But there was no mention of a fishbone in Charlie’s throat so his mother must have been mistaken. Maybe that’s what the parents told the children, to assuage the queer feeling the instant disappearance of Charlie would surely cause.
Grandmother Rosanna was next.
Dáta agus Ionad Báis/Date and Place of Death: 1915, 23 February. 8 Piles Buildings. That name again: Piles Buildings. But this time number 8. O’Rourke was mystified. No sign of Aungier Street anywhere in sight. Had they moved after Charlie’s death?
Aois an lá breithe is déanai/ Age last Birthday: 37 years. She was so young. The math was quick, she was probably born in 1877 or 1878.
Cúis Báis Dheimhnithe agus fad an tinnis/Certified Cause of Death and Duration of Illness:Tuberculosis, about 12 months. Cardiac disease certified.
O’Rourke was horrified. Tuberculosis. He couldn’t believe it. No one died of TB anymore. It was a disease out of the damp history of this island. Thirty-seven, leaving five children, some of them near babies, and an overwhelmed husband.
Síniú, Cáilíocht agus Ionad Cóonaithe an Fhaisnéiseora/Signature, Qualification and Residence of Informant: Joseph Kavanagh, widower of deceased, present at death. 8 Piles Buildings. So his grandfather was with her at the last, perhaps holding the hand that did not contain the rosary? Was the priest there to anoint her? To pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. And where were the children, including O’Rourke’s mother? Big sinner, thought O’Rourke, this Rosanna Kavanagh.
First diphtheria, now tuberculosis. Did you ever hear of two people in one family unit dying from diphtheria and TB within a year? What was going on here? A fourth of the family dying from stupid diseases in the Piles Buildings. The Piles Buildings, another joke gone flat. O’Rourke, the reluctant millionaire, finally realized that his mother’s family had been murdered by poverty.
Joseph Kavanagh.
Dáta agus Ionad Báis/Date and Place of Death: 17 January 1924. Aungier Street Dublin. Well, finally, the street his mother always talked about.
Aois an lá breithe is déanai/ Age last Birthday: 51 years. That would bring his birth date to 1872 or 1873.
Cúis Báis Dheimhnithe agus fad an tinnis/Certified Cause of Death and Duration of Illness: Chronic nephritis certified. Bad kidneys. A gift from the Black and Tans because he would not tell them where his IRA sons were?
Joseph Owen Kavanagh. Joe Jr.
He remembered his death date well, just before Christmas 1961. His mother tried to get home to Dublin but couldn’t because of all the holiday bookings. Not many Aer Lingus flights in those days. Travel was a big deal. Uncle Joe would be buried without immediate family. Another lonely Kavanagh funeral at Glasnevin.
Dáta agus Ionad Báis/Date and Place of Death: 1961, 21 December. St. Ita’s Hospital, Portrane. 26 Temple Lane off Dame Street, Dublin. A new address. Temple Lane in the now hip Temple Bar district. O’Rourke knew it well. It was just an alley running off Dame Street, where George’s Street begins. A short jog from the Olympia Theatre. Just across the street from his favorite pub, the Stag’s Head. He was told by his godfather, way back in the 1970s, that some of his mother’s people had lived there. Was this a clue?
Aois an lá breithe is déanai/ Age last Birthday: 60. Joseph would live to be the oldest of the Kavanagh men, a mere sixty years, two months. Was this a warning to O’Rourke?
Cúis Báis Dheimhnithe agus fad an tinnis/Certified Cause of Death and Duration of Illness: Myocardial degeneration, 6 months, arteriosclerosis certified, 1 year.
A bad ticker from all the smokes—every photo O’Rourke had ever seen of his Uncle Joe had been punctuated by the blazing faggot in his hand. O’Rourke’s mother used to send him money religiously to keep him in smokes. Tobacco and the Irish diet of grease encased in grease suffocated Joe’s poor heart.
So that was the history of the gravestone up in Glasnevin. The research room was beginning to fill up with Americans. O’Rourke sat, utterly deflated. He couldn’t get his grandmother, Rosanna, out of his mind. He could see the picture he had at home of her. There she sat in sepia at a table with the grandfather. She was on the right. A book in her hand. Looking at the camera. She had that wide Conway mouth that his mother had inherited. There was no smile, just a line. But she was not cross in the photo, which was obviously taken in a studio. Her eyes smiled and you could see that they must have lit up when she was happy. The grandfather, with the splendid handlebar mustache, sat to the left, his mouth slightly ajar. O’Rourke guessed it was about 1911. She had four years to live. O’Rourke thought about Patrick Pearse, who lived yards from this very office, and the Dublin of his grandmother came into focus.
