“Is she working?”
“She has a job in an accountant’s office in Galway City. They pay her one-quarter of what Arthur did. The other people in the office ridicule her constantly.”
“The Irish are great for kicking someone when they’re down,” I said bitterly.
“She’d never do that to anyone.”
“No.”
“I don’t think we’ll get her back, Dermot. Too much has happened.”
“At least we must see that she has the right to return if she wants to.”
“We’ll do that, Dermot. Believe me.”
I didn’t quite believe her. I had known all along that no legal system is perfect, yet I still believed that ours worked most of the time. Now I understood that, like all systems, it was gravely flawed by its inability to take into account what stupid, venal, and ambitious men and women might decide to do. You received justice in America if right was on your side and if you were lucky.
Nuala had been very unlucky.
17
ON A hot Tuesday morning in early July, the phone in my apartment rang. It was herself.
“Are you remodeling the whole house, Dermot Michael?” she began.
“I am. I hope to turn it into a home, like the one herself lived in, only a bit more modern.”
“Have you been in the basement?”
“Woman, I have not. I looked into it once and it was a terrible mess.”
I began to shiver, expecting to hear another voice from beyond the grave.
“I think there might be an old closet down there underneath the steps—just a tiny thing. Boarded up. I noticed when I was down there to wash some things that there should have been a place beneath the stairs, but there wasn’t.”
Her voice drifted off into silence.
“You expect me to look down there when I get a chance?”
“No, Dermot Michael Coyne. I expect you to go over there this instant and look. Right now!”
“Yes ma’am.”
I caught a cab up to Southport. No wasting time getting out of the building when buried treasure was at stake. I wondered how Nuala Anne knew that today the workers were going to clean out the basement and begin working on a family room.
When I arrived, I saw them loading rubbish on a large dump truck.
“The basement was full of shit,” one of them said to me. “Newspapers from a hundred years ago in an old closet that they had sealed up.”
“Where are those papers?” I asked frantically.
“We put them in the Dumpster,” he replied. “Anything wrong?”
“I have to search through the whole mess. There might be buried treasure in there.”
“Buried treasure!”
They were very helpful as I searched through the withered and rotting trash, looking for an old letter, as I told them. However, I had to look at every piece of trash myself. I wondered, as I searched, how much of it would be of interest to the historical society. I tried to separate the worthless from the valuable.
But I found no letters.
I went through everything again.
Still nothing.
It had to be there somewhere. Otherwise, why would Nuala have called me?
I’d search the trash all day and all night if necessary.
“Here’s the Chicago Times from 1871,” the foreman said. “All about the fire, which came within two blocks of this place.”
I glanced at it, flipped through the pages, and handed it back to him. Then I reached for it again.
Were there two pages sticking together?
Carefully, very carefully, I opened them. There, sticking to one of the pages, was a piece of stationery, brown with age, worn at the edges, its ink dry and smudged:
The White House
Apr. 14, 65
Letitia Walsk.
Lace Maker
Chicago Illinois
I agree with the observations you made in yours of the 5th ins. I thank you for them. I must let the trial run its course. However, I promise you that when it is over I will grant pardons to everyone.
Yrs
A. Lincoln
President
With trembling fingers, I carried the buried treasure up to Nuala’s apartment. Nervously, I punched in the numbers to Cararoe. Her mother answered the phone.
“It’s Dermot, Mrs. McGrail. Is herself there?”
“Isn’t she asleep, Dermot? It’s eleven o’clock here.”
Had I been searching for all those hours?
“Wake her up. It’s important.”
Then—in a moment—herself on the line.
“You found it, Dermot, did you now?”
She was sleepy, but excited.
“Woman, I did!”
“I knew you would. Aren’t you the greatest treasure hunter in all the world?”
“I think the title belongs to you … . Should I read it to you?”
“That would be nice.”
I read it.
“A nice man, your A. Lincoln.”
“He was all of that.”
“Thank you for calling.”
“Nuala, it belongs to you. It’s worth millions. You found it.”
“No, you did. I don’t want it. Not at all, at all. Now, can I please go back to bed?”
I was prepared for her refusal. So I made a proposal about how to deal with the treasure.
“That’s a grand idea,” she said. “Brilliant!”
“We’ll have to test it, of course, and put it in some protective container.”
“Grand. Good night, Dermot.”
The line went dead. I glanced at the phone. She might have said something more than that I was the greatest treasure hunter in all the world.
Well, she didn’t.
After all, it was late in County Galway.
I called George at the cathedral.
“Incredible, little bro. Let me check with my friend Ralph, and I’ll phone you back.”
He was on the line in ten minutes.
“Tomorrow at nine … . It belongs to herself, naturally.”
“Naturally.”
“What does she want to do with it?”
“I told him.”
“Sounds like her.”
