The Last Cadillac (22 page)

“Ah, I heer-d the little one arly this morning,” she said.

“It's been a bad night, and now a bad morning,” I said. “But she's finally sleeping.”

“It's dreadful, especially for the little ones.”

I froze. Now I was really worried. “What's dreadful?”

She tilted her head and held her hands against her starched dress. “Oh, m'am, it's the tummy. Now, I shall call the hotel doctor. I'll go now, m'am. I'll do it.” And she was gone, flying
down the hallway as quickly as she'd appeared at my door.

I sat on the bed across from my daughter who lay flat on her back, not curled into her customary ball. She was so pale, the freckles leapt off her face. A medicinal, sweet sour odor seeped from her body. No matter how many bouts of flu and viruses and colds they fought, I never got over being scared when they got sick. On top of everything, I'd brought her on yet another crazy adventure, and the more I thought of it, the more I began to panic.

Someone knocked on the door. I opened it and stepped back. There was the doctor. I guessed it was the doctor, because she gripped a black leather bag such as those traditionally carried by doctors making house calls. But the bag was the only clue. She looked less like a doctor and more like a large, furry animal. She was very tall and covered from head to ankles in a strange brown fur that gave her the appearance of a well-worn bear.

“Dr. Mary Frances O'Shaunnessy,” she said, extending long, delicate fingers. I moved out of the doorway as she took wide steps and floated into the room—if a tall bear can float.

“Ah, what a beautiful child,” said Dr. Mary Frances. “Look at that now, so peaceful. Loooovely.”

She put the bag down. A striking face turned to me, revealing fine, silky skin and a strong aquiline nose. Her smile warmed me like the sun coming up.

The doctor took a step back and clasped her long fingers. I waited for her to make a move toward my daughter, but she hesitated, one narrow black foot pointing out from under the hem of a long, velvet skirt that peeked out from the fur.

“Thank you for coming,” I said. “It's so good of you to come out this early. She's had a fever and been throwing up all night and I don't know what to do.”

“Do? It looks like you've done it. Ah, she's an angel.”

“Well, thank you, very much, but I'd rather she be back to her old self, alive and well, you know. Not that she's not an angel.” I rambled on. All the while the doctor seemed amused. Her eyes twinkled and she tossed her head, which caused the fur topper to wobble precariously.

“Now, ye sit and rest up, and we'll have a look. This angel, I can see, should be up and running in the green and having a lovely strawberry ice. She'll be at it again in no time soon.”

I took Dr. Mary's coat and sank into an armchair. The doctor peered under my daughter's eyelid and tapped her chest slightly. Then, she popped up and straightened the fur hat that I feared would fall on my daughter, who had hardly stirred.

“What's wrong with her?” I stood up and started walking back and forth at the foot of the bed, as if I could walk off the worry.

“Ah, she has a bit of the tummy bug. Quite common with the wee visitors, not accustomed to the water and such and other things that fly about.” She made a vague gesture with her long thin fingers to show the general flight pattern of the tummy bugs. “It will take twenty-four hours for the bug to run its course.”

Most of that time had run out. Sunshine was dehydrated, but the fever had already passed. Dr. Mary left me with a sample of the medicine, then pirouetted out the door. She predicted an end to it (nearly to the hour), and prescribed some flat Seven-Up and a few doses of Motilium from the pharmacy on Baggott Street, which I suspected had valium in it. (I considered taking a dose or two myself.) Little Sunshine slept, and so did Dad. I wondered, as I drifted off for a nap, what sort of practice Dr. Mary would have in
Florida. I couldn't imagine her anywhere but here, so elegant and cheery in her brown fur. She had many a tummy bug to chase out of Ireland.

The next morning, I wandered into the lobby, looking for the newspaper, and some answers. I found Eddy, the doorman, on the front steps, a silver whistle in his teeth, brass buttons done up to the neck.

“Excuse me, I know this sounds crazy, but is there a rooster over there in the park?” It was a ridiculous question, but I had to ask it. Every morning, I was sure, my alarm clock was alive and had feathers, crowing in St. Stephen's Green across the street from the hotel—in one of the largest international cities in the world.

