Of Irish Blood (11 page)

“You can’t run from me,” he says. “I’d find you anywhere you go.”

“Then come with me to the toilet,” I say. I’m standing now, looking down at his naked body—the body I thought I’d loved. “Take your pleasure like a man,” he said. What a fool I was.

“Go. Go,” he says. “But make it fast. That fellow’ll be waiting for me.”

I get by him and I’m into the hall. Then I’m running down the stairs and into the street. Piles of dirty snow on the State Street sidewalk and I’ve no shoes, but I don’t feel the cold. Tim’ll have to get dressed. I have a few minutes. Where to go? Holy Name Cathedral. I could hide in a confessional. No, he’ll look in the church. The rectory? And explain my plight to the priest’s housekeeper? Hardly. The convent? I wouldn’t put it past Tim to come battering at the nuns’ door. Can’t go home. He’ll go there surely. Besides, I can’t run shoeless and coatless all the way to Bridgeport. Not a penny on me. I suppose a tram driver might let me on, but there’s none coming. Besides, the passengers would stare at me. What if I see someone I knew? No way to get to Mike’s or Rose and John’s. And Tim might go to their houses. The police? “Good evening, I’m Nora Kelly,” I imagine myself saying to the desk sergeant. “I’ve just been beaten up by a man I thought I loved.” Oh God, the newspaper boys have tipsters at all the police stations. A juicy story—“City Official’s Relative Attacked by Gangster Lover…”

A good three blocks away now and I stop. I haven’t noticed other people on the street, but now I look behind me, see two men I must’ve passed, standing, looking at me.

“You need help?” one asks.

“Thank you,” I start. “Maybe you could…”

But then the other says, “Lose your customer? I’ll oblige you.” He laughs.

“Go to hell,” I say.

“Only joking,” he says, and walks toward me.

Then I hear the sound of an automobile. Of course, he’d come after me in the Oldsmobile. I run behind a building and look down State Street. I see the car pull up in front of Holy Name. He goes into the church. Thank God I didn’t go there, but where now?

The church bell rings eight o’clock. The streets are empty. He’ll have no trouble finding me. Hide in a tavern or a restaurant? Only a few around here. Wouldn’t take long for him to find me. The thought of Tim crashing in and dragging me out of the place. Where?

I come to the bridge across the river. My feet are wet and my toes burn with cold. I’m shivering and, wouldn’t you know, it starts snowing. Big flakes slapping at me, dropping into the river. The bridge is slippery and I have to hold on to the rails as I go across. All I need now is to fall in the river. Suicide, on top of everything else.

The thought makes me laugh. And then, oh Jesus, the sound of the Oldsmobile again!

I start running, turn onto Wacker. Please God, he’ll go straight south expecting me to make for Bridgeport. I turn right, and there in front of me is a huge block of gray stone holding its own against the snow. The Opera House. People inside and warmth. Maybe I could sneak in a side door …

What’s wrong with me? Dolly’s performing there tonight, playing the Merry Widow in Lehár’s operetta. Tim always bragged to me that he never picked up Dolly after the theater. Not at her beck and call. She had her own car and driver and she could join him at the casino or go back to the Palmer House. He’d be there or not, as it suited him.

Dolly. Dolly. Would she help me? The way she’d said, “No” … But then hadn’t Tim said something about Dolly thinking I’d be the kind of girl who’d give no trouble?

The old fellow at the stage door stands for a long time looking at me—a wet mess by now. He stares at my shoeless feet. I say I’m here to see Mrs. McKee.

“I don’t know. Mrs. McKee didn’t say nothing to me about nobody coming. She’s particular.”

“Please, just put me in some corner down in the basement until the performance is over and then give her my name. I’ll write it down. I’m sure she’ll see me. Please.”

“All right, all right. Cold enough outside to freeze a witch’s tit. I’ll let you into her dressing room, but don’t steal nothing.”

And I’m in Dolly’s lavish space. A big sofa against the far wall. To sit down! Thank you, God, thank you! I pull off my stockings and start rubbing feeling back into my feet. My blouse and skirt are soaked.

The door opens. Not Dolly, but Carrie O’Toole, her dresser, a woman I know from Dolly’s fittings. Must be well into her seventies, from Brooklyn, New York, as she’s told me often enough. The only one I’ve ever seen razz Dolly and get away with it.

“Look what the cat’s dragged in,” she says.

