“Then make a general good confession, my child, and resolve to do better, to try harder.” And then, in a gentle, sad voice, Father Donlon said, “Brian, don’t let the sins of your imagination rule you, lad. Control both your mind and your body. Both were gifts to you from our Lord and given in trust. Don’t abuse either of them.”
Father Donlon assigned him penance and gave him absolution. Brian felt the heavy lump of pain in his chest ease and lift; as he knelt, praying his rosary, he felt an extraordinary sense of peace and resolve descend about him.
THIRTEEN
JOHN O’MALLEY WAS NEARLY fifteen years old, but because he had been left back several times, he was in the same class as his younger cousin Kevin. He was a large, gawky, lumbering giant of a boy, with close-cropped reddish hair, a round, smooth, mild face with rich high color, somewhat blank, puzzled eyes and a broad and ready smile. No one had ever seen any display of temper, no mild anger or even annoyance, even when poor John had every right to such emotions. He had an enduring quality of unquestioning acceptance which caused some to think him saintly but most to think him simple.
His father, John O’Malley, Sr., had been a fireman. He had braved dense acrid smoke on the last day of his life, had entered the burning tenement building again and again, each time retrieving half-conscious little children and delivering them into the arms of burned, hysterical parents who blabbed in a language he didn’t understand at all; whether Polish or Slovak or Ukrainian, it was all one to him, for he didn’t understand any of it. What he and the men with him understood was that within the intense heat of the burning building were some others, dead or dying; it was their job to save the dying. He reached the last small child in a back bedroom; it had crept under a bed and died in the smoke, but he clasped the child against his chest—at least the mother would have the body—and as he reached the staircase to the street, it gave way and he tumbled to his death without even knowing that his young wife had newly conceived his own and only child.
She was a bride for only four months when they took to calling her Mary the Widow to distinguish her from other Marys among them. Mary the Widow she remained forever. She was a strange and lonely girl, remote, cast inward. For long periods of time, she would sit and stare at a blank wall as though seeing a picture show, while her infant son howled and screamed for food or a change of clothing or just some arms to hold him. Her only blood relative in the country was a nun of the Order of Perpetual Help, a first cousin and dour but helpful. She arranged for Mary the Widow to have care and the infant to have comfort, first within the confines of their own small apartment and then, when it became apparent that wasn’t working too well, a place was found for them at the Order’s hospital, which served an assortment of poor women with terrible problems of one kind and another.
But it was Mary the Widow needed the hospitalizing and the O’Malley clan took John in among them. He stayed first with one bunch of them and then the other, but his true home seemed to be with his Uncle Brian and Aunt Margaret, partly because Margaret mothered him more than anyone, partly because it was where his grandmother lived, and she claimed him as her blood more directly than anyone else.
Mary the Widow had taken to long and solitary pulls directly from the bottle, until her tired body would fall to the floor and there she would stay until her son, poor John, would summon help; then off she’d go and he’d appear and stay with his cousins.
“For the love of Jesus, Johnnie,” his grandmother said now, “did the madwoman go off again?”
It always amazed them the way their grandmother spoke about Mary the Widow to her own son. But John hadn’t the sense to either defend or blame his mother. He shrugged good-naturedly. “Aunt Ellen said I should stay with her and Uncle Matt and all because Aunt Margaret’ll be just home from the hospital and all...but...” He stood, grinned at them all sheepishly.
“You’ll stay here where you belong,” their grandmother said with a warning glare at Brian, who shrugged. “Now get inside and wash your hands. Aren’t you a huge hulk of a boy to go about so filthy all the time.”
Nodding toward Brian, the boy meekly went off to wash. When he returned, the old woman, sighing, but not unpleased to be surrounded by family, rose to her feet.
“Ah, well, I’ll fix us all up with some good hot tea and cake. And maybe there might be a story or two. You’d never know about that, now would you?” their grandmother said.
It was rare and special for her to gather them around her and spin one of her stories, to have both the chance and the inclination at the same time. She and Roseanne and Kit carried trays of sandwiches and cookies and cake and milk and hot tea into the living room and Brian put away his books.
