Dead Irish (11 page)

Hardy looked blank, and Andy explained. One of his foursome out at the Olympic Club represented some people in litigation against Cruz. A bait-and-switch case. Seems Cruz had suckered a group of his distributors into laying out big bucks to buy into his newspaper’s growth—trucks and coin machines and so on—and then when the paper got into the black, he cut them off, went in-house with the distribution.

“And, of course, being good third-world brothers and sisters for the most part, it was all oral.”

Jane touched her father’s arm. “Daddy.”

“I’m not worked up,” he said, “and that wasn’t a racist remark. And if it was, even here in the bosom of my family, I retract it.”

That’s why he might lie, Hardy was thinking, about knowing one of his distributor’s employees. “Could I meet this guy, your friend?” Missing the father-daughter exchange altogether.

Andy nodded, finishing his drink. “Sure, got a pen?”

He gave Hardy the number on a card, then kissed his daughter. “Well, we working stiffs have to get up in the morning.” He stood up, extended his hand again. “Dismas, I mean it—I’ve missed you. Come around sometime. Get arrested if you need an excuse.”

He took them both in. “Damn shame,” he repeated, as though to himself, about as subtle as a dart in the eye.

They watched him weave through the tables. Jane put her hand on Hardy’s thigh, let it rest there. “Now what?” She half turned to him on the barstool.

His thoughts had suddenly turned to Cruz, back to Ed and Frannie. “I guess I’m going to call your dad’s friend.”

“No, Dismas.” The eyes flickered briefly with amusement. “About us.”

It was a flat question—no coy girl stuff. “Us?”

“You and me. Us.”

“It seems funny, doesn’t it?”

“It didn’t seem funny a half hour ago.”

She’d gotten him there, he had to admit. “No, it didn’t.” Then, “Do I have to answer right now?” He reached out his hand along the bar, and there was hers again, holding his. “Shit, Jane, we’re divorced.”

Jane lifted his hand and kissed it. “Out there . . .”

Hardy nodded. “But that was never the problem anyway.”

“No, I remember.”

No smile. Just stating a fact.

“Maybe that was rare, huh?”

“Maybe.”

They both went to their glasses. Jane’s hand rested on his, unfamiliar and frightening. He noticed the coral nail polish flawlessly applied, the cool trace of blue vein under the olive-tan skin. Jane’s hand right there. He put his glass down and reached over with his other hand, covering it.

“How about, maybe next week or so, we go on a date?”

That had been something between them when they’d been married. They’d gone on dates.

“A real date?” she asked.

“Yeah, you know—dinner, a movie, like that.”

She thought a minute. “What night?”

13

AT THE RECTORY Jim Cavanaugh sat in his library, a book facedown on his lap. It was ten in the morning, and the unseasonable warm spell was continuing. That day he’d gotten up at five and walked the streets around St. Elizabeth’s for a half hour reading his breviary. After the six-thirty Mass, attended by twenty-three elderly women and his two altar boys, he had returned to the rectory and gone directly to the library. That had been nearly three hours ago.

Rose peeked in to see him staring at the window. “Father?” He looked at her, grief all over his face. “Are you all right?”

The question seemed to throw him. “I’m fine, Rose, thank you.”

The old woman paused, not wanting to push him, but concerned. “Will you be having breakfast, then? I could just reheat the eggs. The micro works good on those. Or even make up some new ones.”

Cavanaugh smiled at the housekeeper. “I forgot breakfast, didn’t I? My rhythms seem all off.”

She supposed he meant to laugh at himself—that was how he was, secure enough to enjoy his own foibles. But he didn’t laugh. Maybe, as he’d said, his rhythms were off. Instead, he sighed and went back to staring at the window.

She didn’t like to see him taking the death so hard. Not that Eddie hadn’t been a wonderful boy.

No. She guessed he was—he’d been—a man, though sometimes it was hard to realize it when they grew up right in front of you like that.

But that was the way life was, she thought. A vale of tears, as the prayer said. Eddie’s death was a tragedy, no doubt of that, but you didn’t let yourself sit and stare out windows. At least not for too long.

She learned that when Dan had been killed in the war. That was life. It wasn’t fair. It was a tragedy, all right. But it was God’s will, not for her to understand. And she never would, not ever. She would just have faith and believe that she would see Dan again in heaven. And if she hadn’t pulled herself up by her bootstraps and forced herself back to life, she might not have ever recovered. That all seemed so long ago now. Strange to remember that she really thought she wouldn’t survive. Not that there wasn’t some pain, but it was a different kind now, certainly nothing to die over.

So she could understand Father’s reaction. In many ways, Eddie was the son he could never have. And his death was another bond to Erin, lost, too. She wondered if that hurt him as much as anything.

No, she thought. He was, after all, a priest. He probably didn’t let himself think like that, though a blind person could see the love he had for that woman. Well, she couldn’t blame him for that. Erin was a saint, and beautiful to boot.

She sighed. “Father?”

The priest faced her but didn’t even seem to see her. His eyes had that hollow look they sometimes got. It was her privilege to see him like that, when he wasn’t “on.” He was lost inside himself.

