She closed her eyes in complacent satisfaction.
“You’ve done them before.”
“Not like I’ll do them on July 4. And meself an American citizen now … You’re not angry are you, Dermot Michael? Sure didn’t I make up my mind coming home in Mr. Wood’s cab?”
“I’m delighted!”
“I knew you would be and yourself not angry at all that I hadn’t told you about the Washington invitation before.”
“How would such a wonderful husband like me ever be angry?” I said, testing this new tone in our relationship.
“You’re a living saint, Dermot Michael Coyne, to put up with all me moods and games and acts.”
I probably was, but I never expected to hear it from her.
“Now,” she continued, “if you’re not too tired, would you bring me a tiny drop of the creature and tell me what you learned today about poor Damian’s family.”
When I came back with her drink, I wondered whether the open jacket to her suit was an invitation to love—or at least a promise of it later on.
However, she was sitting up straight in her chair, all business again. Apparently the new Nuala Anne was not abandoning her Sherlock Holmes persona. I was kind of happy about that. Nuala Holmes was fun.
She frowned and swilled the Bushmill’s Green around in her Waterford tumbler and I made my report.
“They’re strange people, aren’t they now, Dermot love?” she said when I was finished. “Would you ever do me a favor and call your man at Minor, Grey and find out if that young woman will become a partner? I don’t think she will and I want to be sure.”
My contact did not ask why I wondered about the legal career of Maura O’Sullivan. His answer was quick and vehement.
“Hell, no, Dermot. It would have been a close call even if she were a fairly normal human being. There might be a place for her doing research for the firm. Her talents are not nearly as good as she thinks they are. If someone is really bright, the law doesn’t mind them being abusive and arrogant. That’s the style we look for in a litigator. She’s just not bright enough to act like a hotshot trial lawyer. No one around here likes her.”
“Tries to outmacho the machos?”
“Some women can get away with it. She can’t.”
“Ask him about her father,” Nuala whispered.
“Has her old man been leaning on the senior partners?”
“Funny you should ask that. He does a lot of business with Conners and Cassidy, Notre Dame types. He’s been hinting to our people that if she makes partner, he’ll move his business to us.”
“Not exactly ethical.”
“If she were good enough, we wouldn’t hold that against her. But like I say, Dermot, there are too many negatives.”
“Poor thing,” my wife said when I reported his reaction. “It’ll break her heart and herself with enough on her mind as it is.”
“So two of his kids are failed lawyers,” I said.
“And the third one is working for his father too and not doing a good job, according to your friend from Marquette. I bet he flunked out of business school. I wonder if the pediatrician is any good … Maybe Damian is the only one of the children with any talent.”
“The cream of the Irish, Jackie O’Sullivan called them. They have to be if they are to be like him.”
“And the poor friggin’ eejit, deep down, is afraid they’re like their mother.”
“About whom we hear nothing at all.”
“You noticed that, did you now?” She grinned at me. “You noticed, didn’t you, Dermot, that poor Damian is the only one in the family who couldn’t have run over Mr. Keefe?”
“Because if he were so drunk as to be wiped out at the side of swimming pool, he would never have been able even to open the door of the BMW?”
“I know who was driving the car, but I don’t know why Keefe was killed,” Nuala informed. “I suspect that the various members of the family have different ideas about it. They’re covering up for someone, but they don’t talk about it and there’s no consensus about whom.”
“What makes you think that?”
“They’re the kind of Irish family, Dermot Michael, who talk a lot—football, politics, golf, their own greatness, other people who aren’t nearly so great, but they never talk about their own family life, their personal relationships, their fears. They don’t have any problems, they don’t have any fears, you understand, don’t you now?”
“Woman, I do. It could have happened to my family”
“Only if your father were a friggin’ gobshite, which he’s not. Your friend Jackie O’Sullivan has turned them into a reflection of his own craziness. You don’t ask questions, you don’t talk, you take good care of everyone in the family because they’re all Irish cream and they know that’s true because their father has told them it’s true.”
“Where does Damian fit in?”
“I’m not one of your shrinks, Dermot, yet wouldn’t one of them say that the rest of the family needs a scapegoat for their own terrors. If they worry about Damian and punish him, they don’t have to worry about themselves.”
“Shite hawks!”
“My word,” she said wearily. “But there’s a lot we still have to figure out, isn’t there now? Would you be having a friend who was up at that club five years ago, if you take me meaning?”
“I don’t hang around them North Shore aristocrats much, but there’s a girl that I dated—twice—when I was at the Dome who lives up there. Her family were hereditary members. I didn’t date her a third time because all she could talk about was how wonderful their club was.”
“She’s happily married, I hope, Dermot Michael Coyne?”
“As far as I know.”
“What does she do?”
“I think she owns a boutique up there.”
“She’d likely be a friend of the O’Sullivans?”
“Knows them anyway.”
“Would she go out to lunch with you?”
“Sure she would! Don’t women love to have lunch with D. M. Coyne?”
“What excuse would you use?”
