Irish Coffee

by Ralph McInerny

  When she turned onto Angela Boulevard toward home, she wondered if it had been wise to agree with Fred that they must wait to announce their engagement until he had straightened out things with Naomi McTear. Mary was not a great sports fan, as this is reckoned at Notre Dame, but she had seen and not especially liked Naomi when she appeared breathless on the screen from the sidelines of a game. Her dislike of the woman had grown and, after the events of recent days, had almost settled into unchristian hatred.

  “Naomi McTear!” she had said when Fred first told her of his involvement with the television reporter.

  “I find it hard to believe myself.”

  “Was your engagement announced?”

  “It’s hard to explain.”

  “Is it?”

  “Mary, I feel trapped. It sounds ridiculous, but things just happened and before I knew it she was talking of getting married.”

  “She was?”

  “I said it sounds ridiculous.”

  “Well, it certainly does. Did you formally propose to her?”

  He fell into an embarrassed silence and Mary found that she did not want to press him on the matter. She did not want to find out what form his relationship with Naomi had taken. Fred was always so respectful of her, almost too much so, but she sensed a nobility in it.

  “You gave her your mother’s ring.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Fred, I saw it. Everyone did. She made sure of that.”

  “That is her mother’s ring.”

  “Hers! How could you give her her own mother’s ring?”

  “I didn’t. Oh my God, this is hard to explain.

  Now Mary wanted to know. “Tell me,” she said gently.

  It had not been enjoyable to hear but it was obviously more agonizing for Fred to tell. At first, it was simply in the line of duty. It was his job to supply reporters with the information they needed to be as knowledgeable as possible about the players, the coaches, various statistics, past and present. Naomi was a reporter, often the only female reporter, and she demanded and got special attention. Fred told her of the dinner at the Carriage House and its aftermath, more by suggestion than directly, but Mary got the picture.

  “She lured you to her room.”

  “I was a free agent.”

  “You said you feel trapped and I can understand that. You are. You were. Fred, break it off. She has no legitimate hold on you. I assume you do want to break it off.”

  “Oh, Mary.”

  She let him take her in his arms, unconsciously recognizing the vulnerability of the contrite male. Men are such fools in matters of love, meaning sex. But then so are women. Anthony unmanned himself for Cleopatra, but she ended with an adder on her bosom. Literature is largely the record of the follies of men and women, ruled by their passions, heedless of consequences, and later wracked by remorse. Naomi’s edge had been the disarming brazenness with which she had pursued her quarry. Of course Fred had been helpless before such an onslaught. Any man would have been. Well, most men.

  “Can you forgive me?”

  “First you must forgive yourself. I hope you’ve been to confession about this.”

  She felt him grow uneasy. Confessions were heard daily on campus, in Sacred Heart, elsewhere. It was Mary’s practice once a month to slip over to the basilica at 11:15 when confessions were heard before the 11:30 Mass. One of the perks of working at Notre Dame was that absence for devotion was never questioned. An annoying thing about those midday confessions were the troops of tourists being led around by officious guides, speaking in loud tones. Bald or silver-haired or both, their blazers a kind of uniform, these guides were retired laymen who found in the mild authority of leading a tour a sufficient last hurrah. The confessionals were an object of interest. Tourists would lag behind and sometimes open a confessional door and peek in, expecting who knew what Maria Monk disporting. Once, while confessing, Mary had heard the door open and then quickly close. Dear God. It was bad enough to whisper her sins through the grille to the priest but the thought of being an object on display for tourists distracted her.

  “I didn’t hear that, Father.”

  The priest had been in full flight when she said this. He was young, zealous, and had obviously prepared a set piece for penitents that day. Her interruption threw him off. There was a moment of silence.

  “I will give you absolution now.”

  “And my penance?”

  Another silence. “Are you staying for Mass?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Offer it up for the poor souls in purgatory.”

  And he went into the long form of the formula of absolution, speaking rapidly. Mary had strained to follow him; she wanted to hear every word of it.

  After his revelation about Naomi, Mary advised Fred to avail himself of that midday opportunity to get his slate clean. He stepped back and looked at her. Then drew her to him again and kissed her passionately.

  “God bless you, Mary.”

  Walking home with snow falling like a benediction on the world she prayed for the repose of Fred’s soul. The thought of dedicating her life to her lost love had occurred to her when she decided to attend the wake and funeral all in black. His death had made her a widow of sorts. The future with him she had dreamt of would never be, but in some ways they were closer now, as if she could communicate with him in the privacy of her mind. The thought of sacrificing herself to his memory had a powerful attraction. It would be an acceptable equivalent of Dido throwing herself on the burning pyre so the escaping Aeneas could see how powerfully her love for him had affected her. Not a very close analogy, but Mary understood what she meant.

  When she got home, she came in the kitchen door, stamped snow from her feet, hung up her coat and went into the living room to find Anthony Boule sitting cozily with her mother before the fire.