She’d try to bring him back, but slowly, in the proper time. No sense bothering him anymore this morning.

Quietly, she closed the door and walked back to the kitchen. For lunch, she thought, I’ll go out to the store and buy some corned beef and a fresh loaf of rye. He’ll be hungry come lunchtime. He’ll never turn down a corned beef on rye.

Erin was thinking that it must be easier for everyone else, with their daily activities: Big Ed was back at work, Steven and Jodie were in finals week, Mick had gone off to ROTC drill camp, Jim Cavanaugh had his duties at church. Everyone had something to take the mind off it.

She sat at the table in the breakfast nook, a cold cup of coffee at her elbow, her calendar open in front of her—the calendar by which she ordered her time, being there for everyone who asked, always finding the energy. Now she looked down at it. Slowly she turned the page back to the past week.

All those appointments unkept. Look at them. Dinner plans with Ed for Wednesday, Friday and Saturday nights. His Knights of Columbus picnic (and her note “Make pasta salad”) on Sunday. Volunteer work at St. Mary’s Hospital. Take Mrs. Ryan to physical therapy. The S.I. women’s committee had their annual housecleaning—getting the classrooms at St. Ignatius prepped for the painters before summer school started. Babysit Lottie’s kids while she and Hal went to Monterey.

And that was just the “public” list. There was also the general housecleaning for her perfect house. The screens had to go up. She had wanted to plant the impatiens for summer. The wallpapering . . .

She and Jim Cavanaugh had had their usual Thursday lunch, although after last week . . .

Well, he’d apologized for that, had called her that afternoon, broken up but managing to sound very much like his old self. What had gotten into him, wanting to kiss her? Naturally, she had known Jim felt something for her, but it was probably like the seven-year itch in marriage. The priesthood must have its own cycles. It had been her fault, really—listening to him so sympathetically over lunch. She had been stupid to ignore the signs. She knew them well enough with other men. Jim was a man, and all men, even priests, had their egos. She hadn’t meant to hurt him, of course, but . . .

But really, that whole thing—God! less than a week ago—had happened in the far distant past. What did it matter now?

She glanced down at the calendar. What did any of it matter now?

She sighed. What if she had seen, one week ago, the real calendar? Monday, Eddie is killed.

What would happen this week?

She touched her face, her hand shaking. No, don’t start thinking like that. But she looked down anyway. The week held far fewer appointments, none of which she felt she had the strength to keep. She wondered who had taken Hal and Lottie’s children, if they’d gone on their vacation to Monterey after all. They hadn’t been at the funeral.

“Stop it,” she said aloud. But her mind kept humming. She saw Eddie’s casket at Ging’s, heard Big Ed’s one sob as he knelt before it, saw Frannie almost go down at the gravesite.

She shook her head again. Yes, the others had it easier now. It had been bearable, getting breakfast made because Big Ed had been there, next to her, touching as they passed each other. But now, with nothing to do but think and remember, she didn’t know if she could stand it.

Maybe she should go and wake up Frannie?

But Frannie, nowhere near as strong as she was, needed her rest. She was sure of that.

“Hi.”

There she was, in the doorway. Erin hadn’t even heard her. “Are you okay?” Frannie asked.

“Sure. I’m just”—she motioned to the calendar—“The week . . . just seems kind of long.”

Frannie came over next to her. She was barefoot, wearing one of Jodie’s robes, and ran her hand across Erin’s shoulders, leaving her arm draped there.

Erin shook her head again, unable now to see the calendar. Why is that? she thought. And what is this rushing sensation? She turned into her daughter-in-law, hiding her face in the front of the robe. Frannie hugged her close, and suddenly Erin couldn’t hold back anymore.

“It’s all right,” Frannie said, “it’s all right.”

Over and over, as the tears wouldn’t stop.

Bunch of dorks, Steven thought as the class filed out around him. Everybody talking about how tough the test was. What was hard was having to sit there after you were finished for twenty minutes while the rest of the class labored over this bullshit.

Okay, so if that got to him, he’d just stay longer, until everybody’d gone.

“You finished, Steven?”

Mr. Andre, a major-league nerd, though he knew his math, stood up by the desk, waiting. Normally, he called Steven Mr. Cochran. All the kids here at S.I. were Mister. So maybe Andre felt sorry for him because of Eddie.

Well, fuck that. “I was done a half hour ago.”

“Too easy?”

Steven shrugged.

Andre was stacking the other tests, cutting him all the slack in the world. “You want to bring it up?”

He gathered his books, head hung down. Andre was standing right over his desk. “I’ll take it. I’m very sorry about your brother.”

Thanks, that helps a lot, Steven thought as he squeezed out by him. “Yeah,” he said.

Big Ed didn’t tell Erin that he called in sick. He figured not telling her didn’t break their rule about being truthful to each other, even when it would hurt. She didn’t have to know he’d come here. She’d only worry about him, and she had enough on her mind.

