“Your mother went to St. Mary’s?” I asked.
“Yes, she did. Dad said the women at Notre Dame would lose their virtue there. Mom just laughed because women at St. Mary’s did too. Still, she supported him like she always did … As I say it didn’t matter that much to me, but I had begun to suspect that just possibly we might be wrong about Sean and Pat. Maybe I thought we believed that some things were true because Dad wanted us to believe them. They didn’t do all that well at Notre Dame either or make the football team. Looking back on it I think that was about the time when Dad’s will-to-believe became an obsession. Or maybe I noticed it only then. Sean and Pat are good guys, they really are. If only Dad would have left them alone … When they didn’t make it as lawyers he pretended to be delighted. He needed their special entrepreneurial talents in the firm … He even bought a company plane for them to play with.”
We were all silent for a moment. The night air stirred lazily. The lights of a plane from O’Hare above us raced across the stars like twin meteors.
“You suspected that the story your family told itself might not be completely true?” I asked.
“Vaguely,” she said. “I kind of knew it, but didn’t want to know it.”
“Why do you think your father was so driven to sustain the story?”
“Something in his own family experience, I suppose … The firm, the club, Lake Geneva, and above all Notre Dame—they were the stage for us all. Nothing else mattered. Looking back on it, I find it hard to believe that a man as smart as he is—and he is very smart—could have such a limited vision. I began to realize how limited it was when I went off to Harvard for my medical training and encountered a completely different world.”
“And himself not wanting you to go to Harvard?” my wife asked.
“He couldn’t understand it. Why would I want to attend such a pagan place? Wasn’t Loyola good enough for me? They’d give me contraceptives. They’d make me perform abortions. They’d try to take away my faith. If I went to Loyola, I could live at home. He’d buy me a car of my own … Mom agreed with him as always.”
“But you went off to Harvard just the same,” Tom McBride said.
“Looking back on it, I’m astonished that I did. Then I discovered that Dad could … well, redefine a situation so it fit with what I now think of as the family myth. I was leading my class at the toughest medical school in the country and showing them that Irish Catholics were as good as anyone else. I wasn’t quite on top of the class but there were plenty of Irish Catholics there to whom it would never have occurred that they had to show anyone anything.”
“Mostly from Boston,” her husband said. “Worst kind.”
“Yet when I came home for my residency I fit right back into the myth. My brothers were both married to young women, graduates of St. Mary’s. They seemed to fit in perfectly, though occasionally I think they were not happy that they could not spend some time on Christmas Day with their own families. Then the talk began that I’d better find a nice boy to settle down with before I was too old. I was only twenty-six and I resented the kidding. I would marry when I found the right man. I hadn’t broken free of the myth yet, but I had begun to see it for what it was.”
“And your sister?” I probed.
“Maura? Our family story is that Maura is an adorable little imp—pretty, tough, a lot like Dad. I always thought she was an obnoxious bitch who tried to be as tough as Dad but forgot about his persuasive charm. Now I feel sorry for her.”
“And Damian?”
“Poor little guy,” she said, the sound of tears in her voice. “For reasons that I could never understand he was defined as the family loser. He was so sweet. He loved to draw. He used to draw little birthday cards for the rest of us. We made fun of them and threw them away. Dad wanted him to grow up and act like a man. Heaven knows Damian tried …”
“And wasn’t your father afraid that he might be gay?”
“That’s pretty evident now, Nuala Anne. It didn’t occur to me then. Like the rest of them I thought that Damian was a useless pest.”
“Even your mother?”
“Especially my mother.”
“It’s remarkable that he survived,” I said.
“Toughest one in the whole clan,” Tom McBride observed. “He had to be. He wasn’t gay either.”
“I think Dad was so afraid that he might be gay that he did the sort of things to him that could make him gay … Though I know now that isn’t possible … It’s hard to change my mind about him.” She reached for a tissue and wiped the tears away from her cheeks.
“Probably afraid of his own gay tendencies,” my wife suggested.
That’s what comes of her reading too many books.
“Looking back on it, Dad’s world was coming apart. Notre Dame was a different place. The football team was losing. His sons were not the successes he had hoped they would be. He needed a scapegoat. Damian was not only a terrible disappointment, he was the cause of all the trouble.”
“And, if we’re to judge by the work at the Reilly Gallery,” Tom McBride said, “he’s the most gifted person in the family.”
“Not the kind of gift your man can admire,” my wife said, “not at all, at all.”
“As the years went on,” Katie continued her sad tale, “Dad began to rethink my situation. I had become kind of a dedicated virgin, almost a nun, who had given her life to the service of the tiny creatures I was keeping alive. He didn’t seem to grasp that thirty didn’t make you a spinster anymore. I had every intention of marrying when the right man appeared. If Tom had appeared when I was in medical school, I would have pursued him then. I began to worry that, like other of Dad’s delusions, this might become a self-fulfilling prophecy … Then when I brought Tom around to meet the family, Dad barely spoke to him …”
“Boston College was just unacceptable.” Tom laughed. “I wondered at first whether I should bother fighting the family myth. I decided that Katie was worth any fight I had to make. I wouldn’t let her go.”
