Irish Linen

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “One more thing, young man. I’ve know her for almost twelve years and slept with her for almost ten years and I haven’t begun to figure her out. Maybe I should turn our conversation into a poem and send it to Poetry.”

  2

  ME WIFE solves mysteries. There’s some dispute whether she or the little Archbishop down at the Cathedral are the better detective. Both claim that the other is. Nuala, however, is fey. She sees things. Like battles being fought at Fort Dearborn almost two centuries ago. And the Haymarket Riot. And the dead bodies of the Union soldiers floating into Lake Michigan where Lincoln Park is today. And an airplane crashing into the Lake. And an old man trying to punish his son for happiness that was stolen from him. And like the burning of a manor house outside of Limerick in 1920.

  I knew what I was getting into when I married her. Hadn’t she pointed out to me that the grave next to my beloved grandparents was empty? But, such was my infatuation with her, that I didn’t much care. I still don’t, though sometimes the detecting puts extra burdens on me since I’m her Dr. Watson, a useful spear carrier and research assistant.

  My family will tell you that I don’t work for a living. The implication is that I live off Nuala’s success as a singer of popular and standard songs. That’s not altogether true. After I had failed to earn degrees at the Golden Dome and Marquette, my family decided to do what similar professional class Chicago families do with a ne‘er-do-well in the making. They bought me a seat on the Board of Trade, where I was an abject failure until one day, when I bought when I had meant to sell, I won almost two million dollars. I paid back my parents for the capital they had invested in me, sold my own seat, turned the cash over to the smartest investor on LaSalle Street and went on the Grand Tour of Europe, ending up in O’Neill’s just off the college green, where my future wife dismissed me as a “fucking rich Yank.”

  Even apart from her earnings, I don’t have to work, which suits me just fine. I write some poetry, which gets published, and an occasional novel about a dolt married to a brilliant woman, which also gets published. But in my achievement-oriented yuppie family these successes don’t count.

  Anyway I got involved in the study of the history of the War because Nuala was looking for a young man from our neighborhood who disappeared in Iraq and I had found, in the archives of my brother George’s parish, a manuscript about a young Irish diplomat who had disappeared in Germany in the more recent act in the Thirty-One-Years war. Such MSS were more or less expected to turn up when Nuala needed them. I don’t even try to understand why.

  Desmond Doolin, the lad from the neighborhood, had graduated from Marquette in 2000. I had played basketball with him at one of the neighborhood parks. He was a nice kid, a good half foot shorter than I am, but quick. Like me his family had destined him for financial services. Like me he wasn’t much good at it. So he signed up for the Peace Corps and went to Eritrea of all places. He came back with shining eyes and a knowledge of Arabic and whatever it is that the Ethiopians speak. His family and his friends, almost all of them financial service gnomes, wanted him to settle down and get a job at McCormick Blair, for example. His knowledge of Arabic, they said, would make him a hot property.

  Instead he enrolled at Illinois-Chicago, in Arabic and Islamic studies. He had finished all the required courses and begun his dissertation when Mr. Bush decided to protect the United States from terrorists. Desmond called his mother, an MD at a Catholic hospital, and told her that he was going to Iraq to stop the war. That was the last anyone had heard from him.

  His father was executive vice president of a very important bank and a major contributor to Republican fund-raising. Yet the Pentagon refused to provide any information. The military refused to deny that they had ever heard of him or confirm that they knew about him. The Honorable Company, as the CIA used to be called, wouldn’t even return their phone calls. His mother was a Democrat with a record of generosity to good liberal causes, but she couldn’t get any satisfaction from our two Democratic senators or our Democratic representatives. The State Department admitted that he had a passport but denied any knowledge of his leaving the country.

  What had happened to Desmond Doolin?

  The elder Doolins did not go to the media, partly because they did not want publicity and partly because they feared that media attention might endanger their son’s life. So they came to see us, that is, to see Nuala Anne. We had heard vague rumors of Desmond’s disappearance in the Middle East, but they seemed too flimsy to take seriously. I had said, “He’s probably gone CIA.”