“The truth.”
“As good as any, isn’t it now?”
“If you’re right, Nuala Anne, they won’t be able to tolerate any success for Damian.”
“Tis true. Isn’t that why I told the Caseys they should watch out for John Patrick O’Sullivan … Could they send poor Damian to jail?”
“For violating his probation? I suppose they might try; it would only be for the duration of the probation. This time Damian will have Cindy on his side. That’ll make a difference.”
“Will it ever! That sister of yours is a real shite-kicker, Dermot Michael.”
“Takes one to know one.”
My wife grinned happily. She and Cindy had bonded. Against me mostly, but that was back in the old days when I wasn’t the practically perfect husband.
“Should we put her to work on a malpractice suit?” I asked.
“If I know that one, isn’t she already working on it.”
“It would tear that family apart to drag them into court when they couldn’t tilt the playing field.”
“We might be doing them a big favor, Dermot love … What’s this woman’s name?”
“What woman?”
“The friggin’ shopkeeper with whom you’ll be after eating lunch?”
“Lorene McMahon, now Lorene Carty, I think.”
“She’s perceptive?”
“She didn’t use to be.”
“See if you can find out something about Mrs. O’Sullivan … We don’t even know her name.”
Supper that night was a celebration of Damian’s new career, about which he seemed to be very happy. The kids were all delighted. They demanded that Damian paint their pictures, so they could go down to the Gallery and see themselves hung.
“Me too, me too!” the youngest demanded.
What would the ultimate identity be like for this little one who, but for th
e grace of God and advanced technology, would not be with us?
It would not be a quiet identity.
Ethne and Damian chatted easily, nothing more in common between them than generation. Yet.
The dogs, aware that Damian was at the table, barked insistently. Nuala relaxed her rule, “just this once, girls,” banning them from the meals. They were very good, for dogs. But they did beg shamelessly. Nuala Anne sternly forbade our feeding them, but she broke her own rule.
After supper she went to her music room and I to my exercise machines. Then we shared the task of helping the older kids with their homework while Ethne put Socra Marie to bed. Ethne and Damian went out for a “cup of coffee.”
Nuala put the older kids to bed, despite their protests, and joined me in my study, where I was rereading the Lonigan diaries. I handed them over to her.
She was wearing tennis shorts, a green Grand Beach tee shirt to get us in the mood for our first trip up there of the season (to plant flowers), and her favorite footwear—nothing at all, at all.
She put on her required reading glasses and “serious thinking” frown.
“Sure, he’s a desperate man, isn’t he, Dermot Michael?”
“He’s all of that, woman.”
“No murder yet.”
“There’ll be one, we know that.”
“Won’t there be more than one? And we’ll have to figure them out, else Ned wouldn’t have left it for us, would he?”
It was a given that Ned Fitzpatrick, long ago in paradise with his beloved Nora, had us in mind when he put this journal in the archives of Immaculate Conception parish on North Park. It was also a given that the good spirits of Ned and Nora were hovering around us, nudging us to get on with the task at hand. I had long since given up contending these points.
“Well we can’t solve it till we know what it is.”
“’Tis true … Now, love, I want to talk about women.”
“One of my favorite subjects,” I said, wondering what was in the wind.
“We’re different than men,” she began, averting her eyes.
“I think I’ve noticed that.”
“Give over, Dermot. I’m being serious.”
“All right.”
“Our bodies are different, more complicated.”
“Because they have to do so many more things than our bodies.”
“Faith, don’t you have the right of it, Dermot Michael, just like you always do?”
We were still in our “praise Dermot” mood.
BE CAREFUL, DERMOT, SHE’S UP TO SOMETHING.
When isn’t she?
“Well, isn’t sexual pleasure different for us?” she went on.
“Sometimes women are content with less than a full orgasm I’m told. Affection and closeness are important.”
“’Tis true,” she agreed solemnly. “And sometimes there is a lot more, isn’t there?”
“If you say so,” I said cautiously.
“Like the other night …”
This was getting awkward for both of us. Should be arousing but it wasn’t.
“You seemed to enjoy it more than usual.”
“Not the first time …” she said, her eyes fixed on the floor.
“No,” I agreed. Then suspecting I was a little too clueless, I tried another comment.
“I can’t quite remember such complete … abandonment.”
“Och, Dermot Michael, I knew you’d understand.”
STILL PRACTICALLY PERFECT.
“Abandon,” she continued rapidly, “is the very word. Many of us know about it, but we don’t talk about it much and there’s no name for it. We’re ashamed to talk about it because, well, isn’t it so animal?”
“That’s not true,” I said. “You were an ecstatic human person, not an animal. Our dogs hardly notice when we mate them. I don’t think any animal enjoys love that much.”
“You enjoyed it too, did you now?” She considered me shrewdly. “Were you after being frightened?”
I thought about it.
“No, I loved every second of it … Is it kind of like a heightened orgasm or something?”
She shook her head, her long black hair briefly a halo around her tense face.
