The World of Tomorrow

by Brendan Mathews

  Now he had done it: drifting off, and all adult eyes were on him, wondering what was happening in the head of poor doomed Michael. He looked from face to face, offering a wry smile, a raised eyebrow, a wink for Martin. I’m still in here, he wanted to convey. I just can’t get out.

  ROSEMARY HAD BEEN curious to meet Martin’s brothers, and so far it had been quite a show. Though Martin had told her the outlines of his life back in Ireland, she hoped that meeting his brothers would fill in some of the blanks. She knew that he had been born in Cork, where his father taught at the university. She knew that his mother, a musician of some local renown, had died in an automobile accident when Martin was twelve and that shortly afterward, his father had moved the boys to a remote town halfway across the country. Martin had chafed at small-town life and wasn’t much fonder of his father, whom he blamed for uprooting the family while the shock of their mother’s death was still fresh.

  She knew more of Michael than of Francis, thanks to his letters. She couldn’t follow most of Michael’s theological meanderings, but truth be told, neither could Martin. And as tight as their budget was, she tried never to begrudge the twice-yearly payments they made to the seminary: Michael had a vocation, a calling from God, and that was not a thing to be questioned. Francis, who was harder to figure, was the one who gave Martin fits. Rosemary and Peggy had their differences, but Martin and Francis were oil and water, or, as Martin had said, chalk and cheese.

  And now they were all together for Sunday dinner. As Martin settled everyone around the table—the girls arrayed on one side and Francis and Michael along the other—Francis insisted that they pop the cork while the champagne was still cold. He’d had the concierge procure the bottle and pack it in a bucket filled with ice, but the ice had melted and the bucket had been abandoned on the front stoop. Rosemary brought four glasses from the kitchen and Francis chuffed the cork, letting it ricochet against the ceiling. Champagne frothed from the mouth of the bottle and when each had been served, they raised their glasses.

  “What shall we toast?” Francis said. “To families reunited?”

  “To a speedy recovery for Michael,” Rosemary said.

  “To the memory of Francis Dempsey, may his soul rest in peace,” Martin said.

  Francis did a double take straight out of a holiday pantomime. “I’m not dead yet,” he said.

  “Ach,” Martin said. “Show some reverence.”

  “Says the man who missed his own father’s funeral.”

  Rosemary interrupted before the brotherly rough-and-tumble became any rougher. “Tell me, Francis,” she said. “What sort of funeral did your father have?”

  “Oh, it was grand,” he said. “Father Hogan was his dour old self. Ashes to ashes and all that. Lengthy eulogy on the noble service Da performed all those years, educating the sons and daughters of Ballyrath, bringing the light of knowledge and so on and so forth. Da would’ve hated it.”

  “Father Hogan getting the last word,” Martin said. “That should’ve been reason enough to keep Da going for a few more years.”

  “It was never a fair fight between those two.” Francis dropped his voice into the gruff bark that best matched his father’s tone. “In a battle of wits, that man is completely unarmed.”

  “That’s the real reason he didn’t want Michael in the seminary,” Martin said. “He was afraid he’d turn into a little Hogan.”

  “Instead of a little Da.”

  The three of them turned toward Michael, who was making faces across the table at Kate. He seemed to sense the pause in conversation and the turn of all the adult eyes toward him. He straightened in his chair and resumed slicing a piece of roast beef.

  “Michael wasn’t the only one who disappointed him,” Martin said. “A university professor, and what did Da get from his sons? A musician, a convict, and a priest. I don’t know which of us he thought was the worst.”

  “He’d been a classmate of Joyce’s, for God’s sake!” Francis said. “He never liked the gatch on that one, though. Always mincing around, giving out about God and art. And don’t get him started on what that fellow did to The Odyssey!”

  “Do you mean Ulysses?” Rosemary said. “Have you read it?”

  “Only enough to know which pages to show interested buyers. Too bad for them the rest of it’s all whinging about lemon soap and kidney pie.”

