Whiskey Island (27 page)

“It must seem that God has turned his back on you, Lena.”

“On me? Oh no, not just on me. On the Irish everywhere!”

“Tommy Sullivan was a good child. He was important to you.”

“As Katie is, still. I fear she’ll never speak again.”

“And so you must speak for her?”

“Someone must!”

“Would it help to know that she still speaks in the confessional? That she hasn’t forgotten how?”

Lena pondered that. She did feel better knowing that Katie’s tongue wasn’t permanently tied.

“Each of us must grieve in his own way,” Father McSweeney said. “Katie has chosen to grieve in silence until she can trust herself to speak again. You’ve chosen to grieve loudly. Perhaps you hope God will punish you and forget about Katie? That you might divert his attention?”

Lena lowered her head. Tears stung her eyes. “I feel so helpless.”

“As you should. The matter of Tommy’s death is not yours to broker. You cannot act as mediator between Katie and God. The only thing you can do, Lena, is to be there to listen when Katie decides to speak again.”

Lena couldn’t manage another word without sobbing. She could only nod, although she wasn’t certain the priest could see her.

“As for your family? Have you considered going out to work yourself?”

She found her voice, although it was choked with tears. “Terry won’t allow it.”

“I will speak to Terence.”

The hope that nibbled at her was the first she’d felt since Tommy’s death. “You would do that?”

“Terence is a fine man. No finer man walks the Whiskey Island streets, but he suffers the sin of pride. I’ll be certain to remind him when next I see him.”

Terry was a fine man. A year and a half after their wedding day, Lena loved him more than ever. But Terry believed with everything inside him that he must protect and shelter her from the harsher realities of their life. He didn’t understand how deeply troubled she was at the plight of their families, how guilty she felt because she wasn’t able to do more.

He didn’t understand how strong she was.

She bowed her head farther, and her voice was muffled. “Father, how can you help me after all the things I said today?”

“Are you asking to be forgiven?”

“Yes,” she said meekly. “I am.”

“Why don’t you begin your confession again, then?”

When she left the church thirty minutes later, Rowan Donaghue, in full police uniform, was waiting to escort her home from St. Brigid’s. He held out a handful of white chrysanthemums, gathered, she was certain, from the garden of one of the grand houses on Euclid Avenue that Rowan was sworn to protect.

“Not the last rose of summer, I’m afraid,” he said, removing his hat in a formal bow. “But as close as I could come. I thought you needed cheering.”

She accepted the blossoms, which were just turning brown at the edges. With winter on the horizon, the season for flowers of any sort had ended. These were a welcome surprise.

She buried her nose in the petals, hoping to catch the lingering scent of sunshine and blue skies. “Did you break the law to get these for me?”

“What kind of question would that be, now?”

“An honest one.”

“The gardener at the Wade house is my friend.”

“They’re lovely.”

“As they should be, for you.”

She lifted her head and smiled at him. Rowan’s round, rough-hewn face was already dear to her. When she had learned that Terry had a boarder, she had wondered how it would be to have a man other than her husband living in their tiny home. But she had never regretted Rowan’s presence. He was good-natured and genuinely kind, trying in every way to make their lives easier. He also had a wicked sense of humor and could nearly always make her smile. That alone was worth a piece of their privacy.

They walked in silence for a while, greeting other residents of Irishtown Bend, or “the Angle,” as some called this section of the city. They passed hillside houses with fronts high on stilts where men passed the time together, squatting comfortably on the ground below, shaded by their own sitting room floors. Children scampered past in groups, the boys pushing and dodging playfully, the girls with mischief in their eyes but a schooled restraint in their steps. A boy rolling a hoop nearly ran them down, and suffered Rowan’s sturdy hand at the back of his neck until he muttered an apology.

The road wound down the hill toward the river, and the houses grew shabbier as they descended. Tar paper held too many of them together, along with lumber “found” at other building sites or rescued from the lakeshore. Smoke billowed from refineries and foundries, and soot layered the leafless branches of the trees.

Lena shivered, pulling her wool shawl closer. “It’s no wonder my garden does so poorly, Rowan. The air and the water are poisoned.”

