The Given Day (45 page)

He laughed.

"I am."

"Let me ask you something--you know the old man is looking into things back in the Old Sod. I told you that."

She nodded, her eyes on the carpet.

"Is that why you're rushing the wedding?"

She raised her head, met his eyes, said nothing.

"You really think it'll save you if the family finds out you're already married?"

"I think . . ." Her voice was so soft he could barely hear it. "I think if I'm wed to Connor, your father will never disown me. He'll do what he does best--whatever is necessary."

"You're that afraid of being disowned."

"I'm that afraid of being alone," she said. "Of going hungry again. Of being . . ." She shook her head.

"What?"

Her eyes found the rug again. "Helpless."

"My, my, Nora, quite the survivor, eh?" He chuckled. "You make me want to puke."

She said, "I what?"

"All over the carpet," he said.

Her petticoat swished as she crossed the study and poured herself an Irish whiskey. She threw back half of it and turned to him. "Who the fuck are you, then, boy?"

372DENNIS LEHANE

"Pretty mouth," he said. "Gorgeous."

"I make you want to vomit, Danny?"

"At the moment."

"And why's that, then?"

He crossed to her. He thought of lifting her up by her smooth white throat. He thought of eating her heart so it could never look back through her eyes at him.

"You don't love him," he said.

"I do."

"Not the way you loved me."

"Who says I did?"

"You did."

"You say."

"You say." He took her shoulders in his hands.

"Off me now."

"You say."

"Off me now. Unhand me."

He dropped his forehead to the flesh just below her throat. He felt more alone than when the bomb landed on the floor of Salutation Street Precinct, more alone and more sick of his very self than he'd ever expected to feel.

"I love you."

She pushed his head back. "You love yourself, boy. You--" "No--"

She gripped his ears, stared into him. "Yes. You love yourself. The grand music of it. I'm tone- deaf, Danny. I couldn't keep up."

He straightened and sucked air in through his nostrils, cleared his eyes. "Do you love him? Do you?"

"I'll learn," she said and drained the rest of her glass.

"You didn't have to learn with me."

"And look where that got us," she said and walked out of his father's study.

THE GIVEN DAYThey had just sat down again for dessert when the doorbell rang. Danny could feel the booze darkening his blood, growing thick in his limbs, perched dire and vengeful in his brain.

Joe answered the bell. After the front door had been open long enough for the night air to have reached the dining room, Thomas called, "Joe, who is it? Shut the door."

They heard the door shut, heard a soft muffled exchange between Joe and a voice Danny didn't recognize. It was low and thick, the words unintelligible from where he sat.

"Dad?" Joe stood in the doorway.

A man came through the doorway behind him. He was tall but stoop- shouldered, with a long, hungry face covered in a dark, matted beard shot through with tangles of gray over the chin. His eyes were dark and small but somehow managed to protrude from their sockets. The hair on the top of his head was shaven to a white stubble. His clothes were cheap and tattered; Danny could smell them from the other side of the room.

He gave them all a smile, his few remaining teeth the yellow of a damp cigarette left drying in the sun.

"How are you God-fearing folk tonight? Well, I trust?"

Thomas Coughlin stood. "What's this?"

The man's eyes found Nora.

"And how are you, then, luv?"

Nora seemed struck dead where she sat, with one hand on her teacup, her eyes blank and unmoving.

The man held up a hand. "Sorry to disturb you folks, I am. You must be Captain Coughlin, sir."

Joe moved carefully away from the man, sliding along the wall until he reached the far end of the table near his mother and Connor.

"I'm Thomas Coughlin," he said. "And you're in my home on Christmas, man, so you best get to telling me your business."

The man held up two soiled palms. "My name's Quentin Finn. I believe that's my wife sitting at your table there, sir."

374DENNIS LEHANE

Connor's chair hit the floor when he stood. "Who the--?" "Connor," their father said. "Hold your temper, boy."

"Aye," Quentin Finn said, "that's her sure as it's Christmas, it is. Miss me, luv?"

Nora opened her mouth but no words left it. Danny watched parts of her grow small and covered up and hopeless. She kept moving her mouth, and still no words would come. The lie she'd given birth to when she'd arrived in this city, the lie she'd first told when she'd been sitting naked and gray with her teeth clacking from the cold in their kitchen five years before, the lie she'd built every day of her life on since, spilled. Spilled all over the room until the mess of it was reconstituted and reborn as its opposite: truth.

