Irish Cream

by Andrew M. Greeley

“Way out in Connemara where the next parish is on Long Island—or if you do the great circle route on the shores of Lake Michigan. She’s an Irish speaker.”

  “Really! Do the kids speak it too? I think it’s so wonderful for little children to grow up bilingual.”

  “Nelliecoyne, the redhead, is a full-fledged bilingual, switches back and forth like they’re the same language. We spend a month or so over there every year, so the kids can keep up with the language. Then herself really becomes mystical and ethereal.”

  “So what’s up, Derm? I don’t mind being taken out to lunch by an old flame, but something’s on your mind.”

  How to explain that my wife was the best or second-best mystery solver in Cook County, depending whether you rated the little bishop number 1 or number 2. Cindasue was an honorable 3rd.

  “Nuala collects strays. I don’t mean stray dogs. We have two wolfhounds that are authentic. I mean stray humans. Recently she collected young Damian Thomas O’Sullivan, who, it would seem, is a very talented young artist.”

  “He’s such a sweet boy,” Lorene babbled. “Not like the rest of those new rich vipers. We used to call him Damian the Leper because they treated him like a leper.”

  Lorene had never worried about putting too fine an edge on matters.

  “She thinks he was framed on the manslaughter charge. I don’t quite know how she arrives at those conclusions. However, she’s usually correct. I have been deputed to find out more about that brood of vipers.”

  Lorene didn’t catch the allusion to François Mauriac’s title, not that I had expected her to.

  “Fey, huh? I bet she’s got you figured out, Derm!”

  “From the first time she met me in O’Neill’s pub in Dublin.”

  “They’re terrible people, really they are. I no longer think the club is the greatest place in the world like I did when I was a little idiot down at the Dome. I also realize that what I’m about to say is snobbish. But they never should have let Jackie O’Sullivan in. He has a lot of money and a nice Irish smile and that’s about all that’s needed. My dad told me that if he hadn’t offered to redo the locker rooms, he never would have made it. Me, I figure we should never let him out of the locker room.”

  “With his fancy scent.”

  “You noticed that, Derm? Nuala has done a lot with you!”

  Arguably, as the little bishop would say.

  “She would agree!”

  “Actually, I’m not being altogether fair to him. There are a lot of others like him around the clubs these days—locker room cowboys with genial smiles that suggest an overflow of testosterone. They put Jackie up for president last year. It offended most of the other members, especially when Jackie brought in a famous architect to make recommendations for the ‘improvements’ he’d make if he were elected. He hinted that he’d pay for most of the improvements. Even if some of the old-timers liked the ‘improvements’—‘make it a golf course again,’ Jackie said, which meant cut out some of the stuff for women and kids—they didn’t like Jackie’s gall. So he lost two to one. He didn’t seem to notice. Still talks about the improvements as though he were president. He’ll keep running until he’s elected, my dad says.”

  “The wives won’t like that.”

  “If Jackie had any sense, he’d support better locker rooms for women. He acts like they don’t exist, except as objects to respond to his smile. He doesn’t get it.”

  “Sounds like he doesn’t get a lot of things.”

  “The Dome never really civilized him,” she babbled on. “People like him the first time they meet him. Then they realize what a bore he is. His children all worship him and he figures that everyone else does too. Even poor Damian worships him, though Jackie shits on him all the time.”

  “Tell me about the kids.”

  “The boys—Sean and Patrick—couldn’t quite make it as lawyers. Sean flunked out of law school, Patrick didn’t make partner at Hodgis, Figgis which is not the best law firm on LaSalle Street by any means. Jackie has persuaded himself and them that they’re geniuses. So they’re working for him because he needs their talents more than the law does. They all believe it. Maureen is an associate at Minor, Grey mostly because her father leaned on the partners who belonged to the club. She’s cute, maybe even beautiful when she gets around to smiling, but a real bitch. She believes more than the others Jackie’s shit that they’re the real Irish cream. The word in the women’s locker room is that she’s dead meat next month, though Jackie’s doing his damnedest to buy her into a partnership.”

