Galway Bay (69 page)

“Máire, I’m surprised at you. The children have to make their own lives. You’re the one always said that.”

“Shut your gob, Honora! What do you know? You’ll always have Bridget. She’ll spend her life suffering for a dead man and enjoying every minute of it, just like her mother!”

“Máire, please,” I said. I took her by the shoulders. “Don’t say such things.”

She reared up out of the chair, turned, put her hands on my chest, and pushed, hard. “Don’t you tell me what to say!” She pushed me again.

I lost my balance and had to take a few steps backward. Then I went for her. But before I got to Máire, I was grabbed from behind. Stopped.

“Mam!” Bridget held me against her.

Gracie had Máire pinned down in the chair. Gracie looked up at Bridget. Silence.

I don’t know if Bridget started first or Gracie, but in seconds they were bent over with the laughing, and there was nothing for it but that Máire and I join in.

“It’s past midnight,” Bridget said. “The fellows will be coming in from McKenna’s. Wouldn’t do to see their mothers wrestling like a pair of ejits.”

The girls sat us down and made tea. We four sat, sipping from the new china cups.

After a bit, I said, “Sorry, Máire. But really . . . I don’t mind what you say about me, but to insult Bridget . . .”

“Not an insult, Mam,” Bridget said. “I admire you for staying true to my da. I love James Nugent. Him being gone doesn’t change anything. No other man could replace him.”

“Not replace him, Bridget,” I said. “You’ll never have a
first
love again, but love’s deeper and wider than you think.” I remembered Granny’s voice:
You’ve made God very small, Honora.
Had I reduced love to a memory I could control and taught Bridget to do the same? I have to make her understand. “You wouldn’t be disloyal to James Nugent if some other young man—”

“Edward Cuneen,” Gracie, who’d gone quiet, suddenly said.

“Gracie, don’t,” Bridget said.

But Gracie went on, “He was an officer in the Irish Brigade, a good friend of James Nugent. We see him at Mulligan’s. He likes Bridget, I know. Comes to see her, but she’ll hardly talk to him, though she wants to. And he’s a nice fellow—good-looking, too.”

“What about him, Bridget?” I asked.

“He understands that I can’t . . .” She stopped.

“Can’t what?” Máire said. “Don’t you want a husband? Children?”

“I’ll have my teaching, and you, Mam,” Bridget said. “And my brothers and their children. I’ll visit Gracie.”

“But your whole life’s ahead of you,” I said to her.

“I’ll get through it as you did, Mam. Left foot, right foot.”

“No, Bridget, no,” I started.

We heard the boys pounding up the stairs, singing.

“Listen to them,” Gracie said.

We are the Fenian Brotherhood . . .

They were through the door for the last bit of the song.

Many battles we have won

Along with the boys in blue,

And we’ll go and capture Canada

For we’ve nothing else to do!

“See, Mam?” said Gracie to Máire. “See? I have to marry James Mulloy right now or he’ll go off again into another war, and I just can’t bear it!”

Drunk as lords, all of them—Jamesy, Daniel, and James Mulloy, even Stephen and Michael. Only Paddy was anywhere near sober, and Patrick Kelly nowhere to be seen.

The boys settled themselves in the parlor, ready for an all-night singsong.

“Don’t get too comfortable,” Máire said. We four women stood at the door of the parlor. “You should be in your beds.”

These are grown men she’s talking to, I thought, but we’re still their mothers. I took a breath, then said, “We forbid any of you to get involved in a war in Canada.”

“That’s right,” Máire said. “Do you hear me, Daniel?”

“Paddy, talk some sense to them,” I said.

“I can’t stop them. But I won’t go. Not with the baby coming.”

“Then James Mulloy can’t fight either. I’m going to have a baby,” Gracie said.

“What?” Daniel stood up and grabbed James Mulloy off the sofa. “To do that to my sister!”

“But I didn’t!” James Mulloy shouted, struggling with Daniel.

Gracie went over to them. “Stop! I didn’t say I’m expecting a baby now. But I plan to. We’re getting married this week, James Mulloy.” She shook her finger in his face. “You promised if we did, you wouldn’t go.”

“She made me promise,” James Mulloy said to the boys. “But I never thought her mother would let her.”

“My mother’s delighted,” Gracie said. She turned to Máire.

The looks on the boys’ faces . . . nothing Máire could do but laugh.

