American Anthem

by BJ Hoff

  “Yes. Horses are her favorite subject.”

  “Sì, she loves the horses. Already she rides well.” He paused. “And you, Susanna? Do you ride?”

  “Oh, no! No, I’ve never ridden. I’m afraid I share Paul’s apprehension about horses. I’ve always been rather frightened of them.”

  “Ah, but there is nothing to be afraid of,” he said, coming around to his desk and resting his hands on the back of the chair. “We must respect them, of course. But there is no need for fear.”

  He paused. “You think it strange that I would say such a thing.”

  It was a statement, not a question. And indeed, Susanna had been thinking exactly that, given the riding accident that had caused his blindness. Deirdre had written only the sketchiest of details about the incident: apparently Michael had been jumping his favorite horse when a pheasant flew out of a hedge and startled him. The horse’s forelegs had become tangled in the hedge, and he failed to clear the jump. Michael was thrown, striking his head against a rock. According to the doctors, the blow caused irreparable damage to his optic nerve, blinding him for life.

  Michael nodded as if he had read her thoughts. “What happened to me is most likely the reason for Paul’s fear. But it wasn’t the horse’s fault. It was simply an accident.”

  He indicated that Susanna should sit down, and he lowered himself into the chair behind the desk and shuffled some papers out of his way. Although the dark glasses tended to put her off, his blindness evoked no feelings of pity for him. Sympathy, perhaps—after all, life must be much more difficult for him than for those who could see. But not pity. To the contrary, she felt admiration that he could live so fully, so generously, in spite of the obvious difficulties his disability presented.

  But, then, Michael defied just about every preconceived notion she’d ever held of him. He was a man of many facets, a different kind of man entirely from what she once feared he might be.

  He was also a man who could, with absolutely no warning, kindle feelings that confused and agitated her. She was attracted to him. Strongly attracted, in a way she had never before experienced. Consequently, she found herself torn between trying to avoid him and wanting to be near him.

  According to Paul, the attraction wasn’t entirely one-sided. Michael, he insisted, was coming to have “much affection” for Susanna. So far, Susanna had managed not to delve too deeply into the implications of this remark. Nevertheless, she couldn’t entirely dismiss the quick dart of excitement that grazed her heart. Could Paul possibly be right? And if so…

  She realized with a start where her thoughts were leading her and felt a sudden urgency to distance herself from the man across the desk. She stood so abruptly that her chair almost tipped over. “Well…,” she stammered, “I expect I should be getting back upstairs to Caterina. She’ll be wondering what’s become of me.”

  Michael got to his feet, his expression puzzled as he lifted a hand to delay her. “I was about to ask you if you would mind working with me this afternoon. Paul will be away, and I’d like to follow the Braille through the new sections of the Anthem. It would help me very much if you would play the piano so I can concentrate on the score.”

  Susanna’s old uncertainty, the familiar feelings of ineptness, surfaced immediately, and she hesitated.

  “If you’d rather not—”

  “No…no, it’s not that. I’ll be glad to help. If I can, that is.”

  He smiled a little. “When will you ever dismiss this foolish sense of inadequacy, Susanna? You are much more accomplished than you’re willing to credit yourself. Indeed, I suspect if I could ever catch you unawares, I would discover that you are a most gifted pianist. But every time I enter the room you stop playing.”

  Susanna couldn’t think how to reply. Michael’s incomparable musicianship intimidated her to the point that whatever ability she might possess invariably froze in his presence. It was one thing to accompany him and Caterina during one of their lighthearted evening songfests, but quite another to perform music of a more serious nature for Michael alone—especially one of his own compositions.

  “I’ll be in the music room most of the afternoon. Why don’t you come down after Caterina is settled in for her nap?”

  For a moment, Susanna found herself staring, caught up in the warmth of his smile, the stubborn wave of dark hair that tumbled over his forehead, the breadth of his shoulders, the strength of his features that could soften when least expected—

  She blinked, forcing herself to answer. “That won’t be too late? I mean—aren’t you going away?”