  Rosemary stifled a laugh. “Oh, there’s more to it than that,” she said.

  “So you’ve read it?” Francis looked impressed. “Quite the libertine you’ve married, Martin.”

  There was a knock at the door, one that started and did not stop, and all Martin could think was that it was Mrs. Fichetti, come to complain about the racket. But this racket was his family. He was ready at last to give her an earful. He turned the knob and yanked the door open.

  “Thank God you’re home!” Peggy’s voice filled the apartment as she brushed past Martin, dropped her purse on the armchair, and made for the dining room at top speed. “I just had to get out of there!”

  “Hello, Peggy,” Martin said to the open, empty doorway.

  “I swear I’m going to call it off.” Peggy was speaking to no one, to everyone. “I’m going to call off the whole thing—oh, hello!” She’d expected only Rosemary and the girls, but here was a big redhead and another fellow who looked like a smaller version of Martin. “Oops, I’ve barged in,” she said, pulling at the fingers of her gloves; gloves, even in this heat. “I’m so sorry—but you will not believe what it’s like over there. I had to make a getaway!” She tossed her gloves on the table, narrowly avoiding the gravy boat, and flopped into Martin’s chair.

  Rosemary shot her a look of concern. “Who else canceled?”

  “It’s not that,” Peggy said. “It’s just Mother. And it’s Daddy. I’m not going to waste another minute thinking about it.”

  At the sight of Auntie Peggy, Kate started announcing the details of a donnybrook she had witnessed in church that morning: a boy in the pew in front of them had punched his younger brother during the kiss of peace, and the younger boy cried so much that his father had to carry him out of the church. Kate had been telling the story all day—twice already to Michael. Her voice had only one volume, and she was a champion hand-waver. “The Italian,” her grandfather called her.

  Francis stood and offered his hand. Peggy looked like she had stepped from the screen of a Hollywood movie—one of those wholesome American exports where the daughters smile and speak their mind and wear shimmery tops that hint at the shapes of their brassieres. Her hair was a long blond swoop that curled up just above her shoulders, and her cheeks were still flushed from her rapid ascent of the stairs.

  Martin brought a chair from the kitchen and as he returned to the dining room was struck by how right and comfortable this was: Rosemary and Peggy and Francis gabbing away, the pantomimed introductions with Michael, Peggy rising from her seat to take Michael’s hand between her own, Francis laughing and insisting on a hug rather than a handshake, Kate telling the story—was it the tenth time today?—about the boy in the church, then telling it again, Rosemary leaning over to give the baby another spoonful and the baby smiling a two-tooth smile and sputtering over the soft mashed carrots and the soggy crust of bread from the Italian bakery. This was family, his family. He had been a part of Rosemary’s family for four years, but it had never been a snug fit, and sure, he and Rosemary had their own family inside these walls. But here now were the Dempsey boys brought back together, and here were Rosemary and Kate and Evie. His first family—his original family—getting acquainted with his new family, the one he had made for himself.

  Francis tried a man’s patience, but with Rosemary and Peggy for an audience, he showed that he had charm to burn, and if Michael was silent he was still sweet and he really seemed to be making an effort. Perhaps his brain was intact, and that was a good sign. And then Rosemary. She shone. She was the girl he had fallen in love with, full of bright humor and as quick and sharp a talker as a
ny of the boys. Even Peggy, who could be a piece of work, brought a jolt to the room. Francis and Michael were full of smiles whenever she rolled her eyes and flipped her hair and talked in that way where every thought was a chore and a joke rolled into one. Having two women in the room was just the spark the night needed. They had all been a bit too formal; the ratio had been all wrong, and there were still so many questions surrounding the sudden appearance of the Irish relations. But Peggy’s presence made those conversations impossible, and that seemed to put everyone at ease. With her in the mix, the night took on a sudden gabby energy.