A hideous truth, Danny noted. At least twice her age. She'd kissed that mouth? Slid her tongue through those teeth?

"I said--you miss me, luv?"

Thomas Coughlin held up a hand. "You'll need to be clearer, Mr. Finn."

Quentin Finn narrowed his eyes at him. "Clearer about what, sir? I married this woman. Gave her me name. Shared title to me land in Donegal. She's my wife, sir. And I've come to take her home."

Nora had gone too long without speaking. Danny could see that clearly--in his mother's eyes, in Connor's. If she'd ever held hope of denial, the moment had passed.

Connor said, "Nora."

Nora closed her eyes. She said, "Ssshh," and held up her hand. " 'Ssshh'?" Connor repeated.

"Is this true?" Danny's mother said. "Nora? Look at me. Is this true?"

But Nora wouldn't look. She wouldn't open her eyes. She kept waving her hand back and forth, as if it could ward off time.

Danny couldn't help but be perversely fascinated by the man in the doorway. This, he wanted to say? You fucked this? He could feel the liquor sledding through his blood and he knew some better part of himself waited behind it, but now the only part he could reach THE GIVEN DAYwas the one who'd placed his head to her chest and told her he loved her.

To which she'd replied: You love yourself.

His father said, "Mr. Finn, take a seat, sir."

"I'll stand, sure, Captain, if it's all the same to ya."

"What do you expect is going to happen here tonight?" Thomas said.

"I expect to walk back out that door with my wife in tow, I do." He nodded.

Thomas looked at Nora. "Raise your head, girl."

Nora opened her eyes, looked at him.

"Is it true. Is this man your husband?"

Nora's eyes found Danny's. What had she said in the study? I can't abide a man feels sorry for himself. Who's feeling sorry now?

Danny dropped his eyes.

"Nora," his father said. "Answer the question, please. Is he your husband?"

She reached for her teacup but it tottered in her grip and she let it go. "He was."

Danny's mother blessed herself.

"Jesus Christ!" Connor kicked the baseboard.

"Joe," their father said quietly, "go to your room. And don't dare argue, son."

Joe opened his mouth, thought better of it, and left the dining room.

Danny realized he was shaking his head and stopped himself. This? He wanted to shout the word. You married this grim, grisly joke? And you dared talk down to me?

He took another drink as Quentin Finn took two sideways steps into the room.

"Nora," Thomas Coughlin said, "you said was your husband. So I can assume there was an annulment, yes?"

Nora looked at Danny again. Her eyes had a shine that could have been mistaken, under different circumstances, for happiness.

376DENNIS LEHANE

Danny looked over at Quentin again, the man scratching at his beard.

"Nora," Thomas said, "did you get an annulment? Answer me, girl." Nora shook her head.

Danny rattled the ice cubes in his glass. "Quentin."

Quentin Finn looked over at him. He raised his eyebrows. "Yes, young sir?"

"How'd you fi nd us?"

"A man has ways," Quentin Finn said. "I've been searching for this lass for some time now."

Danny nodded. "You're a man of means then."

"Aiden."

Danny lolled his head to look at his father, then lolled it back to Quentin. "To track a woman across an ocean, Mr. Finn, that's quite a feat. Quite a costly feat."

Quentin smiled at Danny's father. "I see the boy's been in his cups, yah?"

Danny lit a cigarette with the candle. "Call me 'boy' again, Paddy, and I'll--"

"Aiden!" his father said. "Enough." He turned back to Nora. "Have you any defense, girl? Is he telling a lie?"

Nora said, "He is not my husband."

"He says he is."

"Anymore."

Thomas leaned into the table. "They don't grant divorces in Catholic Ireland."

"I didn't say I got me a divorce, sir. I just said he was my husband no longer."

Quentin Finn laughed at that, a loud haw that tore the air in the room.

"Jesus," Connor whispered over and over again. "Jesus." "Pack your things now, luv."

Nora looked at him. There was hate in her eyes. And fear. Disgust. Disgrace.

THE GIVEN DAY"He bought me," she said, "when I was thirteen. Man's my cousin. Yeah?" She looked at each of the Coughlins. "Thirteen. The way you buy a cow."

