“With Father Flynn officiating.”
“The same.”
“Must have gone on for hours.”
Max shrugged. “Long enough. So. Why weren’t you at your own funeral?”
“Deirdre’s right. I stayed too long at the Fair. She did too, on account of me.”
“On account of you waiting for me?”
Sean ignored Max’s self-blaming interjection. “I didn’t believe Deirdre at first, that it was so urgent I leave. I’d been drowning my sorrows at you waltzing off with Kathleen. Got stubborn and tipsy. Got Deirdre injured as well as my damn self.”
“I’m sorry, Sean. I’ve been sorry for all these years.”
“Your problem. I’ve got plenty enough of my own.”
“Such as?”
“It’s not pretty.” He turned his full face toward Max finally, Max braced for his worst nightmare, a badly burned face, ear gone, eye perhaps damaged, with the familiar red-brown color floating within a skin and bone setting melted into a mask of scar tissue.
But, no, though the sight was bad enough. Max remembered high school guys bewailing the zits and pock marks of acne. He and Sean had escaped the curse, until the pub bombing. Sean’s freckled cheek had become a minefield of black bits of shrapnel and pale scarring, far less devastating than third-degree burns, but severe enough to make startled people politely look away.
“I say I got it in service.” Sean’s weary smile was symmetrical, a better sight for Max. “I don’t add it was in service to teenage stupidity.”
“Which I heard about in quintuplet when I got home.”
“Our parents, of course.” Sean frowned. “Who else?”
“Father Flynn.”
“I imagine your first confession after getting home would be giving the good father an opportunity to mete out a stiff amount of penance.”
“My first mortal sin,” Max agreed. “A month of daily rosaries. What about your arm?”
Max nodded at Sean’s left arm, held cocked in the sweater sleeve is if in an invisible sling. A sling of scar tissue. The left hand and fingers were untouched, looking artificial in their normality. A simple gold band on the third finger attested to Deirdre’s loyalty that had become love.
Sean filled him in. “Besides the beauty mark, no hearing on the left side. Permanent limp. Bum arm. I’m used to it, and to people adjusting to it. Otherwise, I function quite well here. Deirdre’s a wonder. Her own burns were of a lesser degree; at least I managed that. She’s the ‘front’ for our operation. I don’t often see the first-time guests, or rather, more importantly, they don’t see me except at a distance in the traditional visored cap, mucking the grounds and gardens. Some repeaters I socialize with.”
Max drank down a third of the beer. “That’s why you never came home, Sean? Never told anyone you were alive? You didn’t want them to share your pain?”
“Mike, it was over a year before I was even able to think straight. The IRA took me for one of their own. They’d wanted ‘innocents’ cleared out of the targeted pub, particularly American tourists.”
“Particularly American donors,” Max said bitterly.
“You knew their cause was just, Mike. That’s why we came north to see for ourselves.”
“We came north because we were punks. Teenage towers of bravado. We wanted to drink beer and score with girls. We wanted adventure, a last reckless summer before college and marriage and kids. And, yes, I believed the cause was right, but not the means, and I especially believed that after a pub bombing killed my best friend. Why the hell didn’t you ever tell me? Or the damn family?”
“After taking my bearings from that long year of skin grafts and rehab, I thought it best they remember me as I was. I wasn’t going to college, Mike. I wasn’t getting married, or didn’t think I was. And children? ’Twas against the church, but I’d not bring children into this intolerant, bomb-ridden world. And it’s even worse now.”
“’Twas,” Max repeated. “A bit of a brogue sounds good on you, Sean.”
“Are you going home and telling them about me, Mike?”
“Home? Telling them? I’ve been away almost as long as you.”
“What? Why the hell?” Max hated seeing Sean’s wonder expressed on his two-sided face. If he spent enough time with him, he knew the scars would fade in his consciousness and he’d see Sean as he was now without pain. As Deirdre saw him.
“Why didn’t you stay at home, Mike?”