  4

  THE FIRST THING THAT ANTHONY had thought when Scott Frye told him of Fred Neville and Naomi McTear’s liaison was, “Poor Mary.” When she would come to the Joyce Center to see Fred at the end of a day, Anthony was all but invisible to her. She had eyes for Fred alone. When he was noticed, doubtless as a result of some joking remark of Fred’s, Mary had glanced at Anthony but little more. But if he was invisible to her, she was an object of enormous interest to him, all the more so after Anthony heard of Fred’s shenanigans with Naomi. Odd that he never envied Fred the attention the flashy television celebrity lavished on him. Naomi at least noticed him, but then she was aware of every male presence. It was that which had prevented Anthony from suspecting anything between her and Fred; her manner toward him was one of impersonal affection, generic, or so Anthony had thought. Who would have suspected Fred Neville of being a Romeo?

  Fred’s role in Anthony’s fantasies was as the man who had usurped the role meant for him. Anthony was not a Domer—his degree was from Boston College—but like most Catholics, he gave Notre Dame his primary allegiance. He had first come to campus as student manager of a BC team, had marveled at the offices of the sports information director, the efficiency with which things were done, the easy affluence of the place. From that first visit he felt he had found his destiny.

  He took every occasion to establish a bond with the office, he haunted the place on BC visits, and the summer before his senior year he was taken on as a student intern. The following spring, the position Fred Neville eventually obtained had been announced and Anthony immediately threw his hat into the ring. At his own expense he had made several trips to South Bend. He was certain his claim on the position was strong. That he had not been wholly deluded became clear after the job went to Fred. Anthony received a call saying a lesser job had fallen open and was he interested. He accepted even before he got the job description.

  It turned out that his status was little more than that he’d had as student intern, the main difference being that it was year-round and paid more than Anthony would having imagined. After he graduated, he moved to South Bend and began the long agony of
living in the shadow of Fred Neville. Thelma alone had noticed how difficult this was for him, and hers was not a sympathy he craved.

  “I was sure you’d get the job,” she said over beer in the back bar of the university club a week after Anthony’s arrival.

  “I’m thankful for what I have.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “It may be the bottom rung but at least I’m on the ladder.”

  She thought about that. “A healthy attitude,” she decided.

  He was not at all that philosophical about it, but he did not want her pity.

  In humble moments, he could admit Fred was superior to him. He had journalistic experience between graduation and being taken on at the sports information department, he was a graduate of Notre Dame, he was an encyclopedia. When he referred to Fred as Google only Thelma understood. She laughed a toothy laugh.

  “That’s your great advantage. You have a sense of humor.”

  Did he? He found it hard to laugh when Mary was in Fred’s office. Thelma seemed to be his consolation prize, but he found little consolation. Still, it was nice to have a sympathetic ear and someone who voiced the sentiments he was too proud to state himself. It came down to the fact that he was jealous of Fred and from this it followed, as night the day, that he must yearn for Mary Shuster’s attention.

  “If she only knew,” Thelma said, after Anthony had passed on Scott’s revelation.

  “Of course I couldn’t even hint.” Was this a hint that Thelma might?

  But if he was invisible to Mary, Thelma was even more so, giving her a resentment of her own.

  “The professor’s daughter. There are families like that here. They consider themselves to be still basking in a lost prominence.”

  “Her father is on the faculty?”

  “Was. He died at least a decade ago.”

  Fred’s friendship with the Knights seemed to firm up his link with Mary Shuster and her mother. Anthony’s efforts to get in with the Knights had not been wholly successful. Roger was out of reach, Anthony had attended an evening lecture by the huge Huneker Professor of Catholic Studies and it had all been Greek to him. But Philip Knight sometimes came by the office and Anthony had secured an introduction from Fred.

  “This guy knows it all,” Fred had said.

  “What’s all?”

  “Ask him a question. About sports.”

  Phil thought a bit, then said, “Frank Leahy.”

  He had hit on Anthony’s absolutely strongest suit. Leahy had coached at Boston College before coming to Notre Dame. Anthony sometimes thought of himself as the sports-information equivalent of the legendary Leahy. He emptied his mental file on Leahy and Phil Knight had been impressed. He said to Fred, “No wonder you speak so highly of him.”

  Was this true? Anthony was abashed. Fred had never praised him to his face but it was particularly sweet to hear that he was praised in his absence.

  “Fred is the memory man around here,” he said generously.

  But it had never really got beyond that. Even so, it was a whole lot better than his invisibility to Mary.

  Mary worked in the registrar’s office and Anthony made a point of having lunch in Grace Hall on an average of once a week, in the hope that he would run into her. But all he got was a vague nod in return to his greeting. Besides, she was always with somebody, too often with Fred Neville.

  The rock Naomi had flashed at the wake and funeral had never been on display in her visits to the Joyce Center, Thelma assured Anthony.

  “I would have noticed, Antoine. How could you not notice anything about such a classy dresser. I suppose like all the other men your eyes are on her legs.”

