Fire & Water (30 page)

“Go on,” my friend urged, grinding her cigarette with her toe. “I’m not getting any younger here.”

Alice opened the door. “Katie!” she cried. “How lovely it is to see you.” She seemed to struggle, resisting the urge for a customary hug.

“How is he?” I whispered.

Alice’s face changed from delight to a question mark and she glanced at Mary K. Just then, I heard the mixed voices of Tully, Dad, and Dr. Schwartz coming from his parlor.

I stepped through the archway into the so-familiar book-lined room with the smell of old books and furniture polish greeting me at entry. Keats, Dylan Thomas, Czeslaw Milosz, and Wordsworth stood sentry from the shelves where Dr. Schwartz had tried to woo me into their pages. Instead I’d always gravitated to Darwin’s
Evolution of a Species
and
Gray’s Anatomy
,
where more measurable, predictable answers could be found.
These shelves had provided me so many answers as a child, but now the room was filled with only questions. There, sitting around the coffee table, sat my dad, Tully, and a surprisingly upright Ivan Schwartz.

“Oh, Kitten. I—” my dad began to say.

“What the hell?” I interrupted. I scanned the faces then turned to Mary K, whose eyes were cast toward the floor.

“I thought you said he was sick. That there wasn’t much time.”

“Technically, I didn’t say anybody was sick. All I said was Dr. Schwartz needed to see you. And he does. And don’t you think enough time has been wasted already?”

“So now you’re lying to me, too?” I reached toward the doorknob.

“Come on, Murphy,” Mary K whispered, resting her hand on my forearm. “You haven’t exactly been a fountain of whole truths yourself lately. I couldn’t think of any other way to get this reunion going.”

I shot daggers with my eyes to the rest of the room’s inhabitants. “I suppose you all had a good laugh planning this little ruse.”

Mary K squeezed my arm. “Nope. This one you can blame completely on me. I just told them I had invited you over.”

“Another lie,” I barked. “This is getting to be quite a habit.”

“How’s Jake?” Tully asked.

“Jim Dandy,” I said, sarcasm dripping from my words. Tully’s face registered the blow with a wince.

Dad set the coffee on the table. “I know you’re angry. But your friend got us together so that we could talk. And I, for one, am grateful she did.”

A hot lava of rage rose into my throat. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

Like a sprung steel trap, Dad flung his leg and kicked the coffee table. Coffee splashed onto the table’s surface. “Goddamn it to hell, Katie! Can you set your fool pride aside for just one minute?”

Frozen, I stared into my dad’s reddened face, then caught glimpses of Tully and Alice, whose eyes were bugging out. I’d never heard my father utter a curse word in my life, much less directed at me.

As if moving through water, Dr. Schwartz’s twisted hand raised, silencing us all. In his cobwebbed voice, he whispered, “Listen, Katherine. You must listen.”

My father squirmed and cleared his throat. He, Tully, and Alice exchanged glances. silently obtaining each other’s consent. Mary K’s face wore my own curiosity and trepidation. “We should have told you the whole thing back when you learned about Elyse’s death.”

Though Dr. Schwartz’s voice was breathy, his words still bore their usual sureness. “Time conspires to bury the best of intentions, dear Katherine. And cowardice takes advantage.”

Tully patted my dad’s back, and it seemed to strengthen him. We all settled into seats; Alice poured coffee for Mary K and me and wiped what Dad had spilled.

Dad spoke first. “When I courted your mother back in Kilkenny, the war had ended and I’d done my two tours of duty. She’d lost all three of her brothers in that war. She was just eighteen. Wanted a family right away. A little joy to offset all of that sorrow. Shortly after we married, she was expecting. Our joy faded when that wee spirit went on back to heaven just a month before he was to be born.”

I chewed the snags of skin around my thumbnail, enough to taste the salt of my own blood.

“We laid him to rest in the Ryan family cemetery in a casket no bigger than a whiskey box.” Dad looked deep into my eyes. “That tiny headstone was joined by three others just like it in two years’ time.”

I couldn’t look at Alice.

