“Ladies first,” one of them said.
Without a word or a practice swing me wife teed up the ball and whacked it two hundred yards straight down the middle of the fairway.
“A little short,” I observed.
“First drive of the year,” she murmured.
My first day on a golf course after a long layoff is always my best because I don’t give a hoot how badly I play. Then I begin to get serious and my score goes up.
Anyway I drove my tee shot some seventy-five yards beyond my wife’s.
“Hooked it a little.” She sighed.
I birdied the hole. She parred it.
“Should have had an eagle,” I complained.
“You’ll get better as the summer goes on.”
She knew that wasn’t true, but we were playing a game with our companions.
“My chip shots will never improve.”
“Sure, ‘tis all in the wrists, isn’t it?”
I ended up with a thirty-two and herself with a thirty-six. Since I gave her two strokes handicap on the nine holes (which I thought was excessive for the sometime women’s champion at Poolnarooma), I had won easily. Our companions congratulated us.
“You two could sweep the tournaments here this year.”
“Wait till you see our daughter.”
She complained bitterly as we hiked back to our cottage.
“If I were a gorilla, I could hit the friggin’ ball that far too.”
“Not a good loser, Nuala Anne.”
“And yourself wearing me out last night.”
“It was the other way around and yourself seducing me all day long yesterday.”
“I did not!”
Then she laughed.
“Anyway, aren’t you a pushover, Dermot Michael Coyne!”
“Every man is when a beautiful woman goes after him.”
She giggled complacently.
“You ought to take golf more seriously, Derm love. Maybe you should when we’re out at Rynville in August. Teach them Micks that a Yank can win their tournament.”
“I might just do that, but only if I don’t take it seriously. Golf isn’t worth getting tied up in knots about.”
“Your family is right about you. You’re lazy.”
“About some things.”
She giggled at that line.
We had to rush to the beach in our golf clothes to make sure no disasters had happened. Socra Marie and Katiesue were busy trying to empty the Lake into a hole in the sand, a task they pursued with dedicated persistence. The two older ones, under Annie Hurley’s direction, were building an elaborate sand castle.
“Two li’l she polecats a havin’ themselves a ball,” Cindasue informed us.
“Who won?” Pete Murphy, one of the Ryan Clan and an anthropology professor, rose to shake hands with us.
“The big lout shot a thirty-two,” my wife complained. “I’ll beat him at tennis this afternoon.”
Our children barely noted our appearance.
We climbed back to the top of the dune. In our bedroom while we were changing into swimsuits, I caught my temporarily naked wife in my arms and kissed her soundly.
“My turn to do the remote seduction,” I said.
“I’m a pushover too.” She sighed. “I guess I have a weakness for gorillas.”
“You’d better get dressed and do your swim in the Lake.”
“Do I have to?”
“Woman, you do!”
“Then we’ll play tennis.”
“Tomorrow.”
“You’re getting old, Dermot Michael Coyne.”
She carried the robe back down to the beach and tossed it to me at the bottom of the stairs. She charged the water as vigorously as she had yesterday.
“Ma’s swimming,” the Mick announced.
“Ma crazy!”
All three of them and Katiesue joined me at the water’s edge.
“That ‘un jest plum ’tack the Lake,” Cindasue said. “Happen she ever get tired?”
“Not very often.”
Cindasue, from a place in West Virginia called Stinkin’ Creek, was a lieutenant commander in the Yewnited States Coast Guard. She could speak perfectly good radio standard English if she were a mind. But she had discovered that people like it when she talked “mountain” talk—“Just plain ole English ’fore them Puritan folks come through our hollers.”
It was not exactly clear what she did in her office in the Dirksen Federal Building in Chicago. She insisted that she merely counted the boats on the Chicago River as they passed by. Everyone suspected that she was a gumshoe of some sort and really worked for the Secret Service, thinking work. As evidence of her identification she wore a white sweatshirt which said “United States Coast Guard” and carried the two and a half gold bars of her rank. As two outsiders, she and Nuala Anne had bonded instantly.
