Of Irish Blood (12 page)

“Made by the Paris dressmaker, Madame Simone,” Dolly says.

“Who did the dress you wore to Mame’s wedding?”

“Yes, she…”

“Are you two nuts?” Carrie shouts. Then puts on a falsetto. “Mmmm, I wonder what Nora should wear in her coffin?”

She snaps her fingers in front of Dolly’s face.

“We’ve got to find a place for this kid,” Carrie says.

But Dolly fingers the fabric of her gown. “Velvet,” she says. “Made in France.”

“Dolly,” I say. “Carrie’s right. Tim might be on his way here right now.”

“I’m supposed to take the train to New York tomorrow morning. Then sail to Paris. Pick up the wardrobe I ordered from Madame Simone. I have my passage booked.”

“Dolly, for God’s sake,” Carrie starts.

“Be quiet, Carrie,” Dolly says. “I’m thinking.” She looks at me. “You could go instead,” she says. “Easy enough to change the ticket to your name.”

“Me go to Paris?”

“I wasn’t all that interested in making the trip. Don’t like winter crossings. But thought Tim should worry a bit about what I’d be doing when I was away. Get his attention. But now…”

Carrie laughs.

“Paris?” I say again. “Impossible. I can’t go to Europe. Leave my family, my job? I’ve relatives in Galena—maybe…”

A knock at the door. Then a voice.

“McShane’s here.” It’s Charlie, the doorman. “Drunk. A couple of the stagehands got him in the green room. Gave him a bottle. But he’s cutting up rough, Dolly,” he says.

“Thanks, Charlie. Tell Tim I’ll be there in a minute.”

Dolly sits down at her dressing table, writes a note, puts it in an envelope, which she addresses

“Take this to Madame Simone. Her shop’s on the rue de Rivoli,” Dolly says. “Near the rue Saint-Honoré where the fashion houses are.”

Honoré, I think. Granny Honora. Guiding me? Hadn’t she saved her children, my own da, from starving to death by running for her life with four little ones and a baby on the way. Surely I can rescue myself from one man. Go, I tell myself.

“I’ll go,” I say. “Thank you, Dolly, thank you!”

She opens her dressing table, takes out a small purse. Counts out twenty-five dollars.

“Take this. My wardrobe’s paid for. You check it and arrange with Madame Simone to ship it to me. In the note I suggested she give you a job.”

“A job,” I say. “In Paris?”

“Nora!” Carrie says. “In three minutes McShane could be breaking down this door. No more questions.”

Dolly rubs some rouge into her cheeks. Stands up.

“Go to the Drake,” she says to Carrie. “Have the concierge send a wire to the French Line office. Substitute Nora’s name for mine. The
Chicago
sails Thursday, Nora,” Dolly says. “You’ll have to get the morning train to New York.”

“Wait,” I say. “The name of the ship is the
Chicago
?”

“Didn’t I just say that?” Dolly says.

The
Chicago
. Another good omen.

“Leave through the front of the house,” Dolly says to us. “I’ll take care of Tim.”

She smiles at us and leaves.

“The lion tamer,” Carrie says.

*   *   *

I follow Carrie through the lobby of the Drake and up to the front desk. She gives the concierge Dolly’s instructions and a five-dollar bill. The telegram to the shipping line will go out immediately, he says. Done.

Our room faces the dark expanse of Lake Michigan. We stand looking out.

“Far too much water for me,” Carrie says. “I’m from Tipperary. Never saw the sea until I sailed across it when I was nineteen. Met Dolly when I went for a job as a cleaner in a theater in New York forty years ago.”

“Forty? Then Dolly’s…”

“Old enough to know better, but this McShane’s got the kibosh on her. Only a big boob to me, for all his winning ways.” She turns to me. “I’m glad you’re going far away. He’s getting worse. Dolly indulges him. Maybe if she’d taken a firmer hand with him in the beginning.” She shrugs. “I don’t know. Men who hit their women see nothing wrong with it. Like she’s theirs to do with whatever they want.”

“I’m so grateful. I can’t believe Dolly’s so generous,” I say.

“Cheaper than paying for a lawyer to defend Tim on a murder rap after he kills you! Once you go, Dolly will bring him back into line. He didn’t want her to go to Paris. She’ll say she changed her mind for him.”

Carrie walks away from the window and turns down the two beds. “There’s a nightgown for you in that bag,” she says.

I pull out a long silk garment with a plunging neckline edged in lace and hold it up to me.

“One of Dolly’s. Always has the right costume for the scene, does Dolly,” Carrie says. “Why she needs a leading man. Me, I prefer flannel.”

