Irish Crystal

by Andrew M. Greeley

  I pushed the “return call” button.

  “Peter Murphy.”

  “’Tis meself. The blessing of God the Father and God the Son and God the Holy Spirit be on all who live in your house and Mother Mary too.”

  “Thank you, Nuala. We need the blessing with two little critters living in our house … Hang on, Maw wants to speak to you.”

  “Li’l varmint right cute … a-thinking we keep him. He came out real easy. Nice li’l polecat … Now you stop your cryin’ … I don’t wan you a-weeping and sobbing at the Popish Baptism, you bein’ the godmother and all.”

  We both cried of course. Then I let her go back to sleep. Nice going, I told Herself. The species goes on.

  Then I called me Dermot.

  “Coyne.”

  “Didn’t the li’l varmint come right on schedule.”

  “Your schedule, you mean?”

  “Ain’t any other. Everyone is fine. I’m the godmother.”

  “Well, he’ll be a shunuff Popist, that’s fer sure.”

  “Dermot, I’m sorry.”

  “What did you do now?”

  “I usurped your job. Spear carrying is tough.”

  He laughed and laughed and laughed.

  “I don’t have a memory like yours. I wasted the whole morning.”

  “We’ll talk about it when we both get home. I had a most entertaining morning. I don’t think I learned much.”

  For five minutes even my mint green suit didn’t stop a cab. I was polite to the cabby just the same. Hooray for you, Nuala Anne, you’re a citizen now but you’re still not a rude Yank.

  Then I remembered that I hadn’t much progress on Nelliecoyne’s First Communion dress. I should not have promised to sew it meself. That was something else I wasn’t good at. And when would the Baptism of the li’l critter be? That would snatch another precious day out of my schedule.

  25

  “Your wife and my father were oozing charm all over the floor when I left the office,” Jack Curran told me. “She’ll win of course. She talks funny. Funny-talking charm always wins.”

  “The fact that she is totally gorgeous,” his wife Marti added, “gives her an extra point or two.”

  “It wouldn’t make any difference without the brogue, would it now, Dermot Coyne?”

  I sighed, as close to the Galway sigh as I could get. “It would not and herself able to switch from Galway to Dublin and back in a single sentence.”

  . We were sitting in the back corner of Pane Caldo, a small, almost secret, restaurant on Walton Street. Marti, a public defender, with red face and flaming red hair, was wearing a skirt and blouse and a raincoat. She was from the South Side, which is not a mortal sin, at least not when you’re as pretty as she is.

  “We Currans have been charming lawyers for more than a century, charming drunks, charming lechers, charming crooks, charming scoundrels. It’s a great tradition, but I’m afraid my dad is not keeping it up.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. He’s charming all right but he’s a good man. That’s against the family rules of men like Black Bart and Long Tom, my illustrious grandfather. He is an evil man, not necessarily a failing in a lawyer. John and Stelle are both good, though I suspect they didn’t start out that way. I’ve never been able to figure out which one seduced the other down the path of virtue.”

  “Not just nice,” Marti chimed in. “Nice is discount store good. It’s cheap grace. You gotta work at being good. My husband, for example, is certainly nice and he’ll be good someday but he’ll have to work on it.”

  “I suppose it has a lot to do with their sex life, which embarrasses us children. Your mother and father are not supposed to be into sexual love. In fact, the legal profession cannot really tolerate it. A lawyer can have sex, even sexual relations, but sexual love, that takes too much time and energy away from the job. I suppose his colleagues let him get away with it because they are glad that he’s not evil like Black Bart or Long Tom.”

  “Sexual passion does not cause a good marriage like most people think,” Marti said. “It results from it. You want good sex, you gotta be good to your partner all the time. A guy says, I’d be a great husband if only I could get good sex every once in a while. I say to him he’s an idiot. He’d get good sex if he were a good husband. Right, Jack?”

  She nudged him with her elbow, very tenderly

  “As always.”

  Were these two brats for real? Or were they castoffs from Second City?