  “He’s that dumb?”

  “Not so much dumb, Derm, as unperceptive. He’s smart enough, like my dad says, to have cut himself a nice little niche in the technology world, though his sons will probably run the company into the ground. He just is absolutely delusional about his family and determined to modify the world to fit his delusions. It’s boring.”

  “The other daughter?”

  “Kathleen?”

  “The MD?”

  “Yeah, well she is bright. Harvard Medical School without her father bribing anyone. Works with preemies, like your little one. Really good at it, they say. Jackie talks less about her than about the others. He was really upset when she went off to Harvard. He wanted her to go to Loyola, good Catholic school. Then a couple of years ago she marries this shrink from the Institute for Psychoanalysis. Jackie doesn’t like him a bit, they say because he went to Boston College—that’s the kind of guy Jackie is.”

  “They beat the Dome at football.”

  “They cheat,” she howled with laughter, and refilled my glass of carrot juice.

  I remember Belloc’s marvelous lines:

  … Catholic men that live upon wine

  Are deep in the water and frank, and fine

  Wherever I travel find it so

  Benedicamus dominio!

  Me own wife doesn’t feed us much beef (heresy for an Irish lass) but a vegan she’s not.

  “Anyway, she’s always been a little bit different from the others. She buys Jackie’s shit, but not completely. They just married a couple of years ago. She’s older than we are, Derm, so Jackie should be happy she found a husband. But, if you’re Jackie, how do you brag about his son-in-law the shrink. Tom McBride is a tough guy. He stands up to Jackie. There’s going to be trouble there. Katie is expecting now and Jackie is already talking about some Holy Cross priest doing the Baptism. Tom wants a Jebby.”

  “Everyone in the club knows about this?”

  “Everyone who’s dumb enough to listen to Jackie … Tom is only one step above Damian on the family shit list. Jackie tells those who listen to him that Katie made a mistake marrying a guy from Boston … Would you believe it? And hints that maybe an annulment is in the works. Katie loves Tom as any idiot can see.”

  “And Mrs. O’Sullivan?” I asked gently.

  “Madge? What about her?”

  “She fits the scene?”

  For dessert Lorene ordered us a glass of fruit juice, mango and strawberry. It wasn’t bad. Not good exactly, but not terribly bad either. I would have to consume some chocolate-chocolate chip when I returned to Southport Avenue. Or maybe some of the new coconut sherbet that Nuala had found at some ice-cream specialty store on Halsted Street.

  “She’s quiet, unobtrusive, almost invisible. People like her and feel sorry for her. She sort of disappears in the light of Jackie’s radiance, if you forgive the metaphor. She just listens to him.”

  “I assume she’s Irish.”

  “Not much class to begin with. She may adore Jackie or maybe she just puts up with him.”

  “Doesn’t have a vote in family decisions?” I asked.

  “No one has ever heard her disagree with him about anything, a vapid little mouse. Keeps to herself. Smokes a lot, drinks a little bit too much. It’s like she’s not there, know what I mean? She comes into my shop and buys something, enough sweetness to last a week.”

  None of my experience with Irishwomen had prepared me t
o understand such a phenomenon.

  “My mom has a different take on her. Says she didn’t want poor Damian, only ten and a half months after Maura, you know Irish twins. Had a miserable time carrying him and a very difficult delivery. Hated him ever since. Mom says she’s mean and dominating. Maybe so, but she hides it pretty well.”

  “Damian is the only one who looks like her?”

  “I’d never thought of it that way … Yeah, same blond hair, same sad face, same passive nature, same sweet disposition … Hey, do you think Jackie is dissatisfied with him because he looks like his mother?”

  “Not an athletic star?” I said, ducking the question.

  “The two other guys are overgrown apes, too clumsy to make it at football, but they are big and handsome. Jackie has elaborate explanations of why the coaches were against them … He cheats at golf too, though my dad says he doesn’t realize he’s cheating. He doesn’t do it all the time, not with the guys he goes to Ireland with. He cheats, my dad says, when he thinks he can get away with it, know what I mean?”