Kevin, on his stomach, rested his face on his hands; his bony elbows dug into the rug. John sat on the floor, his back against the couch, feet pulled up, chin to knees. Martin sat on the arm of the couch, next to Kit. Roseanne sat on the hassock, which she’d pulled from under Brian’s legs; her thin shoulders hunched forward and she nibbled daintily on a small piece of sandwich one of the boys had left.
There was an expectant silence in the room. They all watched their grandmother’s hands as she worked in the near-darkness. They heard the thin thready sound of the little bone instrument that plucked the string from one hand and twisted and weaved it intricately and precisely and ceaselessly as a spider. Her tatted webs covered all the chair arms and backs and tabletops of their home, but still she continued to spin the delicate secret designs whenever her hands were free of other things. As she spoke, her fingers worked quickly or slowly, according to the tempo of the story.
“Ah, yes,” she said, looking at Kit. “She’s Kate, indeed. And wouldn’t I be the one to know, when it was myself seen her die that terrible morning?”
A shudder, a quick passing chill, went around the room. It was merely a story, what was to come. They had all, except possibly John, become aware of that through the years, that what she passed along to them as fact was largely fiction. What had confused them was the way she tied family into her tales: mothers and fathers, sons and daughters; she named them all. In truth, some portion of what she told had some basis in the family history, but through the years, time and places became confused in her narratives. What she stated happened, some great event, was historically inaccurate, and if questioned, called to task, the story, ruined, would fall about their heads. The telling, the listening, the being taken into the heart and substance of the tale, were what was important, not the picking up of fallacies and inaccuracies. Brian had learned that years before when he’d questioned some point of a story that didn’t agree with a previous version. He’d been dragged from the room by his father, had his face smacked for calling his grandmother a liar and got shoved off to bed. After that, he kept his questions to himself and accepted the stories for what they were.
“A wild girl she was, my sister, Kate. Me father himself was after telling her she’d best settle down. ‘Settle down, Kate,’ sez he, ‘there’s other lads a plenty and that Johnnie Driscoll you’ve an eye for is as good as dead for didn’t the Black and Tans catch him and his crew and will shoot him dead come mornin’.’
“And didn’t she get a look in her eye then and tossed her head at my father himself and sez, all cheeky and tart and so fresh it would make your blood turn cold, she sez, shrewd now, Well, mebbe yes and mebbe no. Mebbe they’ll be some others dead come mornin’ as well.’ Well, himself, may he rest in peace, terrifying man that he was, didn’t the man pounce on the slip of a girl and plant his fist on her mouth and knock her half across the room and the poor old mother cryin’ all the time. ‘Oh, now, Patrick,’ sez my mother, ‘oh, now, Paddy me love, she’s just a small girl and you’ll be killin’ her.’”
With each character, her voice changed. She was young and smart and bold for Kate, a low, hard growl for her father, a weak, pathetic whine for her mother.
The tatting bone moved constantly, click and pull and twist.
“ ‘She’ll be
done with all that foolish talk then,’ sez me dad. ‘I’ll have no trouble inside this house of that sort,’ and off he goes for his pint and bit with the boys. Kate waits him out, shrewd she is, then stands up fresh as ever and the blood still wet on her mouth. ‘Good-by, Mother,’ sez she, ‘for you’ll not see me again.’ ‘Oh, Jasus,’ cries me poor mother, ‘don’t say that, Kate, for there’s some that says you’ve been made wild by that Driscoll boy and he’s to be shot in the mornin’, and let the devil take his own but don’t bring down trouble and shame on your poor old mother’s head.’
“ ’Tis not disgrace but glory,’ says Kate.” The old woman’s hands stopped for the first time, immobilized by her words. She repeated the phrase in wonder and her grandchildren seemed to lean forward slightly to catch it the second time. “ ’Tis not disgrace but glory.”
