“Well, it all began when she choked on a fishbone, really,” Jamie adds. “Someone’s getting sacked tomorrow morning.”
“She did die, though,” Brigid says. “Even if it was just for a few seconds.”
Dr. Gupta reviews her notes. “Well, her heart did stop—”
Jamie and I exchange a look. Is it possible that we’re thinking the same thing?
“So she did die, you’re saying.”
“Yes, Mr. Doyle. Technically speaking, your mother did die.”
“But she’ll be all right from now on?”
“I would like to be able to guarantee that. I can assure you we will do everything we can for her. She’ll need to undergo some tests to determine whether she actually had a heart attack. We won’t know anything for sure until some time tomorrow.”
“And I’m supposed to go home and get a good night’s sleep, I suppose,” Jamie fumes. In his frustration and powerlessness he looks very much like he would like to put his fist through something.
Downstairs, Brigid flips open her mobile and places a call to Captain O’Reilly. “Hey, it’s me, Brigid. I need to talk to yiz about something,” I hear her say. “Can we do it to night? I really want to see you.”
She grabs a cab and heads off to meet her cop, and Jamie and I return to my apartment and undress for bed. “I don’t want to go through another day like this ever again,” I mutter.
“She’s going to be all right,” Jamie says, trying to sound strong. “Isn’t she? I want to say I feel it in my bones, but I just can’t tell.” He chuckles. “I think New York City has affected my empathetic powers.”
He snuggles me close. “Don’t sell yourself short,” I murmur. “You knew what I needed just now. Your Mum’ll be okay, Jamie.” I settle back against his chest, seeking his warmth. “Because that’s what I want to believe.”
“And you’ll get your journal back,” he whispers, nuzzling my neck. “Because that’s what I want to believe.”
And damned if he isn’t right. When we go downstairs the next morning to check on Maureen at the hospital, sitting on the shelf by the mailboxes is a brown envelope addressed to me on a printed label. I eagerly tear open the wrapping to find the diary intact. There’s no note attached.
I dash back up to the apartment to stash it in my bedside table for safekeeping. On my way back down, I catch the headline of the morning paper lying on the doormat in front of the second-floor flat. I freeze like a deer staring down the muzzle of an M80. My photo is splashed on the front page of the Post just below the headline: TESSA MESSA.
And the exclusive—all over pages 2 and 3, CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE’S JUICY BITS REVEALED. Not only was my journal found—it was delivered to the editors at the New York Post, which has taken gleeful liberty in publishing particularly personal entries, “outing” my long-term relationship with David, the racy details of my current love life, the musings over my campaign strategy, and my diatribes against Bob Dobson and the Republican machine.
I swipe the newspaper and, white as a sheet, meet Jamie in the vestibule. “And we thought things couldn’t get worse,” I say weakly. “Oh, Jamie, I’m so sorry.”
“Bastards!” he says, skimming the article. “Feckin’ bloodthirsty bastards. You’re now only just a few points down in the polls and this is how they try to give their guy an edge! What really pisses the shite out of me is that someone in the Pot o’Gold yesterday afternoon probably nicked it while we were in the ladies’, cleaning up Maeve. This,” he rages, stabbing his finger into the paper, “is not news.”
I’m too wounded for tears. “Oh, yeah, my love, I’m afraid it is.”
Twenty-seven
I call Gus Trumbo from the cab. “Is it over?” I ask him.
He already knows what I’m talking about. “Sugar, we took a bad hit—”
“We?”
“We. I’m not quittin’ you. I signed on for the whole game. All nine innings. You can’t get rid of me. It’s as bad as bein’ married.”
“The Post claimed it as an exclusive. Has it hit the TV yet? If NY1 has its hands on it for their hourly In the Papers segment, no one in the city’ll miss it. Wait—I need to put you on hold, I’m getting another call.”
I press the button and retrieve the new call. “Tess?”
“Oh, God, David.” This is when I burst into tears. “I…I don’t know what to say other than I’m so, so sorry.” I’m terrified he’s going to chew me out.