“I think I’ll sleep in my clothes, just in case I have to get up and run,” I say. Still in the black funeral dress.

“McShane doesn’t know where you are. Besides, the house dick here’s a tough old bird. Sleep will put one night between you and what happened.”

But I can’t undress. I lie awake clutching the sheets, listening for footsteps in the hotel hallway. I had wanted to send a note to Henrietta by way of Dolly’s chauffeur.

But Carrie said, “Oh great. And what if Tim’s casing your joint and sees Raymond pull up in Dolly’s Daimler?”

“But I have no clothes,” I said. “Only this black dress.”

“Buy them in New York,” she told me. “Go to Delancey Street.”

New York? Paris? The farthest I’ve been from Chicago is Eagle River, Wisconsin, where Ed has a summer cabin. I’ll never close my eyes again, I think. But I do.

The rising sun wakes me. Confused, I look around the strange room but then I sit straight up and remember. Tim. Dolly. Paris. Carrie is snoring away.

Ashamed to put words to what happened, even to myself. Couldn’t tell Mike. He’d do more than have a word with Tim McShane. He’d tear his head off, or try to anyway. God knows what Tim would do in return. Doesn’t bear thinking about. Tim’s got a gun.

What now? I have to let someone know I’m leaving. Ed, I think. Ed, who’ll be heading toward me right now. An odd habit he has of running along the Lake at sunrise even in winter. Some old boxer had told him an hour of pounding along was all the training he’d ever need for the ring.

“You’ll have two strong legs, powerful lungs, and a fixed mind,” the fellow told him.

Ed said it worked. Hadn’t he been undefeated in every Brighton Park match? Told me he outlasted his opponents. Something to be said for staying on your feet no matter the blows rained on you, he said.

I teased him: “Jesus, Ed, you’re too skinny to be the next Jack Dempsey, so why bother?”

“It’s enough to be Champ of Brighton Park,” he told me.

His fighting days long past. A serious engineer but still there at ringside for every bout. And he runs each morning, then ducks into early Mass at Holy Name. I take the boat ticket, money, write a note to Carrie, then leave the room.

I find Ed rounding the corner of Michigan Avenue right under the Drake Hotel sign. The sun is pushing itself out of the Lake.

“Ed.” I stand in front of him.

“Nonie? What? Did somebody die?” Looking at me dressed in the chorus girl’s funeral clothes.

“Nobody died, Ed, but I have to talk to you.”

The sun’s up now, turning the dark water of the Lake blue.

“Let’s go down to the shore,” he says.

I nod but, my God, what a hike, through a wasteland of weeds and bits of wood and trash washed up from the Lake. Train tracks built on a trestle right in the water. I hear the whistle of the Illinois Central Railroad.

And, of course, Ed starts up again about how there should be beaches here sweeping from the north to the south, and families strolling along grass instead of picking their way through decayed animal carcasses and rotting piles of garbage. As if the rich will ever let people from the slums into their front yards on Sunday afternoon.

He’s waving his hands and saying “Granny Honora” and “Galway Bay” and “Chicago could be as green as Ireland” until I shout: “Ed! I’m in trouble.”

I see his face.

“No, I’m not having a child, but…”

I walk over to a flat rock and sit down, patting a place for him next to me. He sits.

“I have to leave Chicago.”

“Good to travel a bit,” he says. “Gives perspective. After being away with the surveying team I saw that Chicago will never take its place among the great cities of the world until our lakefront—”

“Please, Ed! I have to leave today!”

Damn. I’m sniveling. Can’t cry. So I start to talk fast. I make myself tell him everything. The words pour out of me. My years with Tim and last night. Ed gets up, pacing as I speak. Not looking at me.

I finish with, “Tim McShane says he’ll kill me if I leave him and I’ve left him.”

“Mike and I’ll have a word with McShane. Don’t you worry.”

“No, Ed, he’s a black-hearted bastard. I’ve been pretending not to see it for years. No telling what he’ll do.”

“Let him take a swing at me. I’ll flatten him just like I knocked out that foreman.” Ed’s finest hour. He hit a fellow who’d been abusing him and the rest of the crew. Sent to Colonel Robert McCormick, head of the Sanitary District, to be fired. Turned out McCormick liked a man who stood up for himself, promoted Ed and they’d been friends ever since, even though McCormick was a die-hard Republican.

“But McShane’s got a pistol. I have to get away. Please. Listen to me!”

Finally Ed nods. “Well, we’ve family in Galena.”

“I’m afraid he’ll come looking for me. I’m going to Paris.”