“Look at it. Two cherished sons beg for a solo trip to the Auld Sod as a high school graduation present,” Max said. “Proud parents grant our wish to revisit the family roots. They give us tons of addresses in Ireland, but after a few obedient rounds, we hop up to Northern Ireland to see the ‘Troubles’ first-person. Only one son comes back, with a pile of presumed ashes to bury.”
Sean bent his head. “I’ve always imagined a fine funeral mass.”
“No doubt about the mass. But.” Max waited until Sean raised his head to look him in the eyes. “One son is gone. The other son is hale and healthy and had avoided the bombing by the skin of his teeth. Why?
“Do I tell them I was busy committing mortal sin with a pretty Irish colleen, an act that made me a man now? No, I wasn’t a man. I was the stupid young fool who chased a skirt to leave my cousin, my brother, to die in an IRA pub bombing.
“The dead boy’s parents can’t stand the sight of me. My own parents are deeply puzzled about why we weren’t together, not that they wished me your fate. All my tap dancing and evasions didn’t explain why I was the ‘miracle’ survivor and you were not. Why we inseparable friends would separate. I couldn’t even seek absolution in confession for that part of it. Father Flynn was a meddling old fellow, all for good reason, as he would judge it.”
Sean turned a bit more toward Max. “I heard later you’d come back. I know what you did. I found out after my year in hell. You went after the IRA agents who bombed the pub, IDed them and got them arrested and in jail.”
“I thought they were executed.” Max was relieved to learn he wasn’t a murderer by proxy.
“No. Sentenced to life, and that was overturned with the Peace. You still got an IRA price put on your head for that. I figured you’d head for Wisconsin and safety and forget about me. Now you’re telling me, after all that, you exiled yourself from home too?”
“Yup.” Max leaned forward to clink bottles. “We went off the reservation together, and, apart, we stayed lost and loose and following our own stubborn courses. We are indeed two of a kind.”
“Christ!” Sean’s good hand slammed the beer bottle down on the butcher-block countertop. “Deirdre wanted to blame you, but I wouldn’t let her. I stayed dead, stayed away, so that you could have a normal life with the family. And now you say you didn’t take it? Why the hell not?”
“Tracking those pub bombers, I discovered a knack for undercover work. My youth and vengeful self-hate and fury were assets. I was recruited as a counterterrorism agent. My mentor was a magician who taught me the trade as a perfect cover for going anywhere in the world. I couldn’t stand seeing the questions on the faces of our families, Sean. I stayed away out of cowardice.”
“Me, too, maybe,” he said with a weary laugh. “Aren’t we a pair? Send in the clowns.”
“Except, it’s so good to see you, talk with you again. Clear this crap out of the cupboards.”
“You pity me.”
“Are you kidding? I’ve been a rolling stone. I had a girl and the sun was always shining, and then…my past caught up with me again. I had to go on the run. My mentor, the wisest man I’ve ever known, was shot dead during our last visit to Northern Ireland just weeks ago. And the lovely Kathleen has never forgotten or forgiven me for caring more about your so-called death than her life. After years of raising money for the IRA in the Americas even after the peace, she found out I performed in Las Vegas.”
“You performed in Las Vegas and the family never knew?”
“I used a deliberately
corny performance name, ‘The Mystifying Max’.”
“Max? Where’d that come from?”
Max pursed his lips in a smile and waited.
“Oh, no! Not those awful middle and confirmation names.”
“Yup. Michael Aloysius Xavier.”
“And I’m Sean Owen Turlough. MAX, huh? Way better than SOT.”
Max started laughing. They’d get going on an absurdity as teens and laugh themselves silly. Some of that back and forth was coming back. “Owen Turlough, really? It sounds like Turdlough. Forgot about that. And who can pronounce Aloysius?”
“Al-low-ish-is. It has ‘Ish’ built in. ‘The mystifying Alo-ee-see-us’ does not have a ring to it, and you sound like a drunk when you say it.”
“On the other hand, SOT is an apt set of initials for an Irishman,” Max said.
“Then let’s have another brew,” Sean said, still laughing.
“What about the women in the other room?”
“Let ’em drink tea.” Sean pried open two more bottles and handed him one.
