In Ulysses it was called “All Hallows” as Mr. Bloom paid a visit. He saw a woman coming out and decided to go inside for the first time in nearly thirty years. He genuflected and took a seat in a pew in the almost empty church. Up ahead was the baptismal fount where his christening into the Catholic Church had taken place. He didn’t know it for a fact, but he assumed that this was also the place where the revolutionary Pearse Brothers, Padraic and Willie, had also been baptized. They were born only paces away in Great Brunswick Street, which was now named after them. And they had gone to the Christian Brothers School next door. He still didn’t know what to make of Patrick Pearse, the wall-eyed poet. He was a lousy revolutionary, a miserable politician, and, by all accounts, a terrible businessman. Someone had even written a book about him called The Triumph of Failure. He was an odd duck who ran a school for boys, which sent a red flag up for O’Rourke. But he was an excellent motivator. First at the grave of O’Donovan Rossa in 1915, then later at the GPO on Easter Monday as he read the declaration of independence he had authored, Poblacht Na h Eireann. Next to Yeats, he might be one of the oddest people ever to join the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Collins observed Pearse in the GPO and took notes on how not to run a revolution. Whatever he was, he somehow succeeded in getting the Irish off their asses after seven hundred years of obsequiousness to Britain.
The baptismal fount reminded him not only of his own beginning, but what was going on with Sam and the baby. There hadn’t been a word out of her for the last month. He had called her a few times in Tortola, but she never returned his voicemails.The Luddite in O’Rourke scoffed at the notion that all the new technology was helpful. If it was so fucking helpful, why didn’t Sam call him? What was to become of their baby? O’Rourke didn’t know what to do. Time was becoming tight for the baby’s survival. Maybe he should go straight to London and hop a flight to the British Virgin Islands?
Then he thought of the other Pearse brother, Willie. Pearse the sculptor and occasional revolutionary. He went into the Mortuary Chapel and looked at his Mater Dolorosa, Christ’s sorrowful mother, standing. Our Lady of Sorrows. O’Rourke grunted. This was getting personal. His mother had been married at Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow in Foxrock in 1945. Ireland’s “emergency” over—and hers about to begin. If there was ever truth in advertising, thought O’Rourke, it was his mother getting married in Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow. His parents’ marriage still served as a warning to O’Rourke, the eternal Irish bachelor.
O’Rourke looked at Willie Pearse’s sculpture and wondered how it had affected his mother, the very political Mrs. Margaret Pearse, in the years after his execution. The Via Dolorosa was the route Christ took to Calvary after Pontius Pilate washed his hands of him. It was where St. Veronica wiped the sweating face of Christ and was rewarded with his image on the cloth. It must have been difficult for Mrs. Pearse. Although she didn’t live on Pearse Street after the Rising, she probably came to mass at St. Andrew’s on the occasional Sunday, and the old church must have been a constant reminder of her dead sons. They were baptized here and they should have been buried out of there, but the British were not about to have any more Fenian extravaganzas, like Rossa’s funeral. It must have been agony for Mrs. Pearse to stare at the Mater Dolorosa and think of her two sons. It was the grief of an earthly mother, sharing in the pain of the Blessed Virgin.
He thought of his own mother and how it must have hurt her when Rosanna died in 1915. Then the horror of being taken out of her own house and moving to a strange orphanage. O’Rourke was a menopause baby, and as a child, he worried about what would happen to him if his older parents died. The bond with his mother was extraordinary. Would he ever have a child? If he did, would the bond be as powerful? He couldn’t believe his predicament. He was now nearly fifty-fouryears-old and about to become a father. Or would he? He wondered about Sam and his daughter. A daughter according to a dream. He didn’t know what to do. In front of the Mater Dolorosa he knelt and said a prayer for Sam and the baby girl. Then he said a prayer for his newfound family, the Kavanaghs, late of Camden Row, Dublin City.
50.
His dreams had changed. The Virgin was gone, replaced by the toddler. A little girl with wonderful golden, curly hair. She was so young she couldn’t possibly talk yet, yet O’Rourke instantly knew her name. It was baby Rosanna, his aunt, the sister his mother had never known about. She reached her arms out to him, but they would never touch. For O’Rourke knew this was another Dublin ghost.
