Irish Tweed

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “Thanks, I appreciate that.”

  So we were covering that angle.

  I had told Mike Casey about him once.

  “Keep up the connection, Dermot. He’d never ask anything of you that he knew you couldn’t do. He’s harmless. I’ll look him up.”

  Later he said to me, “Your friend out on the West Side?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Harmless but very useful. Don’t push him too hard because he respects you so much he might become reckless.”

  “Right!”

  “Any suggestions among that crowd of unsavories?” I asked my friend Sean McCaffery.

  “This firm is utterly transparent, Mr. Coyne. Not by policy, but by habit. They never seem to have anything that they need to keep secret. If anyone made threats to Uncle Finnton he’d be on the phone to Cork City five minutes later, and all of us would be listening to the phone.”

  Much of the limited attention in the mind of Nessa Malone was diverted to the contest in her mouth between her bubble gum and her braces. She was perhaps a little less than eighteen, had not been to University, though her “leaving certs” would have made that possible. Instead she had applied for the job at Restoration/America because she wanted to get away from her “stupid family” in Taighat town and see the world. Uncle Finnton had been impressed by her ability to take dictation, her courtesy on the phone, and her skill in keeping schedules straight.

  The firm had appreciated her talents, given her raises, and even paid for her orthodontia, which would transform her completely. She liked everyone in the firm, especially Finnbar, who was so friendly and helpful to everyone. Sean was OK, though sometimes she couldn’t understand what he was talking about. She didn’t like Josie Kiernan very much because she acted so superior all the time, stuck up because of her college degree and because of her husband’s job as an inspector for Internal Revenue. Nessa couldn’t understand why Uncle Finnton had hired her, because everyone else in the office was so nice. Nessa had no idea what an accountant did except “play with numbers,” nor did she want to know what an accountant did because it was all so stupid. Finnbar wanted her to enroll in a junior college in the Loop but she’d had enough school for a while and wouldn’t do anything before her orthodontia was complete. Nessa sometimes showed flashes of intelligence that her leaving cert must have caught. She could become a first-class office manager if her stupid family had not made her somewhat stupid. Maybe Uncle Finnton saw possibilities for Restoration, like he had seen perhaps with Sean McCaffery.

  As best Nessa could recall there had been no strange or threatening phone calls. Lots of idiots attracted by the name of the firm and the Cork background, but nothing that seemed unusual. “Of course, Mr. Coyne, every company gets all kind of eejits on their phone these days.” Some people even wondered if they were a Muslim group or a Christian one. To which she protested that it was a Catholic firm from Ireland.

  She had no idea why someone had wanted to throw poor Finnbar into the River. No one could possibly dislike such a fine young man. She would pray for him every night until he was back in the office.

  “These days we all need as many prayers as we can get,” I responded, sincerely enough.

  “God will take care of us no matter what happens, so long as we have enough faith.”

  I almost quoted Cardinal Ryan and the late and lamented Bishop Peter Muldoon about the superabundance of God’s love, but didn’t think this was the time for an effort at theological education.

  Josie Kieran treated me with the same contempt that Nessa had reported.

  “Really, Mr. Coyne, I have so much work to do that I shouldn’t be taking time answering your questions, which I’m sure are foolish. It is clear as day who the criminals are. It was a gang of blacks, the same kinds of people that are shooting one another down on the streets. They are all on drugs and they have become impossible now that there is a darky running for president.”

  “Mixed race,” I said automatically, “half black, half white, background in Kenya and Kansas.”

  “A darky is a darky, Mr. Coyne. He isn’t even a Christian. He went to an Islamic school.”

  I didn’t say that the school was named in honor of St. Francis.

  She paid no attention to what went on in the office. Her job was to pay the bills and keep the accounts reconciled. She was very good at those jobs and minded her own business. She didn’t care what kind of work the company did, though it was involved with real estate and saving old homes. Mr. Burke was a very nice man, very fair, and very intelligent. The others were all children, spending the firm’s money foolishly. She simply tuned them out and went home at four thirty every night on the Illinois Central. She was sorry to learn about young Mr. Burke’s accident, but he was so lightweight that you had to put a heavy book on him or he’d fly away. No, she had no more suggestions, and now she had to get back to her work.

  I was glad to get out of the place.

  “I told you there was nothing to be found here. We pay our workers very well and take good care of them. They are all very loyal,” Finnton Burke said.

  I made a sound indicating some agreement and slipped over to the subway to catch a train up to Southport.

  Julie was back in the house, exhausted and subdued.

  “Are you going to figure it out, Dermot?” she asked me.

  “Nuala Anne and I have never missed one, Julie . . . How’s your fella?”

  “Obnoxious. He wants to get into rehab so he can be back on the links by Christmas, as if you could play golf in this country at Christmas.”

  Nuala was in her studio (thus distinguished from my office), reading about Angela Tierney.

  “Tough little kid, isn’t she?”

  “How does it feel to be the father of a child who has four F’s on her first report card?”

  “WHAT!”

  “My daughter had four F’s.”

  That was a good sign. If it was my daughter, it was somehow my fault.

  “What happened?”

  “Read this note from Dr. Fletcher.”

