Obit

by Anne Emery

  “That he knows this Ramon and doesn’t hold him in high regard. For some reason.”

  “Right. He remembers some guy who was a young waiter at that club forty years ago.”

  “And we have the whiskey to thank for letting even that much slip. He considers Ramon gutless. Why? Did he swoon at the sight of steak tartare? Who the hell knows, Monty?”

  “Gutless would not be the image he’d be aiming for, if he was really a wannabe, hanging around the fringes of the Mob.”

  “Or what he imagined to be the Mob. He may have wanted to impress them. But surely not by rubbing somebody out forty years after the fact. I have an idea. Terry has friends on the police force. Maybe one of them will bend the rules and run a check on this fellow for us.”

  “Good plan. Al at the club said Ramon quit the White Gardenia, then came back again, desperate for money. Maybe his desperation for money brought him to the attention of the NYPD.”

  Chapter 7

  They say there’s bread and work for all,

  And the sun shines always there;

  But I’ll not forget old Ireland,

  Were it fifty times as fair.

  — Helena Selina Sheridan (Lady Dufferin),

  “The Lament of the Irish Emigrant”

  March 17, 1991

  Sunday morning I was up bright and early, strolling with my daughter on the Upper West Side. We went all the way to the Seventy-Ninth Street Boat Basin, where we walked along the river and speculated about life on one of the houseboats. A couple we saw sitting on bright yellow deck chairs, with a small black puppy frolicking around them, looked as if they had it made. A water view at a fraction of the cost. When we were back in the West Fifties Normie dragged me into a store filled with T-shirts and tacky souvenirs. Half the shop was devoted to all things green, ghastly and faux-Irish. Normie asked for a Central Park Zoo T-shirt and several other items. She and I were haggling when suddenly she screamed and grabbed my hand. An Uncle Sam figure had lunged out at her from the aisle and said: “Boo!”

  “Hey!” I remonstrated. The mask was whipped off to reveal a gap-toothed boy about Normie’s age. He grinned and took off behind a rack of leprechaun costumes.

  “Who is that guy?” Normie asked.

  “I don’t know, sweetheart, just a boy playing tricks on you.”

  “No, I mean who’s the mask about? The old guy with the beard and stars on his hat?”

  “That’s Uncle Sam. Symbol of the USA. I don’t know whether you’ve ever seen those old posters: Uncle Sam wants you! Trying to get people to sign up for the Army in wartime.”

  “I wouldn’t go in a war!”

  “Watch it, kid. You’ll never make it in this town if your loyalty to Uncle Sam is in doubt.”

  For some reason this exchange brought my mind back to the Cathal Murphy obituary. What was it? Some line about loyalty. “His loyalty to his Uncle was never in question.” Brennan had interpreted it to mean Declan had stayed loyal to his Irish Republican relatives. But could Nessie Murphy have been making a remark about loyalty to Uncle Sam? Why would that be “in question”? There were a great many Irish Americans with an intense interest in the politics of the old country; such sympathies did not preclude loyalty to the United States.

  Back at the hotel, Maura greeted us: “You just missed a call from Tommy.”

  “How are things?”

  “Great, he says. He and Lexie are going out to dinner tonight. And his band has been asked to play at the Forum next weekend: young local bands playing for kids of all ages. No alcohol. He claims he’s eating properly and getting some sleep. Who knows? Anyway, I’m glad you’re back in time for the parade.”

  “Parade?”

  “No reason you should know about it, Collins. It’s not as if you’ve been in contact with any Irish since you’ve been here.”

  “Saint Patrick’s Day! That explains — I hope — the ridiculous green items I saw on sale a few minutes ago.”

  “Sure and aren’t you brilliant. So we’ll have an early lunch and go to Fifth Avenue to watch it.”

  That sounded good to Normie, but she thought we shouldn’t have the parade all to ourselves. “Call Father Burke!” she demanded. “He won’t want to miss this!”

  “He didn’t mention it, sweetheart.”

  “Phone him, please! What if he misses it? He’ll blame us.”

  Obediently I picked up the phone and punched in his number. He answered, and I noticed he didn’t say “Top o’ the morning.”