Rosanna died in 1915, a pregnant year for Ireland. In May, the RMS Lusitania sets sale from Pier 52 at the foot of West 12th Street—oddly enough, the border separating the parishes of St. Veronica’s and St. Bernard’s. The queen of the Cunard Line meets the U-20 off the Old Head of Kinsale in County Cork. Kapitänleutnant Walter Schwieger peers through his periscope, shouts “Torpedo loose!” and the gravediggers work overtime. Dublin is a city full of revolutionaries waiting for the next Easter. Big news that summer was the death of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa, the mad Fenian who had died on Staten Island in June. On Tom Clarke’s order, the indefatigable John Devoy dug Rossa up and sent him home for show. “The fools, the fools, the fools!” said Pearse—who would face the wall at Kilmainham and earn a quicklime grave himself within nine months—“they have left us our Fenian dead.” But Grandmother Rosanna did not hear Pearse, for she had already made Glasnevin the previous February. She lived somewhere on Aungier Street, according to his mother. But that was not true. She lived and died in the scatologically named Piles Buildings, Arthur’s Lane. She had four sons in addition to his mother. Joe and Frank would be IRA gunmen, one boy, Charlie, his mother had repeatedly misinformed him, would choke to death on a Friday fishbone and the other one, Dick, would grow up in an orphanage, like O’Rourke’s mother. Did Charlie’s death grieve Rosanna into tuberculosis? Did she give up hope? Did she stop believing in the Virgin Mary? When she was dying did she wonder if she would ever see summer again? Did she wonder who would take care of her children? Did she wonder, “why me?” Did she ask why her Blessed Virgin had deserted her?
It was time to get moving, but O’Rourke had a hunch. Because his mother always made a big deal out of Uncle Joe’s birthday—October 10, 1901—he decided to try and find his grandparents’ marriage certificate. If there was one thing the poor the world over did for nothing, it was fuck and fuck often. O’Rourke made a wild guess and asked for the marriage index for 1900. He immediately went to the quarter beginning July 1 and searched. A Kavanagh showed up on September 17, marrying a Conway. He filled out the slip and waited for the verdict.
Ainm agus Sloinne/Name and Surname: Joseph Kavanagh. Rosanna Conway.
Sollúnaíodh an Pósadh/Marriage Solemnized at: the Catholic Church of St. Michael & John. On Wood Quay, facing the Liffey.
Staid/Condition: Bachelor. Spinster. O’Rourke smiled at the spinster notation. It was a word that, pronounced viciously enough, could stick in the craw of an unmarried Irish woman.
Gairm Bheatha/Rank or Profession: Hairdresser for him. Blank for her. Rosanna must have done something, but the state, British at that time, thought it unimportant.
Ionad Cónaithe/Residence at the time of Marriage: the groom, 40 Camden Row. The bride, 26 Temple Lane. There was the Temple Lane reference again, just as in Uncle Joe’s death certificate. That must have been Rosanna’s home. Camden Row was only blocks away from Temple Lane. This was beginning to sound like a neighborhood romance.
Ainm agus Sloinne an Athar/Father’s Name and Surname: Joseph Kavanagh (deceased). Richard Conway (deceased). So that’s how Uncle Dick got his name. And for the first time O’Rourke knew his great-grandfathers’ first names.
Gairm Bheatha an Athar/Rank or Profession of Father: Kavanagh was a Labourer; Conway a Cabinet Maker. Not only did Uncle Dick get h
is name from his grandfather, but he also inherited his grandfather’s carpentry skills which he used to make altars dedicated to the Virgin Mary.
In ár bhFianaise/in the Presence of us: John Kavanagh was best man; Elizabeth Reilly was maid of honor. O’Rourke knew his grandfather’s brother, Jack, lived in Dun Laoghaire and had lived into his 80s, dying in the 1950s after the family had immigrated to America. He was clueless about his grandmother’s friend, Elizabeth Reilly. He made a note to tell Cyclops.