  Francis loosened his tie, then unbuttoned that ridiculous plaid waistcoat. Before long all of the men were in shirtsleeves, their cuffs rolled to the elbows and their plates doubling as ashtrays until Rosemary said, in a florid, stage-Irish brogue, “What’s wrong with the lot of you, were you raised in a barn?” Martin scooted to the living room and returned with two thick ashtrays, a his-and-hers wedding gift from one of Rosemary’s myriad aunts. The room filled with a sweet blue haze and the champagne kept flowing. The bottle seemed to have no end.

  So there was dinner and then dessert—a chocolate cake, in honor of the reunion of the Dempsey brothers—and then tea, and when that was done Rosemary told Kate to say good night to her father and her aunt and her uncles and she scooped up the baby and brought the girls into their bedroom. Martin reached into the cabinet for the bottle of good whiskey. He brought two glasses back to the table and poured a short one for himself and one for Francis, but before he could cap the bottle, Michael claimed Martin’s glass for his own.

  Martin started to speak, but Francis cut him off. “Let him have it,” he said. “I can’t see that a glass is going to do him any harm.”

  Martin brought another glass from the kitchen, but when he poured his drink Peggy snatched it and raised the glass in a toast to Martin.

  Francis cheered her on: “Good for you! That will show the whiskey miser!”

  It was something out of the Marx Brothers and on another night it might have been enough to set off Martin’s temper, but everything about this night was moving so nicely and he didn’t want to do anything to wreck it. “You’re devils.” He said it with a smile and rose to get a fourth glass from the cabinet.

  When Rosemary returned from the girls’ bedroom, she found Martin, Francis, and Peggy laughing and talking, with the last of the whiskey pooled in the bottom of the bottle.

  Michael’s eyes were bright and alive as he tried to imagine the course of the conversation. Without the distraction of voices and laughter, he was able to count how often Francis snuck a look at the nape of Peggy’s neck, at the tightness of her blouse. He saw too how Peggy let her gaze linger a little too long on Francis, how she batted at his arm with her brightly polished nails.

  Peggy was asking herself why she didn’t spend more time at her sister’s place. She’d never seen Martin so loosey-goosey, and this Francis was a hoot. Who knew that Martin’s brother would be so much fun? Martin was nice, and it was neat, she guessed, that he stuck with his music when a lot of others would have taken whatever job Daddy offered them, but he came across as kind of stuck-up, as if he was judging you and you were always coming up short but he would never tell you what you needed to do to pass his stupid test. No, Martin was great for Rosemary, but there was something unsettled about him. Like he was always going somewhere but had lost the address.

  Now Peggy had discovered this brother of his whom she’d barely known existed. She had heard that Martin had family in Ireland, but the only brother he ever mentioned was the younger one studying to be a priest. But Francis. He was the type that her father called a good-time Charlie. (That’s what he’d called Martin when he found out Martin was a musician, except that as far as Peggy saw, Martin rarely looked like he was having a good time.) But you only had to spend a few minutes with Francis to see that he knew how to have fun. Just look at that giant bottle of champagne! Now that was how you started a party!

  Her fiancé, Tim, was a sweetheart—the sweetest!—but if Peggy had pointed out a bottle like that to Tim, he would have said, Who could ever drink that much champagne? Or would have wondered how much it cost. Or complained that champagne gave him a headache. Peggy decided right then and there that she wanted a bottle just that big at her wedding reception—and if they made them any bigger, then that’s what she wanted. The single biggest bottle of champagne that anyone had ever seen. People would laugh at the very sight of it, and for months afterward and maybe even for the rest of their lives they would tell the story of the biggest bottle of champagne they had ever seen. And the kicker would be that they could say that it wasn’t just the biggest they’d seen—it was the biggest they had ever tasted. Because that’s what Peggy would do: before the toasts started, she and Tim would uncork that bottle like it was a cannon and all the guests would fill their glasses. What could be more fitting than that? It would be beautiful; symbolic, even. And for once it would be nice to show everyone that every day didn’t have to be about cutting corners and doing what’s practical and for God’s sake don’t waste anything. For one day they would have this bottle full of more champagne than anyone had ever seen and they would drink it dry.

