Charming Billy (18 page)
Authors: Alice McDermott
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Literary, #United States, #Contemporary Fiction
“No doubt it was the hour, too,” Kate said, being reasonable, it seemed.
“It was everything together,” Dorothy said.
“We sat right here until when … seven or so?”
“Till John called.”
“Till her husband called, at about seven. And then I walked her back across. It was raining by then, wasn’t it, Dorothy? All that wind and then a cloudy morning anyway. Of course, Billy hadn’t come in. John offered to call around for me. Even said he’d take the morning off to drive around a bit, but I didn’t want him to trouble. It wasn’t like it hadn’t happened before, Billy not coming in.”
“You said you’d let the police know,” Dorothy said, and to the rest of us, “John made her promise to do that much. And to call Dennis. John said, Now, Maeve, Billy’s a very sick man. He offered to call the VA himself, see if he was there. ‘He’s a very sick man,’ John said.”
“I said I’d call,” Maeve told us. “I intended to. But when I got back to the house I did a few things first. I took a little bath. I washed out a few things.”
“Billy’s good shirt,” Dorothy said.
Maeve nodded. “Billy’s good white shirt.”
“When she told me she’d washed out his good white shirt,” Dorothy said to the rest of us, “I knew she knew. She knew he was gone. She’d known it all through the night.”
“And then the hospital called,” Maeve said. “About nine or so. And I called Dennis at Edison to ask if he could go down there. It was because he hadn’t been admitted, see. They found him on the street, so somebody had to identify him.” She looked at me. “Your poor father had to do it.”
Kate said, “Everything’s ready,” and we all moved into the dining room, where the men were already waiting. Two or three of the women immediately began to urge Maeve to eat something. Maybe some of that nice chicken-and-rice thing, not too spicy. Maybe some of this ham. They followed her around the lace-covered table in the brightly lit dining room. Something substantial now, they said. Something easy on the
stomach, too. Bridie’s pound cake, of course. A pound of butter, the way it ought to be made. Old-fashioned ingredients being the best, when you came right down to it, because in the old days you really had to be of some substantial weight, women especially, in order to survive. Such as pioneer women in those covered wagons, or our own mothers making the crossing, although our mother was not a big woman and lived to eighty-three and Dennis’s mother was just a wisp, too, and Uncle Ted’s wife Aunty M. J.—the Lynch men apparently going for the smaller girls and Rosemary’s daughter Jill with her tiny waist and you (me), too, although I see what little portions you’ve put on that plate, good for you, looking at you who would think you’d had two children, you must exercise, Kate does too, you should see the setup she’s got in her basement, Jack La Lanne’s, and so your husband’s home with the little ones?—it’ll be good for him, let him see what it’s like with kids all day, right? men never understand until you ask them to do it and then they say, Well, the kids only act like this with me, it has to be much easier when
you’re
with them, isn’t that the truth? They’re really thinking, You can’t possibly put up with this day after day, can you? But it was so sweet of you to be here like this. Kevin and Daniel came in last night for the wake, but the girls are both up in New England, you know—both lawyers, have I told you? did you see the flowers they sent? They were fond of Billy, both of them. I know your father appreciates it, your being here with him. He and Billy were so close, like brothers, really—neither one of them having a brother of his own. And Dennis having to go down to the VA to identify Billy like that. What would Maeve have done, over the years, without your father to call on. He was the image of his own father in that, of Uncle Daniel. Always there for whoever needed him—what was it that you called him, Dan? A politician? Well, I don’t know about that, but
he did everything for my parents when they first came over. I’d call him a saint and I’m not just saying that. Not a good-looking man, your father was lucky to take after his mother’s side of his family, but goodness poured out of him. I’ve never known anyone else quite like him. You would think he’d been put on this earth just to give the rest of us a hand, to give us some relief—isn’t that just what a saint is? I remember people laughing, whenever I think of him, and I was sixteen when he died. Wherever he went he got people laughing, like Billy in a way, I suppose. Billy without his trouble. Your poor father losing his own dad at eighteen and his mother and his wife within a few years of one another and now Billy, too. I’m sure he’s glad you came in. And tomorrow you’ll go out to the Island with him? Good. Your husband will manage fine, don’t worry about that. All young mothers think their kids can’t survive without them, don’t they? Didn’t you? Soon enough you’ll see. Next thing you know, they’re all grown up and gone from home—isn’t it the truth. Next thing you know, your house is empty again. Look at us, Bridie, Rose, Dorothy, Kate, how many kids altogether? Fifteen, good Lord, sixteen, sixteen kids altogether and not one of them left at home, right? Thank God for that, but see what I’m saying, see how fast it goes? But Kate’s not going home tonight. No sense in her making that long drive back to Rye in the dark. Give Maeve some company, the first night and all. What’s it doing outside? Can you see? It’s been raining since Tuesday, hasn’t it? Rain on a funeral day is supposed to mean a soul going straight to heaven. Did anyone bring the dog in? We should be going so Maeve can get some rest. Has she eaten a bite? Has she eaten anything? Her color’s coming back anyway. It was just the sherry on an empty stomach. And the exhaustion, too, the poor girl. She’ll be fine. Time heals and it’s been a long haul. In
many ways this will be a relief. God forgive me for saying so, she’ll have some peace now.