  He frowned. “Going away?”

  “I thought perhaps you were going downriver…”

  He passed a hand over the sleeve of his coat, shaking his head. “No, not tonight. I’ll be at home tonight.”

  Susanna’s earlier disappointment vanished. “Well…all right then.” She paused to clear her throat. “I’ll just take this paper up to Caterina, and come down later.”

  “Grazie, Susanna.”

  It was impossible, of course, no more than a fanciful notion. But Susanna almost felt as though he were watching her as she left his office and started down the hall.

  2

  A LOVE BRUISED BY PAIN

  Many days you have lingered around my cabin door!

  Oh! Hard Times, come again no more!

  STEPHEN FOSTER

  New York City

  Conn MacGovern got up and pulled back the blanket between the sleeping quarters and the other half of the room that served as the kitchen. Vangie was already at her work, even though it wasn’t yet daylight.

  She sat at the table, bent low over the sewing, her hair falling free as she worked by the flickering light of an oil lamp. Conn stood watching her for a moment, his throat tight, his mouth sour with bitterness.

  Whatever had possessed him to bring her here? This “house” was nothing but a hovel, a dilapidated shack of board and tin and tarpaper, squeezed among dozens of others just like it, or worse. The golden streets of America had turned out to be paths of mud and garbage, and the promise of a “job for every man” nothing but a lie.

  Close on two months now they had been here, and so far he had found no work. Nothing more than an occasional odd job to help pay the rent. Were it not for Vangie’s sewing and the pittance Nell Grace earned making artificial flowers, they wouldn’t even have a roof over their heads.

  Had his dreams of America been nothing more than folly after all? There sat his wife, crooking her spine and straining her eyes over piecework that paid a pitiful poor wage. His children were sleeping in broken-down beds in a cold and drafty room where, come winter, they would surely be taken with the rheumatism or even pneumonia.

  Nell Grace was actually thinking of hiring herself out as a servant at one of the big houses uptown, though he would hear none of that foolishness. There was never enough to manage anything more than mere survival, not even with Renny Magee’s meager findings from the discards in the alleys or the occasional coin she earned from entertaining a paltry audience on the street.

  A worm of self-pity twisted in his gut. What more had he ever wanted, after all, than a patch of good land, a few animals, and a free man’s sun on his back? And just see where his foolish dreaming had landed them all: in the heart of a godforsaken slum where people piled their waste in the streets like animals and drank water that tasted as if it had been drawn from a poisoned well.

  Better they had stayed in Ireland than this! At least in Dublin they hadn’t feared for their lives every time they stepped out of the house.

  He sighed. Vangie turned and saw him watching her.

  Conn tried to smile but failed. “You ought not be working in the dark, love.” He buckled his belt and made an effort to smooth his hair with his hands before crossing the room to her. “Won’t you be ruining your eyesight altogether?”

  She lifted her face for his kiss. “I could do this in my sleep,” she said. “And what are you about today?”

&nb
sp; Conn heard the note of caution in her voice. She knew him so well, knew how it seared his pride, this going out in search of a job day after day only to return home empty-handed. “I’ll be going back to the docks,” he said, forcing a cheerful tone. “Sooner or later I’m bound to get on if I show up every day.”

  “You have the right of it there. As soon as they get a look at you, they’ll see that you can do the work of three men, and won’t they be hiring you on the spot?”

  Leave it to Vangie to put a good face on things, he thought with a rush of gratitude. Her unfaltering faith in him was all that kept him going at times, and that was the truth.

  “Your breakfast is ready,” she said. “You go and wash, and I’ll dish it up.”

  When Conn returned to the table, she had set a bowl of stirabout and a chunk of yesterday’s soda bread at his place.

  “I heard Nell Grace getting dressed, but the boys are still asleep,” she said. “Renny has already gone off on one of her excursions. I do wish she wouldn’t venture out on her own so, in the dark. Who knows what might become of the girl out in the streets by herself?”