“Oh, Carrie, I’m…”

“I can see,” she says. “Take off those wet clothes and I’ll give you one of Her Highness’s robes.”

“I don’t think…”

“Hurry up. Dolly’s got a quick change coming up, and I’ve got to go out and help her.”

I start to fumble with the buttons on my blouse, but my fingers are so cold, stiff and trembling …

Then Carrie is helping me. She looks at the torn collar and up at me. She undoes my blouse and starts to loosen my corset. I yelp. “Sore?” she says.

“I … I…”

“Bumped into a door?” she says. She lifts the corset off. “Bruise already turning purple.”

The skin on my chest’s an awful color.

“Anything broken?” Carrie asks.

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

“Take a deep breath,” she says.

I do.

“You can breathe. You’re probably all right. Go in and take a hot bath. This place’s got amazing plumbing.”

“I know. My brother Mike put in the system.”

“Isn’t that nice?” she says, shakes her head, and starts laughing.

“Sorry,” I begin. “Ridiculous thing to say. It’s just … Carrie, I can’t believe what just happened. I mean, out of nowhere this, this friend turned on me.”

“Hey, Nora, don’t pretend with me. I know who smacked you around. I’d be lying if I said I was surprised. Just go in and soak yourself. Use the bath salts in there. Being clean and smelling good helps.”

“You know? You’ve been, uhm, hit?”

“Not me, but…” She rolls her eyes, cocks her head at the dressing table covered with framed photographs of Dolly and her admirers.

“Dolly? He’d never dare lay a hand on Dolly!”

“Oh, wouldn’t he?”

A knock at the door. “Two minutes,” a voice says.

“I’d better get going,” Carrie says. “Take a nap on the chaise longue after your bath. You’re safe enough. You got away. Smart girl.” She looks me over. “Didn’t let him break your front tooth. You’ve an hour before the final curtain.”

In the lavender-scented hot water the muscles in my shoulders let go. My whole chest aches. The purple bruise has spread across both breasts. Breathe. Breathe, I tell myself, and start to doze in the bath. Then I think, what if Tim breaks the door down right now? Decides to come here and …

I get out of the bath, dry off. Look for my clothes in the dressing room. Gone. Carrie has taken them, tricking me. She and Dolly are afraid of Tim. They’ll tell him where I am.

The dressing room door is opening. I duck behind the chaise longue. Carrie walks in, alone. Thank God.

“Here,” she says. “All Dolly’s things are too big, but one of the girls in the chorus gave me these.” She hands me a skirt and blouse—black serge wool. “Got the outfit for a funeral. Says you can keep them. She doesn’t want sad clothes anymore. Your blouse’s all ripped and the skirt not much better. Toss them. You won’t want to wear them again.”

She’s right. She gives me a pair of Dolly’s shoes which do fit.

“Oh Carrie, what if Tim comes here?”

“He doesn’t usually. But just in case I had a word with Charlie on the door. We got stagehands here who could clean Tim’s clock, he starts anything. Well-behaved when there’s fellows as strong as him around.”

I hear applause, shouting. The final curtain. Dolly taking her bows.

“I should leave, Carrie.”

But she is rummaging through the drawer of an ornate white dresser. She tosses me some bloomers and a shift and a card of pins. I start to dress, making the underwear fit, already imagining Tim brawling with the stagehands.

“I’ve got to go,” I say to Carrie. “Get away before Dolly…”

Then there she is. Dolly, standing still in the doorway, the skirt of her costume blocking the entranceway. And Tim behind her? No, thank God. She says nothing. Carrie points at my chest, the bruise darker above the top of the shift. I pull on the black blouse as Carrie moves to help Dolly out of her costume, unbuttoning the bodice of the frilly white gown.

“I’m sorry for you, Nora,” Dolly says. “I really am. I thought he’d gotten that temper of his under control. What did you say to him?”

“Me? Say to him? What do you mean? This wasn’t temper, Dolly. He wanted to beat me. Cold about it. Deliberate.”

Dolly steps out of the gown and into the robe Carrie holds. She sits down in front of her dressing table mirror, begins to take off the stage makeup, rubbing cream all over her face until her features disappear behind the white film. I watch as she uses a wad of cotton to wipe away the Merry Widow. Never have seen Dolly’s face bare. The harsh lights around the mirror show the fine wrinkles scoring her cheeks and forehead. A blankness around her eyes. She turns around to me. I’m dressed now.

“So where can we stash you?” she says. “I’d say stay here, but there’s the off chance that Tim … You can go home with Carrie.”