His voice sounds strained. “Welcome to the club,” he says ruefully. “I really, really hope, though bloodied, at least you can remain unbowed through this.”
“Right now I want to crawl into a little hole and curl up and die. And of course it’s the worst possible time for me to deal with a disaster. Jamie’s mom ended up in the CCU last night. We’re on the way to see her now…Yeah…I’m afraid I do have that effect on people…What? I can’t hear you? You’re breaking up…Oh…choked on a fishbone. But she may or may not have had a heart attack afterwards. We’ll find out in a little while…What?”
I can’t help smiling through my tears as I listen to David tell me, “Well, even though you wrote that I’m ‘highly self-absorbed’ and ‘narcissistic’—August twelfth—which I guess isn’t entirely unearned, at least everyone in the world knows I’m not gay now. And you did write some very nice things about me, even after I’d broken up with you. You’re a good person, Tess. Fuck…I should have told you I loved you. Not because it hit the papers, but because…because I felt it all along, and I should have let you know. I should have let you know every day.”
“Thanks, I suppose,” I sniffle. “So…any advice for the eviscerated?”
“Same as you gave me a while back. Keep your chin up. Maintain your dignity. Stay on message. Counting today, we’ve got thirteen days until the election. That’s an eternity in politics. A lot can happen between now and then. The voters have lots of time to forget or forgive.”
“Tell that to Howard Dean. Or Gary Hart—well, he did something truly dumb, so don’t count that one. And what about you, David? The voters might have been able to forgive and forget all that silliness about the is-he-or-isn’t-he-gay shit, but the press wouldn’t let it go. If they sink their teeth into this one, I’m sunk.”
“Do you think a public appearance on my part will help at this point? We could all laugh it off and remind everyone that it’s got nothing to do with the issues.”
“I’ve got Gus on the other line. I’ll ask him how he wants to play this. It’s just happened so fast I can’t think straight. My head feels like it’s been invaded by a bunch of dwarves with pickaxes.”
“Careful, if the wrong person hears you use that word, you’ll be accused next of not being PC.”
“Pickaxes?” I ask snarkily. “Dwarves, dwarves, fucking Disney dwarves! I’ve got to run; we’re at the hospital. I’ll try to call you later—or ask Gus to keep you in the loop.” I flip the phone shut and turn to Jamie. “And you, my poor baby, caught in the crossfire.” I try very hard not to cry. “Maybe you should go back home with your mother. As soon as she’s well enough to leave the hospital, we’ll get you a plane ticket, too.”
Jamie steps out of the taxi and extends his hand to help me out of the car. “Are you daft, gorl?” He takes me in his arms. “Tessa Goldsmith Craig, I’m in this for the long haul.” We head up the hospital steps. “Ya didn’t write anything bad about me, did yiz?” he asks uncertainly.
“I said you were a dreadful slob,” I confess meekly.
“Oh, that. Slob I can handle. It lends me a certain air of charm. I was afraid you might have written somewhere that I have a small wanker or something like that.”
“But you don’t. In fact,” I say, blushing crimson, “I may have written somewhere that you don’t suffer from the Irish Curse.”
“Oh! I don’t think the paper printed that comment.”
“Just wait,” I sigh. “It’s only been one news cycle.”
I am tremendously grateful tha
t there are no television sets in the Cardiac Care Unit. This buys us some time with Maureen. And we don’t bother to tell her that Brigid didn’t come back to the apartment last night…which of course means nothing…except that Brigid didn’t come back to the apartment.
“Where’s Brigid,” Maureen asks us. Jamie and I exchange a glance. Do we lie? This could be a test of how in tune we are. Will we come up with the same answer on the spur of the moment?
“I don’t know, Mum,” Jamie says. “She’s a grown woman.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Maureen demands.
“Mum, we’ve had a bit of a rough morning—”
“And I haven’t? Hooked up to God knows how many tubes and wires over here. I feel like a human carburetor. Did ya bring me a puzzle, at least?”
There’s no place to sit, so Jamie and I hover glumly near his mother’s bedside. Dr. Gupta and Brigid appear within moments of each other, Brigid muttering a guilty “Sorry I’m late, Mum.”