The hands moved again, spinning, creating. “Ah, God love us, but she ran from the house and the mother pulled a shawl about me and sez, “Follow her, Mary. Follow your mad, wild sister. Don’t let her get herself into something terrible. Your dad’ll kill her for her wildness one day.’ Well, I followed her but she ran so quickly, Kate did, always faster even than my brothers, and headed straight as an arrow to where the lads held their dark secret meetings, and weren’t the English always trying to find out where, but couldn’t.
“Well, I waited the long cold night, not knowing what I feared the most, those crazy plotters inside or the English outside or my own father himself waiting at home. I was a slip of a girl then, yes.
“And then the dawn came, all cold and shining hard. Out they came, the plotters, all sleepless and frozen-eyed from plotting their terrible plans all the night long. At first, I didn’t even know me own big sister, she seemed for all the world some fierce dread stranger, her hair loose and wild, her eyes all large and seeing things not there and not seeing what was. I caught her arm. ‘Kate,’ I sez, ‘for the love of God, Kate, it’s your own sweet sister Mary and the mother sent me to fetch you home.’ And she turned to me and sez in so strange and lovely a voice it sent the shivers along me spine, ‘I’m goin’ to me own home with Johnnie Driscoll this mornin’ and we’re to take some of them with us, but they’ll go their own separate road from us. It’s hell for them this mornin’, dear.’
“And, oh, holy saints protect and love us but she was a sly one and kept her arms locked tight inside her shawl for that was where she carried the sticks of dynamite.
“And marched proud she did, right to the encampment where they had the poor lads all tied up to their death stakes and themselves lined up and facing them with their great long guns. And I stood shaking with the fear of death, and not ashamed to admit it.” The old face looked up, scanned them, dared any to call her coward but no one did. “Well,” she continued, “anyone with any sense at all in their heads would have feared that dreaded place, but not Kate. Went right up to that British commander and all his soldiers there about him. Shook her head of wild black curls in all directions and he was taken by the astonishing beauty of the girl. He sez to his men, Well who’s this beautiful thing here?’
“Well, Captain,’ sez my Kate, all soft and sweet, ‘why don’t you and your good lads go on about to your homes and tend to your chores? Sure, what is it you’re about this early in the mornin’?’
“He laughed, the captain, and sez, ‘I’ll tend my chores, girl, and then have some time for you.’ And at this, doesn’t Johnnie Driscoll, at the stake, let out a terrible earth-ripping cry to reach heaven and hell and it stopped only by the louder sound, the sound of guns going off all in the row, for the captain had given his signal behind Kate’s back and the men fell dead and dying at their stakes and then the captain gave his orders and they was all finished off.
“Kate walked all smooth and floating like to Johnnie Driscoll, then turns and faces the British captain, who followed close behind. Jasus, save us, but her face was like white marble, all cold and lovely and composed, and her voice, sweet and lovely and calm. All the more terrible, for there was her own sweet love, Johnnie Driscoll, dead at her feet, his blood all over her skirt.
“‘Come over close to me, Captain dear, do, for I’ve something nice to show you.’”
The tatting ceased. Abruptly, she put the ivory-colored thread to her mouth and bit at it. Carefully, she smoothed the bit of lace on her lap, then looked up. “And show them something she did, God love us. The simple fools clustered about the girl. Oh, Jasus, they flocked to see what it was she had to show the captain and it was the blinding flash of hell. Then there were bursts of dynamite and guns all around for wasn’t my poor sister Kate’s explosion the very signal the other lads, hidden all about, were waiting for? And they blew up all the artillery the troops had stored there and the explosions went on for all those many hours until your head was like to break from the noise. And many a lad died there that day.”
There was a fragile, thoughtful silence and a thin, tired, dreamy voice asked, “And they never did find a single trace of Kate’s body, did they, Nana?”
No one turned or glanced at Kit. Her voice was eerie, not her own, and it was easy in the dimness to dream many things about their own wild sister.
“Ah, they never did at all, love, they never did at all. Nor of Johnnie Driscoll either, for though he was seen to be shot, all trace of him disappeared in the explosions, and that’s strange, isn’t it?”
