Galway Bay (61 page)

She paced back and forth, stopped at her looking glass. “Jesus,” she said, “I’m a mess! I look like the dog’s dinner. Honora, you wouldn’t have a bit of stew you could heat up for me, would you? I’m very hungry all of a sudden.”

“I would, Máire.”

“I’ve come back, Honora,” she said. “The fairy woman had me tied and tethered somewhere. Colonel Mulligan’s words worked a charm against her. She’s let me go. I might sleep tonight.”

“Maybe without the poitín?”

“Maybe,” she said. “Is Colonel Mulligan right? Will I get the grace to be strong?”

“You’ve always had courage, Máire.”

“I have,” she said. “I must think of the others. Imagine if a woman had only one child and lost . . . Could you hurry with the stew?”

“Come upstairs,” I said.

And she did. We ate together that night for the first time in the month since Johnny Og’s funeral. Then Gracie and Bridget and Máire too, thank God, worked on the colonel’s letters with me. Máire said writing words to console other mothers and the wives of the men who’d served with Johnny Og would help her.

“Excellent penmanship, Máire,” I said.

“Thank you, Miss Lynch,” she answered.

We added our own bits to each letter: He was a credit to the Cunninghams, a hero of the proud clan of O’Mara, in the tradition of the Fitzgeralds, the O’Donnells . . . Born to be warriors, I thought, and devil a thing we can do about it. We didn’t finish until midnight.

“I’ll sleep tonight,” Máire said, “and I think I’ll go in to the Shop in the morning.”

Bridget and I delivered the letters to the Mulligan house the next morning. I’d asked Máire to come, but she was eager to get back to the Shop. Bridget hadn’t wanted to go, either.

“You can miss school one day.”

“But I have nothing to wear. What if James Nugent is there?”

“You’re not going to a ball,” I said. “Wear your uniform skirt and coat from Saint Xavier’s with that blouse I gave you for Christmas.”

The Mulligans lived on the North Side, not far from Holy Name Cathedral across from Lake Michigan.

Bridget and I stood looking up at the gray stone building with its long second-floor balcony.

“It’d be lovely to step out there and have your tea with the sun coming up over the Lake,” I said.

“I’m sure the Mulligans drink coffee, Mam.”

Marion herself answered the door and hugged Bridget, looking none the worse for her month as a prisoner. I said she looked well, and she told us General Price had been a gentleman, for all that he’s a secessionist. Marion said she remembered Bridget from St. Xavier’s—wasn’t Bridget a freshman the year Marion graduated? A junior now! How quickly time goes. . . .

She brought us into the parlor, and soon she and Bridget were chatting away. Bowed windows looked out across to the Lake. A small fire burned in the grate, and two horsehair chairs were drawn up to each side of the hearth.

Was this where James Mulligan and his wife sat at night? Him smoking his pipe and she sewing or reading? Not too many evenings at home for the colonel now. But later in life, they would enjoy each other’s company here.

Would James Mulligan live to comb gray hairs? So eager to lead men into battle and have this girl, Marion—a mother already with another on the way—follow him.

An older woman came into the room, followed by a young maid carrying a large tray with cups and saucers and a silver tea service.

“Put that on the table, Biddy,” the woman said. The girl set down her burden.

“Ladies,” said the older woman. “What a pleasant surprise. My son-in-law, Colonel Mulligan, is such a one for surprises. Biddy, bring more cups. I’m Alice Grant Nugent—Marion’s mother.”

Mrs. Nugent sat down, regarding the two of us the way Miss Lynch had looked me over at Barna House—ready to inquire and instruct.

When had we come to Chicago and how? I was a widow? Dreadful. Oh, yes, she’d heard that the conditions were awful in Ireland. But she’d never understood: Why hadn’t the people simply eaten fish? She didn’t expect an answer.

Now, her family, the Grants—“we Scotch-Irish”—had been in the country for many, many generations. A cousin of hers, Ulysses S. Grant, was a very important officer in the Union army. “He’ll be a general soon,” she told us. And where do we live? Bridgeport? Oh. Was it true conditions had improved there?

“You’re from Bridgeport, aren’t you, Biddy?” said Mrs. Nugent to the maid as she brought the teapot to her.

“I am, Mrs. Nugent.” And then she turned to me. “I know you, Mrs. Kelly and Bridget. I’m Mary Gleason’s youngest.”

“Bridget Mary, isn’t it?” I said.

Mrs. Nugent smiled and poured tea into my cup and then Bridget’s. “Nice for you to meet friends, Biddy,” she said.