So many of the family secrets had been revealed and O’Rourke, after only an hour’s work, felt exhausted, but in a way exuberant. He now knew where he had come from. He didn’t know if it helped him in any way, but he felt more complete. There were literally hundreds of relatives on the O’Rourke side, stretching from Dublin into Meath and Louth and down to Wexford, but it was this little Kavanagh family of seven that had caught his fascination. Now all dead, but not forgotten. At least not in this moment.
49.
The following morning O’Rourke was back at the Registar’s Office in Lombard Street. He started collecting birth certificates for the Kavanagh children. He knew both Uncle Joe’s and his mother’s birthdays and got the certificates. He backtracked with Charlie the ten years the gravestone said and sure enough found him in January 1904, the year of Joyce’s Ulysses. Did Joyce and Nora Barnacle ever come across the Kavanagh clan as Rosanna wheeled Charlie’s pram across St. Stephen’s Green? Did Nora see little Joseph clutch onto his mother’s skirt or hold his da’s hand in the Bloomtime summer of 1904?
He knew his Uncle Frank was born on November 2nd, All Souls Day. O’Rourke searched the index books for 1902 and 1903 and only came up with a Myles Francis Kavanagh. He got the certificate, but it was not the right Frank. “Myles,” laughed O’Rourke. Boy, was that the wrong fucking name for Frank Kavanagh, the meanest son-ofa-bitch O’Rourke had ever encountered in his life—and that was saying something.
Frank Kavanagh, after his IRA troubles, somehow got to America in the early 1920s, probably illegally, probably as a seaman. He had Hollywood good looks that would put Clark Gable to shame. He loved booze and women and plenty of both. His habit was to work for six months at sea, come back to New York and drink and whore until his money ran out, and then go back out to sea. During World War II he shipped out with the merchant marine and his ship was torpedoed by the Japanese in the South Pacific. He spent nearly three years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. He lived on rice and fishheads. Then it was POW bait. Today they call it sushi.
The only thing Frank hated more than the Japanese were the British, who had, in effect, chased him out of his own country. One of the great indignities of his life was being liberated from the Japanese by the British army. Even after twenty-five years, the IRA man inside remained belligerent. As he came out of the camp, dressed in a thong, a British Tommy in sympathy said, “How are ya, mate?”
Frank Kavanagh took one look at the soldier and let out a well directed, “Go fuck yerself, ya British cunt!” The Tommy almost collapsed, he was so shocked. Frank may have weighed only ninety pounds, but his malicious Irish memory was perfect.
After the war he lost a leg at sea in an accident and moved to Greenwich Village—in St. Veronica’s Parish—to be close to the O’Rourkes. He expected young Tone to come and do his grocery shopping every day after school. Tone wanted to play ball like his hero Willie Mays of the New York Giants. He wanted to perfect the basket catch that Willie used at the Polo Grounds uptown. Tone stopped showing up to do the grocery shopping. Frank got madder than usual. When Frank passed away a few years later, Tone was out of Frank’s substantial will. O’Rourke smiled, thinking of the hard life lesson that Frank Kavanagh had taught him early on.
As usual, Frank was continuing to be difficult. O’Rourke was sure of his birthday, November 2, but could not find him in either 1902 or 1903. Charlie was 1904 so O’Rourke went to 1905—and there was Frank. The first surprise was that Charlie was between Joe and Frank.
O’Rourke’s mother was next in 1907 and then he had to look for Richard, his Uncle Dick, after her. He went to 1909 to give Rosanna a year’s break and found Richard on October 16.
The only difference in all the birth certificates was that Dick was the only one not born at 40 Camden Row. It was the grandfather’s home when he got married and apparently, Rosanna had moved there and raised the family. Dick was born in the Rotunda Hospital in Parnell Square. O’Rourke wondered at the reason. Was it a tough pregnancy or was it becoming the fashion to have babies in hospitals by 1909?
The family was complete and O’Rourke felt rather proud. Rosanna and Joseph had been prolific the first nine years of their marriage:
Joseph, October 10, 1901
Charles, January 17, 1904
Francis, November 2, 1905
Mary, March 18, 1907
Richard, October 16, 1909
O’Rourke was one of those people who looked for significance in everything. He truly believed that serendipity meant something. The dates jumped out at him. His mother was born on March 18, the day after St. Patrick’s Day. St. Patrick’s Day was always a two-day celebration to O’Rourke because of his mother. He also noticed that his Uncle Dick was born on October 16. He shared his birth date with Michael Collins. O’Rourke smiled. Somehow, he couldn’t see Michael Collins building temples to the Virgin Mary in each room of his apartment.