“Hello, Tone,” she said. She was too young to talk, but she was talking as if she was maybe six or seven. O’Rourke didn’t know what to say. “Don’t you want to know my name?” she asked?
“I think I know it,” said O’Rourke. “It’s Rosanna, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” she responded. “Joe was named after da and I was named after mammy. I, too, was born at 40 Camden Row. After Joe and before Charlie. They said 1903.” Then her voice turned sad. “But I had to die.”
“I’m sorry,” said O’Rourke.
“That’s all right,” she replied evenly. “But remember I existed as sure as your mammy did.”
“I knew you were missing,” he said, “from the records in Lombard Street.”
“But you didn’t search for me.”
“I will. Today. I promise.”
“They never talked about me, you know.”
“Who?”
“Mammy and da. I think when I died they felt so sad. Only my brother Joe knew. I think Charlie was too young.”
“I will find you today.”
“Don’t forget me, please. I’m a Kavanagh too, just like the rest of them. Just like you. Think about me so your mammy, my sister Mary, will know I existed. Please.”
O’Rourke awoke and bolted upright in his bed at the Shelbourne. The summer dawn was upon Dublin City and he could hear the birds nosily awaken in St. Stephen’s Green below him. He got out of the bed naked and fell to his knees to say a prayer for little Rosanna Kavanagh who left this world almost a century ago. He could feel her loneliness and her need to feel loved and wanted, just like everyone else in this terrible world.
The Virgin was changing tactics, thought O’Rourke. O’Rourke admired her for the effective politician she was, moving O’Rourke closer to another lonely little girl who resided in Sam McGuire’s womb halfway around the world.
51.
Now he was taking orders from a ghost. Did he really dream about a child named Rosanna? Or was it some figment of his imagination buried down deep that had come to the surface of his conscience because of the guilt over McGuire and the baby? Still, he had promised the child he would look for her, so he dressed and once again headed over to Lombard Street to search for this little girl, who may never have really existed.
He came out of the Shelbourne Hotel on a warm, sunny late July morning and started to head to his left when he stopped in his tracks. No, he decided, he was going the wrong way. He crossed over to St. Stephen’s Green, said hello to the statue of his namesake Wolfe Tone, before heading toward Grafton Street and the Traitors Gate at the entrance to the Green. Around Stephen’s Green West he went by the College of Surgeons and made a left into York Street on his way to Aungier Street. From there he made his way to Bishop Street where the massive façade of the Dublin Institute of Technology stood before him. It was the location of the old Jacob’s Biscuit Factory, where Thomas MacDonough and Sean MacBride would earn their 1916 death sentences. The school’s curved front, like Jacob’s before it, always reminded him of the rotunda of Ebbets Field, of all things.
Down Bishop Street, to the left of the college, O’Rourke went until he came to the National Archives of Ireland at #8. He was photographed and issued an ID card then went upstairs to look at the 1911 Census. It was on microfiche and first he worked all of the Piles Buildings on Golden Lane, but could find nothing about the Kavanaghs. If anything, O’Rourke had surmised about his grandparents, they were creatures of habit. They had spent most of their lives surround
ed by the same streets and buildings. Rosanna must have grown up in Temple Lane and her husband lived only five blocks away on Camden Row. He bet they must have met at church, at Michael’s and John’s.This was their neighborhood, the Strumpet City of James Plunkett, ripe with poverty and unrest, but they would never leave it. They were real Dubs. They had left Camden Row in 1910 and they had not arrived in the Piles Buildings until at least 1914. He just knew they lived around here someplace. He pulled out his map of Dublin and ran his finger down Camden Row to the west and the next street, an extension of Camden Row, was Long Lane. He went back to the desk and got the census for Long Lane.