The gravesite seemed different. They had put the stone up, was one thing. “Edward John Cochran, Jr.—1962-1988.”

He wished he could somehow wipe off the last numbers, make them not have happened. Go back with his wife and kids to two weeks ago and just stop everything right there for all time.

Kneeling on the wet morning ground, he thought out the last time he’d seen Eddie alive, the disagreement they’d had. He wished it hadn’t happened, the same way he wished every tiny event of the last week hadn’t ever been, as though any small change might have prevented what was.

Anyway, the argument hadn’t been important. And it wasn’t as if father and son hadn’t gotten along in general. Sometimes Eddie got a little carried away with his brains, was all, maybe thought his dad was a little too salt-of-the-earth.

Ed didn’t know. Maybe he was a little simple. Things seemed to work for him, though. What was so tough, you had to get all worked up over them? He didn’t get it. You just did your job, you were faithful to your wife, you stuck by your friends. That was it.

Not, he knew, that there weren’t hard questions. Like Eddie’s problem with his boss. Sure, that wasn’t easy to figure out. Maybe the man was in trouble, and getting in deeper. But Big Ed really believed it wasn’t Eddie’s problem. If it got too serious, Eddie could just go get another job for a couple of months before starting graduate school. There were tons of options.

All of ’em gone.

He moved back into the shade and pulled himself up to sit on a horizontal cypress branch.

He guessed he’d come up here to say a few prayers, but for some reason, they weren’t coming out very well. His mind kept jumping.

Or rather, remembering . . .

“What if,” Eddie had said, “what if you’d been alive in Germany in the thirties and had seen what was going on with Hitler? Would that have been your business?”

“Well, sure.”

“So where do you draw the line?”

And Ed had sat there in the trophy room surrounded by the memorabilia of his family’s life and said: “It’s a commonsense thing. You figure where it’s going to hit you.”

“So what if you weren’t Jewish and you had a good government job in the Third Reich? It wouldn’t have hit you at all?”

“Yeah, but there you’re talking evil.”

“God versus the devil, huh?”

Big Ed realized how dumb that sounded. “I guess you also have to figure out if it’s a big enough issue. If it is, you get in it.”

“How about if getting in it early might keep an issue from getting big in the first place?”

He couldn’t help smiling as he thought back on it. How’d he raised this white knight?

He had changed tacks. “What’s the matter, are you bored at home? Not enough to do?” Meaning it to be funny.

But Eddie didn’t have much of a sense of humor about his notion of right and wrong. He hadn’t actually spoken harshly to his dad, but Big Ed could tell he’d said the wrong thing. “Sometimes,” Eddie said, “there are just things you’ve got to do, even if everything in your life is rosy, or it’s inconvenient.”

“I agree with you,” he’d said, placating. “All I’m saying is you’ve got to pick your shots. You waste your ammo taking target practice, and when real shooting time comes you’re out of luck.”

That’s really what he’d said, and suddenly it brought him up short. He had really talked about guns and ammo. And then, less than a week later . . .

If there was a connection, he thought, between that talk and his son’s death . . .

His brain jumped again. What had Eddie said about his boss—Polk at Army Distributing? Something about him and his wife and the business. Was it just that they were in some kind of trouble, or was that only what Big Ed remembered?

Across the cemetery, through the trees, a black limo was pulling slowly up the hill, leading another group of cars to another hole in the ground.

No, he was sure Eddie hadn’t said what it was. Big Ed kicked at the ground, then stood up. Goddamn, he thought. I should have listened to him, not argued with him. Maybe I’d have some idea now about the why of it all.

They’d laid the sod over Eddie’s grave. It was a good job, he noticed, all but seamless. As he’d done countless other times working at the park, he walked the sod’s edge, pressing it into its bed. He wanted the grass over this grave to grow.

Nobody home.

No surprise there.

He put his books on the table adjacent to the front door and walked back to his bedroom.

Probably out do-gooding somewhere. Making Frannie feel better by taking her to lunch or a museum or a park. Never mind it’s my last day of finals, never mind how I might feel about Eddie being gone. Never mind anything about ol’ Steven.

And Eddie was gone. He was dead. Eddie dead. Say it say it say it.

She hadn’t made the bed again. Well, that experiment had certainly worked. Sure, Mom told him it was his job, but funny, it hadn’t been Eddie’s, or Mick’s. Or if it had been, they hadn’t done it and Mom had covered. But she didn’t cover for him. Not one time. And every day he left the bed unmade, hoping she’d come in, as he’d seen her do every day with his brothers in their room. She’d cluck disapprovingly—but then make the beds.

He turned on the television. Game shows. Give me a break. He couldn’t believe all the smiling and crapola for a couple of questions that he’d known every answer to since he was about six.

He and Eddie, testing each other on dumb things, but loving it:

What island is Tokyo on?

Name the Pharaoh who believed in one god. What was that god’s name?

Who was Alben Barkley?

What kind of books did Yogi Berra read on the road?

Yeah. Well, that was over.

He punched the remote and killed the sound. Watch a game show without sound someday if you want to see what they’re really all about.