The Ninth Hour

by Alice McDermott

  Driving back to town, the friend of his father’s youth was full of regret—he clucked his tongue at every other sentence—for the lost years of their acquaintance, for the lost time of their boyhoods together. Without inquiring about their plans, he drove Patrick and his father to the house in Poughkeepsie for the luncheon. It was a pretty house, narrow and tall, brick-red shingles and white trim. A small front porch, a spreading oak, fading daffodils with their heads bent in the front yard, and a not-yet-blossomed row of lilacs along the side, under a bowed picture window hung with lace.

  The funeral guests were parking their cars all up and down the shaded street or walking along the sidewalk, as father and son and the clucking friend made their way up the flagstone path. As they reached the painted steps, the black funeral car pulled into the rutted drive and stopped. The driver stepped out to open the door for Aunt Rose, and then she, in turn, put out a hand for Red Whelan. Together the two slowly crossed the lawn. His father’s friend, greeting them, said, “Miss Tierney, Red,” and then stepped back to show them Patrick.

  The boy swept off the straw boater and placed it over his heart, waiting to be introduced to this frail man who had once been a soldier. But no one said a word. His father had moved away, was already up the steps, standing at the front door, with his own hat against his chest. He had opened the door for them and was standing, waiting, holding back the screen. The corpulent friend of his youth was chuckling, but so quietly, so deeply in his throat, that the sound seemed to come from something nattering in the trees.

  Aunt Rose smiled, her hand on Red Whelan’s arm. Only her teeth and her eyes shone behind the black netting of her veil. With no introductions made, Patrick said, “How do you do?”

  Red Whelan was concentrating on the slow movement of his crutch as he lifted it from the grass of the lawn to the blue slate of the walkway. This close to the man, Patrick saw that the injury that had plowed his flesh, taken his ear, turned his hair all white on one side, seemed only a part of the general redness nature had given his skin, the general havoc that time had played with his ravaged old face and neck and single, skeletal hand.

  “I’m Patrick Tierney,” our father said, addressing the man. He threw his head back. “You went to the war for my grandfather. You went instead of him.” And did not know why, since he’d never met his grandfather, his namesake, he was suddenly overwhelmed. He felt his face grow warm, felt in his throat the hard knot of rising tears. Felt, too, in a flash of imagination that set his teeth on edge, the pain—churned flesh and mud and howling blood—this man must have endured. The suffering.

  “I’m Patrick Tierney,” he said again, more boldly. “I’m the grandson.”

  Aunt Rose patted the shoulder of his fine suit. “You are,” she said, a kind of encouragement.

  But Red Whelan said nothing. The small eyes in his broad face looked up briefly, passed over him, and then fell again to the tip of his crutch. He moved the crutch to another part of the slate, hopped a bit to follow it, his one shoe broad and worn, his breath laboring. Aunt Rose gripped his arm. Something of the mothball odor of his own clothes as Red Whelan brushed past him.

  The two climbed the steps, Aunt Rose beside the old man, her arm across his back. Red Whelan paid no attention to the doorman either, but, head down, back bent, made his way into the black interior of the house, his medal—for it was indeed a medal on a grimy ribbon, although there was no telling (our father told us) if it was his—swaying against the worn fabric of his soldier’s coat.

  Neither of them, father or son—the handsome fruit of Red Whelan’s sacrifice—of any interest at all to the old man, no worthy impediment at all to his determination to go inside and have his lunch.

  At the door, Aunt Rose nodded to his father as he held back the screen and then went in with her charge. The corpulent friend went in as well. Patrick, too, climbed the stairs, thinking to follow them, but his father took a pinch of his sleeve and told him to wait. Together, father and son stood at the opened door until all the funeral guests had gone in, Michael greeting each, “Good day,” “Fine weather.” Some recognized him and offered condolences. Others leaned into their companions even as they crossed the threshold to ask who he was. When the last had gone in, and no more cars moved slowly down the street, Michael Tierney closed the screen door gently and returned his fine bowler to his head, giving its rim, as he liked to do, that extra, two-fingered skim.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  They had only made it to the bottom of the steps when a female voice, thickly Irish, called after them. “You’re not coming in?”