  “Sounds like he knows he’s cheating.”

  There is nothing worse than the guy who subtracts a stroke from every hole or from every couple of holes. It angers the hell out of me, despite what you might hear about Dermot as a “live-and-let-live” kind of guy. So to get even I play my best golf and beat the guy anyway. It’s not much fun.

  “My dad says that Jackie goes through life figuring out what he can get away with and what he can’t. It’s second nature to him. He does it without thinking about it.”

  In this description, Jackie O’Sullivan sounded like a full-blown delusional sociopath, but one smart enough to launch a very successful electronics firm, which he might just run into the ground because of his delusions about his family.

  “Kind of like he lies not because it is in his interest to lie, but because it is in his nature to lie.”

  I knew that Lorene would not recognize Pat Moynihan’s description of Henry Kissinger.

  “Yeah …”

  “Tell me more about the sons.”

  “Grown-up kids, know what I mean? Sean flies the company plane, though they have a real pilot for it too. He wears an old flight jacket and some kind of captain’s cap like he fought in World War II and sort of swaggers around as if he were a Marine pilot in an old film. Patrick has to tell you the latest inside gossip about the sex life of politicians, football players, and movie stars. They both know all about everything and will spend half the day telling you. I don’t think they work much, too busy for it, know what I mean?”

  Now, before she ran out of steam and before she could order me another healthy drink, I must ask the important questions.

  “What was it like the night that Rod Keefe was run over?”

  She rolled her eyes and grabbed a celery stalk to nibble on.

  “A zoo … You know what the Calcutta is?”

  “Sure … There’s an auction of foursomes. If you buy a foursome and they win or do well, you make a lot of money from those who didn’t buy into them. Sometimes people share foursomes. There’s a lot of money involved, a lot of fear and loathing, and a lot of drinking.”

  “You got it! At the club it’s a very big deal. Jackie always wins something, not top prize but something pretty big. Well that Labor Day, poor Damian plays the best game of golf in all his life. He comes in with an eighty-two, which shows he does know how to the play the game. He walks in off the eighteenth fairway with a happy smile on his face. His father shouts at him that he’s an idiot like he always has been. His foursome, on which Jackie has not bet, is a cinch to win because of Damian’s score and his huge handicap. That means that Jackie loses.”

  “People hear him?”

  “There’s not too many around. I’m waiting for the professor, who is in the same foursome and has played way over his game too. But it’s all poor Damian’s fault. So he wipes the smile off his face and starts to drink. I guess he doesn’t stop till he’s completely blotto. I don’t see him, but a lot of people do. So they’re willing to believe he ran over Rod Keefe.”

  “Then what happens?”

  Lorene was warming to her story. No need to push her for details.

  “He and his family are at the table right next to us. Jackie is drinking, not drunk—he’s rarely drunk at the club—but he’s drinking and he’s really furious. Then Rod Keefe, who is drunk, comes up to the table. They rarely speak to each other at the club. Dad says that Keefe and Jackie have been fighting over the firm for years. Keefe shows up there just to collect his profits and complain that Patrick and Sean are ruining the company. This night they have a big argument about some patent. Then Rod taunts Jackie that he won’t be able to cheat his way out of his big loss in the Calcutta. Damian is the only son that’s worth anything and he just cost Jackie a couple hundred thousand dollars.”

  That’s a lot of money, but it’s in the range for some Calcuttas. That’s why my whole family refuses to get involved.

  “Then he goes on to shout that he ought to get rid of those two dolts and bring Damian into the firm. Jackie gets up to slug him and poor Rod just falls on the floor. Two of the waiters haul him out to the lobby and the fun goes on. Jackie just brushes it off as though it means nothing. Everyone knows what a drunk Rod is. My dad says in a loud whisper that people like that shouldn’t be allowed in the club. He means Jackie too, but Jackie just says that he agrees completely.”

  “Does anyone leave the table after that?”