stomach, too. Bridie’s pound cake, of course. A pound of butter, the way it ought to be made. Old-fashioned ingredients being the best, when you came right down to it, because in the old days you really had to be of some substantial weight, women especially, in order to survive. Such as pioneer women in those covered wagons, or our own mothers making the crossing, although our mother was not a big woman and lived to eighty-three and Dennis’s mother was just a wisp, too, and Uncle Ted’s wife Aunty M. J.—the Lynch men apparently going for the smaller girls and Rosemary’s daughter Jill with her tiny waist and you (me), too, although I see what little portions you’ve put on that plate, good for you, looking at you who would think you’d had two children, you must exercise, Kate does too, you should see the setup she’s got in her basement, Jack La Lanne’s, and so your husband’s home with the little ones?—it’ll be good for him, let him see what it’s like with kids all day, right? men never understand until you ask them to do it and then they say, Well, the kids only act like this with me, it has to be much easier when
you’re
with them, isn’t that the truth? They’re really thinking, You can’t possibly put up with this day after day, can you? But it was so sweet of you to be here like this. Kevin and Daniel came in last night for the wake, but the girls are both up in New England, you know—both lawyers, have I told you? did you see the flowers they sent? They were fond of Billy, both of them. I know your father appreciates it, your being here with him. He and Billy were so close, like brothers, really—neither one of them having a brother of his own. And Dennis having to go down to the VA to identify Billy like that. What would Maeve have done, over the years, without your father to call on. He was the image of his own father in that, of Uncle Daniel. Always there for whoever needed him—what was it that you called him, Dan? A politician? Well, I don’t know about that, but
he did everything for my parents when they first came over. I’d call him a saint and I’m not just saying that. Not a good-looking man, your father was lucky to take after his mother’s side of his family, but goodness poured out of him. I’ve never known anyone else quite like him. You would think he’d been put on this earth just to give the rest of us a hand, to give us some relief—isn’t that just what a saint is? I remember people laughing, whenever I think of him, and I was sixteen when he died. Wherever he went he got people laughing, like Billy in a way, I suppose. Billy without his trouble. Your poor father losing his own dad at eighteen and his mother and his wife within a few years of one another and now Billy, too. I’m sure he’s glad you came in. And tomorrow you’ll go out to the Island with him? Good. Your husband will manage fine, don’t worry about that. All young mothers think their kids can’t survive without them, don’t they? Didn’t you? Soon enough you’ll see. Next thing you know, they’re all grown up and gone from home—isn’t it the truth. Next thing you know, your house is empty again. Look at us, Bridie, Rose, Dorothy, Kate, how many kids altogether? Fifteen, good Lord, sixteen, sixteen kids altogether and not one of them left at home, right? Thank God for that, but see what I’m saying, see how fast it goes? But Kate’s not going home tonight. No sense in her making that long drive back to Rye in the dark. Give Maeve some company, the first night and all. What’s it doing outside? Can you see? It’s been raining since Tuesday, hasn’t it? Rain on a funeral day is supposed to mean a soul going straight to heaven. Did anyone bring the dog in? We should be going so Maeve can get some rest. Has she eaten a bite? Has she eaten anything? Her color’s coming back anyway. It was just the sherry on an empty stomach. And the exhaustion, too, the poor girl. She’ll be fine. Time heals and it’s been a long haul. In
many ways this will be a relief. God forgive me for saying so, she’ll have some peace now.