  Like Naomi, Thelma wore skirts of minimal length, but there was no gasping when she crossed her legs in imitation of Naomi and lifted her toothy smile to visitors. Mary, by contrast, favored ankle-length skirts or pantsuits. But it was not because she had skinny pins like Thelma.

  Anthony had driven past the Shuster home in Harter Heights, he had plotted and planned on ways to run into her by accident. But his imagination failed him. When Fred’s body was found, his first impulse had been to want to talk to her, but it was not until the wake that he had been able to confront her, all in black.

  “What an awful thing,” he said.

  Mary nodded, accepting her role as chief mourner. Anthony did not begrudge her this. Fred’s death had put her on the open market and although this was not the time to act on that, he had gained something when he fell into conversation with Mary’s mother, Marjorie Shuster.

  “I was just speaking to Mary.”

  Mrs. Shuster’s reaction was puzzling.

  “They made a wonderful couple.”

  “I knew nothing about it,” Mrs. Shuster said.

  “We all did at the Joyce Center.”

  “You work there?”

  “Why don’t we sit down.”

  They sat and Mrs. Shuster talked about the good old days and Anthony was glad to listen. The following day in the university club he again sought out Mrs. Shuster and was treated to another disquisition on Notre Dame, and her husband, Nathaniel. Nathaniel proved to be the open sesame. The widow was delighted by his interest, and began to speak of her late husband’s library.

  “I’d love to see it.”

  “Just stop by when you have time and I’ll show it to you.”

  And so it was that he stopped by and was ensconced with Marjorie Shuster by the fire when Mary came in.

  5

  THE HARD DRIVE OF THE computer in Fred Neville’s office made it clear that the poem Phil had found in the tray of the fax machine and copied had not been a onetime effort. The file called Egan contained several dozen poems, half of them unfinished. One of the few finished ones was the declaration of Fred’s love for Mary Shuster via thoughts on Isadore of Seville.

  Roger and Greg Whelan had been let into the apartment by Stewart, who had to wake up the aged cop on duty in a chair beside the taped door. When Roger and Greg got settled at the computer, Jimmy left them to their work.

  By and large, Roger and Greg took turns examining the files on Fred’s computer, working in silence, both feeling somewhat sheepish about looking through their dead friend’s work. Perhaps they both feared coming upon something, well, surprising. After all, Roger thought, Fred had proved himself to be something of an enigma. Not in his manner, not in what he had said or done, but in the large dimensions of his life that he had chosen to keep hidden.

  First, there had been Mary Shuster, surprise enough. Not that she wasn’t a wonderful girl. Roger liked her almost as much as he did her mother. Marjorie was a living link to the Notre Dame of yesteryear, her memories evoking an all but lost world. Doubtless it takes eyes to see such things, but neither Roger nor Phil had had any inkling of Fred’s devotion to her. Second, more than a surprise, was Naomi McTear. Phil had known who she was, her public persona, as it were, he had seen her on television, but to Roger she had been less than a name and when he had seen her at Fred’s wake and funeral and later at the university club he did not face the difficulties of those for whom a person is at once a stranger and as familiar as a friend. In any case, it had been to Roger rather than to Phil that Naomi had chosen to come.

  Roger was alone in the apartment when the phone had rung.

  “Professor Knight, please?”

  “This is Roger Knight.”

  “Naomi McTear. I’m on my way to the airport and wonder if I could see you before I leave.”

  “Where are you calling from?”

  “I’m in a rental car, approaching the campus.”

  Roger gave her directions to the Notre Dame Village and, after he hung up, pondered the reason for this unexpected visit. He knew this woman only from her somewhat dramatic appearance at Fred Neville’s wake and subsequent appearance at the funeral and the university club, the last one in which an open quarrel between her and Mary Shuster had been narrowly averted. Phil spoke highly of her in her professional role and this esti
mate had not been affected by what Phil had witnessed at the funeral home. In any contest between Naomi McTear and Mary Shuster, Roger knew which woman he himself would champion, but what contest could there be now with Fred no longer among the living?

  The young woman who came to his door ten minutes later bore little resemblance to the fashionable young woman he had hitherto seen. She was dressed for travel, informal, comfortable in jeans, a turtleneck sweater, and a large olive-colored jacket that hung loosely from her shoulders. She wore a baseball cap with the letters of her TV channel prominent above the bill.

  “Thanks for seeing me.”

  “You say you’re on your way to the airport?”

  She shook a sleeve and a large mannish watch appeared on her left wrist. The absence of the diamond ring was in striking contrast to the way she had flouted it at the wake and funeral. “I should be at the airport in an hour.”

  “There’s coffee on.”

  “Oh, good.”

  When they were settled with mugs of coffee, she sipped and smiled at Roger. “I can’t have made a good impression on you at the university club the other day.”

  “It was a trying occasion.”

  “I am still trying to convince myself that this has happened.”

  “You have lost a fiancé.”

  “Do I detect a skeptical tone?”

  “Do I detect an absence of diamond ring?”

  “I never wear it when I’m traveling. Too flashy.”

  “You and Fred were engaged?”