Charming Billy (2 page)
Authors: Alice McDermott
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Literary, #United States, #Contemporary Fiction
“Maybe that was good,” cousin Rosemary said.
Dan Lynch said, “Maybe it was just as well.”
“Because he didn’t hear another word from her all through the summer,” Kate went on, “though I think he must have written to her two or three times a week, maybe more.
“In September, Dennis got a call from her sister, the one who was still minding the children on Park Avenue. He went into the city to see her and then came rapping at our door at about nine o’clock on a Sunday night. He asked Billy if he wanted to take a drive out to Long Island to check on the little house. I think he said there had been a storm out there. Anyway, Billy was always game. I remember he went out with his suit on a hanger because they were going to drive back first thing in the morning and go straight to Irving Place. I remember my mother ran after them with a sackful of rolls and butter and some sliced ham for their breakfast. All the way down the stairs.
“So it was dinnertime the next day before Billy got home, and that’s when he told us that Eva had died—pneumonia. She was twenty-six years old. I’d like some tea instead,” and the waiter with the stainless-steel coffeepot leaned away. “With lemon, please.”
“Tea for me as well, please,” Bridie said. “I’d almost forgotten this.”
Mickey Quinn said, “None for me, thank you, maybe later,” and then added that he thought only Midwesterners drank their coffee
with
their meals. He said he remembered how it was in the service, the Midwesterners guzzling coffee with every meal, it was a wonder they could taste anything. He paused to see who would rise to the bait, pick up the conversational thread, turn the talk away from Billy’s lost girl to the Second World War.
with
their meals. He said he remembered how it was in the service, the Midwesterners guzzling coffee with every meal, it was a wonder they could taste anything. He paused to see who would rise to the bait, pick up the conversational thread, turn the talk away from Billy’s lost girl to the Second World War.
But Dan Lynch said again, “It was a blow.”
“I honestly thought he’d never get over it.”
“But he stayed on at Holtzman’s store, didn’t he?” Dan Lynch said. “I mean, afterwards. Even when he didn’t need the extra cash anymore. He stayed on. That was Billy all over, wasn’t it? Loyal like that.”
“Well, see,” Kate said, “the money he’d sent her wasn’t all earned. Mr. Holtzman had advanced him a good deal of it, and when Billy wrote to the girl’s parents, to extend his sympathy—can you imagine that letter?”—Bridie shivered audibly—“naturally he told them to keep the money to pay the funeral expenses and to keep a fresh wreath on her grave.”
“Like Joe DiMaggio,” Bridie whispered.
Kate’s eyebrows disapproved of the parallel. “For a while,” she went on, “he talked about going over himself, but we discouraged it. Even Dennis said it would be awkward, maudlin. I was afraid it would just break his heart. Thank you. But working at the store was good for him, in the long run. It filled up one or two nights a week. And Saturdays. And, like I said, Holtzman was glad to have him.”
“Billy told great stories about that place,” Mickey Quinn said. “You know, the kids screaming and the women squeezing their toes into size fours or leaning down into his face when he was trying to fit them, nearly smothering him with their furs and their perfumes. I remember him telling me about one, some big-footed woman who said to him when he measured her, ‘Young man, I’ve always been told I’m a five and a half,’ and he says, smooth as silk, ‘That’s five if it’s halved, madam.’”
“A woman bit him on the ear once,” Dan Lynch said. The information might have been on the tip of his tongue for twenty years.
“No.”
“You’re joking.”
“Good Lord.”
“It’s the truth!” Delighted to finally get it out. “Billy must have blushed every color of the rainbow when he was telling me, down at Quinlan’s. It seemed he was leaning over to pick up some of the shoes this woman had been trying on when she reached down, too, as if she was going to help him, and took a nip out of his ear. Can you imagine it?”
“He was good with the children,” Bridie from the neighborhood said quickly, steering our thoughts down a more wholesome route. “He fitted all of mine, from infant shoes on. He had a way with children.”
“And he met Maeve there,” cousin Rosemary said.
Sister Rosemary confirmed it. “He met Maeve there. She always came in with her father. Getting him shoed, Billy said, was like fitting a mule, and no sooner would she be in to buy him a pair than they’d be back because he’d lost one of them. It didn’t take Billy long to realize he’d lost one under a barstool somewhere.”
“But Billy managed to ask her out,” Bridie said.