The next morning, the expert’s office felt like the sanctuary of the cathedral during the elevation of the Sacred Host. We were all solemnly quiet as he carefully unwrapped the old issue of the Times.
He and George gasped as he saw the letter.
“The last words he ever set on paper,” he said softly. “Worth millions. A last act of compassion before his death. We’ll have to test the paper and the ink and the handwriting, of course, but my preliminary reaction is that it is authentic. Authentic beyond any doubt.”
“You’ll piece it together and protect it from any further decay.”
“With utmost care … Is it yours, Mr. Coyne?”
“No. It belongs to a young woman.”
“What does she intend to do with it?”
I told him.
He smiled. “She must be a remarkable young woman.”
“All of that,” George agreed. “All of that.”
18
“YOU CAN come into the court with me tomorrow as a clerk, Dermot,” Cindy said on the day before the “immediate, emergency” hearing. “Don’t punch anyone. And be patient with me. I’m planning a tirade. I want their decision tomorrow. No delays while they write an opinion.”
The hearing was around an impressive oak table in the Everett McKinley Dirksen Federal Building, a much more informal setting than a regular courtroom, but still one subject to rigid rules of conduct. The three judges sat at one end of the table: An African-American man who was presiding and a white man and woman, the last no older than Cindy.
They greeted us cheerfully and informally at first. Cindy introduced the young U.S. attorney around whose head the case hung like a millstone, and me.
Then the presiding judge said, “Perhaps we may begin.�
� A pall of formality and ritual descended on the room.
“You may assume, Counselor,” the presiding judge informed Cindy, “that we have read your petition very carefully, as well as the responding brief of the United States attorney. We will now hear oral arguments. We will grant time for arguments and rebuttals till twelve o’clock. I hope we may be able to adjourn in time for lunch.”
“Your Honors, I would be remiss in my obligation to my client if I did not make this initial observation. If the Seventh Circuit had not been remiss in its duty when I first moved for relief, we would not be here today.”
The presiding judge stirred uneasily.
“I don’t think we can accept that charge, Counselor. We can accept the fact that if a different decision was made in June we would not be here.”
“We sought emergency relief, Your Honor, and we did not get it. Six weeks is far too long for an emergency. Justice delayed, I would remind you, is justice denied.”
“It is our responsibility to decide what is justice in this case.”
“I put it to you, your honors, that when I am finished you will understand, if you do not do so already, that there was a prima facie case for justice in June and that Seventh Circuit ought to have recognized it.”
The judge sighed, nothing he could say would satisfy this outraged Celtic warrior goddess across the table and he knew it.
I thought I saw a flicker of a smile on the face of the woman judge.
“Perhaps you might begin your oral argument now, Counselor.”
“I begin with the words of an English political philosopher of the last century, Lord Acton: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I put it to you that the district court in its decision offers absolute power to a government agency which has often used its authority, as we all know, to behave with appalling lack of humanity in its treatment of poor and unfortunate men and women.”
Then the tirade began. With biting sarcasm and often furious anger, she attacked Judge Manley’s ruling. With soaring patriotic rhetoric, she praised the due-process clause as perhaps the most noble judicial principle in the history of the species. She decried the current nativist xenophobia that dared to call those noble words into question. She dismissed the arguments about the suspension of the principle at certain times as aberrations for which we should hang our heads in shame instead of citing as a precedent for further violations of elementary human justice. She did not attack Zack O’Hara, nor praise Nuala.
The three judges listened with considerable interest because Cindy was a show and a half, a brilliant, passionate performer of the sort that they would not ordinarily encounter in an appellate hearing.
Sometimes they smiled; occasionally they laughed. My sister, of whom I was immensely proud, was on a roll, and no one could stop her.
I wanted to punch someone.
The woman judge winked at me twice.
“The plaintiff is a remarkable young woman, Your Honors,” she said, winding down, “with much to offer to our society. However, I am not here to argue from that fact. Even if she were an unattractive and vicious woman with whom we would not want ever to share a meal or invite into our homes, even if she were a prime candidate to have her visa lifted, even then she would have the right to a hearing, to appeal, and to turn to the judicial system. If the Immigration and Naturalization Service has reason for its action, let it bring charges against her and let her defend herself however she can. The issue here is not whether the plaintiff will make a good American. The issue is whether she was inadmissibly deprived of that possibility. I do not ask you to rule that she be permitted to continue to live in America, I merely ask that you mandate the State Department to renew her visa so she may return to this country and defend herself against whatever charges may be made against her. I also ask that, if the Immigration and Naturalization Service does not have such charges, you will enjoin it to cease harassing her. That seems to me to be a very minor request on which you can rule today. I ask you to do so in defense of one of our most sacred rights.”
I wanted to get up and cheer.
I still wanted to punch someone.
“Well,” the presiding judge said, clearing his throat, “we have just heard a very eloquent plea. Do my colleagues have any questions?”