  “That one can take care of herself well enough. Only a fool would go and tangle with the likes of Renny Magee.”

  He adopted a gruff tone, but in fact he felt a certain peculiar pride in the girl’s cheeky resourcefulness. Even so, he hoped he was right about her fending for herself. She was a rascal, she was, but though she fancied herself fierce enough to stand off a battalion of Brits, she was but a slip of a girl and hardly a match for some of the vile bounders afoot on the streets of New York.

  Just then Baby Emma appeared in the gap between the curtains, her rag dolly tucked under her arm. She came trundling over to Conn to be picked up, and he swept her into his arms, tousling the mop of golden red curls as she nuzzled her head under his chin. She was warm and sweet, her skin still flushed from sleep, and in spite of his earlier dour mood, love spread over him like a soft cloak.

  As he sat there, dandling his baby girl on his lap and watching his beauty of a wife, Conn thought about his two sons sleeping healthy and whole in their bed and the grown daughter who was an incredible gift to them all. How could he forget, even for a moment, the undeserved goodness of his life?

  But directly on the heels of his remorse came the grievous thought of the lad they had left behind: Aidan, his eldest son.

  Well, that had not been his doing, now had it? He’d had his passage, bought and paid for. But as the boy himself was wont to remind them with his bold tongue, he was a man grown, he was, and could live his life the way he wanted. His ticket to America had meant so little to him he’d been willing to give it up to Renny Magee, a total stranger, an itinerant street busker.

  And hadn’t they all tried to make him see the foolhardiness of his action?

  Aye, but perhaps there was something more a father could have done, had he not lost his temper and washed his hands of his own son.

  Conn clenched his jaw, recalling Aidan’s warning that they might meet with more trouble in America than anything they had ever known in Ireland. What a bitter thing it would be if his son turned out to be right.

  Vangie still held it against him that he had not been able to coax Aidan into coming with them. No doubt she thought if he had tried harder, he might have changed the boy’s mind. But Aidan had made his choice, and that was the end of it. There was no purpose in dredging up the pain time and again. They had enough to worry over as it was.

  Vangie was keen on reminding him that worry was a sin, that the answer to their prayers might not come quickly, but it would come eventually if they maintained their faith. Conn wanted to believe, as his wife did, that it was only a matter of time before something good found its way to them. But he had never been a patient man, and it was a hard thing entirely to have patience in the face of his family’s growing need.

  “In God’s time,” Vangie would say. “It will happen in God’s time.”

  He could only hope that God’s time would come soon, for he did not see how they could go on as they were much longer.

  With Baby Emma in her arms, Vangie cracked the door enough to watch Conn trudge off down the street, his hands in his pockets, his cap pushed back on his head. Love for him welled up in her, but it was a love bruised by pain. The pain of watching her husband’s pride drain away, day after day, like the lifeblood trickling from a mortal wound.

  Conn was a proud man. Too proud, some might say. But he was also a good man, a man who looked after his family and took seriously his responsibilities as a husband and father. He had never been one for the drink, nor had she ever known him to cast a roving eye, although the women were quick enough to eye him. Gambling held no appeal for him, and he routinely handed his pay over to her before it had so much as warmed his palm. Back home, he had been known for his honesty and his willingness to lend a hand to his neighbors. By any account, he was a man to respect.

  He was not, however, a man meant to be idle. It was bitter enough for a man like Conn to be unemployed, but to see his wife and daughter working when he could not must chafe his very soul. Vangie had seen the anger—and the anguish—that flared in his eyes when he walked into the room and saw her and Nell Grace at their respective tasks, and him with nothing to do. She knew all too well the toll this was wreaking on him, and the knowing wrenched her heart.

  If only Aidan had come with them, perhaps things would have been different…

  Impatiently, she shook off the thought. What would have been different? Then both of them would have been looking for work. A lot of help that would be to Conn.

  But at least she would have had the comfort of her son. If Conn’s temper hadn’t been so quick that last day in the harbor, perhaps he might have been able to talk some sense into Aidan and persuade him to come with them after all.