“To the movies. You could have knocked me over with a feather when he told me he was taking her out to the movies. It had been what, Kate? Four or five years since the Irish girl?”
“Five years. It was 1950 and they were married three years later, in 1953.”
“Thirty years, then,” Mickey Quinn said.
Kate nodded. “It would have been thirty years in September.”
“That’s a good long run,” said Mickey Quinn.
And all eyes went to Maeve, who, it seemed, had not touched her food but with her hands in her lap was leaning to listen to Ted, another of Billy’s cousins, as he crouched beside her chair, speaking earnestly.
“She never had an easy time of it,” sister Rosemary said, “especially recently. You know, toward the end.”
“Toward the end it was a foregone conclusion,” Kate said. “I think it was worse for her at the beginning, when she had her father
and
her husband to keep track of.”
and
her husband to keep track of.”
“She’s doing beautifully today.”
“Oh, she’s strong.”
“You have to hand it to her. She’s got a lot of courage.”
And a certain beauty, perhaps, looking up now to say something to my father, and to Father Ryan beside him, her pale hand in a fist on the white tablecloth. And if courage also meant beauty, then her presence in the shoe store was Billy’s salvation, or at least his second chance that through willfulness and indifference he had let slip. But if she was as plain as they’d always said her to be during all the years Billy was alive, a plain girl approaching thirty with an alcoholic old father to take care of and no prospects—if Eva had been the beauty—then Maeve was only a faint consolation, a futile attempt to mend an irreparably broken heart. A moment’s grace, a flash of optimism, not enough for a lifetime.
“I didn’t know,” cousin Rosemary whispered. “Was Billy having trouble even in the beginning? Even when they were first married?”
We all turned to Kate, whose memory had already proven keen. She was the older sister, the only one of them gathered here who had attained real wealth (although it had already been well noted that her husband wasn’t here today, hadn’t come last night), and so she could speak with some authority, while the rest might only venture a guess.
“Well, he always drank,” Kate said. “But for a very long time it seemed he drank harmlessly. I remember him feeling no pain when he was on leave, before he went overseas, but that was understandable. I remember the night he came home and told us that Eva had passed away. He went straight to bed afterwards and I called Dennis to see if I could learn anything
more and Dennis said they’d both had quite a lot to drink the night before, which was understandable, too. It was probably as hard for Dennis to tell him as it was for Billy to hear the news.”
more and Dennis said they’d both had quite a lot to drink the night before, which was understandable, too. It was probably as hard for Dennis to tell him as it was for Billy to hear the news.”
His sister Rosemary said, “I remember he had one too many at Jill’s christening. I was worried about him riding the subway home.”
“But for years he never missed a day of work,” Kate told us. “And he was there to open the shoe store every Saturday morning from the time he started into the early sixties, when Mr. Holtzman finally sold the place to Baker’s. I don’t think Mr. Holtzman ever knew he drank. Certainly no one at Edison knew until near the end.”
But Mickey Quinn held up his hand. “They knew,” he said wisely.
“But not until fairly recently,” Kate said. “Maybe when he went into the hospital in ’73, the same year my Kevin graduated from Regis.”
But Mickey Quinn frowned and shook his head slightly, apologetically, as if over something that was only slightly askew. “They knew,” he said again. “We all knew. I left Irving Place in ’68 and the fellows in the office knew Billy was a drinker even then. They covered for him, mostly in the afternoon. He’d go out on a call after lunch and not come back to the office and they’d cover for him. Everyone liked him. They were glad to do it.”
“I think Smitty might have covered for him, too,” his sister Rosemary said. “In the shoe store. Do you remember Smitty? Mr. Holtzman’s assistant—the little bald man?” He was remembered. “I went in there one Saturday, we were looking for Betty’s First Communion shoes, and Billy was just coming in from lunch. I had the feeling he’d had a few. I mean, he was fine, and the kids were always happy to see him, but I
noticed Smitty did all the measuring and got out all the shoes. Billy mostly sat. Which wasn’t like him. He was sucking a peppermint.”
noticed Smitty did all the measuring and got out all the shoes. Billy mostly sat. Which wasn’t like him. He was sucking a peppermint.”
“When was this?” Kate asked as her wealthy husband, trained at Fordham Law, might do.
Rosemary paused to calculate. “Betty was in second grade. 1962.” Almost in apology: “He was drinking in ’62.”
Dan Lynch raised his hands. “Well, what does it mean? He was drinking before that, too. Down at Quinlan’s. Saturdays after work. Sunday evenings. Hell, I was always there, too, and my liver’s fine.”