  Father and son turned to see a dark-haired maid behind the screen, a bundle of women’s coats in her arms. She wore a white cap with a black ribbon, and although the screen was a kind of veil, she was clearly a beauty, big-eyed, sweet-faced.

  “We’re not,” Michael Tierney said.

  Halfway down the slate path, father and son turned again to see her. She was still behind the screen. The father tucked his hand up beneath his son’s arm, pulling him away. “Let’s not have you marrying any Irish housemaids,” he said wryly. “Let’s not have history repeating itself.”

  The two had lunch together, looking so sharp, in the elegant restaurant of a local hotel. His father carried a flask from which he poured himself two whiskies before their steaks arrived, and then two more to have with his coffee.

  On the train ride home his father said—under the influence, no doubt—“I wonder if it irked my father to see Red Whelan outlive him. I wonder if he thought, as he lay dying, that perhaps for three hundred dollars more Red Whelan would take his place again.”

  He told his son how Red Whelan had come back from the war, a knock at the door one evening while the family was at dinner. His own father but a young man then. How Red Whelan, a young man, too, was brought upstairs to the attic room he would have for the rest of his life. Aunt Rose, just a child, wordlessly taking on the responsibility that she bore even now, and would bear into the future, or at least until that day—not far away, it would seem—when Red Whelan’s life finally came to a close. “Lord knows what she’ll do with herself then,” he said. “She’ll be both an old maid and a kind of widow. No family but myself.” And then added, “And you children.”

  As the train came into the city, Mr. Tierney said the last time he saw his father, the man had grabbed him up under the arm as they stood on the very same threshold he had not crossed this afternoon. Michael Tierney was leaving home for the last time. Elizabeth Breen, his Lizzie, was meeting him at the train. They would be married the next morning in Brooklyn, where her family lived. “Is this what Red Whelan threw away an arm and a leg for?” his father asked him. (Our father, telling us the story, added, “Thus coining a phrase.”) “So the fruit of his sacrifice can drag us back to the slums?”

  The man whispering his furious question, as if Red Whelan, two floors above and without half his hearing, might catch the words.

  “You can be sure I didn’t whisper my reply,” Michael Tierney said as the train returned to the city. “I spoke it clearly, right into his face. I said, ‘One life’s already been given to save your skin. I won’t give you mine as well.’ Those were the last words we ever exchanged.”

  He turned to his son, his teeth bared beneath the polished mustache and his eyes briefly pained. But the pain quickly slipped away. He smiled. “It’s all the past,” he said, and reached out again to touch the boy’s knee. He looked him over fondly, brushed the lapel of the new suit. “Still,” he added—the whiskey had made him flushed—“I might have forgiven him. The old bastard.”

  Patrick said, “He might have forgiven you.”

  * * *

  ONE MORE RECOLLECTION of that day:

  Late that night, after he’d been some hours asleep, Patrick woke in the darkness. His brother Tom slept soundly in the next bed. No stirring in the room beside them where his four sisters sometimes laughed or fought or tapped the wall in the middle of the night. Street noise,
sure, but faint at this hour, and nothing to tell him why he woke so fully and so abruptly, wide-eyed in the darkness. In the darkness, he recalled the wooden coffin, gleaming with sunlight, as it went down into the fresh-cut earth. He thought of Red Whelan’s cold failure to acknowledge him, the shining, spiffy, living fruit of the old man’s sacrifice. He recalled his mother laughing as she said, If he’s going to haunt anyone, it will be Patrick.

  He looked to the vague, pale blue—ghostly, yes—light at the one window. Was there a face in the glass? Was that a cat yowling in the back of the house, or a banshee? A lost soul? He imagined his own soul—a pale, startled version of himself—clutched in his bitter grandfather’s bony hands like a thin blue rag. He imagined being dragged through the empty streets outside, lamplight and darkness, black wet pavement, fences and fire escapes and tumbled yards—slums, his grandfather had called them—up, up, up, into utter darkness.