“The price of progress. Perhaps someday it’ll be your turn to poison the air and have a grand home of your own because of it.”

“If that’s the price, I’ll live as I do.”

“You would give up the chance to be a rich woman?”

“If I made others sick because of it.”

“You’re thinking of little Tommy.”

“At the end, Tommy couldn’t draw a breath. And what was there to breathe, had he been able? Coal dust, smoke, poison vapors?”

“Children up the hill die of fevers, too.”

“Not so many.”

Rowan changed the subject, aware, she supposed, that there was no arguing with her. “The weather’s turning colder. Snow will come soon.”

“And continue many months.”

“There’ll be sleighing on Euclid. It’s a wonderful sight, Lena. This year I’ll convince Terry to bring you to see it.”

“He works so hard, and he’s so tired by evening.”

“No matter. You deserve to see the races. If he won’t take you, then I will.”

“I want to work, Rowan, to spare Terry a little. Father McSweeney has said he’ll speak to him about allowing it.” She took a deep breath. “And if Terry continues to say no, I’ll defy him.”

Rowan was silent, and she felt contrite. Rowan was Terry’s friend first. And by telling him this, she had put Rowan between herself and her husband.

He spoke at last. “If Terry still says no, then I will speak to him.”

“I can
not
ask that of you.”

“You haven’t, have you? But I wonder if a compromise might be in order?”

“Of what sort?”

They were on Whiskey Island now, traversing the rough, narrow streets to the river. Lena lifted a hand in greeting to a neighbor, and pulled her skirts higher as she passed one of the many sooty saloons dotting the landscape. A man lay face-up just at the edge of the street, his cap shading his eyes from a nonexistent sun, snoring contentedly.

“If you had a stove, Lena, a real stove instead of a fireplace, could you make food to bring to the docks to sell?”

Most of her neighbors had stoves, but it was a luxury she couldn’t even hope for until their families were with them at last. “Food?”

“Stew, pies, soda bread, the wonderful things you make for Terry and me each night? Only more of them, to sell to the men working there. You’re the finest cook in Irishtown Bend. You’d have no trouble selling anything you made.”

“But I haven’t a stove. And we haven’t the money for one.”

“I do.” He held up his hand to stop her from protesting. “I would consider it an investment. I know where I might buy one. A large one, at that, with all the room that you’d need. You would pay me back a bit at a time from your earnings, then a little extra for my trouble. That’s how money is made, you see? You spend it to make it. One penny gets another.”

“You spend too much time on Euclid Avenue.”

“What do you think?”

Her mind was whirling. She could scarcely contain her thoughts. She had imagined that, at best, she might find work doing washing and ironing, or perhaps minding children. She had not thought of doing what she loved best.

She
was
a good cook. She supposed that was a prideful thought, but she didn’t care. She poured all her frustrations into the meals she made for Rowan and Terry. The fact that their families were still in Ireland without enough to eat, the fact that Terry wouldn’t allow her to earn money to help them.

The fact that she had not yet given Terry a child of his own.

These things—and now the death of Tommy Sullivan—fueled a fierce desire to create something warm and good in the midst of their barren lives. To this end she had grown a kitchen garden of sorts, haunted the nearby Pearl Street Market at day’s end for bargains on bones and wilting vegetables, traded crusty oatmeal bread fresh from her hearth for bushels of spotted apples and overripe pears.

“A stove?”

“Aye, I know the cook at the Simeon house, and she tells me they’ll be getting a new gas stove in two days. It’s certain she could oversee the sale of their present stove to me. It might take a bit of getting used to, but in no time you’ll have the knack.”

“What will Terry say, Rowan? What will he think of such a thing?”

“Leave Terry to me.”

“Little sticks kindle a fire, great ones put it out. That’s what Katie would say, were she speaking just now.”

“And Terry will see that clearly. Better it is that you cook at home and sell your wares to Terry’s friends than to have you going out to work.”

Lena thought that between Rowan and Father McSweeney, this idea might become a reality. “I’ve no words to thank you enough, Rowan.”

“We don’t need words, Lena. We’re friends, you and I. That’s all we’ll ever need.”