Eddy didn't hesitate to come up with a question of his own. He tipped forward slightly, in a sort of bow, touching the brim of his hat.

“Well, now, miss, and did ya see one walking around thar? Har in the middle of Dooblin?”

“No, I didn't see one. I've heard one or two. Maybe a flock of them over there in the park.”

“But ye haven't seen one struttin' about, have ye?”

“No.”

He looked puzzled and thought a while with a finger
pushing up one corner of his mouth. It was unlikely I would get a straight answer. The Irish seem incapable of it, preferring the story and the enjoyment of telling it and embellishing bits of available information, rather than ending the journey of telling it. I knew this before I even asked him, because I come by it honestly.

“Well, it's curious,” he said. “I don't know for sure, but then maybe thar is the odd one or two. It's not really the custom, ye know, but one never knows in the green, many a parson has seen and heard stranger things thar and abroad.” Then he told me a tale of the woman whose hat flew off, and a passerby in a carriage, who leapt out into the park to catch it, with the upshot that a romance came of it.

That settled it. I could usually get an opinion of some sort from my Irish hosts, or at least a story or two. Maybe yes, and maybe no, this, that, and tuther. At any rate, Eddy didn't clear up the matter of the rooster, so I crossed over to the park and started looking for one, not really expecting to find it at all.

I tried not to make myself look like I was lost, because one of the Irish would surely ask me what I was doing and then give up his or her afternoon to help me search. The prospect of engaging some busy Dubliner in a rooster hunt was embarrassing.

The rooster was well hidden. Although I looked around in many bushes and niches, where roosters might spend their afternoons resting up for morning duty, I didn't find any. I was tired of being awakened at such an early hour by the creature—and there was little I could do about it—but I wanted to look him in the eye. When I thought about what I was doing among the pansies and fuchsia, I stopped and gave up. The existence of a rooster in the middle of Dublin
was something I had to accept. If there were a rooster or two intruding on my sleep and I couldn't prove it, then that was that. I could change some things. Others I had to accept. I had no choice.

I walked back to the hotel and into the Horseshoe Bar and ordered a pint of Harp. I raised my glass. To the rooster, who brings me into the morning, bright and early each and every lovely day in Ireland.
Slainte
!

Ireland was not easily accessible to the disabled, at least not in 1997. I don't know why I brought the wheelchair, expecting to tool around Dublin without a care. The charming stone stoops and low narrow arches and steps, the sidewalks without curb cuts, the non-existent elevators, even in most of the museums and art galleries, the gentle slopes and rain-slicked cobbled walks—all of this I had forgotten about when we decided to make the trip.

Dad could walk, but with great difficulty, so we really needed that wheelchair for the times we could use it. Wheeling it around was another matter. It wasn't easy, but it was part of the adventure. He wasn't going to sit in the hotel all day, although he probably would have enjoyed it, fully ensconced at the hearth with his group of talkative, lovely Irish acquaintances.

We got up late one morning and headed off to Bewley's on Grafton Street for coffee, eggs, and sausages. The sun shone, and the street bustled with busy young people, shopping and going to work. I wheeled Dad out of the lobby and down a ramp that suddenly appeared once again at the hand of the invisible helpers, and the three of us went rolling along the narrow sidewalk. Then we reached the curb.

I stared beyond the tips of Dad's shoes. I was looking across a great canyon. I tilted the front end of the wheelchair back to ease him over the lip of the curb. Dad yelped that I was going to kill him.

Little Sunshine said, “No, she's not killing you, but I think she will, Sunshine, if you don't stop yelling in the middle of Dublin.”

I froze on the brink with the yelping father and the scampering daughter, who was beginning to see a good opportunity to tease her grandfather. It could only get worse.

Then, out of nowhere, four strong arms appeared. They picked up the wheelchair, carried Dad across the street and set him down in the pedestrian walkway. Before I could say, thank you very much, the arms were gone. That's the way we negotiated Dublin. When we came to a curb, Dad-on-wheels was lifted off the ground and into the air by his Irish hosts, who didn't seem to think a thing of it. They only tipped their hats and smiled, while I went on and on with all my thank you's.