Gracie married James Mulloy at St. Bridget’s on New Year’s Eve. She’d continued to surprise us by arranging with Sister Mary Francis de Sales at St. Xavier’s to take her exams during Christmas week. Gracie left for Nashville with her diploma.

“Though what good it will do her on a horse farm, I don’t know,” Máire grumbled.

I told her she’d be singing another tune when she was watching a Mulloy horse named Askeeboy win a great race. “You were right to give them your blessing, Máire.”

“You heard her. She was going to marry him anyway. Didn’t know Gracie was so much like me. What about Bridget?”

Gracie had invited Edward Cuneen to the wedding and back to our parlor. She’d refused to have a big party. “The family’s enough,” she’d said.

I liked Edward—a farmer’s son from Summit, down the canal. He’d studied at St. Mary’s, as Colonel Mulligan had. He planned to teach at the public school in Summit while helping his father on the farm. He’d made a point of telling me Bridget could teach there, too, or if she preferred, stay at St. Xavier’s. There was great transportation between Chicago and Summit—a horsecar, the train, even the canal boat. Very close to Bridgeport, too.

“I don’t know, Máire,” I said. “Edward’s in love with her, no question, and I think she’d feel the same if she could let herself.”

“Let herself,” Máire repeated. “If only Daniel and Jamesy would have the sense to marry.”

Not a chance.

“At least Patrick Kelly’s not around, drilling them for battle.”

Patrick had taken his bag from Paddy’s and left the night that we were up in our parlor arguing. He’d heard all the ruckus and decided not to come in to say good-bye, I thought. He’d left an order for Jamesy and Daniel. They were to collect the name, address, and record of military service of every member of the Brotherhood in the area. General Sweeny had been named secretary of war of the Fenian Brotherhood. He was now commanding general of the Armies of Ireland, and Patrick Kelly had been made colonel in this Irish army. Patrick was joining General Sweeny on a tour of the East, organizing the troops. He’d be back in the spring.

Jamesy and Daniel spent the winter going to Fenian meetings all over Chicago and in places like Belvidere, Illinois, and Anderson, Indiana.

“It’s been two years since the Fenian Fair. So much support, all that money raised. We’ve got to do something!” Jamesy said to me.

Then very bad news came from Ireland. The government, using information from informers, arrested hundreds of men for taking the Fenian oath. Some were Americans. No charges, just off to jail. Forget appealing to the United States. The British didn’t recognize naturalized citizens. The attempted uprising was put down brutally.

Then in February, we celebrated our own victory: A tiny baby defeated the Sassenach, starvation, landlords, gombeen men, and all who’d tried to destroy us. On February 11, 1866, Paddy’s son—Michael Joseph Kelly—was born and named for his grandfather. The great line of Kellys, stretching through the Piper and Murty Mor, the blacksmith, to William Boy of the great party and back as far as Maine Mor himself, would go on.

“The baby’s gained a good bit of weight,” I said to Bridey in March.

He was a month old now and flourishing. Máire and I watched Bridey feed the baby. She’s nice plump breasts, I thought, not flat and falling like mine when Stephen was born during the Great Starvation. Michael, a stór, our grandson! We’re alive. We wouldn’t die to please them. Not mere survival, either. A bit of comfort. Nice things around us. How Mam would have liked to see Máire and me sitting in Bridey and Paddy’s tidy parlor with its flowered carpet and lace curtains.

Doing all right for ourselves in America. Plenty of work for Kelly Brothers’ Blacksmiths. Máire’d gotten another raise, and my letter writing was bringing in a good few dollars. With so much work around, everyone in Bridgeport seemed to be sending money back to Ireland and wanted a flowery American letter to go with it.

“Ah, Mike,” Bridey said to the baby, “plenty there. Slow down.”

“Mike?” I said to Bridey as I leaned over and stroked the baby’s forehead lightly.

“Paddy calls him that,” she said. “Michael Joseph Kelly is his name, of course. But Paddy says ‘Mike’ is short and sharp and good for shouting. ‘I’m Mike Kelly,’” she said in a deep voice, “‘and I can lick any man in the house!’”

Máire and I laughed. Mike. American. Ah well, if they like it . . .

We settled down for a good gossip. James McKenna’s son doing so well at the tavern, Molly Flanigan looking to sell the boarding-house—she’d get a good price. Newcomers were looking for places to live. Germans and Lithuanians were building their own churches in Bridgeport. Irish families were moving out to other neighborhoods, renting bigger places, even buying their own homes.

Funny, I said, how our neighbors settle farther south, while the Irish on the West Side move west and the North Siders go up the lakeshore. But no one hopscotched. A South Side family would never move north or west.