“This har shirt a getting’ me some respect from them ratings a running around in that outboard.”
She was a lovely little woman with a sweet smile and the flavorsome body of a sixteen-year-old. Young ratings cruising offshore, both of them women no more than twenty, would have a hard time believing she was an officer, even with the sweatshirt.
“Ma crazy,” Socra Marie insisted.
“You’re mother’s a fine swimmer,” Cindasue said in plain English.
“Ma fine swimmer! … Me love Ma.”
“You better, chile.”
“Me love Da too.”
Then she informed us that she also loved Kaysue, Mickie, Nellie, and Aunt Cindasue.
I struggled for the words in my Memorial Day poem to describe the swarm of white boats on the Lake, either moving briskly in the wind or dragging skiers through the wakes. It was an explosion of summertime, when, contrary to Gerswhin, the livin’ was anything but easy.
A ski boat pulled up alongside of my wife and someone tossed her a life belt and a skyline.
“That be your nefoo, Simon Coyne.”
Aunt Nuala popped up out of the water and skied back towards shore, taking care not to cross the invisible line that would have brought the wrath of the Yewnited States Coast Guard ratings upon her.
“Ma ski,” my youngest said dubiously.
“Ma is very good at it,” I said.
“Me ski?”
“When you’re a little older.”
“I’m going to learn this year,” Nelliecoyne said proudly.
“Me too.”
“Me three,” Mick promised.
I’d have to spend a fair amount of time over at Pine Lake trying to get Nelliecoyne out of the water. It would take a couple of more years. Prudent little punk that he was, just like his old man, the Mick wouldn’t want to try.
Nuala dropped her ski offshore, tossed the belt to Simon, and swam towards the beach. A bikini-clad teenage lifeguard, whistle in her mouth, her body oiled in sunscreen ambled down the beach. She wore an open “New Buffalo” windbreaker and an “Oinks” baseball cap, Oinks being the local ice-cream supply station.
“Is that girl a good swimmer?” she asked skeptically.
“Ma fine swimmer.”
“She’s your mother?” The teen was impressed.
“Mine too.”
“Mine too.”
The kid lifted Socra Marie in her arms, an almost automatic reaction of a woman of any age to the Tiny Terrorist.
“Are you going to grow up to be a swimmer like your mother?”
“Me ski too!”
“You’ll be real careful?”
“Shunuf!”
“And are you going to be careful too?” She handed my daughter to me and lifted up Katiesue.
“Shunuf.”
If the kid noted that the two of them were talking mountain talk, she didn’t let on. Nuala Anne waded ashore. I wrapped her in the robe.
“I didn’t break any rules, did I?”
“Please exercise extreme caution on the Lake, ma’am. The water is still very cold.”
“Not as cold as G
alway Bay … But I will be careful.”
“You have beautiful children, ma’am.”
“The one in your arms goes with the Coast Guard woman. The others are mine. If they give you any trouble, let me know. My name is Nuala Anne.”
“Yes, ma’am … And it would be better if you swam parallel to the shore.”
“I will,” she said. “Thank you for reminding me.”
Poor child didn’t know that she had a celebrity on her hands. Just as well. My wife had identified herself that way long before she had become a celebrity and didn’t do it now as a gimmick.
“’Tis me name, isn’t it now?”
The next stop was the swimming pool, though we had to take time off so Nuala could call Damian to find out how the dogs were doing in her absence.
“Isn’t he taking Ethne to see a film (pronounced “filum”) tonight?”
“Shame on them both!”
“Give over, Dermot Michael, they’re both sweet young people … Och you’re having me on again, aren’t you?”
After the pool we had to dress for the Mass the little bishop would say at the Murphy house. Poor dear man would have to drive out from the Cathedral, then drive back first thing in the morning. The idiots in charge ought to do something about the shortage of priests.