“Well, the good news is that you didn’t suffer a heart attack, Mrs. Doyle,” the doctor tells her. “But we would like to keep you here another day for observation, just as a precaution.”
“Jamie, as soon as they release me from this filthy place, I want to go home. And you and Brigid are coming with me. I’ve had enough of this nonsense to last a lifetime.”
The Doyle siblings exchange a glance. “Ya know, Mum, Goethe said, ‘What does not kill me makes me stronger.’”
“Goethe said a lot of things, Jamie. But he was a German. Why should I listen to him?”
“Why not? He also said, ‘Nothing is worth more than this day.’”
“You’re talking nonsense. Have you been dipping into my morphine drip?”
“You’re not on morphine, Ma.”
“I’m taking the two of yiz home, and that’s my last word on the subject. Chasing all the way across the Atlantic after some American woman, abandoning your family to manage the business without you. You’re not an adolescent, Jamie.”
“Well, you’re right on that count, Ma. I’m over forty years old. Now, not only would I not consider retorning to Ireland with yiz, but regarding the bit about running off to the States to court an American woman—that’s just about what Da did when he came a-wooin’ you. Isn’t it now? The way he tells it, Grandma had been wanting him to go back to Ireland but he’d just met you and didn’t want to let a good thing slip through his fingers.”
As Maureen blushes, Jamie removes an envelope from his coat pocket. “I figure now is as good a time as any to tell you this. Better, even. If your heart stops again, we’ve got the medics twenty feet away. You see what this is? It’s a deed of sale. You’re looking at the proud-as-shite new owner of the Pot o’Gold.”
“Wh—this is madness, Jamie! What the hell did you use for money?”
“I sold my flat in Dublin. Feathered me new nest egg nicely.” Maureen appears to be in shock. “I’m stayin’ in New York. I might be middle-aged, but I’m finally going to own my own pub. I’m following me own dream now—which includes being with Tessa—and marrying her, if she’s daft enough to have me.”
Now this—my present state of being—is what “shock and awe” really means!
“Over my dead body!” swears Maureen.
“Too late, Ma!” Jamie says triumphantly.
And the evil spell is broken. And although my political career may be on a respirator, or so it certainly seems right now, there are little Disney bluebirds fluttering around my head, because any woman would be a fool not to be affected by Jamie’s sudden, and most romantic, declaration. If only I could write it down in my diary.
“Thanks for that,” Brigid says, giving her brother a shot in the arm.
“For what?”
“Breakin’ the ice with Ma. Maybe what I’m about to tell her won’t seem so bad now.” She approaches the bed and gently takes her mother’s hands. “I was afraid I killed you last night when I told you I met a man. Actually, I thought the real clinker was when I said I was thinking of leaving the community house. Well, I was up all night talking about it with Anto—”
“Who’s Anto?”
“Forst of all, we didn’t do anything—we just talked. And I finally told him, after weeks of torning down so much as a cup of coffee with the man, that I was planning to be a nun. And you know very well who Anto is. Captain O’Reilly. I met him at Holy Trinity. We kept running into each other there every day. Torns out, we were both confused about a number of things, and between the two of us we’re straightening each other out. I like him, Ma. And he likes me. So…I’m going to end my candidacy. I’m goin’ to write to Sister Genesius and the Vocation Director, thanking them all for their faith in me, but that I’ve realized I’m not a good fit for the community after all, and…I’m goin’ to stay on in New York, and see what happens.”
Poor Maureen looks like she’s at a funeral. “You—you’re as daft as yaw brother. But you don’t have working papers. How are ya going to stay here legally? I don’t want no trouble with the authorities. It’s not the Doyle way.”
“I’ve got sponsors. Father Mulligan at Holy Trinity offered me a job as a receptionist when I told him I was thinking of staying in the States. And now that Jamie’s going to own the Pot o’Gold, he can hire me as a waitress.”
“Oh, I can, can I? You’ve got it all thought out, haven’t yiz?”