“I suppose that’s far enough south,” Ed says. “And I’ve a friend—”

“Not Paris, Illinois, Ed. Paris, France.”

That gets him.

“Nonie, you’re nuts!”

“I can’t tell you any details, but a friend’s giving me a ticket and the chance of a job.”

Ed’s shaking his head. About to argue.

“Tim’s dangerous, Ed,” I say. “He’ll go to the newspapers. He’ll use me to get at you, the family.”

“He may do it anyway.”

“Once I’m gone, Dolly will handle him. Please, Ed.”

He looks at me for a long time. “Okay,” he says. “You’ll need money. We’ll go to the bank and…”

“I have to go now! Catch the nine o’clock train to New York. I have twenty-five dollars.”

“Not enough,” he says.

I follow him onto Delaware Street where his Packard is parked. We get in the big car.

“We’ll stop at my house, then I’ll drive you to the train.”

“Oh Ed. Thank you! You’re being so good to me. I can’t thank you … I’m so ashamed … I…”

“Whist!” Granny Honora’s word. “You’re a Kelly, Nonie—my own flesh and blood.”

“Flesh and blood,” I say. “What will Mike think. He’ll hate me! I’ll never be able to face him. I…”

“Never is a long time, Nonie.”

“You’re not going to tell him about … Tim McShane.”

“Not as big a secret as you think, Nonie,” he says.

“Oh, God, Mike knows?”

“McShane’s a braggart and, well one night at the Palmer House bar he hinted around to Mike that you were…”

“And Mike?”

“Called him a liar and walked out. McShane was drunk.”

“Oh, no. When?”

“Must be a year ago.”

“And neither of you said anything?”

“I asked my wife and she said the fellow was crazy. That you would never…”

“Ed, you told Mary … and did Mike tell Mame?” I can hardly say the words.

“I told you Nonie, we decided it wasn’t true and it’s not. Deny everything. His word against yours.”

His wife Mary lets us in to his house, says nothing but “Good morning, Nonie,” and goes back to feeding baby Eddie his breakfast. Lovely little fellow, the spit of Ed, this third Kelly redhead.

Amazing that she asks me no questions. We chat about the baby while Ed goes into another room. A good politician’s wife.

Ed hands me an envelope. Twenty-five dollars inside.

“Let’s go,” he says.

We’re on Archer, almost downtown at the station, when I say, “Ed. I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I let myself…” I stop. “Do you hate me, Ed? Will the others?”

He turns and smiles. Thank God.

“I love you, Nonie. We’re the redheads, the Twins. People make mistakes. It’s what they do afterwards that counts.”

“What will you tell the family? What about Mr. Bartlett? My job?”

“I’ll tell Al Bartlett you had to settle family business in Ireland. And as for the family. Maybe better they don’t know where you’re going if McShane comes looking for you.”

The thought of that. Dolly won’t let him. Dolly will …

“What about a passport?” Ed asks me.

“Passport? I don’t even have underwear,” I say.

“Not required to have a passport really,” he says. “But it might not be a bad idea for you to carry some document. It’s just eight o’clock. Pat’ll be in his office.”

“Pat?”

“Pat Nash. He’ll have an idea.”

We pull into Nash Brothers construction yard. A whole block on West Eighteenth Street.

“Stay here, Nonie,” Ed says.

I’m glad to sit in the car. Wouldn’t want to try to explain myself to Pat Nash.

In ten minutes Ed trots back to the car.

“We have to hurry. Matt’s waiting at his house.”

So. I leave Chicago with fifty dollars, Madame Simone’s address, and a temporary passport issued by Federal Judge Matthew Craig.

“I’ll be back in the spring,” I tell Ed as I board the train. I’ll write to the others. I will, I think as we pull out of the station. But now it’s relief I feel.

Glad when the last bit of Chicago slides by. Get away. Get away. Get away.

5

PARIS 1911–1914

NOVEMBER 1911

I stand in front of the Gare Saint-Lazare repeating to myself the name of the Paris hotel I want. “L’Hôtel Jeanne d’Arc,” the steward on the S.S.
Chicago
had said. A Frenchman and a good fellow. Somehow knew how lost I felt on that huge ship full of fancy people. Overwhelmed by the luxury of the first-class cabin where I spent most of the voyage. Sick. The steward had brought me the few meals I could eat. And afraid too. What if Tim McShane had somehow followed me? On the ship. Ready to pounce.

Crazy I know, but if you’ve ever been really afraid you understand how your own mind can make the impossible seem all too probable. That noise at midnight? Tim McShane waiting outside my cabin door, going to break it down. And my heart beat fast and my throat went dry and …