While Rosemary and the Legion ladies cleaned up in the kitchen, Dorothy took Maeve’s hands and asked her to please remember she was there, she and John were there, right next door, any time of the day or night, as always. “Thank you,” Maeve said softly, “thank you, dear,” but in a way that seemed to indicate that she, too, was aware of how little need she would have, now, of aid and assistance in the middle of the night.
“Even if it’s just a bad dream,” Dorothy said.
She glanced at her husband. “Even if it’s just a strange noise or something you need right away from the store. An antacid or something. Just call us. Anything.” She glanced at her husband again. “Even if you’re just feeling lonely,” she said, and then burst into blubbery tears—as much for herself, it seemed, and her own possible, probable long nights of widowhood as for Maeve’s. The stocky husband she had just imagined into his grave put his fingers to her elbow and said, “Now, Mama,” and Dorothy found a crumpled tissue in her pocket and waved it across her face. “I promised myself I wouldn’t do this,” she gasped.
But Maeve was smiling indulgently. She looked tired. The skin seemed to have thinned across her cheekbones, beneath her neck, and yet she seemed, too, to have found another source of strength, or composure, some last well of it that would see her through the final ceremonies of the day. “It’s all right,” she said. She briefly took the woman into her arms. “It’s all right,” she said again as they drew apart.
“He was a fine person,” Dorothy was saying through her tears. “Without the drink. He was a sweet soul sober, Maeve. One of the best. Talking to him was like listening to poetry,
wasn’t it, John? Even when he was drinking, he was worth listening to. A smart man in his way. A sensitive man, Maeve, when you think about it. Maybe too sensitive for this world, if you know what I mean. A man with his fine feelings. The Lord made him as he was. There was no one to blame. You had your good years with him and that’s what counts, doesn’t it? Remember what you told us tonight about the spinach. And throwing away those shoes. Think of things like that.”
wasn’t it, John? Even when he was drinking, he was worth listening to. A smart man in his way. A sensitive man, Maeve, when you think about it. Maybe too sensitive for this world, if you know what I mean. A man with his fine feelings. The Lord made him as he was. There was no one to blame. You had your good years with him and that’s what counts, doesn’t it? Remember what you told us tonight about the spinach. And throwing away those shoes. Think of things like that.”
Her husband was slowly drawing her out of the room, nodding goodbyes to everyone he passed. “Maeve’s tired now,” he told his wife. “Let Maeve get her rest.”
“He was a sweet man,” Dorothy was saying, on into the hallway. “If he hadn’t taken to drink. What a shame he ever took a drink.”
When they had gone, the Legion ladies stepped out of the kitchen, drying their hands on dish towels and slipping into their coats. They told Maeve what she had in the way of food in the kitchen. They’d be by first thing in the morning, they said, and no sooner were they out the door (bustling, in their plastic rain hats and short canvas raincoats, their caution in going sideways down the three wet brick steps the only physical indication of their age) than Mac turned to us all and asked, “Don’t any of these holy women have homes and husbands of their own?”
Dan Lynch said, “Apparently not.”
Bridie said, “Ah, but I do,” putting her purse over her plump and freckled arm and taking her coat from the settee in the hallway, which had begun to fill up with the odor of the wet night and the residual perfumes of the women’s headscarves and spring jackets. “And my lady who looks after him will be charging me time and a half because I told her I’d only be here an hour or so,” she looked at her watch, “And now it’s been three.”
“How is Jim?” Mac said soberly. Bridie waved a hand as if to show him there was no need for such solemnity. “He’s doing all right, thank you,” she said. “He doesn’t always know me, that’s the hard part. But as long as I can keep him home and keep him happy—things could be worse. He’s more or less in his own little world.” She shrugged. “Sometimes I envy him.” She leaned to kiss Maeve, and then Rosemary and Kate. “God bless,” she said to each of them, and then turning to us all: “I’m not going to make a speech. That was Billy’s forte. The hard part’s going to be going to the mailbox every day without hoping there’s a note from him.” To which everyone agreed, drawing in a breath as they nodded, as if they had not yet taken this into account but should have, would have, sooner or later. Bridie kissed me and my father and Mac, and with a “You, too, Danny,” Dan Lynch.