  My wife frowned but did not comment.

  Then Thomas John Doolin phoned us one evening to ask if he and his wife, Grace, might visit us the following evening. I passed the phone over to me wife, excuse me, my wife. She listened, nodded sympathetically, and said that they would be most welcome.

  The next day she consulted with our neighbor down the street, Commander Cindasue Lou McCloud Murphy of the Yewnited States Coast Guard, mother of Katiesue Murphy, inseparable buddy of our Socra Marie, and a wild infant son called Johnnie Pete Murphy. Cindasue was an intelligence officer for someone in the government.

  Nuala returned from the Murphy house with a grim frown on her face.

  “I couldn’t pry anything out of her, Dermot love. That’s not like Cindasue. She kept saying that she didn’t know anything about Desmond Doolin and couldn’t talk about him.”

  “The Feds have their reasons for pretending that he doesn’t exist and have spread the word to all their spooks.”

  “Come on, Dermot Michael Coyne, Cindasue isn’t a spook even if she’s talking like one.” My wife sighed. “She knows something all right … Is this frigging president of yours scaring everyone?”

  “He’s your president as well as mine and I didn’t vote for him and I don’t like him any more than you do.”

  “We’re stuck with him, Dermot Michael, it’s not friggin’ right.

  “We’d better watch our step, woman. The Feds might come looking for us.”

  She grinned in happy memory of her previous successful battles with the men in dark suits.

  “Let them try it.”

  That evening Grace and Tom Doolin climbed the stairs of our pre-Fire house and entered through the second-floor doorway—the house, like all its neighbors having been pumped up out of the ooze, a good four feet above the level of the backyard. When they were admitted to the house, both of them—slender handsome people in their late fifties—marveled at the wonders we had worked on the old place and admired the two snow-white hounds who greeted them, as they greeted everyone who came through the door, with paws extended in friendship.

  “What lovely dogs,” Grace Doolin said, “so well behaved.”

  Having played their game, the pooches took their leave to return to the playroom to frolic with the kids.

  I had no idea why this ritual was important. However, Nuala, in an elegant black dress with silver jewelry, believed firmly that it was necessary to impress new clients. Hence I wore a blazer and a shirt and tie she had selected.

  ALPHA PERSON ALL RIGHT, said the voice of my Adversary, who lurked in one of the subbasements of my brain.

  Could anyone seriously believe that this charming Irish countess (whose brogue became thicker every time a “client” arrived) could actually solve mysteries? Or that she was fey, blessed with what the little Archbishop called a “neo-Neanderthal” vestige which enabled her to “see” things?

  “I gave a considerable sum of money to Bush’s campaign,” Tom Doolin began the serious conversation after I had poured each of them a “splasheen” of Middleton’s Special Reserve. “I regret it now, but he won’t even talk to me about Desmond. I’m sure they know something. I don’t think they give a damn.”

  “Never trust a politician who won’t let you pick up a marker,” I remarked with the solemnity of a Hindu wise man.

  “I think they have him in one of those horrible detention centers,” Grace Doolin added, “that we’ve been r
eading about in the papers. If we knew which one it is, our lawyers could go into court and seek a writ of habeas corpus. They have been warned by federal agents not to do that, but we’ve learned in recent years not to trust federal agents, haven’t we?”

  “The men in dark suits,” I murmured.

  “Which federal agents warned your lawyers?” Nuala asked.

  “They claim to work for the government, but they didn’t say which agency.”

  “Sounds like the CIA to me!” Tom said, struggling to keep his temper.

  “If he isn’t in one of their prisons,” Grace said, dabbing at her eyes with a tissue, “then he may be working for them. If only they would tell us that.”

  “And,” Tom joined in, “he may be dead. Sometimes we are convinced that he is dead and that we will never know what happened to him. So many people have died over there. Who would notice if a roadside bomb blew up one more idealistic and naïve American boy.”