“Jesus Christ, Dolly, remember last time? He broke my Belleek bowl out of pure badness when he didn’t find you at my place,” Carrie says.

“Someone he doesn’t know,” Dolly says to me. “Not your relatives.”

“How about a hotel?” Carrie says.

“I … I don’t have any money,” I say.

Dolly waves her fingers at me. She applies a tinted cream over her face, then outlines her eyes with a black kohl pencil. Creating herself.

“By tomorrow Tim’ll be recovered. Come to your door with an armload of roses. Very sorry, he always is,” Dolly says.

“Always? Dear God, Dolly, how can you let him?”

“He doesn’t mean any harm. Not easy for him to be in my shadow. I make allowances.”

A clicking sound from Carrie.

“And am I an allowance too?” I ask Dolly.

“You see, Tim is a man of great appetite,” she says. “And I…” She stops.

“Can’t be bothered,” Carrie says.

“Not true,” Dolly says. “I am a woman of passion, of course, but my energy has to go into my work.”

“So I spelled you. Is that it?” I say.

“Better you than some goofy chorus girl who fancies herself in love with him,” Dolly says.

Carrie speaks up. “And threatens to go to the coppers. Remember that little Italian girl whose father came here, said he’d make a lot of trouble, tell the newspapers? Cost you a lot more than a night in a hotel will,” she says.

“Go to the newspapers?” I say. “I never want anyone to know. I am so ashamed!”

“
He
hit
you
,” Carrie says, “not the other way around. He’s the one should be ashamed.”

“Still, you must have provoked him,” Dolly says.

“No, no, I didn’t.”

“Did you get mad at him for threatening you at the wedding?” she asks.

“Mad? Not really. I only said we couldn’t go on. Dolly, he would have told my whole family if you hadn’t stopped him.”

She sighs.

“He does have it in for you Kellys and hates that detective. What’s his name? Larney. Says your brother and cousin look down on him. Wants to wipe those smug looks off their faces, he says.”

“He told you all this? That’s awful.”

When I was a little girl I got up one night to find a neighbor woman sitting at our kitchen table. Three little boys with her, crying. Mam making tea, Granny Honora holding her hand. Uncle Patrick and Da went out.

“They’ll have a word with him,” Granny said to the woman.

“It’s the drink,” the woman said. “The devil gets into him.”

Uncle Patrick and Da came back and the woman left with them.

“Made him see sense,” Uncle Patrick said to Granny when he and my da returned. “One of those fellows who hangs his fiddle behind the door.”

“Angel in the street, devil in the house,” Granny Honora said.

The next morning I asked Mam what Uncle Patrick and Granny meant.

“Oh Nonie,” she said. “Some fellows charm the world but torture the people who love them.”

“Why, Mam? Why?”

“I suppose because they can,” she said.

“Will he hit that lady again?”

“I hope not, Nonie. Your father and uncle threw a good scare into him. Better if she could get away from him. But where would she go? Not even a mother living here. In Ireland she’d have loads of relatives though no guarantee she’d be welcomed. Poor thing.”

Poor thing. Dolly, with all her money and fame, ready to let Tim knock her around and then take him back. Tolerate his other women. “I am a woman of passion,” she said. Well, if that’s passion, please God, save me from it! Love. I really thought I’d loved him. A man who was only a squeeze of his fingers away from killing me.

Nowhere to go? I’ll find somewhere. Not for me, roses and apologies. I’m awake now, the fairy kingdom left far behind me, the Fairy Woman flown.

Dolly stands up. Carrie removes her robe. Well-corseted is Dolly, her flesh pushed up and overflowing. Formidable. He hits
her
? What would he do to me?

“You’re a fool, Dolly,” Carrie says. “Tim is getting worse. He’s going to kill somebody one of these days. And it could be you!”

Dolly laughs from under the dress over her head. “I’m the director of this drama,” she says when she reemerges. “Tim always comes to heel.”

Carrie shakes her head and says, “You never threw him out, told him you were done like Nora did.” She looks at me. “He won’t like that, Nora. Dangerous. I’d get as far away from Chicago as I could,” she says.

Dolly smooths down the skirt of her dress, pleated at the waist and falling in easy folds that disguise her bulk. She sees me looking.

“Curious about my gown?” she asks.

“Well, it is very flattering,” I say.

Can’t believe I’m letting myself be distracted by a design when I should be running for my life right now.