  Some parents will note that their child’s grades are much lower than they were last year. This results from our new policy of compassion. It is not fair that young people who are fortunate to have intelligent parents should receive the highest grades while those not so blessed should have lower grades, though they work much harder. The staff at your school has evaluated the efforts as well as test scores of our students and distributed high and low grades in more equitable fashion. Do not complain to the teachers when you meet with them tonight. These decisions were made collectively to reflect the purpose of Catholic education. They are definitive. They are not subject to revocation or revision. If it seems to you that their grades will preclude their admission to certain high schools, we would remind you that the purpose of Catholic education is to produce compassionate Christians, not academic success stories. If you are not satisfied with our decisions, you are perfectly free to enroll your children in other schools.

  Rev. Frank T. Sauer

  Pastor

  Dr. Lorraine Fletcher

  CEO

  “Did you fax it to my brother?”

  “Certainly.”

  “And he said?”

  “That the policy will not stand. I gather that the Superintendent of Schools has approved it. She might not stand either.”

  “Your other children?”

  “All abysmal failures . . . I gather from my friends that the Lecher has left at least half of the report cards unchanged. The outcry will come only from those who have been moved from top to bottom. Poor little Socra Marie is inconsolable.”

  “And Mary Anne?”

  “Quietly furious. She was especially good at martial arts this afternoon.”

  “Should we take them out of the school?”

  “Let’s see what Blackie does first.”

  The atmosphere at the parent-teacher meetings, always charged with emotions, was prerevolutionary. Women as well as men were u
sing curse words to express their rage. The teachers, who were innocent, became the targets of parental rage, though they pleaded that they had nothing to do with the grades.

  Mary Anne’s teacher, just a year out of DePaul and almost indistinguishable from her students, was weeping when we entered.

  “Those are not my grades. I gave Mary Anne A’s in everything. I’m going to resign tomorrow morning, even if it means I can’t pay for the condo I just bought. The other women can’t afford to quit . . .”

  “Don’t do anything impulsive,” Nuala Anne warned. “They’ve gone too far this time.”

  Our four kids and Julie Crean were waiting in the parlor for our return, under the watchful patronage of the two hounds.

  “Well?” Mary Anne demanded as soon as we entered the room and before we hung up our raincoats.

  “They all claim no responsibility for the revolution. They are embarrassed, troubled, scared.”

  “Why are they scared?” Socra Maried asked.

  “Afraid that they will lose their jobs and other schools will not hire them because everyone knows what’s going on here.”

  “What did you tell them?” the Mick inquired, his jaw resting on folded fingers.

  “To be patient. This inanity would not stand.”

  “Uncle George and Cardinal Blackie will shoot them down?”

  “That’s an unduly pugnacious description, Mary Anne. I would prefer to say that they will restore the status quo.”

  “And get rid of Hannibal and Sourpuss?”

  “People always make the same mistake about the Cardinal, dear,” my wife explained. “Like Father Brown in Mister Chesterton’s funny little books, he only seems harmless.”

  “Gotcha!”

  The five of them and the two dogs retired to their respective homework.

  “Let’s go look at the fax,” Nuala suggested.

  There were two faxes waiting for us, both from Father Rick Neal, Vicar for Education. The first was a brief press release to the faculty and St. Joe’s Catholic school.

  The change of grades at St. Joe’s Catholic school would appear to be inconsistent with the philosophy of Catholic education. Therefore the grades distributed today are nullified. Teachers will mail their original grades to me at this office in the enclosed stamped envelopes by the end of business tomorrow. The next set of grades in December will be based on the usual criteria with which both parents and students are familiar.

  The second release was a statement from the Cardinal in praise of Sister Mary Theodolinda who, after thirty-five years of work in the apostolate of Catholic Schools, was retiring.

  Sister hopes to devote her time and energy to a book about her experiences in Catholic education. Father Richard Neal, Vicar for Education, will lead a search committee to seek a replacement for Sister, a replacement who will continue our historic quest for innovation and excellence in Catholic schools.

  “You guys are really cool.” Mary Anne, accompanied by Fiona, appeared at the door of our office.

  “And we are as angry as you are, dear,” Nuala answered for both of us.

  She raised an eyebrow to me. I nodded.

  “In strictest confidence—you don’t tell your brothers or sister, or even Julie, about these faxes from Uncle George.”

  She frowned as she began to read them, then she smiled and her smile turned into a grin. “I’ll never underestimate Cardinal Blackie.”

  “This does not mean the troubles are over, it means only that we know who is going to win.”

  Both statements appeared as single paragraph articles in the next day’s Tribune.

  “Do you think this is the end of it?” my wife asked as she poured my morning cup of tea with all the elaborate grace of a papal liturgy.

  “Father Sauer is smart enough to be able to read the handwriting on the wall. The Catholic bureucracy is closing in on him, and his protection there—the good Sister Theodolinda—is out of a job. He’s next. He may not be ready to sacrifice his parish to Fletcher’s cause. Blackie sends clear signals. Things may quiet down for awhile.”

  “She’ll never quit, Dermot.”

  “You’re right. Too bad for her own good and the parish’s she can’t back off.”

