The World of Tomorrow

by Brendan Mathews

  She shushed him, her expression cross, and pointed toward the floor, then toward the open window. She spoke slowly, expecting to be overheard: “Oh, she’s lovely. You’re just in a contrary mood.”

  Martin gritted his teeth. He couldn’t speak honestly in his own home without the old biddy who owned the place giving them hell. Which meant it wasn’t his home. It was just a place he lived, a place his wife liked no better than he did—less, actually, because she spent so much more time here dealing with its summer stifle and winter chill, its smells of someone else’s cooking.

  From the girls’ room came Kate’s voice, high and insistent. She wanted something, or someone, and if she persisted she was sure to wake her sister.

  “Would you mind?” Rosemary said. “She’s not going to want me. Having you home in the evening is a treat for her.”

  “I told Francis I’d—”

  “For her sake,” Rosemary said. “And for mine. She’ll keep this up all night.”

  Martin sighed heavily, shucked off his jacket, and draped it over the back of a chair. In the girls’ bedroom, a pale strip of light traced the edges of the blackout shade. The longest day of the year was coming, and the sun hadn’t yet set.

  “You’ve got to hush, monkey,” he said. “You’ll wake the baba.”

  “I can’t sleep.” She was rolling from side to side on the mattress. Her wispy blond hair was matted to her forehead. Martin had pulled down the upper window sash but the air in the room did not stir. With one pudgy fist, the girl rubbed her eyes, back and forth like rolling a ball. She would soon be fully awake, and he would have to either bring her into the light of the kitchen to keep her from waking the baby, or else call Rosemary in to get her back to sleep. Neither option would please Rosemary.

  The telephone rang in the living room, and with the first pulse of the bell Kate winced and scrunched her eyes. It rang a second time and he asked himself how long it would take Rosemary to pick it up—the apartment wasn’t that big. Did she expect that Martin would—

  The phone was snatched up on the third ring. Martin rubbed Kate’s back, but she batted his hand. Too hot. Already the fabric of her nightshirt was damp and clingy. He could hear the murmur of Rosemary’s voice, then a sudden rise in volume. She was speaking too loud for this hour, especially with Kate teetering on the edge of sleep.

  “I want Mama,” she said. “I want Mama to sit with me.”

  “Mama said you wanted Dada,” he said. “That’s nice, isn’t it?”

  The girl scrunched her eyes again. A sour-lemons face. A Mama-not-Dada face.

  “Now let’s go back to sleepy town,” Martin said. “When the sun goes down, we go to sleepy town.” He spoke with a lilt, hoping to sneak a lullaby past her.

  “No songs,” she said. “A story.”

  “It’s too late for a story, monkey. All the little monkeys are in bed, fast asleep.”

  “Story,” she said. “A Ireland story. Like Mama tells.”

  “What kind does Mama tell?”

  “The kind with fairies.”

  “Oh yes, fairies. Of course.”

  “And leepercons. But no pookas. Pookas are mean. And scary.”

  “Agreed. No pookas.”

  “Mama says Dada is from Ireland. And Mama says you sailed on a big boat.”

  “I did.”

  “You came to ’Merica—that’s where we live.”

  “All true.”

  “And you and Mama fell in love.”

  “We did. We fell in love.”

  “And you had a baby—and the baby was me!” Kate’s expression was beatific, like an advertisement for baby food or enriched bread. She was the happy ending to the story, the point of it all. She did not know how much consternation had come with her arrival, and he hoped that she never would.

  “That’s a very good story. I think that’s the best story there is.” He hoped this would be his cue to say good night, but Kate wasn’t done with him.

  “Now you tell a Ireland story. A different one.”

  “Katie, it’s late and Dada—”

  “Stor-eeeee!”

  “Katie,” he said, a bit too sharply. “Dada is more of a song man than a story man.”

  “Mama tells stories. Good stories.”

  “And that’s what makes Mama special, and music is what makes Dada special. Aren’t you lucky to have two such special parents?”

  Kate looked unconvinced. She looked disappointed. Not for the last time, Martin thought. But she had also gotten a few more minutes before bedtime, and that was something.