“I mean, Sean, Kathleen is a loaded pistol. She led me to you only to hurt us both. She may have killed a bunch of people.”
“Deirdre knew how to handle her then, and she can do it even better now. We noticed a strange rental car lurking in the neighborhood a few weeks ago. Now I realize it was her. Is this her way of punishing you for pursuing the terrorists instead of the Black Velvet Band?”
“Yes. You know that song?”
“Every Irishman does.” Sean crinkled his eyes to regard Max. “‘Her eyes they shone like the diamonds…’ Damn, but they did.”
Max heard the next lines in his head. And her hair hung down to her shoulders, tied up with black velvet band.
Sean was still smiling at the memory. “You literally left your home and your family, like the song said, to follow…not the Black Velvet Band, but a course in counterterrorism. In a contrary way, you fulfilled our teenage quest, to contribute to the Irish cause.” He ticked bottles with Max. “Here’s to peace and the only terrorism-resolved country in the world. Our beautiful love, Ireland. And I fulfilled our quest to find Irish roots and love of the Old Country.”
Max nodded, too touched to speak. Sean’s spirit and laughter had made his injuries fade already.
Sean clicked bottles again. “And to those who perished in the good fight to end all fights. “You’ve had quite the James Bond run, Mike. I mean, Max. I’m sorry about your mentor’s death. Who killed him? Was it what’s left of the IRA?”
“I don’t know. Maybe ‘retired’ IRA members with long memories or the so-called ‘Real IRA’, which remains a paramilitary organization and attacks drug dealers and criminal gangs. ‘The Troubles’ of a thousand years of discrimination and oppression to the point of genocide doesn’t end with a clean edge. I should warn you. Kathleen O’Conner found you and told me you were alive. She’s been stalking me and anyone I can vaguely call mine for the last year or two. The IRA winning an age-old battle and the resulting member retirement comes hard for a psychopath.”
“She’s still lethal? Kathleen?” Sean started up from the stool.
“Nothing Deirdre can’t handle, as you said,” Max reassured him. “I made sure of that before I left them together.”
“So. You nailed her that day of the pub bomb, really?”
“Sean, that’s crude.”
“Yes, but it what was we both wanted and you got it.”
“It shouldn’t have happened. She was terminally damaged, from long before we met her.”
“Aren’t we all?” He looked hard at Max, both sides of his face exposed. “You pity her.”
Max lowered his head. Nodded. “Hers is one of the more horrendous stories from the hell that was the Magdalene laundries. Asylums, they called them, and those imprisoned there certainly courted madness. She’s expecting our reunion to savage both our wounds. Can you imagine that kind of…anger and pain?”
“I’ve spent my time in hell asking why me and therefore why not my best friend? It took years to grow up and realize that was unworthy of me, and you, and the God we profess to follow, including in the Way of the Cross. That was the whole point, wasn’t it? Humankind is capable both of uplifting and casting down and will suffer for either. Our job is to do better than expected. Let’s disappoint the poor girl. I’m grateful she found me, and that you cared enough to find me. I’m grateful you see the me beneath life’s scars. I’m grateful we’re alive and can quit kicking our own asses for long-ago misconceptions.”
Max got up to clink bottles together. “Nothing like some Irish beer to banish the crud of almost twenty years. To union and reunion.”
Sean’s grin was back, the one that made him look like Huck Finn. “To Deirdre and Ireland. I love it here, Max. I love maintaining the place and the land. The sunsets almost knock your eyes out. I wouldn’t change anything.”
They stood at the same time. Sean looked shocked. “My Gawd, I believe you’ve grown two or three inches since we were last together.”
“Probably. Perhaps it’s the rack Kathleen’s had me on. What are we going to do about her?”
“Go and see if Deirdre has had to hog-tie her.”
“Seriously?”
“We keep some sheep to shear. Sure, a bit of a thing like Kathleen is lighter than any ewe.”
“As kids, we always longed for Ireland long distance, Sean.” Max nodded. “And you’ve got it, in a time of more peace than ever before.”
