Secret Isaac (13 page)

Annie wouldn't look for another job or lose her faith that Dermott was descended from the Irish. “Mama, we all broke out of the same potato. Me, Dermott, and you.”

She was ashamed to take money from him, but she did. Mothers and sisters have to eat. And Annie's father was long dead. But it was a slow kind of loving they had. He didn't make a mistress out of Annie Powell. They went to the Rockaways. Walked in freezing sand. They had three-hour lunches in Little Italy. She rolled pasta on a fork. She burped into her napkin and said, “Excuse me.” She was always home by six o'clock.

What kind of work did her professor do? Available seven days a week he was. Must be a landlord on the side. Dermott had apartments all over the City. After a month he took off her clothes. They were in a flat on Murray Hill. How many maids did Dermott keep? You couldn't find dust under the chairs. Oh, she'd had other boyfriends. But no one had licked her armpits before. He didn't mutter filth in her ears. Or make idiotic marriage proposals. He could touch a woman's body without coming in his pants. He wasn't like her Canarsie beaus, who went in and out of you so fast, you couldn't tell if you had a man inside, a rabbit, or a rush of wind. He had a delicate body that wasn't brittle or soft. It fit into hers like the cardboard teeth of a Chinese puzzle. And she thought, what does it mean to take your pants off in somebody's car? I've been going out with monkey boys. Dermott had magic everywhere, in all his parts. He could make her come with his finger and his mouth. She would twist around and grab pieces of that black hair. She'd never be able to sleep with a Canarsie boy again.

He loved to swipe her underpants, stuff them in his pocket, and sniff them from time to time. It didn't matter where the panties came from, how cheap they were, how flimsy, how many holes they had. She would have carried his underpants too, but her sisters might have gone through her things, spied on Annie, and snitched to her mother. She could imagine how mama would react. “I've raised a whore in my house. Annie, what are you doing with a man's jockey shorts?”

Then Dermott announced to her in a quiet voice, “I'm going to Ireland? Will you come?”

She spoke up like a good Irish girl. “Dermott, my mother would kill me.”

“I'll handle that,” he said. And it hurt her a little. Because he had to barter with mama, as if Annie were a cow. Mama cursed every misfortune the saints had thrust upon her and accepted Dermott's five thousand dollars. Annie was embittered. Mama should have cried harder and clutched less. It poisoned Annie's lovemaking for a week. But she figured to herself: I'm nobody's cow. That five thousand has nothing to do with me.

Oh, it was a merry life for a girl with a dead father, living in Dublin on a rat's honeymoon. Because wherever Dermott went, that donkey went too.
They
were the married pair, Dermott and Jamey O'Toole. Like brothers they were. Big and Little. And Annie couldn't snuggle between them to locate her man. But she learned to appreciate O'Toole. He would poke drunken men out of her way, choose a nice path for Dermott and Annie. She was a bit unclear about her own Irishness. Mama had never been to the Old Country. Some granddad of Annie's had arrived starving in America after one of those long potato blights. It could have been a thousand years ago. The girl had no sense of history. Irish she was, but she didn't look like any of the freckles she saw on Grafton Street. God, it was a land of freckle-faced people. Her own complexion was kinder than that. Not lumpy, gray, and red. It scared her. She didn't want to become a boiled potato.

You could see row after row of gray heads on the bus to Dalkey. The buildings were gray, or a bloodless brown. But she adored the street signs that were in Gaelic. It was like a fairy's tongue. FAICHE STIABHNA. Stephen's Green. SRAIDIN MUIRE. Little Mary Street. LANA NUTLEY. Nutley Lane.

The town seemed populated with elves. She ran into a soldier four feet high, with a cap and boots and a green, green shirt. The soldier dipped his cap and said, “What do you think?”

Annie struggled for an answer. “Not very much.”

“Same as us all,” the soldier said, and he was gone from Annie Powell.