“You could call it that, but it’s different, Dermot love. Maybe it’s a little like God feels when he loves us—complete and total surrender to love, so much that it absorbs you completely, tears you apart, rips you out of yourself. It terrifies you and you don’t want it to happen again, but of course you do.”
“Men are cheated, aren’t they?”
“They are, the poor dears … A woman first surrenders to her lover, then she realizes her body is pushing her further. She has a chance, if she wants it, to surrender to the storm of passion locked up in her own body. The man doesn’t cause it. He’s kind of a precondition … If he’s gentle and sweet and loving and demanding like you are.”
AHA, STILL THE PRACTICALLY PERFECT DERMOT MICHAEL COYNE.
“I’m glad I do some things right.”
“It’s not up to you, Dermot Michael, not at all, at all. Isn’t it up to me when I find myself rushing towards the fiery waterfall to decide whether I let myself ride over it?”
“Oh …”
Silence.
Again she leaned forward and pondered the floor.
“My point is that it’s not your fault if it doesn’t happen.”
She said “pint” of course.
“It’s good to know that.”
“My head has to be right and my body has to be right and even then sometimes I don’t let it happen.”
“Why not?” I asked, surprised.
“I’m afraid to let go. I don’t trust meself or me life or me kids or me lover or me God.”
“Oh,” I said again.
“Sometimes, me body won’t let me get away with that.”
“Good for your body!”
“You did enjoy the other night, didn’t you, Dermot Michael Coyne?”
“Woman, I did.”
“I thought you did … Some women are proud of the fact that they never have orgasm.”
“They’re not,” I said, an Irish way of expressing skepticism.
“They don’t want to give their husband the satisfaction … and there are others who don’t ever go over the waterfall because that gives their husband too much power. At least I think that’s the reason. Aren’t we afraid to talk about it, though some of us whisper to one another because we know the waterfall is there waiting for us.”
“Do you feel guilty if you don’t ride over it?” I asked. My Nuala Anne, you see, tends to feel guilty about almost everything.
She thought about it.
“A little bit, but not too much. After all, I do it often enough, though never like the other night.”
“And why the other night?”
“Och, how would I know, Dermot? Maybe because I love you so much.”
“That’s a good reason, I guess … And afterwards?”
“Afterwards, Dermot Michael Coyne, didn’t I fall in love with you all over again like I did that night at O’Neill’s?”
She burst into tears and ran to my arms.
“Except then I was a silly virgin who had no clues about what it is like to possess a man of your own, how terrible, how wonderful, all-consuming. Just like God has us.”
SHE SAYS SHE POSSESSES YOU. HASN’T SHE GOT IT ALL WRONG? BESIDES GOD KEEPS CHANGING AROUND.
If you’re Irish, you can do anything you want with metaphors.
“And didn’t I realize then what a terrible eejit I’ve been and meself not listening to you when you tell me that I shouldn’t worry about the kids, especially about the little demon and about everything else too.”
“So you decided you’d sing in Washington on July 4?”
She stopped sobbing.
“Sure, isn’t that why I’m telling you all this terrible personal stuff?”
“Letting me into your most intimate emotions?”
> SO SHE’LL POSSESS YOU EVEN MORE. HIGH-QUALITY SEDUCTION.
She nodded and produced the inevitable tissue to deal with the sniffles.
“And you feel good about telling me?”
“Do I ever!” She dabbed at her eyes. “You must not expect the waterfall trip every time, Dermot.”
“Being a man and not having all the complexities you womenfolk have, I don’t really need it, Nuala, though I’ll enjoy it when it happens.”
She cuddled in my arms.
We did make love that night. No fiery waterfalls, as far as I could tell. Still it was wonderful.
9
LORENE HAD been a babbling twit at the Dome. She still babbled but was no longer a twit. Rather she had matured into a svelte blond businesswoman whose North Shore boutique (begun with her father’s money) had become a substantial success. She wore a pale lemon summer suit, molded to display her not inconsiderable breasts. She wanted to babble about my wife, understandably enough.
“What’s she really like, Derm? I can’t imagine you finding such a remarkable woman. Is she like on television—kind of ethereal and mystical?”
NEITHER CAN ANYONE ELSE.
“My wife is many different women, all of them adorable. The TV persona is very real.”
“And those gorgeous kids? What are they like? Is that tiny preemie doing all right?”
“She has grown into a Tiny Terrorist at two years. She has some eye problems that they think they can fix when she’s older. Otherwise fine.”
We exchanged family pictures. Her husband, a theoretical physicist at Northwestern (with tenure, she said proudly) looked properly abstract and bemused. The two daughters were blondes like their mother.
We were eating lunch at an upscale café on Green Bay Road that concentrated on odd salads and soups. I had settled for split pea soup, Caesar salad, and carrot juice.
“Does she have any concerts coming up?”
“She’s practicing the Copland American songs to sing on the D.C. mall on the Fourth. She’ll make a big deal that now she’s an American citizen though she can still vote in Irish elections.”
“Where’s she from?”
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