We all had to dress for Mass, myself in a sports shirt and slacks, the kids in “churchgoing” clothes, and my wife in a white skirt and her infamous “Galway Hooker” tee shirt, which she always wore for the little bishop.
He spun Socra Marie in the air much to her delight and hugged Nelliecoyne and the Mick. Then he performed a similar rite with Katiesue.
“Coast Guard and Galway racing boats,” he observed. “A good way to begin summer.”
All the summer enthusiasm began to weigh on me. It was an illusion. The weather would turn bad tomorrow. Summer would be fleeting. This Saturday might be the only good one. Life was fleeting too. We were struggling to keep alive an illusion we all knew was ephemeral.
O lente lente currite noctis equi, as the Roman poet had begged. Oh, slowly, slowy run you steeds of night.
My wife is the melancholy Irish person in our marriage, except when the black mood is upon me. Then I go down much more deeply into the swamp than she ever does.
Nor was I looking forward to the conversation with Katie McBride. There was so much pain in that family. Yet they doubtless had their own exuberant celebration of the coming of summer.
“The issue,” said the little bishop in his homily, “is whether the tombstone or the flowers are more ultimate. It is perhaps odd that we Americans celebrate our day of the dead just when life flourishes and summer begins. Somehow we have our symbols confused. My parents called this festival Decoration Day because it is the day when we used to put flowers around the tombs. Now we put them everywhere and perhaps forget about the meaning of the festival and the tombs. We honor those who died in the country’s wars—millions of young men whose lives were cut short before they had a chance to flourish. All war is foolish. Some may, however foolish, also be necessary. That is not for us to decide today. We must rather consider those long rows of white crosses—and Stars of David—and think of how much those young men might have contributed to the life of our country if they had been given a chance. We must also think of the parents, the wives, the sweethearts of those who are buried in the military cemeteries and how much their lives were blighted by early and sudden death.
“It might be said that they died for their country. It is more likely that they died because they were drafted and had no choice. They may also have died because political leaders or military leaders made tragic mistakes. We must not use this day of the dead to glorify war but rather to sorrow for those who died and for those who lost them.
“We must also ask God, with all due respect, why he permitted all these young lives to be cut short with such tragic results. We don’t expect an answer but we must ask the question. Indeed he expects us to ask the question and not to lose sight of the tragedy in the military pageantry we will see on television.
“Yet we put flowers on the tombs and we surround our homes with flowers on this day. Hence the question: Which is more ultimate, the flower or the tomb? Death which the white cross represents or life which the flower represents? Do we just make the tomb pretty or do we defy it?
“I put it to you that as Catholics we defy the tomb. We do not pretend that there is no tragedy in all these deaths. We do not turn away from the stupidity, the futility, the ugliness of death, of any and every death and not merely that of a young man or a young woman in the prime of life. Because of our faith we seek to transcend it. Love is as strong as death the Song of Songs tells us. It is a kind of draw between the two. If, however, love cannot prevent death, so death cannot prevent love and thus in the end love wins. Consider the lilacs here on the Murphy lawn: they ought to have been wiped out long ago by the wind and the snow and the erosion of the dune. Yet they reappear every year at this time to remind us that there is beauty in the cosmos. If there is beauty then there is Beauty with a capital B. And if there is Beauty, death is not quite the end. There is yet more to be said. Beyond that today we cannot go and we need not go. All the beauty of this wonderful spring day and our celebration of the beginning of summer once again defies death and we join in that defiance. Life is too important ever to be anything but life.”
12
“THAT GORGEOUS little redhead I saw at Mass,” Katie McBride said. “She’s the one in Damian’s paintings, isn’t she? The one with the two white hounds?”
“She is,” Nuala agreed.
Before she could say something negative about our kids, a bad and thoroughly Irish habit, I interrupted, “She has her mother’s beauty, her great-grandmother’s red hair, and her dad’s Irish smile.”