“You’ll be all right driving home?” my father said with his hand on her back.
“I’m fine.” She shook her thick ring of keys. “I’ve got my siren and my Mace. I’m armed and ready. And it’s not that late.” My father said he would walk her to her car at least.
“She’s a riot,” Rosemary said when Bridie was gone, clearly meaning something else.
“She’s had a hard row to hoe,” Kate said, directing her sister toward it. “Her girl with the drugs and Jim with Alzheimer’s. And those babies she lost.”
“And Tim Schmidt,” Rosemary said, “in the war.”
“She’s a marvel,” Maeve said, and Kate touched her shoulder and told her, “You, too, my girl.”
Maeve laughed a little. “A marvel of what?” she said. Her shoulders seemed boneless.
“Of endurance,” Kate said.
“Of patience,” Rosemary added. “And loyalty.”
Maeve smiled, dipping her head. It was clear that it pleased
her, to have this much recognized and acknowledged. Her endurance, her patience, her long suffering. That same determination that had once made her throw her father’s good shoes down the incinerator had made her a marvel at this, at being Billy’s wife.
her, to have this much recognized and acknowledged. Her endurance, her patience, her long suffering. That same determination that had once made her throw her father’s good shoes down the incinerator had made her a marvel at this, at being Billy’s wife.
As Maeve took her leave of us herself, she paused on the stairs, her hand on the simple railing, and said to my father, “Thank you, especially, Dennis. I know how hard this has been for you.” (Dan Lynch smiling sympathetically beside him, reserving his own tearful What about me? for another time, tomorrow night at Quinlan’s, perhaps, with his cronies and a drink.) My father nodded. “Call if you need me,” he said, repeating Dorothy’s mistake, forgetting, as she had, that the mad nights were over.
For a moment the familiar weight struck me: I wondered how much lonelier my father’s nights would be now, uninterrupted by crisis.
Billy’s sisters, handmaidens still, followed her up the stairs, and a few minutes later Rosemary came down again to put her own coat on and gather up her husband. When Kate came down in her stocking feet to lock the door behind us, we followed Mac and Rosemary out. Dan Lynch, his jacket collar turned up and his feelings hurt by Maeve’s last remark, began to walk to the bus stop in the light rain, under the orange streetlights, carrying the plastic grocery bag Rosemary had pressed on him, a supper or two’s worth of leftovers. But my father called him back and said, almost impatiently, that he would of course drive him home. What did he think?
In the car, Dan straightened his collar and quickly recovered his good humor by asking us, Wasn’t the Monsignor something? Wasn’t he incredible? The embodiment of every good thing about the priesthood. He said he was certain there were plenty of fine rabbis and ministers, but there was something
about a priest, a good priest, that those others couldn’t match. A holiness. A closeness to God. “Don’t you feel it the minute he walks into a room?” My father admitted he did. Dan twisted in his seat to see me. I admitted I did, too.
about a priest, a good priest, that those others couldn’t match. A holiness. A closeness to God. “Don’t you feel it the minute he walks into a room?” My father admitted he did. Dan twisted in his seat to see me. I admitted I did, too.
Well satisfied, he said, “It’s a life lived on another plane, you see. A life that’s all God, nothing else.” He paused, but there was something false about the way he did, something theatrical. It seemed clear that everything he was about to say was well formed in his mind, well memorized, perhaps, a speech he had already worked out in every detail, that had, until now, lacked only an audience. “Think about it,” he said. “A rabbi or a minister closes up his church or synagogue after a service and goes home to dinner with his wife and kids. He pays his bills,” tapping his index finger on the car’s dashboard, beating out the rhythm of an imaginary day, “does the grocery shopping, tosses a ball with his son, right? What’s to distinguish him from anybody else, with any other kind of job? But a priest can take off his collar, play a round of golf, go to a ball game—he’s still always different. It’s a consecrated life, see, not just a consecrated profession. I mean, take the Pope, for instance, even non-Catholics are excited to meet him, aren’t they? They know he’s something special. Holy.” He shook his head. “Now they’re talking about changing things, but I hope they never do. It would be a mistake. We’ll lose that, Dennis. The Church will lose the very thing that makes its priests a cut above.”
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