  The nails of both hands dug into her palms until she wondered that she didn’t draw blood. She had to stop this puzzling over what they might have done—what Conn might have done—to keep Aidan from staying behind. Had to stop wishing for what might have been.

  Had to stop blaming Conn for their son’s willfulness. She turned away from the door and set the baby to the floor beside the table, giving her a tin cup and spoon to play with. Nell Grace came into the room, her dark red hair tied neatly back with a piece of ribbon. “Morning, Mum. I’ll dress Emma if you like.”

  “There’s no hurry. You have your breakfast first so you can get on with your work. The boys will be up soon, and we’ll need to clear a place for them to eat.”

  As if she could read the worry in Vangie’s face, Nell Grace came to put a hand to her arm. “Da will find a job any day now, I’m sure. He just needs to find the right place, is all. A place where someone can recognize a man’s worth for what it is.”

  Vangie turned to look at her, surprised but grateful for this thinly veiled attempt to lift her spirits. “Aye, the both of us know that, now don’t we? ’Tis himself we need to convince.”

  Nell Grace smiled a little as she sat down to her bowl of stirabout. “You could convince Da of just about anything, I expect.”

  Vangie looked at her. “Is that so?”

  “It is,” Nell Grace said, not looking up. “Doesn’t he dote on your every word? I only hope the man I marry will be as taken with my opinions as Da is yours.”

  “And aren’t you a bit too young just yet, miss, to be thinking about the man you will one day marry?”

  Nell Grace lifted one delicate eyebrow. “Tell me again, Mum, for I forget—how old were you when you married Da?”

  Vangie’s attempted frown crumbled under her daughter’s mischievous grin. “You know very well I was exactly the age you are now. Seventeen years. But didn’t it only make things harder for us, being wed so young? I want better for you.”

  Nell Grace regarded her with a long, unsettling look. “Then you want more for me than I want for myself. I couldn’t imagine anything much better than being married to a man who would look at me the way
Da looks at you, and after twenty years at that.”

  Vangie felt herself flush. “Fuist! Such foolish talk, and to your mother! You’d best finish your breakfast and tend to your flowers, miss.”

  She went to start the dishes, but after a moment stole a glance at Nell Grace, who already seemed to have forgotten their exchange and now sat eating, absorbed in her own thoughts.

  Vangie smiled as she turned back to the dishes. Nell Grace was right. Despite the struggles and drudgery that had filled so many of their years together, what she had with Conn MacGovern was something other women could search for a lifetime over and never find.

  In truth, she wouldn’t have traded even the hardest times for a different life with someone else. She was blessed even when burdened. The thought both shamed her and quickened the struggling hope within her heart. And suddenly even the chill that clung to the cabin walls seemed to give way to an unfamiliar warmth, a warmth that had nothing to do with the stingy bit of fire fighting to stay alive in the aged stove.

  Vangie felt a tug on her skirts and looked down to see Baby Emma reaching up for her. Quickly she dried her hands and lifted the toddler into her arms, burying her face in the cloud of red-gold curls that so distinctly marked the offspring of Conn MacGovern.

  3

  TOWARD HOME

  Let others delight mid new pleasures to roam,

  But give me, oh, give me, the pleasures of home!

  JOHN HOWARD PAYNE

  By midmorning, Renny Magee was hotfooting it back toward the house. Already she had dodged two drunken reprobates, a filthy old woman with not a tooth in her head, and a gaggle of swaggering bullies too young for whiskers, but who clearly fancied themselves men to be reckoned with.

  Of course, they hadn’t counted on Renny Magee. Just because she was slight and thin as a whip, their type almost always made the mistake of assuming she was also frail and weak—and perhaps simpleminded as well.

  She grinned to herself at the thought of how she had easily showed them up for the great lumpheads they were. Like most of the other tomfools who lurked about Bottle Alley, the boyos she’d met up with this morning had been neither clever enough nor quick enough to so much as give her a good chase. She’d outrun the lot of them in a shake without ever losing a breath.