  “Now you have to promise Dada that if I sing you a song you will go right back to sleep. No more of this stay-awake nonsense.” Framing it as a deal made him feel like he wasn’t indulging her—a common complaint of Rosemary’s. So this wasn’t spoiling. He and his daughter were entering into a pact. He was teaching her the value of keeping her word.

  Kate lay on her back, her head on the pillow. Martin sat on the edge of the bed and smoothed the sheet around her. He swept the wet strands of hair back from her forehead. He didn’t spend much time with the girls, and when he did, he was prone to impatience on a bad day and befuddlement on a good one. Most nights, Martin wasn’t home until long after the girls were in bed—Rosemary included. When pressed, he had been able to dredge up a half-remembered story from his own childhood, but these required a great deal of on-the-spot invention. Halting improvisations on the theme of leprechauns, fairy folk, pookas, and the other citizens of the invisible, ideal Ireland. He had been twelve, too old for stories, when his mother died, and after her death his father had told a different sort of story anyway—when he was in the mood for stories at all. Gone were the twilight creatures who raided cottages in search of porridge or stockings to mend or the odd infant or two. And gone were the big-boy tales of Cúchulain and Ossian and Finn McCool—the heroes of Old Ireland who had inspired the creation of the New Ireland. Instead, when it was time to send the boys to sleep, Martin’s father had cracked the spines of Virgil and Homer and Herodotus. It was no wonder Michael had turned out so serious-minded—the boy had never had a proper bedtime story in his whole life. That was his father’s fault, but it was also Martin’s. He could have taken it upon himself to read to his little brother, to soothe the boy who would grow up without any memory of his mother. But he hadn’t—not once.

  And now here was his own little one. She had closed her eyes but hadn’t put to rest the smile of victory, of anticipation.

  “YOU’RE NOT GOING to believe this,” Rosemary said when Martin returned, blinking in the bright light. “Peggy wants to call off the wedding. She says she’s been thinking about it ever since she went out with your brother. Didn’t I say that was a bad idea?”

  “You did.” He poured a glass of water from the tap. “You are a prophetess. The Cassandra of the Bronx.”

  “Has he said anything to you about Sunday night?”

  “Not a word. But I’ll ask when I see him.” Martin downed the glass of water and retrieved his jacket.

  “My parents are going to kill her. Then they’ll kill me, and then they’ll kill you, and then your brother.”

  “The streets of the Bronx will run red with the blood of the Dempseys.” Martin cocked his head. “Now that’s something I could write a song about. They’d be singing it from Bainbridge Avenue to St. Stephen’s Green. ‘Oh, the blood of the Dempseys runs red in the streets! On account of a blonde with two dancing feet.’”

  “I’m glad you think this is funny.” Rosemary picked up Martin’s glass and began washing it in the sink. “You should see my parents whenever the subject of this wedding comes up. Another disaster for the Dwyer family.”

  Martin reached for her hand and drew her closer to him. He kissed her fingers, still wet from washing up. “Rose of my heart, I wouldn’t change a thing.”

  She raised an eyebrow and grimaced. Skeptical.

  “I sailed on a big boat to ’Merica. We fell in love. We had a baby. And that baby
was Kate.” He kissed her hand again. “It’s a very nice story.”

  “It leaves out a lot,” she said.

  “We had another baby. We stayed in love. That’s still part of the story, isn’t it?”

  She ran her fingers through his hair. Jet-black, like Evie’s. She did love him, and that should be enough to make the rest of this bearable: the apartment and Mrs. Fichetti, the long nighttime hours when the girls were asleep and Martin was in the city, all that time when it was just her and her thoughts and no one to talk to. She hadn’t counted on this being such a lonely life. She had imagined that she would be a part of Martin’s world, a world of music and cocktails and men in sharp suits and women in dresses you’d see in the magazines. They’d had that life, both of them, but only for a few months. She still kept the memories boxed up. She took them out and looked them over during the long nights, but lately it didn’t cheer her to think of the life they had lived in the not-so-long-ago. Increasingly she felt cheated by the life she lived in the here and now. A life of rent, utility bills, groceries, a tab at the butcher shop, a husband who had quit a good job.