  “All this talk about flying over to Cortina to boost Rory’s morale is hooey. They had been planning to spend the weekend in bed. Then they decided that it would be more fun in a ski resort in the Alps where you could ski in the morning and then crawl into bed after a big lunch and a bottle of expensive wine and screw all afternoon. That’s the way they are. Can’t knock it.”

  “And since they’re both more than nice, they’ll be only too happy to take care of our kids when we go over there in a couple of years.”

  “Did you get the message about them leaving for Italy?”

  “Sure Dede called me. I passed it on to Marie Therese. It’s the family system.”

  “Some people,” Marti continued the riff, “rare, I admit, are good but not nice. Take your sister Cindy. She’s certainly a good woman, really good, but nice? That she hasn’t got. That’s why she’s such a good lawyer. I bet she is mildly amused by the fact that you write poetry, but has never read it.”

  This combo could prove dangerous.

  “Women lawyers,” Jack commented, “cannot afford to be nice. It’s against the rules. When this redhead and Marie Therese take over the firm—Curran and Daughters—they’ll infuse a lot of tough, competitive, hardheaded machismo in it. They’ll dump the rest of us not bringing in enough business to justify our overhead.”

  “For sure. We’ll hire five associates every year out of law school, not pay them much, make them do all the work, then dump them after six years while we eat bonbons and go to spas. We’ll say they don’t quite fit the image of the firm—too aggressive.”

  “Women are the only hope the profession has of retaining its fabled machismo.”

  The talk ended while the waitress brought our pasta.

  I knew where I was—at an improv company featuring G. K. Chesterton and Oscar Wilde.

  “Anyway, because Dad is so good, I work at the firm and talk all day long, which drives my poor brother Trevor bonkers, but he never says anything. That’s not really even nice of me. But at my age, you can’t be nice all the time.”

  “You’re too hard on yourself, love. You do talk a lot, which is harmless if sometimes mildly annoying. But you also say things, which is harder to ignore. Anyone who’s been to law school can babble. But if someone says something, then he’s likely to be trouble. He thinks, and that’s really dangerous.”

  “We have too many thinkers in the profession,” Jack said. “Most of them are judges and they’re convinced that they’re wise. They get away with it because counsel is usually smart enough not to make fun of them … And you wouldn’t want to go to bed with a real thinker. I mean you’d be trying out all your foreplay tricks and she might say something instead of babbling. You have a thinker on your hands. What do you do then?”

  “Punt,” Marti suggested. “Good lovers have to pretend that they’re shallow.”

  “So as you can see, Dermot, Mom and Dad have done a pretty good job on the family despite the fact that they’re both good. Good parents usually have bad kids. Childhood was too pleasant. Bad parents usually have bad kids too, but sometimes good kids. Look at Dad and Long Tom. None of us, as far as I know, are up for an indictment. All of us are at least nice some of the time. Dede and Gerry are partway into goodness. They’ve done pretty well on in-laws too.”

  “Except for that tight-assed little bitch Annette,” Marti snapped. “Looks down on all of us because we don’t have spiritual directors.”

  “Annette knows she’s good because Father Charles has told h
er she’s good.”

  “She’s a dark shadow on your parents’ golden years.”

  “Someday Trevor will have to order her to leave Opus. That’ll be a tough decision. Opus tells her that she has to obey her husband always, but it also tells her this time she can’t obey him.”

  “We shouldn’t enjoy that, Jack,” Marti admonished him. “It’s not nice at all.”

  “You see my problem, Dermot, we decide that I’m nice some of the time and my wife uses that to push towards being good.”

  “Wives always push their husbands, Jack,” I said, getting into the flow, “more often then not away from good. You and I are lucky we have the other kind.”

  They both howled at that epigram. I was part of the game.

  “Just the same, Dermot,” Marti turned serious for a moment, “Stelle and John are wonderful people. I’m lucky that they let me into their family circle.”

  “No choice, woman. We needed some red-haired genes.”

  I filled both their wineglasses.

  “You don’t think much of your grandfather, Jack.”

  “It’s not just that Long Tom is a mean, moody, hard-eyed bastard. You run into herds of them every day if you’re a lawyer. There’s evil in his eyes.”