  “I have a little girl here who wants to make sure you don’t miss the Saint Patrick’s Day parade.”

  “Ah.”

  “Are you people regulars at this event?”

  “I think it was only once I went to it. As a child. I’m just back from Sunday Mass, where they were giving out little shamrocks made of pipe cleaners, and a pipe made of what looked like chewed-up white candy. Sure didn’t it make me want to burst out in song, and proclaim to the world that, yes, I am proud to be Bulgarian.”

  “You say you were passed over again this year?”

  “What?”

  “No, of course you’re not too tall to be one of the little people. That’s discrimination. There’s nobody more suited to lead the parade. Yes, I agree. You do look good in a leprechaun outfit; has someone suggested otherwise? No, I understand. It’s a shame. We’ll go along to it anyway. I’ll explain to Normie. What are you up to later?”

  “Doing some prison visits, to tell you the truth. One of my fellow priests is under the weather, and I said I’d do his visits for him.”

  “No such luck you’re going to Attica, I suppose.”

  “No, one of the local lockups. As for you, take the day, take two, go sightseeing with your family. Take in a show. I’ll be wanting to see some holiday snapshots when we get back to Halifax, to assuage my guilt.”

  So off to the parade we went, and bought a tricolour for Normie to wave from the sidelines. It was a spectacle indeed and it showed that the colour green is not restricted to the places Mother Nature intended; I tried but failed to imagine any of the Burkes taking part. When even the youngest of us had seen enough, I suggested to Maura that we pay a visit to Sandra Worthington. We were only a few blocks from her townhouse in the East Seventies.

  “This is more like it!” Maura exclaimed when we got to Seventy-Second Street. The outburst earned her a dead-eyed glance from a tall thin woman in tweeds, walking a long thin dog in a red sweater.

  “Oh? The good socialist has a taste for the ritzier parts of town?”

  “The quieter parts of town.” She pointed to a sign that urged people not to sound their car horns except in a situation of danger. “I’d like to get hundreds of these signs and post them all over Manhattan, starting in front of our hotel.”

  “I’ll help you, Mummy,” our daughter offered.

  Sandra wasn’t alone when we arrived but she seemed genuinely pleased to see us, and she made a fuss over Normie, who beamed at Sandra and her splendid surroundings. We made ourselves comfortable in the elegant uptown apartment, with its high ceilings, panelled doors and carved marble fireplace. When I’d been there the year before, I had noticed a page from a musical score framed on the wall. This time, now that I knew her better, I would not be shy about taking a closer look. But right now we were being introduced to Reggie Baines. He was tall and expensively dressed, with a jutting chin and greying blonde hair brushed back from his forehead.

  “Reggie is an old, old friend. Monty and Maura, and of course Normie, are new friends from Halifax, Reggie.”

  “Really. I’ve sailed up that way a few times. Fun town. I know some people at the Yacht Squadron. Do you sail?”

  “Sold my boat.”

  “Trading up? What did you have?”

  “A tub. Traded up for a Stratocaster.”

  “Stratocaster? Is that something just coming on the market? I’m not familiar —”

  “It’s a guitar.”

  Baines looked puzzled.


  “We’re friends of Brennan,” Maura said. “That’s how we met Sandra.”

  “Brennan? I don’t believe I know the name.”

  “An old boyfriend, Reggie. Long in the past,” Sandra said. Normie stared at Sandra with humongous eyes. Father Burke was somebody’s boyfriend? “Can I get you anything? Scotch, gin, lemonade?”

  “Lemonade sounds good,” Maura replied, looking ready to settle in for the afternoon.

  “Wait a minute,” Reggie said. “Brendan. Was that the guy who took you away from Dody Spencer’s birthday party? It was Dody’s seventeenth and I remember it was almost like a debutante party. Though of course, with her birthday in April, it was out of season. Still . . .”

  “Oh, Reggie, they don’t want to hear about the days when I was young and foolish.”

  But Maura, one of seven children of a Commie coal miner from Cape Breton, looked as if there was nothing in the world she would enjoy more than hearing about Dody’s deb party, in or out of season. “Do tell us, Reg. It’s either that or the Saint Patrick’s Day parade.”

