“Jack Donlan,” said the man, poised, urbane, wavy black hair with just a touch of white—an ad for a men’s magazine of a decade and a half ago. “My wife, Maria.”
“Archbishop Ryan sent us,” said the tall, slim woman in a mink coat. “He said you didn’t want nobody that nobody sent.”
The light of an imp flashed quickly across her face as she repeated the old Chicago political cliché.
“Dermot Coyne,” I said shaking hands. “Come in, as my good wife would say, before you catch your death of cold.”
It was my good wife they wanted to see, the legendary singer and puzzle solver, and not her loyal and brave spear-carrier.
Earlier as I had entered our master bedroom and discovered herself in red and green lace lingerie in honor of the coming holidays, I gulped as I always do when I see her, especially if she is partially dressed.
“Well, didn’t I tell you that they would call us?”
I had been running the dogs and my two older children at the dog park. Even the elderly Fiona had better wind than I did. They had bounded up the stairs to the second-floor entrance and down to the playroom on the ground floor where my niece and our nanny, Ellie, would preside over them and their two smaller siblings.
“Who would call us?” I demanded putting my hand on her bare shoulder.
“Och, Dermot Michael Coyne, give over,” she replied, leaning against me. “We have business to do. The lollygagging can come later.”
“Promise?”
“If I don’t, it doesn’t matter, does it?” She returned to arranging her long and formidable black hair in a bun on the top of her head. She was putting on her business mode. “And meself telling you that them poor folks would call us and I not needing any more of me hormones chasing around in me bloodstream.”
“What poor folks?”
She smelled of soap and perfume and promise. I didn’t remove my hand from her shoulder, but I refrained from attempting further progress. My wife is easy to seduce, but I had grown skilled through our years together at reading the proper times and places.
“Them poor folks that German shitehawk over at St. Freddy’s wouldn’t let marry and the poor woman so lovely in her blue gown and her gorgeous boobs.”
My wife had an Irish woman’s fury at injustice, especially when a woman was a victim.
“Jack and Maria Donlan . . . Blackie must have thought it was a case for a fey Irish woman.”
“Doesn’t your man say I’m the second-best detective in the whole city of Chicago?”
“As I heard him, he said best.”
I kissed the back of her neck and slipped away. Her black pants suit was on the hanger. Over a white blouse with silver jewelry, she’d be ready for heavy lifting, an Irish professional woman. Indeed, a veritable Celtic Tiger. The Donlans would find a major ally against their enemies. And poor Dermot would have to find his spear and sally forth to battle.
You knew what you were getting into.
And not a moment’s hesitation either.
“And yourself leaving without hooking me bra?”
“I thought you’d never ask.”
Me wife and herself looking like an Irish goddess and blue eyes which could skin the flesh off your face if she were angry at you and a voice that hinted at distant bells ringing across the bogs was in high dudgeon these days—indeed stratospheric. The new president of the TV network which had presented her Christmas specials every year—hereinafter known as “that frigging gobshite”—had canceled this year’s production and terminated her contract. “Many people,” the said gobshite had observed, “think it is not correct to have so much religious music at Christmastime. Such songs ruin the holiday season for those people who have no religious belief and resent having such music imposed on them. Moreover, popular reaction to the series has been slipping over recent years.”
This was frigging bullshite, my woman insisted. The ratings were higher than ever last year, indeed higher than all other Christmas specials. He also canceled the concert without consulting Nuala’s agent or without negotiating payment for a cancellation fee. Then when another network tried to pick up the performance, he said that as he read the contract, Nuala Anne couldn’t perform for anyone else but he didn’t have to pay her. She didn’t give a friggin’ damn about the pay, but she had prepared twelve numbers from six different religions so that Lullaby and Good Night would be politically correct.
So the matter went to court. In Chicago, much to the dismay of the media lawyers from Los Angeles.
When my Nuala is in dudgeon, she becomes an Irish Tiger, though we in the family are not targets but audience. We try not to laugh. The Donlans had come at a good time. Her aroused fury would be aimed at their enemies too.