One by one he went through them until he came to #36 Long Lane. A chill ran down O’Rourke’s spine, for there they were, all seven of the Kavanaghs, including his mother. And for the first time he saw the signature of his grandfather, Joseph Kavanagh. It was strong and clear and it never wavered below the line that said, “Signature of the Head of family.” The census had been filled out all over Ireland on Sunday, April 2, 1911. After all these years and all his mother’s stories, it was there for all to see, not on a sad gravestone, but on an official British government document, proof that the Kavanagh family existed in the eyes of the government. The grandfather was older than O’Rourke had thought, it seemed, because the census said he was forty, which would have put his birth year at 1870 or 1871. He was six years older than Rosanna. Joseph, Rosanna, Joe Jr., and Charlie could all “read & write.”The other children, Francis, Mary, his mother, and Richard, “cannot read & write.”The three older boys were “scholars,” and O’Rourke’s mother and his Uncle Dick obviously didn’t go to school yet, but stayed home with Rosanna, who still was not assigned a profession by the government.
There was no sign of another child, perhaps a daughter named Rosanna, but then he saw it. “Total children born alive: 6; children still living: 5.” There was a missing child and O’Rourke’s heart began to race. He printed out a copy of the document and ran out the door into Bishop Street.
He hailed the first taxi he saw—that was one of the great things about the new Dublin, you could actually find a cab when you needed one—and minutes later was at Joyce House on Lombard Street. Up to the second floor he went and pulled the birth indexes for 1902 and 1903.
He started looking for a female child born in South Dublin. He looked for a Rosanna, but she was not to be found. He then searched for familiar names. He knew his mother had a sister named Nellie, which in Ireland at that time was short for Ellen. He found an Ellen and his heart raced. When they called his name out with the information slip, he thought he had solved the mystery.
“I’m sorry,” informed the woman clerk, “there seems to be a mistake in the book. I checked twice and this Ellen does not exist.”
O’Rourke went back to the books and searched again. He tried to limit his search from late 1902 until early spring 1903. Those were the parameters, because young Joe was born in October 1901 and Charlie was born in January 1904. He tried Mary Anne, which he thought might be his grandmother’s name. No luck. He tried Eileen. Nothing. He tried Annie, Kathleen, and Frances and all the other girls names in South Dublin within his parameters and got nothing.
Maybe he was wrong in what he was looking for. Maybe it was a boy. Maybe Baby Rosanna was a ghostly curveball. First he tried John because that was his grandfather’s brother’s name. Nothing again. Then he tried James and James Leo and James Patrick and there was a John Joseph and Patrick and he came up totally empty. This child—he was positive she was a girl—was beginning to depress him.
He abandoned the birth books and worked the death books for 1903 and 1904. The age was listed for every entry. He choose zero to one and searched for South Dublin deaths. There was a “Nellie,” the same name as Grandmother Rosanna’s sister. He handed in the paper and awaited the verdict. Little Nellie Kavanagh, spinster, read the document, was a child of a servant, and had lived nine hours in 1903. The only trouble was, she was not Rosanna’s and Joseph’s daughter. It was the wrong child.
O’Rourke explained his situation to the clerk who said that not all births and deaths had been religiously registered. Perhaps, if the child died in the first few days after birth no one had bothered to register it.
In his mind’s eye O’Rourke could see Baby Rosanna and he knew she was beseeching him to keep searching for her. He kept checking randomly, anything close to what “qualifications” Baby Rosanna presented to him. He kept coming up with babies who had died at six months of bronchitis, pneumonia, and other diseases that today antibiotics would wipe out in days.
“You look depressed,” the clerk said to O’Rourke.
“I am,” he replied. “I can’t find this child who I know existed from the census of 1911.”
“Sounds like a Holy Angels Plot baby to me,” said the clerk. She went on to explain that the Holy Angels Plot was up in Glasnevin and that babies that died in infancy were buried there.
Poor Baby Rosanna. Forgotten and abandoned. All O’Rourke knew was that she was not in the family grave in Glasnevin, he couldn’t find her in the birth/death records, and maybe she was in Holy Angels with all the other little dead Dublin babies. No wonder she felt abandoned. When he went to visit his mother up in Glasnevin, O’Rourke was always moved by the graves of infants and young children. There was sometimes a picture of a beautiful child and on the stone would be written: “Love you always from your heart broken Mammy and Daddy.” He knew this baby had broken his grandparents hearts. He also guessed that she died before his mother was born because his mother never mentioned she had a sister. The pain of a century passed was drilling O’Rourke in his chest.