  “Tell us!” Normie begged.

  “Oh yes, it’s that time of year yet again, when we’re all confined to our houses by that crowd stumbling up the avenue.” He sighed. “Where was I? Dody’s party. We were all waiting for Sandra and this boyfriend —” he might as well have said gigolo “— and they simply didn’t show up. Thanks to this Brian, or Brendan, or whatever his name was. What happened there, Sandra? That was just before I left for Yale, so I never did get the details. Or meet this loverboy. I heard you ended up with a bunch of tramps, in a bread line, or something.”

  He turned to us. “Did you say this Brian is a friend of yours? I would have thought he’d have imbibed himself to death or got knifed in a brothel by now.”

  Sandra spoke up. “I had invited Brennan to Dody’s party. He didn’t know most of the people there but —”

  “I should say not.”

  “But we were going out together. So Brennan borrowed his father’s car and came to pick me up. He was looking very elegant —” Reggie’s expression told us he knew better “— in a beautiful dark suit he had saved to buy. Or maybe he stole it, I don’t know. But when he arrived I was in a snit. About my shoes.” She looked embarrassed, but went on: “I had ordered a new dress, and it was fine. Kind of a pale aqua —”

  “And a pillbox hat to match,” Maura quipped.

  “It was after six, dahling,” Sandra corrected, with a laugh.

  “So. No hat,” Maura acknowledged. How did women know these things? Normie’s eyes went back and forth between them, taking it all in for the future.

  “Mother had sent my shoes out to be dyed to match my dress. They weren’t done until the day of the party, and when I saw them, I threw a fit.”

  “They’d replaced them with a pair of tooled leather cowboy boots!” my wife guessed.

  “Almost as bahd,” Sandra agreed, in a self-mocking wail. “They were a bright turquoise, almost green.”

  “Frightful,” I agreed.

  “You’re bad, Monty. You two know Brennan,” Sandra stated. “You didn’t know him then, but try to imagine him even as you know him now, listening to that story about my shoes.”

  New York City, 1957

  “What’s this you’re telling me now Sandra? You had a pair of shoes dyed to match a green dress?”

  “The dress is aqua, the shoes are green. I look hideous!”

  “I don’t understand this. What colour were the shoes before you dyed them?”

  “They were white, what do you think?”

  “So why didn’t you just leave them white? Wouldn’t they go with more of your outfits if they were white instead of green?”

  “Brennan, it’s April!”

  “I’m not following you here.”

  “One does not wear white until after Memorial Day. Obviously. Oh, what’s the point?” I can’t bring myself to budge from the car. Anything else will be too horrid to imagine. But he’s starting the engine. We’re going to have to make an appearance.

  “What’s the difference?” he’s asking me. “Who’s going to notice?”

  “Who’s going to notice? Everyone! I’ll be the laughingstock.”

  Brennan is looking at me as if he has no idea who I am or what I am doing in his car. He yanks the steering wheel, and the tires make the most embarrassing squealing noise. Right here in Upper Manhattan!

  “What are you doing, Brennan? Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see what it’s like to have some fecking hideous shoes, you little pussacon.” I hate it when he calls me these Irish names. He calls me a pussacon when he thinks I’m being pouty. But I’m just being normal. He’s the one who’s from another planet.

  “You turn around this instant, Brennan! I cannot miss Dody’s party. I will never live it down.”

  “Start livin’ it down, Princess.” Where is he taking me? We’re on the bridge to Queens. Now where are we? What is this horrible place? It looks like an old warehouse and it’s got a cross painted on the side. And who are all those people shuffling outside in a line?

  “Where are we?” I hope he can’t hear the panic in my voice.

  “We’re where I’m supposed to be tonight, but I bribed my little brothers to cover for me so I could take you out.” He’s parking. Is he serious? Now he’s yanked off his jacket and tie. We’re out of the car, and he’s pulling me!

  “Get your hands off me, Brennan.” Inside there is a food counter and racks of obviously secondhand clothing. A man is ladling out soup, a woman is serving bread. There are cold sandwiches, and Jell-O for dessert. These people, you have to feel sorry for them. They appear to be absolutely desperate. I know I look out of place in my dyed satin shoes, skimpy little aqua dress with spaghetti straps, and my hair all done up.