And the damn money they had in this Republic. A ten-pound note was big as a napkin, and it had a goblin's face in the back. She didn't know how to spend such things. Dermott gave her banker's checks to use, with her name and his printed on the bottom. ANNIE POWELL OR DERMOTT BRIDE. It was like having a company together. You couldn't cash them at Woolworth's. You had to take Dermott's checks into the prouder stores. She bought everything at Switzer's and Brown Thomas: underwear, peanuts, pajama tops. Cashiers would hold up the checks with their fingers, smile, and shout “Grand!” at Annie. She didn't need identification, no little card with a signature on it. Dermott's checks were finer than gold. That's some man I have, mother dear. The Bank of Ireland sits on his shoulders.

Where was the money flowing from? Dermott took Jamey and her to dinner and lunch. It was a strange kind of eating, more often than not. Dermott might rent out a whole restaurant. He'd reserve twelve tables from seven to nine. O'Toole would be stationed at the door. Busboys and master waiters would hover over them, while Annie stared at empty tablecloths. “Everything to your satisfaction, madam?”

She chugged her head. A sauceboat would arrive on a flaming tray. “Just a dash for you, madam?”

Dermott wore a velvet suit. But she was too miserable to gloat on his handsomeness. Who buys out every chair at a restaurant?

The waiter was a genius. He could slice smoked salmon in front of your eyes. Her man knew all the fancy waiter talk. “Madam would like a bit of toast.” It was like having pet camels in your room to fetch whatever you want. The busboys sidled up to Annie with ten racks of toast. Mercy on the miserable and the poor. Annie could have fed off those racks of toast for a year. But she still couldn't tease out her man's line of work.

“Derm, are we ever going home?”

She must have hit on something, because his sockets turned dark.

“We're gypsies now,” he said. “But I'll take you to Connemara in a week.”

“Where's that?”

“Near Galway. In the west.”

You couldn't talk directions to Annie Powell. West was nowhere to her. West of Dublin? West of what? Ireland was a mystery. An Irish cab took them to Dublin airport, and they got on a plane to Shannon. It was no ordinary rent-a-car that waited for them. Her man had reserved a huge limousine. Jamey did the driving. He sang songs about the Rose of this and the Rose of that. “Yes, she's the Rose of Castlebar …”

It was a straight road to Galway, a town with one little square, like a pinch on your behind next to Stephen's Green. The lads didn't stop in Galway. But that square confused them. They couldn't decide which turn to make. Dermott growled under his teeth. “The road to Salthill, you dummy.”

Jamey wouldn't bend. “It's Clifden we want. And Oughterard.”

“Who's car is this?” Dermott asked.

“You're the king and I'm the driver.”

They didn't take the road to Oughterard. They were near the ocean in a minute, in some kind of bay. Geese flew over their heads, wild birds with long skinny bodies and delicate wings. Annie couldn't understand their powers of locomotion. How could such tiny wings carry a bird? She was a city girl. Pigeons are what entered her head, not geese that could caw over the knock of an engine.

They hugged a narrow seawall, and Annie was sure the three of them would drop into the bay. The donkey started teasing her. “Look, Annie girl, you can see Manhattan behind them rocks.”

“I'm from Sunnyside,” she said, and she wouldn't talk to Jamey. He must have been growing delirious. Because he muttered weird stories that went beyond the girl. He used a rough English tongue, as if he weren't enough of a giant without such a voice. “You hear me, laddies.
Neither O nor Mac shall strut nor swagger through the streets of Galway
. This is British land.
From the ferocious O'Tooles, good Lord, deliver us.
”

Dermott laughed. “Jamey, I didn't know your people were from Galway.”

“Ah, it's nothing, man. I learned it all from a catechism book. God pity the Irish, at home and abroad. I'm Jamey O'Toole. My people rose out of some pile of shit an Englishman made in Kildare. Show me an Irishman who can trace his ancestry, and you'll find that same pile of shit.”

“Agreed,” Dermott said.

But Annie took it as an insult. “My granddad dug potatoes. He was a good working man … from Omagh, I think. Or Ballyshannon. So speak for yourselves.”

