To the waiting media, she said, “I’m so happy to be home in Chicago again. God willing, my stay here will be a little longer this time. I’m grateful to all those who helped me to return.”
Simple and sweet.
We carried her off in a limousine to her redecorated and refurbished apartment on Southport Avenue. A caterer had laid out an elaborate buffet. Cindy proposed a toast with a glass of Barolo.
“Nuala Anne!”
“Nuala Anne!” we all echoed the toast.
Tears formed in her eyes as she sipped the wine.
“Yourselves!” she said in voice that cracked as she spoke.
She was still wearing the hat, which the women at the party praised mightily.
A duo played a violin and a viola as we ate and chatted. Nuala consumed only a bite or two.
“’Tis yourself, woman, that should eat a little more. Or won’t you wither away to a shadow of your former self?”
“Won’t I be making a daily pilgrimage to the 31 Flavors over on Southport?”
“It will take more than that.”
She touched my arm lightly. “It’ll be all right, Derm, now that I’m home … . ’Tis yourself that’s responsible for me new apartment?”
“Me ma, mostly. I helped a little.”
“Then you’d be responsible for them terrible naked women on the walls?”
“Aren’t the two of them nude, not naked?”
“Och, and aren’t they lovely—kind of mystical, if you take me meaning?”
“Celtic Twilight. She wants to paint you.”
“Ah, Dermot, sure, I couldn’t do that at all, at all! Wouldn’t I be terrible embarrassed altogether? … When?”
“Dermot is too modest,” my mother insisted. “Most of the ideas for redecorating were his. Doesn’t he have good taste?”
“Sometimes.”
We all laughed.
I guided her over to the framed picture of the letter to Letitia Walsh, lace maker.
She nodded and smiled.
“Buried treasure indeed, Dermot Michael.”
Nothing more.
I thought or at least hoped that I had been restored to my former role in her life.
No such luck.
On the phone the next day, she said bluntly, “Derm, I think we should break up for a while. I need time to take everything in.”
My heart skipped a beat and my stomach and throat tightened.
“How long?”
“No time limits.”
“You’re the boss Nuala Anne.”
That was that. August, which started in a couple of days, would be a hot and long month.
HAVEN’T YOU LOST HER ALTOGETHER? the Adversary said to me.
“Drop the phony Irish brogue,” I told him. “You’re no friggin’ good at it.”
I played tennis; I played in a Grant Park softball league (sixteen inch), as every young man of my age must do; I messed around with my stories; I began a novel about a man with a broken heart; I went to the movies.
Movies are my way of escaping from reality, always have been.
The novel moved along pretty well. My agent said that, if I kept it up, it would surely be published. No one, I thought, will want to read a novel in which the man loses his love because he’s a stupid eejit.
The family asked no questions and never spoke about herself in my presence, except when I asked Cindy about the suits. Not even the Priest.
One night in the third week of August as my twenty-fifth summer dragged to a miserable, self-pitying end, I took a taxi down to the Fine Arts Building (where Madame reigned in her studio) to see The Brothers McMullen, a film about three Irish brothers from New York (and hence very different from us Chicago Irish) made for $25,000 by a kid only a year older than I was.
It was grand, super, brilliant. If Nuala and I were ever reconciled, I’d have to take her to see it.
I walked back to my apartment despite the 85-degree heat. I was envious of young Mr. Burns, who had written it, directed it, and played the leading role. He was a frigging genius and himself only a year older than meself. I didn’t resent his success. Rather, I was angry at my own mediocrity. I possessed all the money I needed for the rest of my life and through no fault of my own. (I’d gone long when I should have gone short on a huge order. The market opened limit up the next day and I made $3 million, whereupon, since I was as bad at trading as I had been at everything else, I retired.) Yet I had not done anything with my life. I was a dilettante writer who fooled around with writing but had yet to do anything important. I’d wasted the whole last year mooning over a woman and lost her anyway. It was time for me to settle down and get serious.
Having lost in the comparison of myself with Ed Burns, I toppled into my easy chair with a stiff glass of Bushmill’s Single Malt to kill the pain. What was the film about, besides a comparison between you and your man?
The message was simple enough and Burns made it clear enough: Once you find your true love, never let her go. A Catholic message pretty clearly, even if Ed Burns was only dimly aware of it: Your true love is a sacrament of God.
I stirred uneasily in my chair. The real difference between the characters in the film and me was that I had let my true love, my sacrament of God, slip through my fingers. I was a frigging eejit.
I hadn’t heard from her in weeks. No one had. She had dropped out of sight. I had gathered from Cindy that the two suits were inching forward towards settlement, and from Tracy that she had flatly turned down television appearances and record contracts with the comment, “I’m an accountant, not a singer.”
Stubborn bitch.
She was, however, determined to escape the celebrity role, and that was healthy, wasn’t it?
As an extra precaution, I had put Reliable back on her as soon as she returned from Ireland.
She was still my true love, and I had let her go too easily.
I grabbed for the phone and punched in her number.
“Hel-lo.”
“Nuala?”
“Dermot?”
“’Tis.”