Brigid beams at her brother. “I have, actually.”
Maureen is weeping. Too proud to ask for a tissue, she’s trying to blink the drops back behind her tear ducts. I feel the urge to hug her. Ever so gingerly, so as not to disturb any of her tubes, I put my arms around her. “I’m not a good one for change,” she confesses softly. “Never got used to mini skirts or rock music or Vatican II; I’ve even worn my hair the same way since I was twenty. Family and duty and responsibility are more important to me than anything in the world. Always have been. Father McCaffrey back home in Dublin is always telling me I need to let go. I don’t know why I hold onto things so tight, but I do. It’s just my way. I don’t have any deep dark history of loss…there’s just something in me that wants to see all my children as babies who need me, no matter how old they get. I was a nurse for a lotta years, ya know. In a children’s hospital. And every one of them was like one of my babies. It’s why I was no good at it when push came to shove; I cared too much. I couldn’t bear it when we lost one of them. Well, maybe that’s my history of loss, then, but I was like this long before I entered nursing. The reborn dolls I make are a part of that, too, I suppose. If everyone could stay a perfect little child…ach, ya probably think I’m crazy as a loon.”
Well, maybe she’s a bit of a head case, but who isn’t in their way? We’ve each got our eccentricities. And one of us now has twenty laminated giant jigsaw puzzles hogging every bit of counter space in her duplex.
“Are you going to marry Jamie, then?”
I glance over at my beau. “Do you think he’ll put his clothes in the hamper if I do?”
“Oh, you’re asking for a lot, now. But if anyone can get my son to pick up after himself, you can, Tessa. Lord knows I never could. When you told him you loved him, within a day your flat looked like it had been Simonized.”
“I will marry him. Especially if he still wants me after this morning.”
Her expression darkens. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’ll know soon enough anyway. Someone found my journal and brought it to the Post. They printed excerpts from it in the morning paper. Since the paper is also online, everyone in the world from my optometrist to Osama bin Laden now knows about my relationship with Congressman Weyburn. And with Jamie.”
“Jamie do you know what you’re getting into?” Maureen asks him.
“Tessa’s entitled to her personal thoughts. It’s not her fault that everyone is reading them. Ya know—I want to think positive on this for as long as I can. Nothing she did was against God’s commandments, ya know. And would you want to vote for
a candidate who didn’t enjoy sex?”
Although the Times buries the diary story, relegating it to a page deep within the Metro section, the tabloids blaze it. The Daily News with its TESSA CONFESSA headlines lags a day behind the Post by virtue of the latter’s exclusive; and the Post never does reveal how my journal got into their hands.
The letters to their editor, published the following day, castigate the paper. People have written everything from “Shame on you for trying to smear Ms. Craig!” to “I always thought Ms. Craig was a babe, but now I’m certain of it” to “Mind your own business; don’t you newspapers have anything substantive to write about?” But those are a drop in the bucket compared to the flood of correspondence mailed to my campaign headquarters. Brigid, Venus, Imogen, Jamie, and I open hundreds of letters from supporters. “Yeah, I admit I read the articles,” one note stated, “but I still think that printing excerpts from your journal was totally sleazy. I’m a betting woman and I promise you it’ll go as a strike against Mr. Dobson and cost him dearly on Election Day.”
Another letter said, “I’m sorry this had to happen to you. I wasn’t sure I liked you because, I mean, after all, who are you? I didn’t know what qualified you to run for Congress any more than Bob Dobson. But when the paper published your diary, I found myself feeling violated on your behalf. Reading something so personal showed me that you’re not a politician; you’re just like me: a woman full of hopes and fears and dreams. I admire you very much now.”
And then there was the person who wrote “You rock, girl! David Weyburn is a hunk!”
Of course, there was a fistful of sobering notes, such as the one from a man named Buck who wrote, “I’m glad the newspaper showed you to be a slut so that everyone else knows now. You’re going straight to hell where you belong.”
Jamie took that letter from my hand and ripped it into tiny pieces. “Don’t give it another thought, me darling. Hell must be his euphemism for Congress.”
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