  “He’s had a hard life, Jack,” his wife admonished him, pushing him towards nice, I suppose.

  “I know! I know! Bataan Death March! Wife dies young. His father a crook, a deadbeat, an adulterer, a bastard. Still …”

  “He wants to hurt people,” Marti took up the case. “I’ve only met him once. He looks me over like he’s taking off my clothes, nothing subtle about it. But then I sense he wants to do something mean to me. I told my husband I’d never visit the man again.”

  “And I said right on!”

  “Isn’t he a nice man, Dermot?”

  “I don’t think, however,” Jack became serious for a moment, “that he’s put out a contract on my parents. I’m sure he hates their happiness and would like to make them suffer. But death in an explosion is too quick. A lingering death, maybe. A bomb, I don’t think so.”

  “Just like the Japanese tortured his fellow soldiers.”

  “Maybe with his help.”

  Two good insights. These kids could do more than improvise comedy.

  “Who then?”

  “I’ve been saying he’s stepped on some Mafiosi toes. The cops tell me they’re not involved. They have their own contacts … so someone of the other mobs. The Puerto Ricans have their own drug gangs. The Russians, the Albanians, Serbians, White Sox fans …”

  “Jack!”

  “OK, scratch the last. They’re like the Vatican. They couldn’t organize a good conspiracy if their lives depended on it … My serious point is that someone is very angry at us. Trevor is going through our files looking for suspects. The cops say it’s a Hispanic outfit from out of town. OK? Which Hispanic outfit? They don’t seem to know?”

  “It’s a terrible feeling,” Marti added. “You’re always looking around to see if anyone is following you.”

  “Thank God—and you, Dermot—for Reliable Security. If it wasn’t for them, Mom and Dad would be dead. But can they solve the mystery?”

  Then I said something very foolish.

  “If they can’t, Nuala Anne will. She never fails.”

  That was a pretty blunt promise. I’d have to confess it to her.

  I parted company with the young couple as they climbed into a cab to ride back downtown. I then walked over to the Cathedral to interview Father Rory, now on the staff. Kids were drifting out of the school. My friends the porter persons would be hovering at the door of the rectory. I took a deep breath. They were lovely young women but, after the riffing Currans I was not sure I was up to four sixteen-year-olds named Megan.

  I pushed the doorbell button. I heard someone rush down the stairs.

  Megan Kim threw open the door, the most restrained of the Megans. The other three followed after her, Megan Flores, Megan Jones, and Megan McCarthy—Blackie’s multicultural team.

  “Dermot!”

  “How’s Nuala?”

  “How’s the tiny terrorist?”

  “Is Nuala pregnant again?”

  “The Arch isn’t in!”

  “The Arch?”

  “That’s what we call Father Blackie now that he’s an Archbishop.”

  “His robes are awful cute.”

  “The new priest is awfully cute too.”

  “He has charge of the young people. Of course he really works for Crystal. That’s what he says.”

  “Father Rory?”

  “It sounds like a girl’s name.”

  Giggles all around.

  “He’s like awesomely cool!”

  “Do you really want to see him?”

  “Yes really.”

  I was shown into Blackie’s office, a comfortable sitting room without desk or files or pictures of bishops or Popes.

  Father Rory appeared in short order, dressed in a perfectly tailored black suit with a Roman collar vest. He shook hands with me briskly and sat down in a chair next to mine. He did not wear cuff links, which my brother George the Priest, once on the Cathedral staff, said were a sure sign of episcopal ambition.

  “Technically this is the boss’s room but he tells me to use it whenever I want. It’s probably the only rectory office in the country like this.”

  “I’m told you are in charge of the young people!”

  Rory Curran was about his father’s height but must have been a throwback to another gene pool. His skin was pale and his thick, cropped black hair reached, it seemed, almost to his eyebrows. He might have been a pirate working for Grainne O’Malley or an IRA gunman. His ready smile revealed flawless white teeth, unusual in our ethnic group. His features were sharp but pleasant. He seemed poised, utterly in control of himself. The perfect Vatican diplomat?