  “Derm, you know what Labor Day is like at the clubs. Everyone has drunk a little too much—except my dad, who doesn’t drink anything—and they’re all running back and forth to the bathroom. Then that unspeakable little twit Maura comes in screaming. She’s already blaming Damian.”

  “Why did Maura leave?”

  “You can never tell why that little bitch does anything. She’s all impulse, dumb impulse, thinks she’s Angie Harmon in Law & Order. I guess she had a snit with her boyfriend, Jim Creaghan. Married the poor jerk since then. Supposed to be a good engineer. Domer. Chafes under her idiot brothers at the firm. If Jackie is worried about an annulment, that’s the marriage he should look at.”

  “You think she ran over Rod Keefe?”

  “Anyone in the family could have gone outside, got in that hideous German car and run over Rod a couple of times. I think we all knew that …”

  “Or anyone in the club who had a set of keys?”

  She sat up with a start.

  “Anyone … me included. But the police seemed to settle on Damian pretty quickly, though as the professor says, he was too drunk even to start a car. Anyway, they didn’t send him to jail.”

  “My information is that they tried.”

  “No one, not even Jackie O’Sullivan, would do that.”

  I didn’t debate the point. Over her protests I paid the bill and promised that I would bring Nuala up to the boutique sometime soon. She pecked me on the cheek.

  Purveyor to her royal highness, the Princess Nuala Anne.

  I would never keep the promise. Since I wouldn’t tell herself about it, I had no obligation to keep it. My wife did not need or want expensive designer clothes. She figured, quite correctly, that even on TV she looked brilliant altogether in simple clothes.

  I had learned a lot from my old flame about the culture of the club and about the O’Sullivans. However, I had also learned that even an eyewitness could not guess who had gone out to the BMW. Moreover five years later, the people at the dinner that Labor Day probably did not want to remember.

  Still it was interesting that Maura was blaming Damian from the beginning.

  Well, I had done my part.

  It would be no easy task for herself to figure out what happened.

  As I drove home I realized that, though Lorene was an attractive enough woman, I had not a single lustful thought through the whole meal.

  It must have been the celery.

  Or maybe the carrot juice.

  10

>   WHILE MY husband was interviewing his old sweetheart, I took our youngest daughter to the pediatrician’s office. Since I am being nice to Dermot these days, I did not give him a hard time about her. After all, I’d sent him on his assignment.

  I’ve been giving the poor man a hard time since the first night in O’Neill’s partly because I have Irish fishwife genes and partly because I’m frightened of the power of his love. It’s time I stop and I know it.

  La terrorista, as I call her, was on her best behavior for the pediatrician.

  “Me do poopoo in the toilet,” she announced at once and lifted her skirt. “Me wear big girl pants now.”

  “Wonderful!” the doctor said, as though she meant it. “Do you like your glasses?”

  “Everything pretty!”

  “And your brother and sister?”

  “Take good care of me. Say me drive them nuts.”

  “Do you?”

  She nodded solemnly.

  After a few more questions and a few cursory probes, the young woman said to me, “She seems fine. I’m sure they’ll be able to do laser surgery on her eyes eventually.”

  I explained my concern about her sleeping too much.

  “Do you like to sleep, Socra Marie?”

  “Nope. Ma say waste of time.”

  The doctor looked at me in surprise. I felt my face flame.

  “I was talking to her da.”

  She chuckled, half-believing me.

  “But you do sleep a lot, don’t you, Socra Marie?”

  “Me tired!”

  “Why are you tired?”

  The child sighed expressively, doubtless imitating her ma.

  “Hard work to be two.”

  We all laughed.

  “She’s fine, Nuala Anne,” the doctor said to me. “She built up a lot of energy just staying alive. Now she has to run it off.”

  “When will she have finished running it off?”

  “Probably never.”

  I think I knew that already.

  I was not reassured at all, at all. Yet as Dermot says, I like to worry about things, because I’m afraid that if I don’t worry about them, they’ll go wrong. He thinks that’s silly, and he’s right like he always is.