In the parlor I took our guests’ coats and hung them in a closet, barely covering my gasp at the sight of Maria’s lovely body pressed against a maroon knit dress. Without her mink coat she looked like a timeless Sophia Loren. I must not gape too much when my wife joined us. Her husband was wearing a three-piece black suit of Italian make, no casual for him. Both of them looked like models in a high-class magazine picture of Milanese fashions. Surely they exercised and dieted and went to spas, but their striking beauty was almost certainly genetic luck. I knew enough about human nature that those not so fortunate would envy and resent them, especially Maria. No woman over fifty had any right at all to look that timeless.
My wife, given to running down the stairs when she was in a hurry, descended with regal grace. I introduced her to both of them. She and Maria sized each other up quickly and bonded immediately as women sometimes do.
“Would you ever like a wee drop of something to banish the cold or maybe a small drop of Barolo?”
“There’s enough Northern Italian in me,” Maria said with another flash of her impish grin, “for that to have some appeal, but I’ll settle for a drop of tea . . . black.” Jack nodded with a smile, not nearly so exuberant as his wife’s smile.
Her dark skin and flashing brown eyes suggested the Levant, wherever the hell that is, probably some place just outside of Palermo.
Stop undressing her before Nuala notices.
“My husband has cured me of the terrible Irish habit of polluting tea with milk! I’ll put the kettle on and I’ll be right back.” She left with the same dignity with which she had descended the stairs, though, knowing her as I did, I was sure she wanted to bound. Left to her own desires, my Nuala Anne bounds rather than walks.
“We’ve seen her on television of course,” Jack Donlan said softly, his normal tone of voice. “But she’s even lovelier in person.”
“And herself with four kids and a career and a house to manage and a laggard husband to be given instructions!”
“Fey too?” Maria Donlan said, asking a question.
“When she comes back, she’ll have slices of Irish bread and jam which she made earlier because she knew you’d ask for tea. She predicts the gender of children even before they are conceived. You get used to such things after a while. Archbishop Ryan calls it a neo-Neanderthal vestige.”
A small laugh around the room in honor of Blackie.
“He is a most unusual man.”
“A very holy man.”
“And a very smart man, according to my brother the priest.”
The couple were patently, as Blackie would say, in love. They could not take their eyes off each other. Sitting on our antique couch their hands frequently touched. Somehow this infatuation did not seem inappropriate, even if they were over fifty. Age had nothing to do with it, nor their physical perfection. A man and a woman had every right to fall in love again or for the first time. As a sixty-five-year-old colleague on the Exchange said, “I get on the elevator with her, my legs turn to water, and I forget she’s my wife.”
Don’t pretend you don’t know the experience, boyo.
Nuala reappeared with the tea tray, distributed the cups, saucers, and the plates with the soda bread and jam, and placed the cozy on the Galwa
y teapot, all these rituals performed with maximum West of Ireland ceremony.
“We’ll let it steep for just a minute longer. We Irish know just how long it takes tea to steep.”
She poured it and we all sampled it.
“The soda bread is excellent.”
“Thank you, sir, and didn’t I make it meself.”
“Her mother always says,” I added, “that the best Irish bread is made in the house where it’s served.”
Then, just as we were about to turn the conversation to the reason for their visit, a strange apparition took place. Two large, snow-white animals, bronze age remnants, pushed their way out of the door leading to the ground floor, and without looking at Nuala who had forbidden such intrusions into the parlor, walked to Maria Donlan’s feet, sat on their haunches, and raised their right paws.
“Maria Donlan,” my wife said, “may I present our two resident doggies, Fiona and Maeve. They are absolutely not supposed to be here, but I presume they know what they’re doing.”
She lifted an eyebrow in my direction, as though I were somehow responsible for their violation.
The dogs shook hands with their new friend. She hugged them and told them they were wonderful, which of course they knew but were glad to hear again. There upon they lay down, definitively in charge, both with their huge muzzles at her feet.