The old woman rocked back in her chair and studied the ceiling, then said, “And there was some who said they’ve seen the two of them, wild and happy as you please, racin’ up and down a mountainside and laughin’ and carryin’ on in the devil’s own way.” She hugged her body, arms close, hands on elbows. “Well, I’ll not say nothin’ about it, one way or the other, not havin’ seen for myself. But I’ve heard about such things. Yes, I’ve heard tell of such things.”
Kit drowsed, warm and distant, holding the wild, brave girl deep inside herself till she fell asleep where she was on the sofa, and Brian heard her call out once during the night from inside of a dream. He couldn’t make out what name she’d cried. He folded his arms beneath his head and stared at the black space and heard the sounds of breathing, each one so individual from the other, marking and defining the sleeper.
His grandmother shouldn’t tell Kit the stories about that wild dead Kate; the kid was wild enough as it was. But it was strange, when he thought about it. It was strange. All of them, each of them, part of each other and part of people who had lived and felt and been angry and been brave and been cowardly. Whatever truth there was or whatever Nana made up, they had come from a long, unknowable line of people whose names they carried. Kevin O’Malley, who danced and sang and fiddled, married the old woman, who was young then, and who it was said Roseanne resembled; and Martin it was said bore the same solemn face of some other Martin, long buried in distant hills. All of them carried lines and threads as intricately woven as his grandmother’s tatting and tales.
All of them contained within them not just themselves but parts and pieces of each other and of the strangers whose names they bore. Brian watched the darkness become heavier and heavier and he rocked his head from side to side, puzzled by his gentle and contemplative mood.
FOURTEEN
PEADAR O’MALLEY LEANED HIS long body against the back of the wooden chair and flexed his shoulder muscles. They were good muscles still, fireman-strong and flexible and reliable. Barely moving, just turning his head toward the hallway, he said softly, “If I catch any of you damn kids out of your beds, I’ll whip the bejesus out of you and give you a second dose tomorrow.” He waited, allowed the bare feet to run almost soundlessly before he checked the hallway. “Lucky for them,” he called out loudly through the apartment, then turned back into the kitchen.
“Damn little bastards,” he said good-naturedly, “always think they’re missing something. Well, Brian, is it some beer you’ll be drinking?”
Brian knew they were all a little uncomfortable with him. It gave him the edge he needed for the a
dvantage was all too much with his uncles. He moved his hand vaguely. “Nothing just yet, Uncle Peadar, but thanks.”
“All around for the rest?”
Matthew O’Malley reached for his glass and sipped his beer and wished to hell Peadar would get on with it. It was well enough for him, he’d worked an afternoon shift and had all morning to sleep away.
Eugene O’Malley, the youngest of the brothers at thirty-four, turned his dark-blue gaze to his nephew. “Matt treating you all right, Brian? He’s getting on for an old fella is Matt, but we can’t let him take advantage of your youth and inexperience.”
Brian slid a cigarette from his pack and hunched over the match which Gene extended. “Thanks. Well, I think I can handle my end of it, Uncle Gene.”
“That was quite a spell of time you were on your own altogether, Bri, wasn’t it? Well, you’ve fit in hack home and done a good job of it too, haven’t you? And you managed well enough when you was on your own, I guess?”
Peadar had his father’s voice; Gene had his father’s eyes and dark hair. Only Matt, quiet, thoughtful, somewhat vague, demanded nothing from him, no explanation. Brian’s voice was a little taut and dry.
“Well, I managed, yeah. And learned a few things too, I guess. I guess you’d say I learned the hard way—on my own.”
“Well, that’s the way a man’s got to learn things, isn’t that so, Peadar?” Gene’s eyes stayed on his nephew though he’d addressed his brother.
Peadar took a long swallow then put his glass on the table. “Well now, then, Brian. I guess we’ve a few things to clear up here, haven’t we, lad? Is there anything you’d like to say, anything on your mind that we might like to hear about before we get to the business at hand?”
It was the old challenge voice: Go ahead, kid, go ahead. Try. We’re ready for you, you cute little bastard.
But Peadar wasn’t his father and he’d gone through what he had had to go through with his father. It was strange; he felt they were trying to bait him and he felt no need to rise to their bait.
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