“We moved here to the States,” Dad said. “There was too much sadness on that hill for us. I wasn’t so much help to her in those times. Spent a fair amount of my time in my cups, I’m afraid. A lot of the soldiers came home that way.”

I felt the question that must have shown on my face. “Oh, I tipped the whiskey pretty good in those days, I did. But we made promises when we crossed the Atlantic that we’d leave all of that behind us. Her sadness and my drinking.”

Tully nodded knowingly.

My dad continued with some of the parts of the story I had known since childhood. Alice had been part of St. Anne’s greeting committee and had welcomed them into the neighborhood. They busied themselves with starting the pub. Alice soon became the first employee and the younger sister Elyse never had. Tully put the first coat of paint on the walls of the pub. Dr. Schwartz was the first paying customer. “It’s his dollar bill in the frame behind the bar,” Dad said. “These three became our family.”

Dr. Schwartz’s gauzy words came between thin breaths. “When my Ruth passed on, I was lost. A widower, no children. Elyse and Alice helped me so much.”

“We worked hard and life was good,” Dad continued, “but Elyse noticed time passing. Every month her womb was empty she seemed to get smaller. Her nerves grew more ragged. She prayed for a baby every day and every night. Then finally we found out she was expecting. I never saw her face happier.”

Tully lifted his chin, his face washed with happiness. “She truly glowed, didn’t she, Angus? As her belly got rounder, her smile got brighter.” I recalled the photograph on my mantle. If pure joy could be captured on film, it was on that black-and-white picture of a mother-to-be.

“But it wasn’t to be,” Dad sighed. “That child was born with his heart as still as a winter midnight. When the doctor told her that there’d be no more babies—well, I surely thought it would kill her.”

I looked at my dad. “So what? You slept with her friend so she could have a baby?”

Alice’s jaw fell, her mouth hanging agape. “Katie, no. Is that what you thought?”

I sank deeper into my chair.

“No, Katie. No. Your father loved your mother, and Elyse was like a sister to me.” Though still confused, I relaxed a little with this one fear eliminated. Picking up the baton of the story, Alice continued telling of some pieces of her life that I knew, but others that were new to me. “About that time my last marriage ended. You know me. I never had any luck at love. Married a con man, two drunkards, and a man with a temper.”

Tully’s fingers wadded into fists. “That old fart Father Fahey sent Alice back to that rat bastard, Clive. Even when he beat her bloody.” A look of sisterly love passed from Alice to Tully.

Alice tilted her head and looked deeper into my eyes. “I was angry. Foolish. Lonely. Making nothing but bad choices. I met a tall, good-looking fella. Charlie Crowe. A businessman from Minnesota. He was charming and funny.” Alice shrugged. “Married.” She seemed to scan my face for disapproval. “Well, nature and bad judgment sort of took over, and—”

Dr. Schwartz stepped in when words failed Alice. “This part you don’t know, Katherine. Alice found out she was expecting just a few months after Elyse delivered her stillborn child.”

Alice’s words scrambled out of her mouth. “I couldn’t break up a family, Katie. Charlie had three little ones at home. I never even told him. And an unmarried woman, a Catholic, just didn’t go and have a baby on her own back then and—”

Their voices, like a fugue, took turns rendering each part, revising my biography with every sentence. Before Alice was showing, she and Elyse went to Dublin. They told everyone at St. Anne’s and the pub that Elyse was expecting again and wanted to go back to her homeland to deliver. “Another cluster of fibs, I’m afraid,” Alice sighed.

Dr. Schwartz gave them money enough for transportation, to live on for six months, and to cover Alice’s medical care. Alice looked lovingly at Dr. Schwartz. Her eyes glistened. “He said he’d never gotten the chance to provide for his own baby, so he’d like to help welcome this one into the world.” Alice told the midwife who delivered me that her name was Elyse Murphy and that her husband was “across the pond,” waiting to hear of the blessed arrival.

Alice looked into my eyes. “Elyse and I came back here and let everyone believe you’d been born to her.”

“So you were ashamed,” I said. “You lied to protect your reputation. You lied to me my whole life.”