“And he didn’t,” she said, “though it was dicey at times. I almost gave his ring back when he said that my family was dysfunctional … He was right, of course, though I still have a hard time putting the pieces together. Dr. Murphy is helping me to do it … I was surprised to see her at Mass today.”
Mary Kathleen Ryan Murphy was the little bishop’s sister and the grandmother and namesake of Katiesue.
“And your father was frantic by now?”
“He still doesn’t talk to Tom and is spreading rumors about my getting an annulment, even though I’m almost eight months pregnant. I suspect a lot of people at the club and the parish believe them. It’s hard not to believe Dad.”
“Who do you think ran over Rod Keefe?” I asked suddenly.
“I don’t know. I didn’t do it and neither did poor Day. I’d like to think it was an accident. But the lights are bright enough in the parking lot. It would have been hard not to see him on the driveway.”
Someone had told me the lights weren’t bright.
“Can you exclude anyone else in the family? Your father? Your mother?”
She thought about it.
“I can’t imagine Mom hurting a fly. Dad? It’s not his style … There was trouble in the company then. Keefe was threatening to make some kind of trouble. I don’t know what it was. I don’t think my brothers were aware of the problem either. Jim Creaghan, Maura’s fiance then and a very bright young engineer, hinted to me that there was a patent problem of some sort and it was serious. It seemed to disappear after Keefe’s death.”
For the first time we had a motive.
“Och, your da’s world is coming apart now, isn’t it, Katie? Damian is on the verge of success. You didn’t go to Lake Geneva …”
“And everyone outside of the family knows that no way is Maura going to make partner at Minor, Grey. She’s able enough but she’s too much of a bitch even for that profession.”
So Jackie O’Sullivan was probab
ly coming apart too. He might become dangerous. I’d speak to Mike Casey about that.
Our own lovemaking was very mild. Neither my wife nor I wanted to end up in that ecstatic lake again.
“Isn’t it terrible, Dermot Michael?” she said as she snuggled in my arms.
“Marital sex, Nuala Anne?” I said.
“Well, not with you … I mean the mess that John Patrick O’Sullivan has made of his family. Think of how many lives he’s ruined and how Damian and Katie will have to resist his myth, even long after he’s dead.”
“It’s a mistake to believe that all the fantasies you had when you were at Notre Dame can come true.”
“Or that you can force them to come true.”
“What did we learn tonight?” I said, brushing my lips against hers.
“Didn’t we learn about a possible motive, and that the mother is the high priestess of the Jackie O’Sullivan cult, and that this poor Jim Creaghan who married Maura might have figured things out?”
“So someone should see if Jim Creaghan wants to talk to us?”
“Ah, and now who would that someone be, Dermot Michael Coyne?”
The weather turned bad on Sunday morning as I had predicted it would. I played tennis with my wife, who mopped up the court with me. Then I settled in during the afternoon to read the latest transcripts from Father Richard Lonigan D.D.
13
February 2, Feast of St. Brigid, patroness of Ireland.
I have returned from my niece’s wedding in Dublin. I had expected that I would enjoy the civilized conversation and warmth of Dublin. In fact I was bored. I had also expected that I would return to this terrible place with great reluctance. In fact I was almost eager to smell again the acrid stench of manure and peat, which permeates the West of Ireland, and only too willing to tolerate the oppressive reek of the sea. Nor did the great rock, hovering implacably at the end of the strand, oppress me quite as much as it had.
The sensation that I was happy to come home worried me. Had this wet, cold, miserable place become my home? Were these poor, illiterate, and superstitious peasants my family? Had I given up all hope that the Cardinal would relent and permit me to return to Maynooth, where I thought I belonged?
The answer to these three questions I must conclude is in the affirmative. I have become a native just as surely as missionary priests do in Africa. I must begin the practices which link me to the outside world. I must continue this diary and resume my half hour at the piano. I am not a Donegal native and never will be. I’m not a Dubliner anymore either. This is very dangerous.
The school goes very well indeed. Liam is a wonderful teacher and adored by the students, even the louts who were most likely to give him trouble. So good is he that some of the people—those who talk to the insufferable Branigan—complain to me about him. It’s not good, they say, for a schoolmaster to be admired by his students. He is a bit of a Fenian, they say, he’ll make trouble.
With the Ribbonmen around, I replied to Branigan (who, I suspect, has ties with them out of fear if nothing else), there’s no reason to worry about a young schoolmaster.
Lord Skeffington is pleased too. I appreciate his approval of the choice I made.
“The parson,” he says, “would never have found me a young man like that.”
“‘Tis said he’s a bit of a Fenian.”
“No worse than you, Dick.”
Milord is terribly worried about his wife. Her pregnancy seems to progress nicely. She is beautiful and blooming. He will take her to Dublin for her confinement at the Rotunda.
“I lost a child and its mother in India,” he said to me once.
I hardly knew how to answer.