“So when did it become a problem?” cousin Rosemary asked.
“He started AA in the late sixties,” Kate told her. “And then again around ’71 or ’2.”
“He took the pledge on that Ireland trip. That was ’75.”
“What good did it do?”
“I thought it would stick. Maeve did, too.”
Dan Lynch was chuckling, his hand around his small glass. “I remember Billy saying that AA was a Protestant thing, when you came right down to it. Started by a bunch of Protestants. He said he didn’t like the chummy way some of them were always calling Our Lord by his first name. I drove him to the first meeting and waited to take him home, ’cause Maeve didn’t want him driving, and when he came out he said you could tell who the Catholics were because they’d all been bowing their heads every ten seconds while the Protestants bantered on about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”
(And sure enough, up and down our stretch of table, heads bobbed at the name.)
Sister Rosemary said, “He didn’t like them calling God a Higher Power, either—which I guess was the official AA term.
Nondenominational, you know. He said it only proved that none of them had a sense of humor. He said you’d have to be God Himself to get higher than most of these guys had been.”
Nondenominational, you know. He said it only proved that none of them had a sense of humor. He said you’d have to be God Himself to get higher than most of these guys had been.”
There was a bit of low laughter. “Billy had an irreverent streak,” Mickey Quinn said. “I liked that about him.”
“The way Father Joyce explained it to me,” Dan Lynch went on, “the pledge was the Catholic take on AA. He said it was like Holy Orders itself—you signed on and there was no going back. An unbreakable oath never to take another drink. Billy thought it was the real thing.”
“But he broke it.”
“There’s plenty of priests that break their Holy Orders, too,” Dan Lynch told them.
“Well, it got him over to Ireland, anyway,” cousin Rosemary said. “I tried to talk him and Maeve into going over any number of times, but I never could do it.”
“Maeve isn’t one to travel,” sister Rosemary said. “She’s a homebody. Always has been.”
Kate leaned toward us all, folding her hands on the table: a tasteful ring of diamonds, a gold bracelet, a professional manicure. “I often wondered,” she said slowly. “I never had the heart to ask him, but I wondered if Billy went to visit the town Eva came from. While he was there.”
Her sister shook her head. “Billy would have said so if he had. He wasn’t one to keep things to himself.”
Kate paused only a moment to consider this. “But he might not have wanted it to get back to Maeve, you know,” she said. “He might have thought she wouldn’t want to hear about a pilgrimage like that.”
“Who would?”
“She knew about Eva?” Bridie said, whispering too, adding, “Thank you,” as the waiter took her empty plate.
“I’m sure,” Kate said. “Thank you.” And then: “Actually, I don’t know. I’d imagine she knew something about her.”
“He must have told her something.”
“Dennis would know,” Mickey Quinn said. “They were always real close.”
But Dan Lynch objected. “I was the best man at Billy’s wedding,” he said. “We were pretty close, too.”
“Well, did he tell Maeve about the Irish girl?”
Dan waved his hand impatiently. “I’m sure he told her something. You know, it’s not the sort of thing men talk about. And I’ll say this for Billy, you never heard him mention that girl again, once he married Maeve.”
“Ask Dennis,” cousin Rosemary whispered.
The selected dessert was brought in: two scoops of vanilla ice cream in cold stainless-steel bowls. Hands in laps to make the poor man’s job easier as he reached between their shoulders. Thank you.
“I remember watching Maeve come down the aisle,” Dan Lynch said, lifting his spoon, holding it like a scepter. “She was on her old man’s arm, but it was clear as you watched her that she was shoring him up, you know, keeping him straight. She was smiling as sweetly as any bride, but there was a determination in the way she walked, you know, the way she held her shoulder up against his, like it was a wall about to topple. She took hold of his arm when they got to the first pew, I mean a good grip, right here.” He demonstrated, taking hold of his own forearm, spoon and all. “The old man banged his foot against the kneeling bench—you could hear it all over the church—and for a minute it looked like he’d go down headfirst. But she got him in there and got him seated. She maneuvered him. By sheer force of will, I’d say. And then she gave a little nod, as if to say, Well, that’s done, and came up the steps to marry Billy.” He sipped his beer. “Ready to take him
on, is what I remember thinking. She was a plain girl, but determined.”
on, is what I remember thinking. She was a plain girl, but determined.”
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