“Yes, they'd all love to have one father,” Jamey said. “Finn MacCool. Not potatoes, Annie girl. There's a king in all of us. That's why our bones crack so easy.”

There was no use arguing with a donkey like him. Her man didn't say a word to defend the Irish. Who was Jamey to talk of people rising out of shit? Annie couldn't find a tree out here. Miles and miles of stone. Rock walls twisted over Hills that turned into low, harsh mountains. Yellow flowers grew between the rocks. You saw cows in the hills, bands of sheep, and haystacks with rags on top. The sheep looked odd to Annie when they came up close with their curled horns and black feet and blue markings on their rumps, as if an idiot had gone about stamping sheep's asses with color. Jamey honked at the beasts. “Get on. Climb on somebody else's back.”

But they had to sit until different gangs of sheep passed along both sides of the car. Jamey was perturbed. He drove too fast around a bend in the road and struck a cow. It was an awful sight for Annie. The cow lay dead, its hooves in the air, blood running from a shoulder. “Jesus,” the donkey muttered. “I thought a rock hit us.” He didn't have any mercy for the cow.

“Who's going to move that fucking thing?”

A farmer and his boy appeared in front of the seawall and approached the car.

“An accident,” Jamey said. “I swear to Christ … I wouldn't bash a cow on purpose. It just stood there, man, and looked me in the eye … I couldn't turn …”

The farmer and his boy dragged the cow off the road. The boy was crying. Jamey removed a wad of that Irish paper money from his wallet. “We're not villains,” he said. “Two hundred quid for a dead cow.”

The farmer wouldn't take the money. Jamey bundled it in his fist and tried to give it to the boy. But the boy only stared at him out of freckled cheeks. Jamey threw the money on the ground. Then he drove ahead of the farmer and the cow. He was in a fury. “Did you see the fender that animal put on us? It's lucky we can crawl.”

Annie was waiting for her man to slap the donkey on his ear. To murder a cow and then offer money, and not a word of real regret. But Dermott never scolded the donkey.

“Let me out,” she said.

“What's that, Annie girl?”

“You heard me, Mr. O'Toole. Stop the car. I'm not riding with cow-killers.”

O'Toole banged on the dashboard with a knuckle; the cushions under Annie trembled from the blow.

“Jesus, it's a fine day when your own family is against you. Dermott, you think she'll rat on us?… Annie, didn't I lay two hundred on that old gizzard for his cow? It was a worthless animal. Dull in the head. A cow that stands in the middle of the road and hogs your lane!… Dermott, ask her to forgive us now. We'll order up a Requiem for that animal at the next church. We'll pay for chanters and all … I wouldn't disappoint Annie Powell.”

Annie hardened against the donkey and her man. “Have your jokes,” she said. “Blaspheme a poor cow that doesn't have a soul and can't defend itself against its murderers. But I won't ride with you.”

Jamey pummeled the dashboard again. Dermott wasn't amused. “Let her out,” he said. They left Annie on the road to Screeb and Maam Cross. She had her suitcase. She'd strut back to Galway and sleep in that little square, she would. She'd show that donkey and the king. Annie Powell could get along without her man. She had some Irish silver in her bag, coins with a bull on one side and a harp on the other. She'd spend them in Galway, live on coffee and scones, and the lemony biscuits she liked. Maybe she
would
buy a mass for that cow. She'd ask the fathers of Galway if such a thing were possible …

Annie brooded and brooded, but she hadn't gone a step. She already missed the king. Why did her man throw her out of the car? She should have listened to her mama and stayed in Sunnyside. Sure, she could close her eyes and whisper that her man was in real estate. But how many realtors would pay five thousand for the right to bring a girl toDublin?Dermott Bride was a crook. His men liked to murder cows. Here she was, a gangster's lady.

It could have been an hour before the dust shivered up off the road. She saw spots of brown fur and a glue made of blood inside the big hollow on Jamey's fender. She was glad the cow had marked the limousine with its own dying. But she didn't say that to her man. She climbed on Dermott's lap when the door opened. She curled into his neck. She would never have gotten to Galway by herself.