  “I know what you’re angling for with all of this lovey talk.”

  “Can’t a man tell his wife how he feels?”

  “Of course he can. He just shouldn’t expect anything in return.”

  “And what am I expecting?”

  “Something that could lead to another crib in the girls’ room.”

  “I’m not thinking about babies, not one bit.”

  “And that’s your problem. You never think about babies until it’s too late.”

  He kissed Rosemary and grabbed his hat. He had been foggy-headed from the heat and shadows of Kate’s room, but now he saw it clearly: no wedding meant no reception, and no reception meant no Martin Dempsey Orchestra. “You’ll talk to Peggy? Set her straight?”

  “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Even if the wedding is off, we can still have the reception, right? No sense in canceling a party. I imagine it’s already paid for.”

  “You just tell Francis to keep his distance. I’ll take care of Peggy.”

  HARLEM

  BY THE TIME BENNY Carter finished his set, Martin was hollowed out. He felt such joy that he had a hand in scripting the wonder he had seen, but it was backed by the fear that he would forever be too slow to catch that train—the one that led to a spot on the really big bandstands. It was always this way whenever Martin saw one of the greats perform. The action on the bandstand was a bracing, eighty-proof shot of inspiration, but it triggered in him a furious despair. It was as if he was being taunted, but not by Benny Carter. No, sir. Carter was a beacon of pure light and hope. He was everything that Martin wanted to be: polymath musician, bandleader, arranger. Martin’s anger was directed at himself, a chastening fire: Why isn’t that me up there? He had wanted nothing his whole life but music, and yet somehow he had settled: one hit song, a seat in Chester’s band, life above Mrs. Fichetti. Is that why he’d left Ireland? Why he’d come to New York? Martin could tell himself that he was still young—not yet thirty—but he had a wife and children and he was just starting to learn that time was the world’s cruelest con man, a master of sleight of hand. You look one way and your wallet’s gone. You look the other and the clock has run to zero: time’s up!

  Benny Carter was a reminder—This is where the bar is set, my friend; this is how high you must climb—but he was also a rebuke. Martin was taking his shot with his wedding combo, but compared to Carter’s orchestra on the stage of the goddamn Savoy Ballroom, with the dancers whirling and air-stepping all around him, he had to ask himself: Who are you kidding? A wedding reception in the Bronx, in a roomful of political hacks kissing the arse of your father-in-law? And for that you quit your job? Cheers to him for trying, but how had he banked his future, his family, his life, on that?

  When Francis suggested a drink, Martin stumped with him down Lenox Avenue on heavy legs. He knew he had to snap himself out of this funk, but he knew, too, that first thing tomorrow he needed to find whatever work a mortal like him could get to keep the American Dempseys out of the poorhouse. The ballroom bands had finished for the night, and now was the time when players from all over the city came together in jam sessions to see who measured up. Martin and Francis claimed two seats at the bar of a lounge that was just starting to fill and ordered their first round, and when the drinks came Francis paid and offered a toast to his brother, the famous composer.

  Martin winced. “So what happened with Peggy the other night?”

  “Oh, just a bit of fun,” Francis said.

  “You know she’s getting married on Saturday?”

  “And I was only showing her what she’s giving up, joining the ranks of the newly wed.”

  Martin sipped his drink. “About that,” he said. “Peggy wants to call off the wedding. She told Rosemary she’s not ready to give up… whatever it was you showed her.”

  “It’s an impressive sight, I have to admit.”

  “Just stay away from her—for my sake. Give Rosemary a chance to set her straight.”

  “I’ve no plans for seeing her again. I’m beginning to feel like she was the one using me. Show a fella a nice time, take him dancing and then go back to his fancy hotel—”

  “You took her to the Plaza?”

  “She thought I was having her on about staying there. Said she was calling my bluff.”

  “I don’t want to hear any more,” Martin said. “I don’t want to be lying to Rosemary when I tell her I don’t know what happened.”