“You’ll think I’m crazy, Jack, but I’ve always wanted one of these creatures.”
“No reason why you shouldn’t,” he said quietly.
“This is all very serious,” my good wife said grimly. “Very serious indeed.”
“How so?” Jack Donlan asked.
“Fiona, our matriarch here, was a police dog in her youth. She sometimes has an instinct that someone is in danger.”
“And you have Reliable Security looking after you? I noticed that one of their operatives was driving your limo.”
“Sweet child,” Maria said softly.
“And a crack shot,” I added.
“We’ve had some threats. . . .” Jack said, his voice trailing off. “Very serious threats. Filled with hatred . . .”
“I agree with Archbishop Blackie,” Nuala said. “There is serious evil at work here.”
Then, as if the tension were not already turning creepy, Fiona stirred herself, rose from the floor, and began to howl. Maeve, not to be outdone by her mother, joined in the cry. The hounds of hell were loose.
Dermot
I GLANCED out the window. An old Chevy had pulled up in front of our house. Three men in black overcoats and grey fedoras emerged, each of them holding a big club of salami. It looked like a scene from the Capone era, called up from the nineteen twenties by an evil wizard. They strode toward our stairs, undaunted by the howling hounds. But then, someone threw open the door of our house and the great white monsters, howling with rage, emerged and rushed down the stairs followed by a banshee—a woman spirit, also howling and waving a club of her own.
That’s my wife. She shouldn’t be doing that.
A smaller woman spirit followed, aiming a small camera at the invaders.
That’s my daughter. She shouldn’t be doing that either.
I punched in Mike Casey’s number on my cell phone.
“Casey . . .”
“Mike, tell Gaby to drive the car back around our corner. We have visitors from the nineteen twenties. Tell Culhane to get his people over here too.”
I realized that I should play some kind of subsidiary role. I grabbed the snow shovel on the porch and dashed down the two flights of stairs, almost slipping near the top. My personal seraph intervened.
Just as I regained my balance, the invaders scurried back into their car. Their movements were frantic and clumsy. Two of the three fedoras were lost in the rush as well as all the salami clubs. The bad guys made it in the nick of time. They slammed their doors shut just as the white monsters arrived. The woman spirit pounded on the windows of their car with her camogie stick, a weapon used in the woman’s version of hurling. Hadn’t my wife been all-Ireland when she was in high school?
The weapon smashed the back window of the car just as it began to move. Nuala got a jab at one of the thugs. The hounds circled the car yowling and yipping, snarling and screaming. Nuala called them off, lest the terrified invaders might hit one of them. Obediently they sat next to her and continued to howl.
Some one of these days our neighbors would complain.
I should remonstrate with my wife about taking chances. She would argue that with her doggies and her camogie stick there were no chances involved.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded of her elder daughter.
“Taking pictures of them and their car. I got the license number,” our eight-year-old said proudly.
Gaby’s Lexus sped around the corner, police siren crying out in dismay.
“The rest of the flying squad is ready for action,” I said, pointing up the stairs. The three younger children, commanded by Ellie, stood on the porch, each of them holding some kind of weapon or would-be weapon.
“Nelliecoyne,” Nuala said, suddenly sounding very weary, “go upstairs and help Ellie get your brothers and sister back downstairs.”
“Yes, Ma!”
“Dermot love, I know what you’re thinking. I’m a terrible eejit altogether. . . . Would you ever calm down our guests and tell them that I’m not always that crazy.”
“Only when someone attacks your house.”
The dogs sniffed at the salami clubs and turned up their noses in disdain. Not their kind of food.
Several squads from the Sixth District arrived on the scene. Their cars are doubtless programmed to come to our block automatically.
Captain Cindasue L. McLeod of the United States Coast Guard materialized from down the street in a USCG sweat suit, her forty-five service revolver, bigger almost than she is, at the ready.