  “She wants to get our kids because she hates me. I’m the celebrity she’s always talking about. I represent all that is wrong with American capitalism.”

  10

  THE NEXT day I ate lunch at the Bar Association with Bob Hurley and two denizens of the West Side real estate market, which now stretched out almost to Rockford. Both of them were in the non-shady crowd. Their firms had not been involved in the blockbusting thirty years ago. Roy Morningstar (English for Morgenstern) specialized in Oak Brook, the huge DuPage county residential and commercial area out beyond the Cook County line. Five feet eight at most with dark brown eyes that oozed sincerity, he was the grandson of a Holocaust survivor, active in Jewish community affairs, and a specialist in shopping malls. His favorite gesture was a slight shrug of the shoulders which said, in effect, “What can I tell you?”

  “You want to buy a mall, Mr. Coyne? What can I tell you? I have a bunch of them for sale, not the big ones, of course, though there are a lot of properties inside the bag that are worthless now for all the interest they would stir up. A mansion with housing for your thoroughbreds? I could get it for you cheap, even below wholesale. Nothing is moving out here. I mean nothing. Maybe next year, if we are all alive?”

  Johnny Bowler, an overweight Irish-American with a bald head and sad blue eyes who specialized on the close-in suburbs—Oak Park, River Forest, Elmwood Park, Forest Park, LaGrange—was equally pessimistic. “An upturn? Not next year. Maybe the year after. Worst I’ve seen, absolute worst. My dad says go back to the Great Depression to see it.”

  “I didn’t vote for him,” I said, my standard response to those who complained about the economy.

  Everyone talked about the Great Depression these days, but none of them had been there. I’d read the books. We were not in something like the Great Depression, even the housing bust. We weren’t throwing people out on the streets yet, not that we could exclude the possibility.

  “What about this crowd that’s trying to redo West End Park?”

  Johnny Bowler answered.

  “The Irish firm . . . What do they call themselves, Restoration? They’re really part of the market. Hey, they build up that neighborhood again? It will be a big deal, but it’s long term at best. No help to us, no threat either . . . I don’t like the Irish butting into our business, though. Why should they be building that idiot spire down at the River? That’s rubbing it in. When things get better here, Americans ought not prop up their economy with tourism.”

  “Better their money,” I said, “than Russian or Chinese.”

  “You know anything about Ireland?”

  “A little,” I said, waiving off Bob Hurley.

  “Is that not the company whose young man was thrown in the Chicago River the other night?” Roy Morningstar asked.

  “Yeah, I read about that. Probably just some gangbangers. They’re not big enough to be a problem. Allied Irish Bank? That’s another question.”

  “The West Side Irish,” Bob observed, “have taken a real beating the last thirty years. They might resent foreigners intruding.”

  “Hell,” Johnny Bowler insisted, “the Irish aren’t foreigners.”

  “Any kind of Irish Republican resentments out here?” I asked innocently. “They have long memories.”

  “The Greenhorns, maybe, but most Irish Americans don’t give a shit about the Irish Republicans. Probably think they are the conservative party over there.”

  “There was once a man”—Roy Morningstar frowned as he struggled for a memory—“who owned a big gasoline station at Harlem and Lake. I don’t remember his name. He was active in some kind of group which was sending money to Northern Ireland for the fighting over there. A little obsessed with it, people say. An immigrant himself, judging by the way he t
alked. Northaid, I think he called it.”

  “Noraid,” I said.

  “Yes, Dermot, I think that was what he called it. He’s probably long since dead by now—Freistaters he called the people in charge of things. Really hated them.”

  “Free Staters?”

  “Yes, that’s it. They are the ones in charge of Northern Ireland?”

  “No, that’s the English government . . . The Free Staters are the recognized government of Ireland, duly elected by their own people. They are called Free Staters by those who lost to them in the Irish Civil War.”

  “So . . . But wasn’t that settled recently?”

  “It was, Roy, but the extremists would regard that as another sellout to England and the Northern Protestants.”

  “Stupid bastards, why fight over something that happened fifty years ago?”

  “A hundred years ago, Johnny. Or maybe seven hundred, depending on how you count.”

  “Why the fuck are they messing around in our business?”

  “Because the administration believes in a weak dollar to help American business.”

  We walked back to the law offices of Warner, Werner, Wanzer, Hurley, and Hurley. I wanted to greet my sister Cyndi and see what mischief she and my wife were spinning for the Archdiocese.

  “It looks like the Archdiocese backed down,” she said as soon as I walked into her office.

  She was clearly disappointed by this apparent retreat.

  “I don’t think that the people in charge at St. Joe’s have backed down.”

  “That idiot ex-nun doesn’t know what we can do to them. Is she sleeping with the priest?”

  “I don’t think so. I suspect rather that she’s a substitute for a domineering mother.”

  “Doesn’t matter! We could get an injunction against them tomorrow on the grounds that their grading system is doing grave harm to many of the students and violates the implicit contract the school makes to the parents. Extend the injunction to include the Church. I assume your friend Blackie knows what we did out in Joliet?”

  “I’m sure he does. That’s why he issued the releases that were in the Trib this morning.”