“Brigid, Patrick, and Columcille, wasn’t I sitting here staring at me phone and meself trying to work up the nerve to call you?”
“Why?”
Put the ball in her court.
Her voice took on its crafty, scheming, conniving tone.
“I suppose you’ve been to see that Monet thing, haven’t you?”
“I’ve had had more than enough of your man for one summer.”
“Would you ever like to take me over there?”
“That puts the matter in a different light.”
“Well, isn’t me firm having a dinner party there, and haven’t I got two tickets, and don’t I need a date?”
“Do you now?”
“I do.”
“Well, I might be able to fit it into my schedule. Black tie?”
“Isn’t it now?”
“I suppose I can arrange that, too. When?”
“Ah, isn’t it tomorrow night, Dermot Michael?”
“Tomorrow night!”
“Viewing at five, drinks at six, dinner at six-thirty. Don’t your accountants like to go to bed early? Would you ever pick me up about four-thirty?”
“Kind of short notice, Nuala Anne.”
“I was afraid to call you, Dermot Michael.”
She sounded so frightened and so sad that I took pity on her.
“For you, Nuala, I’ll always be available on short notice. Four-thirty tomorrow it is.”
“Thank you Dermot.”
Had I recovered my true love? With no effort on my part? Why did I get all the lucky breaks? Well, this time she doesn’t get away.
Such were my thoughts when I pushed the bell at the top of the solid stairs, with which I had replaced the old rickety ones.
“On time as usual, Dermot Michael,” she said as she opened the door. “And isn’t yourself looking handsome tonight, in your black tie and everything?”
I gulp
ed and gaped and gasped.
“You’re the one who looks handsome, Nuala Anne.”
“I like it so much when you look at me that way, kind of hungry like.”
“Starving.”
Powder blue was still the color, a full-length gown, thigh slit as high as it dared to go, no shoulders, precious little back, a generous view of breasts, and a shimmering and sheer cape of the same color edged with a touch of gold.
“Why the harp?” I asked as I took her arm and led her down the stairs.
“They asked me to sing and said they’d give me two free tickets. It’s a benefit banquet and, sure, I didn’t have one thousand dollars for me meal. So I’m singing for me supper … . You don’t mind, Dermot, do you?”
“Why should I mind?”
She was a sensation at the Art Institute. Naturally. Men and women both, like me, gulped and gaped and gasped.
She introduced me as, “This is me young man, Dermot Michael Coyne. He’s a seanachie. That’s Irish for a storyteller.”
Her young man, is it now?
A couple of Arthur’s folks asked me what county in Ireland I was from. I replied each time in flat Middle Western ‘Mercan,’ ‘County Cook, a little village called River Forest.’”
The canvases were overwhelming. The man was truly a friggin’ genius. Some of them even distracted me from looking at Nuala.
The champagne was superb, the food excellent, the conversation sprightly, considering that the guests were accountants or computer consultants. Unlike Judge Manley, they read the New York Times.
Then came the singing.
Nuala Anne sat on a dais at one end of the banquet room and tuned her harp.
“For them as don’t know me or don’t recognize me in this fancy and shocking dress, I’m Nuala Anne McGrail and, despite appearances, I’m a junior accountant with the firm, and I’m learning a lot about computers. I also sing, as a matter of fact and—you should forgive the plug—I’ll be singing at the Abbey Pub on Wednesday nights after Labor Day.”
General laughter. She had disarmed them completely. Performer persona.
Then she began to sing—from her diaphragm.
In Dublin’s fair city,
Where the girls are so pretty
I first set my eyes
On sweet Molly Malone.
She wheeled her wheelbarrow
Through streets broad and narrow,
Crying “Cockles and mussels,
Alive, alive, oh!”
Alive, alive, oh!
Alive, alive, oh!
Crying, “Cockles and mussels,
Alive, alive, oh!”
She was a fishmonger,
But sure ’twas no wonder,
For so was her father and mother before
And they both wheeled their barrow
Through streets broad and narrow
Crying, “Cockles and mussels,
Alive, alive, oh!”
Alive, alive, oh!
Alive, alive, oh!
Crying, “Cockles and mussels,
Alive, alive, oh!”
She died of a fever
And no one could relieve her,
And that was the end of sweet Molly Malone,
But her ghost wheels her barrow
Through streets broad and narrow,
Crying, “Cockles and mussels,
Alive, alive, oh!”
Alive, alive, oh!
Alive, alive, oh!
Crying, “Cockles and mussels,
Alive, alive, oh!”
She wouldn’t look at me as she sang.
She sang three more songs, two lullabies, and a lament and then finished up with “Paddy Reilly.”
Tumultuous applause.
“Remarkable young woman, Dermot,” said the man who sat on the other side of her empty chair. “You’re very fortunate.”
“That remains to be seen!”
She returned, I stood up to hold the chair for her.
“Your voice is in top form tonight, Nuala Anne.”
“Shouldn’t it be now, and meself seeing Madame every week?”
“Ah?”
“She’ll be sending you the bills at the end of the month.”
I felt that someone was tightening the lasso around me.