  Tom waking tomorrow to find only his brother’s body in the bed, a hollow shell, empty-eyed, thin-skinned. Only dust. Is this what Red Whelan lost an arm and a leg for?

  He felt the prickly heat of fear on his neck, in his spine, at the soles of his feet. He wished with everything in him that his father had never said whatever it was he’d said at their final parting, about one life for another. One life to save your skin.

  He had worked himself, under his blankets, into a froth of dread when he heard his father’s voice and his mother’s in the dining room, and knew he was hearing again what had woken him so abruptly. His father was saying, “Too late, too late,” and his mother replying, soothingly, “Nothing to be done, Michael. Nothing to be done.” Patrick knew without seeing that his father had his hand around a glass. He heard—impossible, of course—the glass go to his father’s lips, the soft swallow. And then his father’s voice rose abruptly and Patrick recognized the phrase that, just moments ago, had pulled him out of a deep sleep. “I loved the man,” his father said, moaning it. “I loved him.”

  There was another silence. His father was crying.

  It all would have been too terrible, his own fear, his father’s sorrow, the cats yowling in some distant yard, the face of the old man at his window, if his mother’s voice hadn’t, at last, broken the spell.

  “You did,” she said. He recognized her tone: the smooth voice richly amused: the end of the argument. “But love’s a tonic, Michael, not a cure. He was a bastard still.”

  * * *

  TWO WEEKS LATER a letter came from Aunt Rose. Beautifully composed—the lines written straight in black India ink and the handwriting, Spencerian script, so beautiful, their father called the girls to admire it before he read out what the letter had to say. Aunt Rose was very sorry that he had not come into the house after his father’s funeral. She had not anticipated the depth of his anger. Righteous anger, she said, to be sure. My brother was an unhappy man, she said. Weighed down all his life by the burden of gratitude.

  Gratitude, their father pointed out, glancing at their mother. “A monkey on his back.”

  Now, the letter said, Red Whelan was gone. She was composing this in his attic room, which was full of his absence. She had lived out her life at his side, she said, and she had done her duty gladly. She had no complaints to make. She had been his companion through the years and he hers. Now she was alone. One generation passes away, she wrote. And then she gave their father instructions to contact a lawyer on Water Street. In reparation for their estrangement, she was giving him everything his father had left her. She would move out of the house, take an apartment in town. She would make do on what she and Red Whelan had saved together over these many years. She asked only that he write to her now and then. She said she would do the same. She said she would pray for him and his family every morning and every night for the rest of her days.

  Liz Tierney said, “She’s looking for someone to take care of her when she grows feeble.”

  Wasn’t she the soothsayer? our father said.

  Four months later, the family moved again. This time to a three-story house on Second Street. Their own home, purchased with the inheritance. It was a row house, nothing pretty, but five bedrooms—five. One for the two boys, one for the twins, one for the two younger girls. A wide bedroom for the parents, and, after all that spreading out, an empty bedroom left over, suitable for a boarder or a guest.

  Suitable for Sally when she came to the door, late in the afternoon of the day she returned from Chicago. Beside her was the same rattan suitcase she had carried on the train, containing still the four chemises, six pairs of stockings, three muslin nightgowns without embroidery or decoration—the immaculate clothes that were to bring her to her new life.

  Behind her stood Sister Lucy, who could insist.

  True

  WITH OLD AUNT ROSE ensconced in our attic, Sister Jeanne raised her eyes to the ceiling. Here’s a story, she told us.

  This happened in France, in the last century. Jeanne Jugan was a kind woman who worked in the homes of the wealthy. One day, she came across a blind widow who had been put out on the street by her family. Put out on the street to die. Jeanne Jugan took the old woman to her own home, bathed her and fed her. She tucked the old lady into her bed and moved a pallet to the attic just above her head, where Jeanne Jugan slept within earshot of the poor soul.