  “In charge of that mob of teenage hope and enthusiasm?” he said with a short and amused laugh. “Even the Cardinal can’t keep them in line and he has the sense not to try. What better manifestation of the exuberance of life to greet the Catholic people when they enter this foreboding old place?”

  “Indeed.”

  “And there’s the ineffable Crystal Lane? You have met her?”

  “Mystic in residence.”

  “Indeed yes. I’ve never met one before.”

  “The Church needs more of them.”

  “My parents are somewhat upset about my assignment here. How wrong they were. I love it, I love every minute of it. The Arch, as they call Blackie, is one of the wisest men in the world. Once this mystery is out of the way, I hope to have the whole family over for supper to meet him—and the Cardinal if he’s free.”

  “My brother George was here once.”

  “He was good enough to come over to welcome me into the neighborhood. I asked him if he could give me tips about the lay of the land. He said that the land doesn’t ‘lay’ … Most of my contemporaries in the priesthood would get rid of the Megans and Crystal … and of Blackie and the Cardinal too. Give me a couple of more weeks here and they’ll want to get rid of me too! The priesthood is exciting work.”

  “I’ve just come from a meeting with your brother Jack and his wife.”

  “Don’t be confused by their gift of laughter and sense that the world is mad. They are two very bright people.”

  I noted the reference to Scaramouche.

  “I confess that I wasn’t sure for a few moments what was happening. It turned out that it was merely an improv with Oscar Wilde and G. K. Chesterton.”

  “A good description … Were they any help in your investigation?”

  “I ask the questions and then report back to the Oracle of Carraroe, who sorts out the mystery.”

  “Blackie tells me I should take heart because she never fails.”

  “I make no guarantees.”

  “And herself?”

  “She takes it for granted that she’ll figure everything out.”

&n
bsp; “Interesting woman. Beautiful voice, not operatic, but in its own genre just about perfect . . Can I help with some answers of my own?”

  “It seems to us, Father …”

  “Rory, Dermot, please.”

  The man was cool, smooth, polished, self-confident. Perfect diplomat. But perfect parish priest too, if a lot more formal than me brother.

  “That with your parents, your family made a decisive turn.”

  “I had never thought of it that way until recently. On both sides the past was pretty bleak. Now suddenly its joyous. Mother and Father have made it that way, by great effort I would think. They are remarkable people. Someday I would like to know more about their stories.”

  “You’ve met your grandfather?”

  “Long Tom, yes on several pilgrimages to Ocean Reef. As a boy I did not particularly like him. In fact I feared him. Then I came to realize that he is a lost soul, still fleeing from the Japanese in the Philippines. At first in my zeal as a seminarian I thought I would save him. Now I know it would require a priest of much greater maturity and wisdom than I now possess or may ever possess.”

  He lifted his shoulders in a gesture of resignation.

  “And … ?”

  “And I didn’t like the way he looked at women. No one else seemed to note it. His appraisal would begin with a certain generosity and respect, then quickly morph into raw hunger. I warned my sister Marie Therese, a year older than I, not to be alone with him, and she asked if I thought she was crazy. However, I believe she took my point.”

  He paused for a moment.

  “Morph” indeed. We never used that word on the West Side of Chicago though it has slipped into my poetry.

  “If you asked me to guess, I have been told that Grandmother was an extraordinary woman and that he loved her deeply. It could be that he is angry at all women because she left him when she died … Irrational I know, but …”

  This was one very bright young man. His parents had much of which to be proud.

  “Not by any means impossible … You of course knew that your parents were flying to Italy?”

  “It was my suggestion. They love to ski and they sounded like they needed to get away from Chicago. I had already made the reservation for us in Cortina. I wanted to tell them that I had informed Milord Cronin, as Blackie calls him, that I did not want to attend the College of Noble Ecclesiastics. I wanted parish work. I don’t think I had gotten through to them when we received the call from the police. So I must assume that the bombers thought they would be in the house and some of us … In direct answer to your question, Marie Therese, to whom I am quite close, did send me an e-mail so that the rules of family communication would be honored. Mother has always been insistent on that.”