  Poor people, I thought to myself. Nice, hardworking, churchgoing, successful Americans, products of a world where your lawyers and your doctors and your priests could be expected to protect you from disorder and confusion and crime—so long as you lived in the right neighborhoods. They could not comprehend the utter and absolute fragility of all of us, whether it be the men and women in the World Trade Center or riders on English buses or Jordanians at a wedding party. Those things didn’t happen in our neighborhoods.

  “Would you ever mind telling me about Desmond?” Nuala asked in a tone of gentle compassion. “Me husband played basketball with him once or twice, but we’d like to hear about him from you.”

  The couple glanced at one another and Grace began.

  “He was an ordinary young American Catholic. He went to SS Faith, Hope, and Charity grammar school up in Winnetka, Loyola Academy, and then Marquette. He was barely five feet ten, the shortest of our three kids, bright and a great reader, but I’m afraid he didn’t take his academic responsibilities seriously …”

  “He didn’t take anything seriously,” Tom Doolin cut in.

  “He could have played varsity sports in high school, track anyway. He could have made the dean’s list. He could have gone to summer school. He could have worked as an intern in any of a dozen financial services firms. BORING! was his favorite word. He didn’t want to grow up.”

  I resisted the impulse to say that every male was entitled to a Peter Pan interlude and I had one too. That would leave open the question of whether I had ever grown out of mine.

  Grace passed two graduation pictures of her son to me—one in academic robe and hat and the other in blazer and slacks. Typical financial services kid with a wonderful Irish grin … Not a hint as far as I could see of craziness. I handed them over to Nuala.

  “Sure, doesn’t he have the glint in his eye?” she said with some surprise.

  “The glint?” Tom asked. “What do you mean by that, Mrs. Coyne?”

  “Mrs. Coyne is me mother-in-law. I’m Nuala Anne … He was an impish little lad, wasn’t he?”

  Grace laughed, with a tone of pain and sorrow in her voice.

  “It was so long ago that he was a little boy that I forgot that we always called him our little leprechaun. Even Conor and Jenny laughed at him, though sometimes he drove them crazy with his jokes and his silly tricks and riddles.”

  “Sure, and of course he grew out of that phase, didn’t he now?”

  Tom leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees, forming a tent of fingers under his chin.

  “I’m not sure he ever did. Shovie, the girl he dated, told us often how he could keep a whole crowd of drinkers sober because they were laughing at his silly stories.”

  “One of them kind, was he now … Was it serious between him and Shovie?”

  “Her real name was Siobhan, of course … We hoped it was serious because we thought she might settle him down. On the other hand, as Tom often said, she just encouraged him to be goofy. She urged him to join the Peace Corps after we had bought him a seat on CBOT.”

  “Remember, Tommy, when we visited him in Eritrea? He was telling his stories in three different languages and everyone was laughing. He was teaching them English and supervising a clean water project. They all adored him. You even said he was kind of like a priest for those handsome black people—and most of them Catholics too …”

  “The most vile place on the face of the earth,” Tom responded. “Hunger, poverty, disease, misery, everyone speaking their own language and an economy ruined by stupid civil war. We flew from Frankfurt to Addis Abba on an old DC-8 and then up to Asmara on an older DC-4. The stench was terrible even before we left the plane. And there was our son, in jeans and a Marquette tee shirt, having the time of his life.”

  “I thought of that short story we had to read in college,” his wife added, “The Darkness of the Heart, the one about Mr. Kurtz. I wondered if our Desmond was Mr. Kurtz for these people.”

  Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. I restrained my correction because it was worthy only of a prig. Anyway, Desmond Doolin sounded like the exact opposite of Mr. Kurtz.

  “And more Catholic Churches than there ought to be,” her husband protested. “I thought there was just one Catholic Church, the Roman Catholic Church. In Eritrea there are Egyptian and Greek and Ethiopian and Roman Catholic Churches and no one seems to be able to tell the difference. I can’t understand why the Pope tolerates such stuff!”