Charlie’s birthday was the oddest. January 17. It must have been a date of immense joy in 1904 when he was born. And O’Rourke wondered if his grandfather was aware of it when he died 20 years to the date of Charlie’s birth in 1924?
In a strange, benign way O’Rourke was suddenly curious about the mating habits of his grandparents. Kids in 1901, 1904, 1905, 1907, and 1909. What the hell was going on in 1902 and 1903? He doubted they had come up with some amazing form of birth control, which left the question, was there a miscarriage or an infant death, or even a stillbirth? It was a distinct possibility considering the fertility of this young, robustly sexual couple. O’Rourke thought of going through the birth and death books one more time, but he just wasn’t up to it. For now, at least, he would let his imagination dictate what was going on over at 40 Camden Row.
O’Rourke left Joyce House and walked down Pearse Street to the Dublin City Library and Archive. He had used it before when he was working on Mary Robinson’s campaign for the Irish presidency in 1990. He went upstairs and headed for the Thom Directories, a great source of information on Dublin going back to the mid-nineteenth century. It listed every business in the city, by street name. He decided to look in the 1900 book and searched for Camden Row, #40. There it was: Joseph Kavanagh, hairdresser. He continued going backwards until he got to 1893 and found another barber had the business in that year. Did O’Rourke’s grandfather buy that business? Now O’Rourke went forward. Nineteen-ten was the last listing for Joseph Kavanagh at 40 Camden Row. Since all but one of the children were born there, they must have also lived in the building. After sixteen years of business on Camden Row why did he suddenly move? Why the economic downturn? Too many mouths to feed?
The librarian directed O’Rourke to some maps of Dublin City and he immediately checked the key for the Pile’s Buildings. To his astonishment, they were there in postal code Dublin 8, and it also gave the street name Golden Lane, which was just to the south of Aungier Street, very near St. Patrick’s Cathedral. On the map he could see Golden Lane, right next to Arthur’s Lane. And the Adelaide Hospital was just around the corner. On the map, O’Rourke could see it was only a block from the beautiful park at St. Patrick’s. He wondered if Rosanna ever took the children to romp in the park on a sunny summer’s day. He rechecked the Thom’s Directory and found that #1 and #8 Golden Lane were tenements, worldwide nomenclature for the poor.
O’Rourke had one more thing to do. Sam had not been a complete failure teaching him about strange technologies—like cell phones and the Internet. She showed him how to use Google by putting his name in the search engine.
He was surprised by the number of items that came up with his name on them.
“How do you like being Googled?” she asked.
“Feels good,” replied O’Rourke.
“Is that all you think of?” replied Sam, not all that upset at the innuendo.
O’Rourke loved Sam’s humor and was a bit surprised to catch himself laughing out loud as he typed in “diphtheria” into the search engine. The description was surprising: “Diphtheria is a very contagious and potentially life-threatening infection that usually attacks the throat and nose. In more serious cases, it can attack the nerves and heart.”
Throat and nose. O’Rourke’s mother had been right, in her own way. As Charlie succumbed to the diphtheria, O’Rourke’s mother thought he had choked on a fishbone. Nineteen-fourteen. Eighty-six years ago. It was strange. O’Rourke worked in a profession—politics—where truth was never spoken and seldom thought. Yet his mother spoke her version of the truth to him about Charlie’s death, so long ago. And that tombstone up in Glasnevin spoke the truth too, giving clues to a family that had been forgotten for almost a century.
O’Rourke came out the Pearse Street Library and started walking back towards City Centre. He thought of the Kavanagh family gravestone up in Glasnevin and how that new statue of the Virgin Mary seemed to be stalking him from over in that other plot, as if beseeching him to write down the information that was chiseled into the stone. It was all so curious.
When he got to Westland Row, he stopped. He made a left and, for some reason, headed for St. Andrew’s, the church where he had been baptized as Jude Wolfe Tone O’Rourke. Life had taught O’Rourke’s mother many lessons and she was a big believer in St. Jude, the saint of hopeless causes. It was as if the church, which would have saved him from the nothingness of limbo if he had died in infancy, was inexorably pulling him towards it.
Our Lady Of Greenwich Village Page 31