  Not long after that, Jeanne Jugan came upon another old woman who had been abandoned on the street and she took that woman in, too. And then another. And another.

  Life was very hard for the old in those days. For poor widows especially. Who needed them? The small and the weak and the old. They got in the way of rushing, robust life, see? They were a pain in the neck. Always frail and sick. So people asked themselves, Who needs them?

  Word got out, and people around the town began to bring their old folks to Jeanne Jugan. But there are always as many good people as there are bad. Better believe it. Soon other women who were as kind as Jeanne heard about the work she was doing and asked if they could help her. Some of these good women moved into Jeanne’s attic, too, so they would be available any time of the day or night. The community expanded. The number of old folks who were cared for grew and grew.

  Jeanne Jugan went to the priest. She asked if the women could form a religious community of their own, to help guide their lives as they did this good and difficult work. They held a meeting in Jeanne’s attic and there they drew up their plan to become the Little Sisters of the Poor.

  Every day, Jeanne put her basket over her arm and went out to collect food and money for her people. She would never take no for an answer, see? One rich man got so angry at her persistence—Sister Jeanne waved a fist in the air, imitating him—he punched her right in the face. Knocked her down.

  When she got up again, she said, “Yes, but my ladies are still hungry.” Then he gave her all the money he had.

  Whenever people said to Jeanne Jugan, “Oh good Lord, Sister, I gave you money yesterday,” she said, “But my ladies are hungry again today.”

  Jeanne Jugan became famous. The President of France gave her a gold medal for her good work, and what do you think she did? She melted it down and used it to buy a bigger house for her ladies.

  Sister Jeanne said, I heard this story from my spiritual advisor when I was a young nun: One day, Charles Dickens came to see Jeanne Jugan. Maybe he had read about her in the papers, I don’t know. But what do you think she said to the guy?

  We couldn’t answer.

  She said he should put his money where his mouth is. So he gave her a big donation.

  And then he wrote somewhere or other that she was the holiest person he had ever met. Isn’t that something?

  We said it was something.

  But all the while good Jeanne Jugan was busy doing her work, the priest who had advised her was off scheming. He went to Rome and told them he was the one who started the order. He said he was the one who found the first blind widow on the street and he was the one who told Jeanne Jugan to take care of her. He was the one who invi
ted the other women to help out. And the priests in Rome fell for it. They made him the head of the order. And they put up a plaque on Jeanne Jugan’s house that said HERE FATHER SO-AND-SO FOUNDED THE LITTLE SISTERS OF THE POOR.

  And that wasn’t the worst of it, Sister Jeanne said.

  There was a very young nun in the order, and this priest liked her better than Jeanne Jugan. He put her in charge and told Jeanne she could no longer go around with her basket. She could just stay inside, do some housekeeping, train some novices. Jeanne said to the priest, “You have taken my work from me.” And then she said, “But I gladly give it to you.” And that’s how she lived the rest of her life. Staying inside.

  As the years went by, people forgot that Jeanne was the founder of the order.

  But, listen, Sister Jeanne said, life is like the blink of an eye.

  The young nun the lying priest had put in charge became an old woman herself, and as death approached, she knew she had to set the record straight. An investigation was made, and sure enough, the plaque on Jeanne’s house was changed to say HERE JEANNE JUGAN FOUNDED THE LITTLE SISTERS OF THE POOR.

  Sister Jeanne sat back in her chair, the light of the fading afternoon just behind her. We sat back, too, satisfied, as children will be, at any tale that is resolved with the restoration of order. Children who know, without instruction or study, what is fair.

  But then we saw that old Sister Jeanne was laughing inside her bonnet. It’s all silliness, she said. Don’t you see?

  Jeanne Jugan was already in heaven with Our Lord.

  What in the world would she care about a plaque on an old building in the country of France? Whatever glory was taken from her here on earth had already been restored a hundred times, a million times, and more.