  Probably because Catholic means here comes everyone.

  “And whatever their language or religion, they all loved our poor Desmond. He wouldn’t translate some of the nice things they said about him.”

  “Did he break up with this young woman,” I asked, “when he came home from the Horn of Africa?”

  They both were silent for a moment.

  “I don’t think they actually broke up,” Grace replied. “It was hard to tell. He enrolled in the Arabic program at UIC and she had a fellowship out at Creighton in psychology. I think they saw each other occasionally. He was always very mysterious about her.”

  “He would be now, wouldn’t he?” Nuala said.

  My wife sniffed something.

  “Did he call her before he left for Iraq?”

  “We’ve never asked her,” Tom said sorrowfully. “He didn’t even talk to us. He called the house. Had a quick conversation with my older son and said he was off to Iraq in the name of peace. That was the last thing we heard from him. We know he flew from Chicago to Frankfurt on American and then on to Dubai on their airline. Then he disappeared into the desert stand.”

  “Did he tell his brother that he would be back?”

  They were both quiet for a couple of moments.

  “Our sons were not close to one another,” Grace finally replied. “But there was no animosity between them either. They were so different from one another. Conor of course tried to talk him out of it, but he said that Desmond was being his usual goofy self. He thinks his last words were something like ‘If I don’t see you, I’ll see you.’”

  “Typical goofiness,” his father said, shaking his head.

  Poor guy. He’d been a good father. He didn’t understand. Just like my family never understood me, though I was not as much an amadon as Desmond was.

  “He was very interested in Islam and Arabic?” I said, a foolish question I realized as soon as I asked him.

  “He went up and down Lawrence Avenue,” his father told us, “talking to every Arab shopkeeper he could find and made friends with a lot of their clergy, imams or whatever they call them.”

  “But he never became a Muslim, did he now?” me wife said, a statement more than a question.

  “We became worried about that,” Grace admitted. “He thought that was very funny. ‘Mom, he said, I’m an Irish Catholic from Chicago. How could I convert to Islam?’”

  “That would be the kind of thing he would say,” Nuala nodded wisely.

  “Do you think he’s alive, Nuala Anne?” Grace was crying again.

 
Me wife sighed her loudest Connemara sigh.

  “I don’t know, Grace. There’s too much that’s still a mystery. I don’t want to raise your hopes when there’s all that mystery. All I can say is that I wouldn’t be surprised if he were.”

  That was a big leap beyond the evidence for our Nuala Anne.

  After they had left, grateful for our time and interest and encouragement, me wife and I sat silently in our parlor (or “living room” as she calls it). The Doolins promised that their son and daughter would talk to us and that they would ask Desmond’s best friend Ryan Dorsey and Shovie and the Newman chaplain at UIC to call us.

  “Do you think they’ll call us?” I asked finally.

  “Give over, Dermot Michael! Of course they’ll call. Young master Desmond is the kind of person about whom people love to talk.”

  “One of those with the glint in his eye, like meself?”

  “Och, you have a couple of glints, Dermot love, especially when you look at me and doesn’t it embarrass me something terrible. ’Tis the other glint that I’m talking about.”

  “Is it now?”

  “’Tis, and those poor good people don’t really understand him, do they now?”

  “I know the experience,” I said.

  “Indeed you do and your family still not quite understanding what you are, but then, if they did understand you, you wouldn’t have gone to Ireland seeking an innocent Irish virgin to bed, would you now?”

  “I thought the said Irish virgin was looking for a focking rich Yank!”

  She bounded across the room and cuddled up next to me on the couch.

  “Well, I was the winner, wasn’t I now?”

  “I never had a chance,” I replied as I tightened my arm around her.

  “Sure, doesn’t your family have enough sense of humor to laugh at you? Those poor folks are humorless altogether.”