After a week of wheeling around, eating and drinking and talking, we only had a couple of days left. So, it was time to go on a special last round of adventures.

That night, Robert picked us up from the hotel for a ride in his horse carriage. We clip-clopped past Georgian buildings shining in the gold light, and along the River Liffey that reflected nighttime Dublin like a black diamond necklace. We passed through Temple Bar's narrow alleys, past the polished, old buildings and warehouses turned into hip hotels and restaurants, around the large, modern, imposing U.S. Embassy. Finally, we wandered out onto a wide street, around a couple of brand new hotels with huge shiny windows. It was cold, so we huddled under the blankets, while Robert in his top hat
and cape told us about how he and his horse, Champ, and the carriage were extras in
Braveheart
with Mel Gibson. “A regular, fine sort of fellow who sat down to dinner with everyone on the set—with the whole Irish movie army and all.”

The next morning, as promised, John McGrory arrived early at the hotel to pick us up for the drive. I had the map spread out on the linen cloth in the dining room, along with my notes and books. The adventurous spirit of the last day seized me, and I looked away from the guidebooks and my lists of sights to see. John had lived in every part of Ireland, so I asked him where we should go.

“Most Americans have cooked up ideas of what they want to see,” he said.

“Surprise us,” I said. “Show us your Ireland.”

“That'll be fine.”

“John, one thing. I made a promise to Dad that we would go to the pub. He says he wants to ‘belly up' to the bar one more time in Ireland.”

“Then he shall do it.”

“Do you have one in mind? A very good one? The best one.”

“Ah, and that I do. But the best pub is the one I'm in.”

On that silvery morning, John drove us north of Dublin to Malahide Castle, where my daughter ran through the dining room—where the Talbots sat down to breakfast one horrible day, hundreds of years before, and then all of them went off to die in battle. Built in 1175, the castle is mostly a Georgian creation of small medieval rooms, throughout which portraits of the noble family Talbot hang against the backdrop of the famous Malahide orange.

Dad and John wandered into the tearoom to smoke, eat currant scones, and talk. Little Sunshine and I went out to the winter garden where some 4,000 species of rare and exotic shrubs flourish on the grounds, mostly May through October. It was lush, even in the first days of March. Against all that green, the tall, spindly, black, leafless trees in the desmesne reached to the silver sky, and everywhere I looked, I thought, if trees could talk, what things I would hear from those branches and from the Irish ghosts that whispered through them: the Talbots, the druids, and Vikings, my ancestors? My daughter ran through the grounds, a pink dot of happiness, zigzagging across the wide expanse—her laughter a friendly welcome, even in this most ghostly place.

Later that afternoon, we headed off the highway on to narrow roads south of Dublin to the fishing village of An Rinn, a rare Irish-speaking part of southeast Ireland. It was no coincidence that the secluded area had been a hotbed for the Irish Republican Army. But time passed, and it was not a crime to speak Gaelic anymore. “We'll thank the Brits for backing off,” John said.

The roads got narrower until John finally brought us down a boreen, a cow path rutted by cartwheels, and through a tunnel of fuchsia hedge to a clearing on a small bay in Dungarvan. It was a remote area, on the edge of the world, and I began to grow uneasy, again aware of the responsibility I had for my father and daughter, brought here because I had another great idea for an adventure. But the moment passed. John stopped the car at the Seanachai, a pub and inn with a thatched roof and freshly white-washed stucco walls. We were plunked down on the edge of nowhere, with not a soul in sight, but I felt comfort at the sight of the inn.

Mrs. Gowan, our hostess and innkeeper, peeked at us over
the spindly geraniums in the window as we got out of John's car. The weather was cool and soft with a misty sky lingering over the village.

My daughter and I jumped out of the backseat with our camera, and left the men to diddle with the walker and their cigarettes. We ambled toward the back of the inn, where we found a courtyard laid over with plywood sheets set up for the thwacking of the hard shoe in a jig or reel. My girl climbed up there and clattered away with her legs flying like she was taught in Irish dance class, back in Chicago, such a long, long way from this fishing village. Mrs. Gowan opened a window and started clapping. My little dancer froze in midair. She'd thought she had the place to herself.