Thomas extended his hands across the table toward her. "A tragic state," he said softly. "But he is your husband, Nora."

"Fookin' right on that, Cap'n."

Ellen Coughlin blessed herself and placed a hand to her chest.

Thomas kept his eyes on Nora. "Mr. Finn, if you use profanity in my home again? In front of my wife, sir?" He turned his head, gave Quentin Finn a smile. "Your path home will, I promise, become far less predictable."

Quentin Finn scratched his beard some more.

Thomas tugged Nora's hands gently until he covered them, and then he looked over at Connor. Connor had the heels of his hands pressed to his lower eyelids. Thomas turned next to his wife, who shook her head. Thomas nodded. He looked at Danny.

Danny looked back into his father's eyes, so clear and blue. The eyes of a child with irreproachable intelligence and irreproachable intent.

Nora whispered, "Please don't make me leave with him." Connor made a noise that could have been a laugh.

"Please, sir."

Thomas ran his palms over the backs of her hands. "But you will have to leave."

She nodded and one tear fell from her cheekbone. "Just not now? Not with him?"

Thomas said, "All right, dear." He turned his head. "Mr. Finn." "Yes, Cap'n."

"Your rights as a husband have been noted. And respected, sir." "Thank ye."

"You'll leave now and meet me tomorrow morning at the Twelfth Precinct on East Fourth Street. We'll properly adjudicate the issue then."

Quentin Finn was shaking his head before Thomas had half fi nished.

378DENNIS LEHANE

"I didn't cross the bloody ocean to be put off, man. No. I'll be taking me wife now, thank ye."

"Aiden."

Danny pushed back his chair and stood.

Quentin said, "I have rights as a husband, Cap'n. I do."

"And those will be respected. But for tonight, I--"

"And what of her child, sir? What's he to think of--"

"She has a kid?" Connor raised his head from his hands.

Ellen Coughlin blessed herself again. "Holy Mary Mother of Jesus." Thomas let go of Nora's hands.

"Aye, she has a little nipper back at home, she does," Quentin Finn said.

"You abandoned your own child?" Thomas said.

Danny watched her eyes dart, her shoulders hunch. She pulled her arms in tight against her body--prey, always prey, searching, plotting, tensing for the mad dash.

A child? She'd never said a word.

"He's not mine," she said. "He's his."

"You left a child behind?" Danny's mother said. "A child?"

"Not mine," Nora said and reached for her but Ellen Coughlin pulled her arms back into her lap. "Not mine, not mine, not mine." Quentin allowed himself a smile. "The lad's lost, he is, without his mother. Lost."

"He's not mine," she said to Danny. Then to Connor: "He's not." "Don't," Connor said.

Danny's father stood and ran his hand through his hair, scratched the back of his head, and let out a heavy sigh. "We trusted you," he said. "With our son. With Joe. How could you have put us in that position? How could you have misled us? Our child, Nora. We trusted you with our child."

"And I did well by him," Nora said, finding something in herself that Danny had seen in fighters, usually the smaller ones, in the late rounds of a bout, something that went far deeper than size and physical strength. "I did well by him and well by you, sir, and well by your family."

THE GIVEN DAYThomas looked at her, then at Quentin Finn, then back at her, and finally at Connor. "You were going to marry my son. You would have embarrassed us. Besmirched my name? This name of this house that gave you shelter, gave you food, treated you like family? How dare you, woman? How dare you?"

Nora looked right back at him, the tears finally coming now. "How dare I? This home is a coffi n to that boy." She pointed back in the direction of Joe's room. "He feels it every day. I took care of him because he doesn't even know his own mother. She--"

Ellen Coughlin stood from the table but moved no farther. She placed her hand on the back of her chair.

"Close your mouth," Thomas Coughlin said. "Close it, you banshee."

"You whore," Connor said. "You filthy whore."

"Oh, dear Lord," Ellen Coughlin said. "Stop. Stop!"

Joe walked into the dining room. He looked up at them all. "What?" he said. "What?"

Thomas said to Nora, "Leave this house at once."

Quentin Finn smiled.

Danny said, "Dad."

But his father had reached a place most sensed in him but few ever saw. He pointed at Danny without looking at him. "You're drunk. Go home."