“What in tarnation you uns a doin’ down hyar on a quiet Sunday afernoon?”
“Jest, a stirrin’ up the shite, Cap’n ma’am.”
Our two guests, eyes wide, were watching us as we climbed the steps.
“It’s part of our campaign to force the people of the neighborhood to put us under peace bond.”
“Anyone want a small splash of the creature? . . . Ellie, would you wet the kettle again?”
“They were going to attack us with those sausages?” Jack Donlan asked.
“Old Capone gambit . . . clumsy . . .”
I poured splasheens for the guests and filled the jar tumbler for my wife and me.
“I’ll never eat salami again,” his wife murmured. “I see why the archbishop sent us to see you. You have a formidable team.”
“Who were those men?” Jack said as he accepted the jar I gave him (a Waterford tumbler, but still a “jar” when the creature is poured into it).
“Lowlife thugs for hire. Very amateurish. Those who are out to make trouble for you are clumsy and stupid. But not undangerous.”
My virtuous wife was calm and serene when she came from her conversations with the cops.
“Sorry for the interruption. . . . Please pay attention to the hounds. They are very proud of themselves. . . . Dermot, you have treats?”
I gave her the treats and she rewarded the dogs who were then assigned to the backyard to run off some of their energy. Of course, they expected embraces and praise from our guests.
“You don’t have to persuade us, Jack and Maria, that you have enemies out there. Maybe you could tell us something about yourselves and your lives.”
John Patrick
COMING HOME from my wife’s burial at All Saints Cemetery, I realized that an oppressive burden had been lifted. I was choked with painful grief. I had loved her. I had failed her. I would miss her always. Yet I was finally free of her mean miserable family. I could move out of their neighborhood, buy a co-op somewhere along the Gold Coast, one with a swimming pool, and relax into a solitary, almost monastic life. It would be a struggle to keep Faith’s g
rieving family at bay, but I hated them so much that it would be easy. My eldest daughter, Evie, was already married, my second daughter, Irene, was engaged, and my youngest daughter, Mary Fran, was in first year at Loyola Medical School and living out in Forest Park, near the campus. I had protected them as best I could from the family. They would be on their own now. I was getting out.
My in-laws are mean, miserable, overweight drunks. Faith was the only one who was an alcoholic, but her unmarried sisters—Hope and Charity—her mother, Eulalia (aka Lallie), and her father, Guy, and her grandmother Evangeline were all drunks, woozy from drink at the end of the day.
I found myself furious at them once again. Their behavior at the wake and the funeral was one long boozy, hysterical bash in which the principal theme was that I had killed Faith. As expressed by the enormous Evangeline, if I had not persuaded the “poor kid” that she was an alcoholic, she would not have drunk so much and would not have piled up her Lincoln Town Car on Magnolia Street returning from her mother’s birthday party while I was away in Washington.
“You never gave a damn about her,” Lallie, her mother, screamed at me as she fell on her daughter’s body at the funeral home.
Her father, in addition to being an enormous fall-down drunk, was a pious fraud. A huge man, he was a crooked lawyer who interfaced between the more corrupt elements of real estate trade and the local governments. The Feds had questioned him often and the media had labeled him “Mister Fixer.” But none of the many United States Attorneys for the Northern District of Illinois had found enough to indict him, much less to persuade him to testify—or wear a wire—against some of his “business associates.” Despite his reputation for adroit maneuvering on LaSalle Street, he was without influence in his own family. Like me he simply avoided conflict with his daffy, and half-tuned, women. He had an office somewhere near the county building, but did his business in a string of bars and restaurants in the heart of the Loop, none of them places where he and I might encounter one another and be embarrassed by our inability to find appropriate small talk. For my part I usually hung out at the Chicago Club or the University Club, just off Michigan Avenue. Though he was well known in the parish as a shady operator, as well as a perennial officer in the Holy Name Society, a trusted head usher, and chairman of the parish finance committee. When he lumbered down the aisle with the collection basket, I thought to myself that I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.
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