They did not.
“Neither do I. Does the United States attorney want to present an oral argument?”
He began to write on his inevitable legal-size yellow pad.
“No, Your Honor I do not. Originally, as you know from the record, we did not intend to oppose this petition. We were ordered to. We have presented our best arguments in two briefs. I have been instructed to say that I have nothing to add to those briefs.”
“Well, I see that we may even have an early lunch.”
He passed his yellow pad to his male colleague. He read it carefully and nodded his head. The presiding judge than handed it over to the woman. She added a carefully written line.
I was sure we had won. Cindy continued to frown, her anger not yet cooled.
“Well,” said the presiding judge genially, “I believe we can make an oral ruling now and direct compliance this afternoon. We will provide a written ruling with appropriate citations in the near future.”
He cleared his throat, adjusted his glasses, and began to read the decision:
“This court reverses the decision of the Court for the Northern District of Illinois and rejects its arguments as fatuous. It directs the Department of State either to retrieve the plaintiff’s visa from the Immigration and Naturalization Service or to issue a new one immediately. We also direct the Immigration and Naturalization Service either to begin action against the plaintiff within a reasonable period of time or to cease and desist its harassment of her. In any case we enjoin that Service not to prevent her return to his country.”
“Thank you, Your Honors,” Cindy said, biting her lip so as not to cry.
There were congratulations all around.
“You see, young man,” the presiding judge said to me, “there is justice in this land of ours.”
Not wishing to be churlish, I said, “I never doubted it.”
“Proud of your sister, Mr. Coyne?” the woman asked me.
“Dazzled.”
“Will she come back, do you think?” the third judge asked Cindy.
“I’m not sure. I’m afraid she won’t. What do you think, Dermot?”
“She’ll come back because she knows she belongs here. Eventually.”
I was surprised by that insight.
“Did you get any material for your stories?” the presiding judge asked.
“If I use it, I’ll be violating Cindy’s copyright.”
They all laughed.
In the corridor, Cindy and I hugged each other and cried with joy.
We were not out of the woods yet. A spokesperson for the passport service announced that it would take several months to issue a new visa because all the paperwork would have to be done over.
She changed her mind the next day, reportedly after a furious call from the White House. The papers from the previous application would be adequate. A new visa would be sent to Ambassador Jean Kennedy Smith in the afternoon diplomatic pouch.
The next day the ambassador journeyed to Cararoe, met Nuala and her parents, and presented her with the visa and a ticket to Chicago via Manchester on American Airlines. The airline had upgraded her to first class.
Nuala smiled shyly, thanked the ambassador, introduced her parents, and offered Ms. Smith an afternoon cup of tea. She accepted the offer, drank the tea, ate the homemade scones, complimented the McGrails on their tea service, and took her leave.
“When will you be home, Nuala?” a television journalist asked her.
“This is home,” Nuala said politely. “I don’t know that I’ll ever go back to America, much as I like it.”
I decided that enough was enough. I would fly to Shannon, drive up to Galway, and carry her off with me.
&nb
sp; I was saved that task. Your man called her and pleaded with her to come back to America. Some of his ancestors were Irish. America needed young people like her from all over the world. We would miss her badly if she did not give us another chance. She would have two homes; one in Chicago and one in that lovely spot out there in Galway. The mayor of Chicago had spoken to him not an hour ago and asked him to convey his urgent invitation that she come to her other home. Just one more chance, Nuala Anne.
Who was “your man” this time? Come on, you know.
Being who and what she was, she could not refuse his request for forgiveness.
So she came back to the United States, confident, I suppose, that all the conspiracies had been put to rest. But there was one more conspiracy with which to contend.
19
NUALA’S HOMECOMING was solemn high, a beloved celebrity coming home. The new Chicago director of the INS greeted her at the plane, apologized for the “misunderstandings,” stamped her visa and her customs form, and carried her small bag to the immigration room. The INS agents in the room cheered for her, shook her hand, and hugged her. Those of us who were waiting in a tight little circle in the back of the room joined the cheers. Herself was wearing a short-sleeved powder blue summer dress with the usual white belt and a white hat with a blue ribbon. She carried her harp in her left hand.
“She’s acting like the frigging Queen of England,” I whispered to Cindy who was standing next to me.
At the door, Her Majesty warmly acknowledged the welcome of the mayor, the cardinal, the little bishop, the presiding partner of Arthur, her boss, and the Coyne clan. She hugged the latter appropriately and, I thought, reserved a special hug and kiss for me at the very end of the line.
“Ah, ’tis yourself now, is it?”
“’Tis.”
She sighed and I sighed, too.
The persona was smooth but with cracks around the edges. She was wearing more makeup than she usually did and she had lost weight. Herself had been through emotional hell and was covering the effects up with an actress’s aplomb. The show must go on.
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