  Here comes his little brother Terrence. “Do we still get our money, now that you’re here, Bren?” He’s paying them to be here in his place.

  “You’ll get your money, you little gobshite. What are you supposed to be doing?”

  “I’ve got the balls!”

  “You what?”

  “It’s me that’s puttin’ the balls in the toy bags for the kids.”

  “So do it!” Brennan gives him a shove and sends him off.

  Now it’s Patrick coming over. He’s so sweet. He’s got a big spoon in his hand; his face and shirt are sticky with red Jell-O. “So you’re here after all, Bren.”

  “Go get a clean spoon and keep it out of your gob.”

  “Oh, hello, Sandra.”

  “Hi, Pat.”

  “You’ll be needin’ some clothes, then? They’ve a whole bin full of sweaters there, Sandra. And don’t worry; they won’t cost you a cent.”

  Brennan is grabbing him by the arm. The poor little guy looks nervous. But Brennan just ruffles his hair and sends him off with a big wink. About me. Well, I guess I am the odd one out.

  “Come here, Sandra. Spear some food onto people’s plates and be gracious about it.” I try to be, and it isn’t really all that bad.

  It’s over now, and we’re on our way to my place. He hasn’t said a word. Now we’re at my door. He isn’t moving, he hasn’t turned the engine off, he’s just waiting for me to go. The only thing he says by way of good-night is: “Anybody comment on your shoes?”

  “So that’s where you were,” Reggie said. “I never did get it straight.”

  “I told you before. It was a Catholic charity, Reg.”

  “Right,” Reggie sniffed. “The Pope in Rome probably got half the money from it!”

  “Half the soup, you must mean,” Maura said. “So,” Sandra told us, “somebody learned the social graces that night.” Reggie harrumphed at that, but Sandra went on: “It changed me, though I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of saying so.” She spoke in a conspiratorial whisper: “Maybe I was the first soul he saved.”

  Everybody laughed, though perhaps for different reasons, if Reggie’s expression was any indication
. Then Maura brought the room down. “I don’t know whether you heard, or maybe it was in the papers, Sandra, but somebody tried to kill Brennan’s father.”

  “What? I didn’t see anything in the papers. What happened?”

  “I was there!” Normie burst out. “It was at Katie’s wedding party. Somebody shot Katie’s granddad, Mr. Burke. The guy got away!”

  “Shot him in the chest,” I confirmed. “Just missed his heart.”

  “My God!” Sandra was horrified. “Do they know who it was?”

  I shook my head. “The police don’t have a suspect yet. And if Declan knows who did it, he’s not saying.”

  “Is he going to be all right?”

  “Oh, yeah. He tries not to let on it happened.”

  I glanced at Reggie Baines. He looked as if somebody had just farted in the Knickerbocker Club.

  Sandra chose that moment to offer us fresh drinks. Normie held out her glass for a refill, but Reggie declined, saying there was somewhere else he had to be. When he was gone, I went to the framed page of music on the wall.

  “Tell us about this,” I requested. The notes were done by hand. The sheet had been torn through the middle, then lined up again. The piece was written for traditional Celtic instruments and, when I sang the melody line to myself, it sounded like a lament. I gently removed it from the wall, took it over and propped it up so I could play the top line and some of the accompaniment on her piano.

  “It’s sorrowful, it’s haunting, and it’s so very, very Irish,” Maura remarked, almost to herself.

  Even in the small snippet we had, the piece managed to express an overwhelming sense of loss. “Where’s the rest of it?” I asked.

  Sandra shook her head. “You lost it?” No comment. “You tore it up.”

  “I wasn’t very receptive when I first got it. I should have been, I guess. It’s the only piece of music anyone ever wrote for me, which explains why it’s there on the wall. Really, I suppose, it was sweet of him to —”

  “That’s passion, babe, not sweetness,” I snapped, jabbing the music with my finger. Even I was taken aback by the sharpness of my tone. “I hope you didn’t underestimate him while you had him in your life.”