  “SO WHAT’S A typical night like around here?” Francis said. They had moved their drinking into the living room, a few feet farther away from where the girls were sleeping. The radio played and Francis held his glass to the overhead light, where it glowed like honey. “I picture bathtubs full of gin, Duke Ellington and his colored dancers dropping in at all hours, rent parties that have the neighbors calling the police—”

  “What exactly have you been telling them?” Rosemary said to Martin. “I really want to hear more about these dancing girls.”

  “The only girl who’s been dancing around here is Kate, though I’ll admit that getting her to keep her shirt on and her skirt down can be a problem.”

  “Come on, now,” Francis said. “You must go out on the town. Nightclubs and ballrooms are Martin’s places of business.”

  Martin and Rosemary exchanged a look and a movement of the mouth that wasn’t quite a grimace but certainly wasn’t a smile. There hadn’t been many nights out lately, they allowed, not for the two of them together.

  Peggy clapped her hands. “That’s what we should do! Dancing! I want to go out dancing.”

  “It’s a Sunday night,” Rosemary said. “And you’re getting married in six days.”

  “Exactly,” Peggy said. “You just said yourself that once you get married, you stop having fun.”

  “That’s not—”

  “So where should we go?” Francis said. “Where’s the tip-top for dancing in this town?”

  Peggy’s eyes were aglow. “The Savoy! Let’s go to the Savoy!”

  “For crying out loud,” Rosemary said. “You can’t go to the Savoy!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because if Mom and Dad find out that I let you go to Harlem on the Sunday night before your wedding, they will kill you, and as soon as they’re done with you, they’ll kill me, too.”

  “What’s all this about you letting me go? You sound just like them.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on her,” Francis said.

  “I don’t think it’s such a good idea,” Martin said.

  “I managed jail without a scratch. I think I can handle myself in a dance hall.”

  “You were in jail?” Peggy’s face flushed. “Do Mother and Daddy know about that?”

  “Jesus Christ, Franny. Will you watch what you say?”

  Rosemary took hold of Peggy’s arm. It was the same pincer grip she used when Kate misbehaved in a department store. “They don’t know, and they can’t know.”

  “Oh my God—”

  “You can’t say anything. Ever.”

  “What’s all this?” Francis said. “I’m not ashamed—it’s our narrow-minded, priestly government that should be ashamed.”

  “What did you do?” Peggy said.

  “He di
dn’t do anything,” Martin said. “What I mean is, he’s not a thief or a killer or—”

  “I was practically a political prisoner.”

  “Oh, Janey Mack,” Martin said.

  “Here’s what we can agree on,” Rosemary said. “Mom and Dad are never to hear a word of this.”

  “Because Martin is ashamed of his own brother,” Francis said.

  “Because I’m not my in-laws’ favorite person, and having a convict for a brother isn’t going to help matters.”

  “Do I look like a convict?”

  “Not at all,” Peggy said. “You look like a gentleman.”

  “It’s nice to know there’s someone in this family who thinks so.”

  “Now, if it’s okay with you old married folks, this gentleman and I are going dancing.”

  While Francis reknotted his tie, rolled down his cuffs, helped himself to another slice of cake, and even ventured into the kitchen to pick at the few scraps of roast beef that had escaped his plate, Peggy ransacked Rosemary’s closet for something to wear. She complained in an offhand way about how out of date, and also how large, Rosemary’s clothes were, before finally settling on a dress that Rosemary had bought right before she found out she was pregnant for the second time and which she had never worn. Out in the living room, it was decided that Michael would stay at the apartment and that Francis would escort Peggy home from the Savoy—midnight at the latest!—but that he was not to have any contact with the Dwyers.

  “Stay in the cab when you drop her off,” Martin instructed his brother. “Just to be on the safe side.”

  “Not very gentlemanly,” Francis said.

  Once Peggy was safely deposited in Woodlawn, Francis was free to spend the night with Michael in the living room—“Fat chance of that!” Francis scoffed—or return to the Plaza.