“I get to Bridgeport for the Saturday night céili and Sunday Mass at Saint Bridget’s. Late Mass,” Biddy said, and laughed.

“Must never neglect our souls,” Mrs. Nugent said. “We go to the cathedral. Bishop Duggan is a dear friend of ours.”

“I tried Holy Name once,” said Biddy. “But there’s better-looking fellows at Saint Bridget’s. Though there’s a right few at Saint Patrick’s. Lots of railroad men live in the boardinghouse near the parish. Sometimes I go to Mass at both places.”

“How devout of you, Biddy,” Mrs. Nugent said. “Thank you. That will be all.”

Biddy winked at us as she left.

We all sat with our knees and lips pressed together, and then Marion started laughing. Bridget and I joined in.

Mrs. Nugent said to Marion, “What? What is it?”

“Biddy and her Masses,” Marion managed to say.

Alice Nugent turned to us. “You see, ladies, I’m a convert to your faith, and I sometimes don’t understand these things.”

Marion and Bridget laughed harder.

“Someone’s having a good time.” A young man came into the room. “I heard the noise and wondered.”

Marion looked up and smiled at him. “My brother, James,” she said.

Bridget stopped giggling. I heard her say, “Oh,” very softly.

Oh, indeed. James Nugent stood in the double door of the parlor, his head almost touching the frame above. Golden hair, a color you didn’t see on boys very often, unruly, as if he’d tried to flatten the curls down but they wouldn’t obey. Very white teeth and a lovely smile. He had Marion’s blue eyes, her straight nose. But where her chin was round and her cheeks plump, his face had angles enough to stop him being pretty. He walked over and kissed his mother’s cheek.

“What’s the joke, Mama?” he said.

“Joke? What do you mean?” said Mrs. Nugent.

He turned and smiled right at Bridget. “What a lovely surprise on a winter’s day,” James Nugent said.

Marion introduced us.

“Ah, Corporal Kelly’s family, and connected to Patrick Kelly, too, I understand. I’m very sorry about your nephew, Mrs. Kelly, and your cousin, Miss Kelly.”

“I’m Bridget,” she said.

“Bridget was my granny Nugent’s name, my father’s mother who came from Ireland. I remember she had a reed cross she called Saint Bridget’s cross.”

“Croiseog Bhríde,” I said in Irish.

“Granny spoke Irish,” Marion said, “but we never learned it.”

“Why would you?” said Mrs. Nugent.

“I know ‘Faugh-a-Ballagh,’” said James Nugent. “That’s Irish.”

“Clear the Way,” said Marion. “I know that one.”

“And do you know the history behind it?” I asked.

James Nugent answered: “In 1745, the Irish Brigade fighting for the French beat the British at Fontenoy. Faugh-a-Ballagh was their battle cry.”

“I was courted with stories of Irish heroes,” said Marion.

“Weren’t we all?” I said.

A nice girl, this, in spite of the mother.

I watched Mrs. Nugent’s face as her son charmed my daughter, Bridget, a girl from Bridgeport. Not one bit pleased.

Bridget’s a very beautiful young woman. I hadn’t quite realized. Blond curls, blue eyes, and Walsh curves, sitting there so calm and composed in her St. Xavier’s uniform, at ease in this room. She was telling James Nugent other phrases in Irish she remembered.

“‘Nollaig Shona Dhuit’ means ‘Happy Christmas,’” she said.

He tried to say it, and they laughed.

“The Brigade will have its Christmas dance in a few weeks. I would be honored if you would accompany me,” he said.

“Now, James . . . ,” Mrs. Nugent began as Colonel Mulligan came in.

“I’m leaving this afternoon for Washington,” Colonel Mulligan said. “Trying to get the War Department to reinstate the Brigade. Glad to get these sent.” He sat down and began to sign the letters. “A beautiful job, Mrs. Kelly.”

“Bridget wrote a good few. She studies at Saint Xavier’s, you know—soon to graduate. Top of her class. Your brother-in-law kindly invited my daughter to attend the Brigade’s ball,” I said.

“Not formally,” said Mrs. Nugent.

“Mother.” James Nugent winked at Bridget. “I’ll send you a note.”

“And please give your sister my condolences,” Colonel Mulligan said.

“Your letter meant a great deal to her. She wrote some of these letters. She said she was very glad to help other mothers.”

“Yes. That will be important. I’m sorry I have to leave. I’d like to thank her.”

“She works in Mr. Potter Palmer’s store downtown—his best saleswoman.”

I saw Mrs. Nugent open her mouth, but Marion nudged her in the ribs.

