s funeral mass was to begin. He was an honor guard, standing silently by the coffin that was draped with the American flag. He was waiting to be relieved so he could catch last call at Hogan’s Moat. The Irish are supposed to embrace death. Laugh at wakes and sing the praises of Tim Finnegan, dead until a noggin of whiskey—from the Irish uisce beatha, water of life—brings him back to life. But O’Rourke wanted nothing to do with death and he hated wakes and funerals with a passion. To him they were an embarrassment because he never knew what to say. And how do you say you’re sorry to the pregnant widow because you took the wrong turn and her husband had his brains blown out? O’Rourke, that Saturday morning, had closed his eyes as if trying to deny the reality that had claimed him and the nation. Unconsciously, he had begun to nervously rock on his heels, back and forth. Then he heard the creak. He opened his eyes, but there was nothing amiss. He closed his eyes again and there was another creak. His eyes flew open and he saw there was no one near the casket but him. He could not take his eyes off the box and his mouth became dry.

  The coffin squeaked again, and O’Rourke thought he was going insane. Was the Senator alive inside the box, trying to get out?

  O’Rourke placed his hand on the box, as if to steady himself, and he felt the coffin move to one side. He put his hand on the other side of the casket, and the box shifted the other way.

  O’Rourke then saw it was the old catafalque’s fault. It wasn’t level and the box was able to move when a hand gently touched it. He smiled. It was just Bobby having a little fun with him.

  Now, inside the cathedral, O’Rourke could see that there was no box occupying the center aisle and somehow he felt better. He walked down to the high altar and then sat in a pew close by. Underneath the altar, O’Rourke knew, were the tombs of all the archbishops of the Archdiocese of New York. From the great ceiling of the cathedral, on long wire-strings, red hats called galeros, represented New York’s dead archbishops, ten in all. O’Rourke stared at each and every one of them, wondering which one was Dagger John’s.

  As he sat there, he saw a man in a black suit enter the pew in front of him. He could see it was the Cardinal, strangely anonymous in his own church. Sweeney stiffly kneeled and with the purity of a young boy on the day of his First Holy Communion, placed his hands together, fingers pointed to the ceiling in prayer. Then he started to look up at the ceiling above the high altar. He was also looking at the galeros, very conscious that some day very soon, his own red hat, number eleven, would be among them. The legend in the Church had it that when a red hat fell from its mooring, a soul had ascended into heaven. “In that case,” thought O’Rourke with a small smile, “looks like all the Archbishops of New York are still doing time.”

  O’Rourke felt a special contentment for he knew that he had piqued the Cardinal, just as he had been piqued by the ghost of Bobby Kennedy on that June day so long ago. Then O’Rourke also smiled, for it was obvious that Declan Cardinal Sweeney was searching for the galero that belonged to his ancient predecessor, the irascible archbishop, Dagger John Hughes.

  45.

  O’Rourke was in a daze. He stood outside his apartment building on Charles Street on a beautiful summer’s day and felt as if someone had sucker punched him in the stomach. Slowly, like an old man, he started to walk west towards the river.

  The note had been succinct. “I have to think the baby over. I’m going to my mother’s in Tortola. I’ll call you.”

  O’Rourke got it: Don’t call me, I’ll call you.

  Think the baby over. My God, what a way to put it.

  Since O’Rourke won the Democratic primary on June 19th, their silences had been loud. Two bodies in the same space doing their best to ignore each other. The pregnancy had changed McGuire. She was sick every morning and she placed the blame squarely on O’Rourke. She had become depressed and silent. There were no smiles and no smart-ass asides to keep O’Rourke in his place. O’Rourke could actually physically feel them drifting apart from each other.

  “Is it the baby?” he asked.

  “What do you think?” McGuire responded curtly.

  “I think it’s the baby.”

  “Well, you’re right.”

  “Doesn’t the baby still make you happy?”

&nbs
p; “I’m not sure,” she said. “I’m not sure at all about this child.”

  “What are you not sure about?”

  “That this child should be brought into this world.”

  “Don’t talk like that.”

  “Don’t you talk like that,” she snapped, and O’Rourke knew it was not the time to have a drag-out with her.

  Then this afternoon, after work, the note.

  He walked along Charles and passed the synagogue near the corner of West 4th Street, the Congregation Darech Amuno. O’Rourke’s father used to do free plumbing for the rabbi back in the 1950s. One of his fellow Irish supers asked O’Rourke’s father why the freebie and the response was classic O’Rourke Senior: “Because the rabbi’s a fucking good guy and he’s also a man of God.” O’Rourke walked past the house of poet Hart Crane, who had committed suicide by jumping off the stern of a boat, and envied him. He continued on Charles past Bleecker Street, past the back of the Sixth Precinct and the Bomb Squad and came to a stop on the corner of Charles and Hudson. He crossed over to the Sazerac House restaurant where his friend Nick Pinto used to work, then turned south and headed in the direction of the World Trade Center.

  He walked on Hudson past Ruby Fruits lesbian bar and the Cowgirl Hall of Fame. Past Christopher Street, he found himself in front of St. Luke’s in the Fields, the oldest church in the Village. Well, finally, the Episcopalians seemed to have something on St. Joseph’s over on Sixth Avenue—they were the oldest. He was drawn to the side yard which was surrounded by wonderful brick buildings built in the 1820s. There wasn’t a soul in sight and he found himself face-to-face with the statue of the Blessed Virgin, glorious in her patina, except for her prayerful hands and nose, which glistened like silver from all the hands that had rubbed her throughout the years. This Virgin was the opposite from the ones that had been tormenting him in his dreams. Although her face was uncovered, he could not see this Virgin’s eyes. It was weird. They were open, but they were blanks; there were no eyes. But unlike his dream Virgins, she had a wonderful smile. No teeth, just a line of a warm smile. It reminded him of Rosanna’s smile. And she had a big bust like Rosanna. Then O’Rourke noticed something very strange about this Virgin: she had patina streaks under her eyes, as if she had been crying. Crying, but smiling at the same time. At the base of the statue was a plaque which called Mary, “the Blessed Mother of Christ.” There was a veneer of begrudging Protestant respect there somewhere, mused O’Rourke.