“In fact, I had a role in some of those discussions, but I’m retired now, and content.”
“I envy you.”
“Retirement?”
“Contentment.” Max slapped his palms on his unlikely jeans, plain and strong, like the life Sean had made for himself.
They returned to the front lounge, where the big American “picture window” of the ’50s made an Old-World barn into a modern HGTV viewing palace.
The landscape as dimming, the distant blue hills almost luminescent. Flowing waves of shades of green were darkening and melding together. A peachy glow edged Ireland’s western land mass that served as the selvage edge of England and Europe. This was the bookend to Homer’s “rosy-fingered dawn” described in his Odyssey, Max thought, only this was sunset. He felt that his own odyssey was almost coming to an end.
He caught himself glancing at Kathleen, whom he caught in the same act. The scenic beauty was too overpowering not to share. This embodied the “terrible beauty” of Ireland and the Irish cause to be free of England, as the poet Yeats had called it, thinking of the woman he’d loved, Maud Gonne, a patriot so fierce she declined his love.
Deirdre stood, her tall, sturdy, rounded form reminding Max of a mother goddess. “Sean is cooking dinner. I’ll get him started and bring us all a glass of Madeira to toast the sunset. These are the most beautiful in the world.”
In the picture window the white wrought-iron table and chair set glowed with an unearthly light-lavender shade, as white objects did in the black lights of a strip club stage. Kathleen’s pale face shared the halo effect.
Max grinned at his own comparison. Strip club? Wild, Northern Ireland was the antithesis of pop culture sleaze. Everything…the air, the view, the light, the surrounding sea was so clean it could have been etched on the mind and emotions like a laser light, like the famous Waterford Irish crystal.
Deirdre had approached on silent feet over the rug and set delicate glasses on the large square coffee table in front of the modern sectional sofa.
“I’ll be wi’ you in a minum,” she said, backing away like the clouds shrouding the horizon.
Alone together.
“You spoke the truth,” Max told Kathleen. “You did find Sean. Alive.”
“I heard you laughing in there. You and Sean. What do you have to laugh about? Him disfigured and toiling in a bed and breakfast on the back of beyond, you leaving the woman you loved behind to marry another man.”
“Chill, Kathleen,” Max told her. “Yo
u’re back in the land of your birth, having accomplished your aims. I’m here, as you wanted, an exile again. I warn you. I won’t prosecute you, I won’t obsess over you. I won’t be what you need any more than I was almost twenty years ago.”
She kept silent.
“And I’m grateful to you,” he added, savoring a sip of the sweet wine.
“Grateful! As well you should be. I got you out of the doomed pub. I lured you away to the park. You! I picked you. Of all the men and boys I could have had with a snap of my fingers and twitch of my ass, and did, proving it over and over, I had you that day while your cousin was suffering and almost dying. I had you.”
“I had a girl and she had me,” he said, “and the sun wasn’t always shining. You were the thing I desired most in that moment, that I forsook my cousin-friend and my faith for, and well willing to do so. You were beautiful and brave and a fierce patriot, most of all.”
“So you might have loved me. For the moment, I suppose. That ex-priest who tried to analyze me said so. Your rival.”
“It’s not all rivals and religion and truth or dare, Kathleen. My emotional memory is kaput, but I think I must have loved you, as much as a randy teenager understands that concept. I’m sorry the kind of love you needed wasn’t what a boy could give you.”
“I had no faith,” she mumbled. “I had nothing but my anger and my nerve and my female assets. I was almost disappointed when you agreed to accompany me to the Sir Thomas and Lady Dixon Park so readily. I thought you were just like the rest. Until you touched me.”
Max shut his eyes. Did a teasing itch of familiarity dredge up a memory, or a supposition? Yeah, it had to have been a moment a boy dreams of, fears, covets. And…he had shared it with a young woman who’d been an incredibly abused child from the Magdalene Asylums. He’d shared it with a hopeful soul, seeing something in him that wasn’t harsh and dirty and corrupted. And he had not been worthy.
Mea culpa, mea culpa. My fault, my fault. I am not worthy.
Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit Page 20