“We’ll be going now, Colonel. I’ll take the letters to the post office. Good afternoon.”

“Oh, Mam, how could you? You were bragging about me in front of Marion Mulligan and the colonel,” Bridget said. “What will James Nugent think!”

We walked along LaSalle.

“Let’s hope he thinks for himself and doesn’t let his snob of a mother, Alice, boss him. If he hasn’t the courage to stand up to her, he’s no good to you. Puts me in mind of the story a Claddagh woman told me about a mother who didn’t like the girl her son loved,” I said. “Would you like to hear it, Bridget?”

“Mam, I’m in no mood for a story. I’ll never be able to look James Nugent in the face again.”

“Now, Bridget, a story shortens a journey.” She didn’t say no, so I began. “Fadó, a long time ago, a Claddagh fellow loved a girl and his mother took against her. The mother spread terrible gossip about the girl. Said she was no better than a whore, and on and on. The fellow believed the slander and broke off with the girl. Then he found out it was all lies. He went to the girl to apologize, but she would have nothing to do with him. He haunted her father’s cottage, but she wouldn’t see him. One day he caught the girl coming down to the strand. He begged her to take him back. ‘Marry me. Marry me.’ He said he was furious with his mother. Now, these two loved each other with a kind of passion that can be a curse. And so the girl said, ‘I will marry you.’ He was over the moon. ‘I will marry you,’ she went on, ‘when you bring me your mother’s heart in your own two hands.’ And the boy did it. He cut out his mother’s heart and offered it, all dripping with blood, to the girl. ‘From my own two hands,’ he said. And you see that heart and those hands on the Claddagh wedding ring.”

“Oh, Mam, that’s a horrible story!”

“Maybe, but there’s something to it. Mothers can be very possessive of their sons.” Mothers and sons—Johnny Og’s last word was “Mathair.” I’d cut out my own heart to save my sons. If Mrs. Nugent didn’t want her son involved with a Bridgeport girl, at least Bridget was warned.

Máire came home from the Shop more like herself than before the war had started.

“You won’t believe it!” she told me.

She’d been called to Mr. Potter Palmer’s office, and who was there? Only Colonel James Mulligan himself, wanting to thank her in person before he left for Washington. Mr. Potter Palmer had been very impressed. A collection had already been taken up among the clerks as a contribution toward a stone for Johnny Og’s grave, she’d told Colonel Mulligan. And then the two men had asked her would she consider a more active way to honor her son’s memory? It seemed women’s clubs all over the country were coming together in the United States Sanitary Commission, to help improve conditions at hospitals and army camps.

“Think about it, Honora,” Máire said. “It was fever killed Johnny Og. Maybe with better medicine, he’d have survived.”

The women were going to try to keep close track of the wounded and get information to their families.

“I could have gone to him if I’d known where he was,” she said.

“Máire, this all sounds wonderful. And you’ll be so good at it.”

“I will,” she said. “Most of the others are Protestant society women, but I’m well able for them. Don’t I deal with them every day in the Shop?” Máire’s eyes filled. “Johnny Og would be pleased.”

“He would,” I said.

Máire’s new sense of purpose cheered us all, though Bridget had received no note from James Nugent and tried to hide her disappointment. For two weeks, she’d gone to the post office every day— nothing.

Máire noticed Bridget moping about the place and asked me what was wrong with her. “It’s nothing, really, compared to your real sorrow,” I said to her, but she made me tell. Máire said lovesickness was a relief—normal, at least. She had a long talk with Bridget. Whatever she said, Bridget wrote James Nugent a note wishing him a happy Christmas and inviting him to visit the family sometime. Máire got Thomas to take it: “He’ll talk his way past the mother,” she said.

Now they’ll think Bridget’s a bold piece, I thought, but said nothing.

Thomas came back full of his conversation with James Nugent. It seems Mrs. Nugent told her son that Bridget Kelly was engaged to a Bridgeport boy in the Brigade, claimed her maid had told her. An officer mustn’t turn the head of the sweetheart of one of his own men. Well, Thomas had set him straight. So.

Bridget was sure she’d never see or hear from James Nugent. The humiliation, the shame . . .

“Do the washing,” I told her. “Take your mind off James Nugent.”

The next day, Saturday, Bridget set the washtub up in the yard. It was cold, but the sun was out and there was a breeze from the west. I said if she could get the clothes rinsed and up on the line by noon, they’d dry and not go all icy.

I walked over to the window to see how she was getting on when I saw the young man come striding along: black trousers, green jacket, brass buttons shining in the sun—and those golden curls . . . James Nugent himself.