We all laughed.
“I was astonished by the work in the Gallery on Oak Street. He is very gifted, isn’t he?”
“Very,” Nuala said solemnly, as she searched for the tone of the conversation.
We were sitting on the deck in front of our cottage, sipping port and Bailey’s. The sun had set. The sky was dense with stars, the Lake content, the temperature comfortable if you had a sweater over your shoulders. Across the Lake the twinkling lights of Chicago defined the sky and swiftly moving lights marked the planes that O’Hare was firing off like firecrackers.
Tom McBride was indeed a little guy. However, his whimsical smile and his quick brown eyes suggested a gift of laughter and love. It must have required a lot of the latter to woo Kathleen O’Sullivan away from her father. He was silent through most of our conversation, but nodded approval for his wife’s story as she told it.
“I’m so happy,” she went on, “that you have helped Damian. I admit that as much as I wanted to believe that he had some artistic talent, I also wanted his exhibit at the Reilly Gallery to be … well, less than adequate. If he is really good—and he is—then my family has done him a great injustice. I went along with it, even when I had reasons to be suspicious, so I did him a great injustice.
“I thought I grew up in a wonderful family,” she went on. “I have come to realize that it is in fact deeply dysfunctional. I am exploring this with a psychiatrist—not my husband—because I want to understand it and I want to avoid its influence on the family I will raise.”
She touched her swelling belly.
“The first hint I had of the family culture,” Tom McBride said quietly, “was the debate about our marriage being at the Notre Dame Grotto. It made no never mind to me. Katie thought it was a site for kids in their early twenties. I watched in dismay as they all brought pressure on her for us to marry in the Grotto as her parents and all the children had with the same doddering old priest presiding. It scared the hell out of me.”
“Tom couldn’t believe,” Katie added, “that this was a serious attempt to exorcise his Boston College background. It became a celebration of our family unity …”
Her voice trailed off into th
e twilight.
“How can we help?” Nuala asked.
“I assume that you are attempting to reverse that terrible plea bargain that my father imposed on the case of the death of Rod Keefe. I was at the club that night of course. I knew that Damian was far too drunk even to open the door of the car. I told the police that and they agreed. He could not have driven it over poor Mr. Keefe. Yet later I somehow persuaded myself that he had.”
“We’re doing what we can,” Nuala said softly. “You’d provide an affidavit about his condition if we needed it?”
Katie McBride hesitated.
“Of course I would … You’ve become the family he never had. It’s astonishing to me that he has survived as long as he has.”
“We’re a resilient species,” Tom McBride murmured.
“We were so happy as children,” Katie went on. “Or thought we were. We adored our father, just like our mother did and still does. He was fun and funny and showered us with affection. We sang and we danced and we told stories and made up our little plays and went on vacations together and to Notre Dame games. Notre Dame was so much a part of our life. And our house at Lake Geneva. We could hardly wait to go up there in the summer. The family is there now and I feel a powerful tug towards them. I didn’t tell them the truth. I said we wanted to be near The University of Chicago Hospital if the child came early.”
She paused, understanding that she must break free and that it would be very hard to do so.
“We felt sorry for other kids who didn’t have a wonderful father like ours or such a happy family life. I suppose we didn’t get to know other kids as well as we might. We had all that we needed in the way of affection and relationships at home … The first hint I had that maybe there was something unhealthy was when my brothers were at Loyola Academy. They were big kids, kind of clumsy and not too interested in studying. They were not quite good enough to be on the starting team till they were seniors and even then they had a hard time staying in the game. They hovered on the edge of academic ineligibility. Dad blamed the Jesuits. He said they wanted them for Holy Cross. Somehow he got them through school, though he didn’t seem able to persuade the coaches that they were as good as we all believed they were. I was at St. Mary’s then. I wanted to go to Notre Dame, but Dad didn’t approve of the admission of women students. He said it would ruin the school. It didn’t make much difference to me …”
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