Why shouldn’t she? After all, wasn’t she my true love?
“Will you come up for a minute or two, Derm?” she asked me as I eased into a parking place in front of her house.
“Sure.”
What next?
If she dragged me into bed with her, I couldn’t refuse, could I?
Nuala wouldn’t do that. She’d try something even more effective.
I felt no sense of impending doom as I climbed the steps with her.
Inside the apartment, she directed me to a chair, whirled off her “Dracula Cape” as I called it, and brought two small glasses of Bailey’s Irish Cream.
“’Tis only a drop because don’t you have to be driving home?”
Then she knelt at my knees and said, “I ask your pardon, Dermot Michael, for the terrible person I’ve been to you all summer.”
“You don’t have to kneel, Nuala,” I said trying to pull her off the floor.
“No, Dermot, you keep saying I am an actress and this is the part I have to play. I confessed to Father before Mass this morning, and now I must confess to you.”
I gave up my attempt to lift her from the floor. She folded her hands on my knee.
“I’ve been terrible to you, Derm. There’s no excuse, none at all, and I know you’ve already forgiven me, but I still have to explain.”
“All right.”
I caressed her face and her throat and her neck and her shoulders and her chest and her back and the tops of her breasts with chaste and gentle fingers. Well, pretty chaste.
“Don’t stop that, Dermot. Please don’t stop it.”
“If you say so.”
“This wonderful city overwhelmed me. I tried to absorb everything. You were overwhelming, too much altogether—big and strong and sweet and kind and smart and nice. I said to meself, this man has captured me and I’ll never get away from him and never be able to be meself or even think for myself. And then I said, I must be free of him, or I won’t be able to cope with all the other things I had to cope with. I lost the run of meself altogether. You, do understand, don’t you Dermot Michael?”
“I do.”
“Then, when I returned here and broke up with you, I thought me poor heart would break. One morning, ‘twas only last week, I woke up and said Nuala you’re a friggin’ eejit. He’s only your nice young man Dermot, poor dear fella, who is no problem at all, at all. You don’t have to cope with him. The only thing to do is to enjoy him. You’ve got to get him back and then never let him go away.”
“You appear to have succeeded.”
My fingers rested on the top of a breast, slowly tracing delicate circles.
“You do understand, don’t you, Derm?”
“Totally.”
“And you do forgive me?”
“Whatever there is to forgive, I forgive … still let me say something. I hope you try to have more respect for yourself and your instincts and your talents than you do now. I won’t argue with you about what you’ve said because that would be a churlish male response to such an appealing plea. Yet I could make a strong case—one that’s pretty reasonable to me—that you have behaved with regard to your poor, nice young man with considerable skill, all things considered.”
My fingers found her other breast and traced designs on it. Nuala drew a quick breath—of pleasure, I hoped.
“I won’t disagree with them words … and you won’t mind if I come to Grand Beach for your bank holiday?”
The schemer again.
I pushed her dress a little lower and removed enough of the minimal bra to reach a nipple. I possessed it with my lips. It rose to meet my demand. Then I paused to rejoice in the glory of her lovely young breasts. They were more wonderfu
l than my constant fantasies about them.
“Here we call it Labor Day weekend, and I’d mind if you didn’t come. I’ll tell Mom in the morning.”
“Och, Dermot, I told her today!”
I took her in my arms and rocked her back and forth. I loved the schemer persona almost as much as all the others. Then I lifted her from the floor and grabbed her bare shoulders firmly.
“Listen to me, Marie Phinoulah Annagh McGriel, don’t you ever try to run away from me again. The next time I’ll run after you and drag you back by your long black hair!”
“Wouldn’t that be an fascinating sexual experience now!”
She rearranged her dress, sat in the chair on the other side of the coffee table, and toasted me, “Dermot!”
I returned the favor. “Nuala!”
“Weren’t you doing some wicked things to me?”
“You said I shouldn’t stop!”
“Och, they weren’t that wicked!”
We talked for a few minutes, reveling in a barrier overcome.
Then she said with her best County Galway sigh, “’Tis time to go home, Dermot.”
“’Tis,” I said, rising and sighing myself.
We kissed each other lightly and she opened the door.
In the dim light, I saw the last conspiracy at the bottom of the stairs. Billy Hernon and two flunkies, all of them with switchblades in their paws.
“We’re going to fuck her all night long and make you watch!” Billy crowed as he began to ascend the stairs, “Then we’re going to cut the two of you up, so that no one will ever want to look at you ever again.”
20
“GOOD EVENING, Billy,” I replied. “It’s nice to see you again.”
The whole world seemed to decelerate into a leisurely crawl. I saw each movement unroll in slow motion. I knew exactly what I would do. I guess they call the phenomenon “flow,” or something like that.
Calmly, as if I had all the time in the world, I moved Nuala behind me. I told her to go inside and close the door, though I knew there wasn’t a chance in the world that she would do that. I waited patiently for them to get two-thirds of the way up the stairs. Their blades were gleaming in the light coming from the doorway. “About now,” I said to myself.
Irish Lace Page 30