O’Rourke sat alone looking out the window onto Lombard Street. O’Rourke thought of this young child who was not even remembered on the family gravestone and to his utter surprise, began to cry, tears silently running down his cheeks and onto the 1911 census certificate before him. Baby Rosanna had been found, but not found. O’Rourke wanted to comfort this little ghost that so much wanted to get back into the dead Kavanagh family. O’Rourke knew he had failed Baby Rosanna, but he had done his best. He could see her in his mind’s eye awaiting the verdict. Right now there was nothing he could do. Soon, he promised, he would make it right.
“I won’t forget you, Rosanna,” he whispered. “I promise I won’t forget you.”
52.
“Where is he?” McGuire snapped into the phone at Winthrop Pepoon. “All I’m getting is voicemail at the office and at home.”
“Sam, is that you?”
“Where is he, Winnie?”
“He’s in Dublin.”
“With another woman?”
“No, no, Sam,” said Pepoon. “He’s with Clarence Black.”
“What the hell is he doing in Dublin?”
“I think he needed to get away.”
“I bet,” countered McGuire, “he really needed a drink.”
“That too,” Pepoon chuckled, and then turned serious. “You know you’re the reason he stopped drinking. Without you, there is no reason not to drink.”
“Oh, Winnie, what am I going to do?”
“Why don’t you call him?”
“He still doesn’t own a cell phone,” reminded McGuire.
“But Clarence does. They’re five hours ahead of us. Give him a buzz.”
“I will,” said McGuire. She then paused before saying, “Oh, Winnie, I’m so confused.”
“He misses you, Sam.”
“Does he?” asked McGuire, brightening a little.
“He misses you with all his heart,” said Pepoon. “You know he’s that kind of man.”
“Yes,” said McGuire, “I know he is.”
53.
O’Rourke and Clarence Black were sitting at the bar of the Stag’s Head, just off Dame Street. O’Rourke had been coming here since the 1960s, when he was a college student at CCNY and he had first returned to Dublin to visit his family. At night it was an asylum, dense and loud, but by day the quiet
reminded him of what Joe Flaherty had once written: “The warmth of the room appealed to my Irish heart; it seemed like a blend of wood and whiskey, combining the best aspects of the womb and the coffin.”
The bar dated from Victorian times and had lived through every major event in modern Irish history. According to legend, every remarkable Irishmen, including Joyce and Collins, had bellied up to this bar. He could just imagine Collins, hunched in a snug, conspiring with one of his spies from Dublin Castle, which was just a five minute walk away. In the great James Cagney movie, Shake Hands with the Devil, the Black and Tans come into the bar from the Dame Lane side entrance looking for IRA man Michael O’Leary and have the tables turned on them by the hard-drinking, quick-thinking clientele.
And now the bar meant even more to O’Rourke because of the information that he had just learned about his grandparents from the archives in Lombard Street. If you walked out the door and slid through the alley to Dame Street and crossed the road, you would find yourself in front of 26 Temple Lane, Rosanna’s childhood home. Temple Lane was more alley than lane and the brick façade of #26 had been altered, but there was an atmosphere that hadn’t changed much since 1900 when Rosanna left here to marry O’Rourke’s grandfather. And O’Rourke wondered, when they were courting, did his grandfather drop off Rosanna at her mother’s house, then proceed across the street to the Stag’s Head for a pint before heading down the road for his home in Camden Row? Did he sit right at this bar, in this spot, and wonder about Rosanna, her scent, and what her wonderful breasts might look like? Could he ever imagine that a century later, his grandson, an American multi-millionaire, would sit at the same bar and wonder about him, Rosanna, and another woman with marvelous breasts?
The quiet of the afternoon was broken by the ringing of Black’s cell phone. Black listened, then handed the phone to O’Rourke. “It’s for you,” he said with a small smile.
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