“She was a native of course. An exquisitely beautiful girl. I loved her deeply. I blame myself for her death.”
“Fairly?”
“No. There was nothing I could have done … I had expected to stay on in India. When they died, I knew I had to come home. I told myself I would never love again. Then I met Mary Margaret, as different a woman as there could be, and I fell in love with her. I am a romantic, Dick, as you well know.”
“You wife knows the story?”
“No. She could not understand. It wouldn’t be fair to burden her with it.”
Who was I to argue with him?
I must ask myself candidly whether I was also happy to see Mrs. O’Flynn again. Had I missed her dignified reserve, her native intelligence, her excellent cooking? Surely yes. And her womanly presence? Her classic face and her firm elegant body?
I would like to be able to deny that I found her attractive. Yet that would be to deny the obvious. Out of respect for her and my celibacy I must, guard my feelings—and offer thanks to God that she lives in the house behind mine. I hope that she finds a husband worthy of her, one who does not mind if she continues to work at the parish house.
I now time my interlude at the keyboard to match the return from school of Eileen O’Flynn and her friends.
February 19, Feast of Colman of Lindisfarne, the last abbot of the monastery there before the English church took it over after the Synod of Whitby.
Legend has it that he then went to Inishboffin off the coast of Connemara, where his monks built the beehive huts.
Today I watched part of the process in the making of poteen. I denounce on every possible occasion the abuse of the drink. I am convinced that Father Mathew Theobald was correct in his total abstinence crusade. Yet I do not reject the tiny jar of the creature that Mrs. O’Flynn offers me on occasion when I come in from a ride in the bitter rain.
If the making of the poteen is part of the life of my people, I should at least know how it is done.
I am now convinced, after several hours of watching the work in the dark of night, that there is a serious craft to it, indeed one might almost say an art. There are perhaps a dozen farms in the parish where poor folk supplement their meager income from cattle and grain by the slow, careful, and loving creation of the “creature” as they call it. In the ongoing battle between them and the customs officials—usually Protestant if truth be told—the still masters usually win. The local constables are on their side and give them advance warning, for which they are rewarded with their own supply.
The care with the still masters’ work and their loving concern for hiding their tools in part are precautions against the customs officers, but also part of the almost religious ritual with which they work.
Looking back on the night from the sober gray day I realize that I ran considerable risk. The customs officers would delight in arresting the local priest. The Cardinal would find his conviction of my imprudence confirmed.
Yet I was assured that there was no risk. The guards set out on the narrow road to the farm would raise the warning in plenty of time for the still master to cover the still and sweep the muddy earth over it.
And for the priest to ride away in the rain.
I have come to realize that there is much art in the way these people live. They are illiterate for the most part and superstitious. Yet they are not merely oppressed peasants. They carry with them a very old culture which has never needed literacy.
I can hardly credit that I wrote that last paragraph. Yet I believe it. They have invited me to their come-all-ye singing sessions around the fireplace because they discovered I could play the accordion as well as the piano. I have long despised the former instrument as unworthy and frivolous. Yet they marvel that a priest can play it and play it well. I do not remain long at these events. In my presence, they do not quite relax and they certainly do not drink as much as I’m sure they otherwise would. Still they unbend enough for me to see them as individuals. They put aside the masks of servility which they maintain for the “betters” and become interesting human beings.
Some of the men—though not the musicians and storytellers—are hard, unsmiling domestic despots who govern their wives and children with grim brutality. Yet other men are gentle and loving and respectful to their wives. Some of the w
omen are sour complainers and the laughter of others is contagious and their affection for their husbands is obvious to all. In these respects they are no different from men and women I might encounter in an infinitely more formal setting in Dublin.
Sometimes as I ride home I find myself wondering which kind of wife I would have chosen if I had walked down another path. Does a young man know what kind of person lurks behind a pretty face? I wonder if I would have chosen a woman with the mysterious reserve of Mrs. O’Flynn. What thoughts, what fears, what hopes, what passions hide behind that reserve?
It is a question I should not ask, especially not on bitter nights when the wind, all the way from Newfoundland, screams like the terror of the damned.
Nor are they as passive politically as I had thought. They know the stories of all the failed “risings” of the last century and affirm that “someday poor old Ireland” will be free. They hate the English and even more the Belfast Protestants who represent what passes for government around here—the customs officers, the senior constables, the resident magistrates, the bailiffs. Indeed I am surprised—though perhaps I should not be—at the virulence of their hatred. No one mentions the deaths of the Famine, yet I don’t think they’ve forgotten them.
Violence lurks just beneath the surface. They do not talk of the Ribbonmen but occasionally there is a sudden silence, as though a Ribbonman might be listening at the door or even sitting among us around the hearth.
When someone is cursing Tim Allen, Lord Skeffington’s agent, someone else will remark, “There are those who will take care of him someday.”
And another adds, “And the Widow Cudahy in the bargain.”
Then the embarrassed silence, as though they realize they should not be talking that way with the priest in the house.
“No one dare touch her,” a woman will say. “Or the women of the village will tear him apart.”
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