“Paddy wants to buy a piano,” Bridey said. She looked down at the baby. “Mike’s asleep. I’ll put him in his cradle.”

“A piano,” said Máire. “Even the Pykes never had a piano.”

A few minutes later, the boys came racketing in. They were all busy during the week, but they made a point of meeting at McKenna’s on a Saturday night.

“If they wake the baby . . . ,” said Bridey.

Nothing would do but for Paddy to bring his son out to his brothers and Daniel. The baby looked so small in his arms as these big men clustered around him. Jamesy touched the baby’s face.

“See these fellows, Mike?” Paddy said, tilting his son up toward the boys. “Jamesy, Stephen, Michael, and Danny O? They’ll stand with you against the world.” Then to me, “Remember Da—the fingers and the fist?”

“I do, Paddy.”

Mike smiled up at them—a real smile, not just gas bubbling up.

Michael reached out his finger, and the baby Mike took it.

“Some grip on this fellow,” Michael said. “He’ll strike the mighty blow! Here’s a partner in the forge for us, Paddy.”

“Ah, Mike,” Paddy said to his baby son, “you’ll not work away in a forge all your life. You’ll be a banker and wear linen suits and a straw boater hat and be a grand fellow entirely.”

Victory.

Patrick Kelly arrived in mid-April. Chicago’d finally shaken off the winter, and the scraps of prairie left near Bridgeport bloomed into crab apple blossoms and buttercups. Why does America not have snowdrops? “Saint Bridget’s flower,” I’d told Bridget. “We need them.”

“No matter, spring’s here,” Bridget had said.

Edward Cuneen had taken to coming in from Summit and meeting her at St. Xavier’s after school. They took long walks along the Lake, she said, talking about James Nugent. Slowly, slowly, with a word here and there, I tried to nudge Bridget into choosing her own happiness.

She didn’t understand me and my life, I’d told her. I’d suffered, of course, and I missed her da, but I didn’t see myself as the noble Widow Kelly, my face set against adversity. I took great joy in her and the boys, and now Mike, found comfort and fun with my Bridgeport friends and satisfaction, too, from working in the office, at church, and doing my letters. “And Bridget, I had the before times. Your da and I”—how to say it without embarrassing her—“found such delight in each other, something you can’t grasp unless you experience it. Didn’t God Himself make the bodies of men and women this way?” She’d only nodded. I’d explained the Brehon laws to her, mentioned Queen Maeve. “Irishwomen enjoyed taking and giving pleasure,” I’d said, “but the Great Starvation brought such overwhelming sorrow.” And then I’d told her that certain priests tried to scare women into guilt and denial. James Nugent had been a generous fellow who would be glad to see her married to Edward Cuneen.

“So why don’t you marry Uncle Patrick?” she’d said.

“Jesus Christ, what has Máire been telling you?” Everything, it seemed. A conspiracy. “I just might, if it keeps him from leading the boys into Canada and gets you to see sense.”

“So do it,” she’d said. “Prove your argument.”

Patrick Kelly had been in Chicago a week now. Busy, staying downtown at the Tremont House. Better for meetings and such, he’d said. He hadn’t even come to see the baby, so I was surprised when he walked into Paddy’s parlor.

I was minding Mike. Bridey was out shopping. Late afternoon. Máire still at the Shop. Quiet.

Patrick leaned over, and I held the baby up to him. Mike, not a bit afraid, grabbed one of the brass buttons on the dark green tunic of the new uniform Patrick wore as an officer in the Army of Ireland. I eased Mike’s little hand free.

“I didn’t know I’d be so besotted,” I said to Patrick as I rocked Mike, comfortable in Bridey’s big chair, the coal fire warming the place.

Patrick sat in the chair across from me.

“Being a grandmother’s a great thing altogether,” I said. Mike yelped. “Whist, whist,” I said. “Nana’s here.” Now I understood Granny Keeley giving her food to Dennis’s girls. The next generation. Their turn.

“A young-looking nana,” Patrick said to me.

“Forty-three,” I said.

“Not old,” he said. “I’m fifty-six.”

“Only numbers,” I said. “You don’t change. You’re the same fellow came walking into Knocnacuradh that night. It was three months before Paddy was born, and here’s his son.”

“I remember thinking Michael was a lucky man,” Patrick said, “never knowing how few years he had left.”

“He was only twenty-seven, Patrick. Now I realize how young that is.”