“To protect myself, yes,” Alice said, nodding. “That’s part of the truth. But it’s the smallest part. It was to protect you, too. I wanted you to have every chance. I wanted you to have a father.”

“So you’re not even my father,” I said, willing tears away.

“But I am. As surely as if my blood ran through your veins, I’m your father, Kitten. Always will be.”

“Blood isn’t everything,” Tully said.

“That’s it, then? What else? What other lies have I been told? I want it all out right now.”

“That’s all of it, Katie.” Tully said. “They say in AA that you’re only as sick as your secrets. If that’s true, then the four of us here just got a lot healthier.”

“But why?” I asked. “Why didn’t you tell me six years ago, when I learned about Mother’s suicide?” I looked at Alice. “I had a right to know that you were my—that Ryan has a living grandmother.”

“Everything in me wanted to tell you. That morning of your wedding and again at the baby shower before Ryan was born, I almost did. But then I remembered.”

“You mean you lost your nerve.” My jaw muscles clenched as I probed Alice’s dewy eyes.

“No,” Alice said. “I remembered the promise we made to your mother.”

Tully chimed in. “We promised Elyse you’d grow up as her daughter and she promised Alice that she’d always have a place in your life.”

Dr. Schwartz’s convulsive movements announced that he wanted to speak. “You must choose how to view this new information. Either you’ve been betrayed in the cruelest of ways…” The seconds whirred while he tried to still himself enough to speak. “Or the people around you… flawed humans that we are… made enormous sacrifices on your behalf and now look to you for forgiveness and understanding.”

“You can hate us all, Kitten. But I swear on all that is holy that we’ve not withheld another thing from you. The only shared blood in this room is between you and Alice, but the rest of us are all family just the same.”

My mind raced through a catalogue of images. Tully teaching me to ride a bike; Dad collecting flowers and birds’ eggs with me in the park; Alice sewing jumpers for me; Dr. Schwartz teaching me how to divide fractions. Burt and Mary K now served those roles for Ryan, while her father, the one whose blood ran through her veins, lay in a darkened cocoon of isolation and her mother was barely holding herself together.

I sat there immobile and wishing that I could turn back the clock. I wanted to travel back to the time before I knew that even my most trusted relationships included deceit. I wanted Ryan to be an innocent toddler again, and for Jake to be her adoring daddy. I looked at the frail, tremulous shell of the wise and brilliant man I’d loved my whole life—the man I now knew had provided support to me even before I was born. I looked into Angus Murphy’s dove-gray eyes and saw nothing but the love and kindness that had always meant “father” to me. Tully’s basset-hound face drooped, weighted by the worry that something had irreparably changed between us.

But it was Alice’s face that held my gaze for what seemed an eternity. When I tried to envision her at my age, pregnant and afraid, I could see only my own image in her face. I too had found myself unexpectedly pregnant, as she had. But unlike her, I’d had all that I’d needed to make whatever choice I’d wanted for my child. And even now I didn’t know if the choices I’d made were good ones. Alice had been a mother to me in every possible way—perhaps a better one that I was being to Ryan— and now I understood what she’d sacrificed on my behalf.

Mary K nudged me with her shoulder. “So how long am I going to be in the doghouse?”

“Hard to say,” I said, trying to maintain the anger I’d felt when I hit the door. But even then I could feel the cooling of my rage. The fixed yardstick by which I’d always measured things like truth, family, and loyalty had turned to rubber, flexible for changing circumstances. My scientific method for determining right from wrong, wise from foolish, was failing me, giving me unpredictable results.

“That’s okay,” Mary K replied with a second nudge. “I don’t mind it in the doghouse for awhile. It’s where some of my best friends hang out. Just remember to throw a dog a bone now and then, will ya’, Murphy?”

As if mocking me, the well-thumbed copy of Rumi’s
The Book of Love
sitting on the end table next to Dr. Schwartz came into my vision. The words that my mentor had read to me so many times, urging me to take them in, only to have them categorically dismissed, began to reel around in my mind. “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing/ there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”