  With the noise of the crowd roiling around them, Francis confessed that there was another girl who had caught his eye. He spelled out for his brother the meeting aboard the Britannic, the dinner at Bingham Castle. “I don’t know what it is, but there’s something about this girl,” Francis said.

  “Yeah, she’s worth a million bucks.”

  “She’s worth a lot more than that—but that’s not it.” Francis looked into his glass, swirled the ice in the last drops of Scotch. “Or not all of it. She played the violin after dinner and there was something, well, something magic about it. You’d know the tune. Beethoven, I think it was.” He swirled the glass again, then crunched the ice in his mouth. “Do you remember much about Mam?”

  Martin rubbed his chin. This wasn’t where he’d seen the conversation going. “I wish I could remember more.”

  “You’re lucky, being the oldest. And she doted on you, with the music and all.”

  “Mam didn’t dote on anyone but Da.”

  “Da,” Francis said. “Well. He certainly needed looking after.” He caught the bartender’s eye and signaled for another round: Scotch and soda for himself, a gin rickey for Martin. “I wish he could have gone out some other way. Him alone, and us scattered to the four winds.”

  “There are worse ways, I’m sure.” Martin bolted down the rest of his drink. “Sorry. That came out colder than I intended.”

  “Just how cold did you intend it?”

  “Look, I knew I’d never see him again. Still, not having him in the world—I don’t know what to make of that.”

  “He didn’t pull us out of Cork just to make you miserable.”

  “I know that—”

  “He was heartbroken and he never got over it. Losing Mam like that—well, she’s another that deserved a better death.”

  “A better life.”

  Francis lifted the fresh cocktail from the bar. “Cheers to that,” he said, nodding the glass toward his brother.

  “How is Michael taking all of this? He and Da had a lot of years where it was just the two of them.”

  “Honestly, I don’t know what he thinks. About anything. He’s been in good spirits since we arrived but I don’t know if it’s New York or just the passage of time.” Francis rotated his glass a half turn but did not lift it to his mouth. He had already told Martin about the visit to the doctor and the promise of specialists to come, all as a way of validating his big-spending,
Plaza-living approach to the immigrant experience. “We had a fine dinner tonight and then it was straight to bed for him. For now, I’m just trying to put some meat on his bones,” Francis said. “I don’t think the priests fed him more than brown bread and weak tea.”

  “But how long can you keep this up?” Martin dropped his voice to a raspy whisper, though it wasn’t necessary. The bar was humming with talk, with music, with the chime of bottles and glasses. “Are you just going to wait until the IRA comes looking for their money? Or for the FBI to figure out they’ve got an escaped convict on their hands?”

  “Fellas run off all the time,” Francis said. “And I’m hardly notorious. The police aren’t going to wear themselves out because one well-dressed pornographer got away.”

  “You haven’t given it a moment’s thought, have you?”

  “On the contrary—”

  “Well, would you look at what the cat dragged in?” Elston Hooper materialized out of the growing crowd and gave Martin a slap on the back. “I thought this place had standards, but I guess writing the hottest song at the Savoy will open a few doors.”

  At a nod from Martin to the bartender, Hooper’s regular—bourbon and milk—appeared on the bar. Martin looked from Hooper to his brother and hesitated. Was it to be aliases, or—

  Francis extended his hand. “Francis Dempsey,” he said. “Martin’s wayward brother.”

  Martin would save the reprimand for later. Escaped convicts ought to be a little more careful about advertising their identity, even in an after-hours bar in Harlem. Or especially in an after-hours bar in Harlem.

  “I’ve been telling Martin about the latest love of my life,” Francis said, omitting any mention of Michael, their parents, and the possibility that he was being pursued.

  It took Martin a moment to realize that Francis meant the heiress and not his sister-in-law. “It’s quite a love story,” he said to Hooper. “She thinks he’s someone else.”

  Hooper shook his head. “Women always think their men are someone else. They could never love us if they knew the truth.”

  “Your friend’s a wise man,” Francis said.