One month later the stove took up most of the tiny kitchen and covered the fireplace, but Lena didn’t seem to care. Terence thought that in the summer she might be sorry when its cast-iron body heated the entire house to an unaccustomed warmth, but now, with the first snow falling, she seemed thrilled beyond measure.

Lena clapped her hands. “Oh, Terry, feel the heat of it. I can bake loaves and loaves of bread now. And soups will simmer all day, simmer for a week at a time!”

“I doubt any soup you make will last that long,” Rowan said from the doorway. “Every man on the docks without a wife to bring him dinner will want his share.”

Terence felt an unwelcome tension in his belly. He was torn between Lena’s joy and his own pride. That a wife of his should be forced to earn what he could not was like a boil erupting inside him. Yet wasn’t he a fortunate man to be married to such a woman? And weren’t they fortunate to have a friend like Rowan to make this possible?

Lena whirled and caught his expression. Her own sobered. “Terry, I want to do this. I’ll be glad to do it. My days are too long. Without a child to tend to…” Her voice trailed off.

And there was the other reason for his distress. He had not been able to give Lena a child, though clearly he had tried often enough.

“And when there is a child?” He could not, would not, believe she was barren. As he had told himself so many times before, it was only a matter of time before they had children to support. Children they could ill afford. Children vulnerable to the same fever that had taken little Tommy Sullivan.

She lifted her chin stubbornly. “When there is a child, Terry, I will care for him while I cook. Just as Katie cares for her children while she washes.”

Rowan broke the tension. “I stopped to tell Katie the stove was here. She’ll be coming to see it tomorrow.”

“She’s up and about already?” Terence asked. Two weeks ago Katie had delivered a baby girl. Baby Annie had brought back Katie’s voice, although Katie never spoke of Tommy.

“She seems her old self, or nearly,” Rowan said.

“She’s a rare one, Katie Sullivan.” Terence gazed up at his wife. “But no rarer than my Lena.”

Her smile lit the room and warmed it in a way that the new stove never would.

“I believe I’ll be going out for a quick nip.” Rowan vanished from the doorway, his footsteps fading away through the sitting room.

Terence held open his arms and enveloped Lena in them. “I want you to be happy,” he whispered. “That’s all I’ll ever want.”

“I
am
happy. This makes me happy.” She kissed him with an unsurprising thoroughness. In this he was fortunate, too. He had married a woman who found pleasure in every touch, in everything they did together.

At last she pulled away. “And now for your bath and shave.”

“And just where will we put the tub now that the stove takes up all the kitchen?”

“There’s room in the corner. I made sure of it. And the water’s nearly heated.”

He supposed he had the new stove to thank for that, as well as for a room warm enough to make his bath a pleasure. He went for the tub and brought it in, to find that it just fit where she’d said it would. He watched as she poured a kettle of boiling water into it, followed by another she’d drawn earlier. As she finished filling it, he stripped off his work clothes, encrusted with the same rusty ore dust that was ground into his skin and beard. He knew that Lena had bathed before going to St. Brigid’s, and he wished he had been there to witness it.

“What a sight you are!” She giggled, a sound as rare as the twittering of robins in winter. “As red as an apple.”

“But what a pretty sight I’ll be when you’ve finished with me.” Terence eased himself into the water, his skin rippling with pleasure as the water seeped up past his belly. His knees were folded against his chest, and his shoulders were as dry as a terrier just before payday.

She remedied that with a bucket of water. “Now lean forward and let me scrub.”

He did so, with pleasure. His work was backbreaking and degrading. But each Saturday night, Lena scrubbed away all signs of it, and on Sunday, for one entire day, he looked like any man.

He gave himself over to her gently thorough hands, and later to the feel of the deadly straight razor scraping his chin and cheeks. She teased him about how often she had to sharpen it, that the iron dust dulled it so that she would need a new one soon. He sighed with pleasure as she washed and trimmed his hair, then dried him with a towel still faintly damp from her own bath.

He turned off the lights then and led her to bed. She was by turns pliant and passionate in his arms, and when she cried out, he filled her with his seed as he had nearly every night since their wedding.