The Parting Glass (31 page)

She remembered her own reaction, and it bothered her. After her mother’s death and her father’s desertion, she had abandoned God as a time-consuming hobby. She had spent the hours she should have been in church trying to keep her sisters together. When compelled by family members to go to a First Communion, she always arrived at the last minute and departed before the sign of peace. She hadn’t so much been angry at God as dismayed by his indifference. She had returned the favor.

After the tornado, then the explosion, she had run back through this tunnel praying silently that Niccolo had survived. She hadn’t even realized she was praying. The words had been wrung from deep inside her, snippets of long-buried prayers that her mother and the St. Brigid’s nuns had taught her. And she had found Niccolo alive, when by all rights he should have been dead or seriously injured.

The spot still felt holy to her. Not because of the image. And perhaps not because she had found her husband alive after all. But because she had turned back to God in this place. Not demanding a miracle, not bargaining with something she would later forget to deliver, but simply asking for the strength to face what was ahead of her.

And strength was only a piece of what she’d been given.

She stared at the image and wondered if Niccolo felt something of the same here and if that was at least part of the reason why he didn’t want to close the tunnel. His life had been spared on this spot. Perhaps his willingness to show others this place was his way of expressing his gratitude.

She passed on to the storeroom. She had made a good start here, but she hadn’t been back for a while. Niccolo had rigged a long extension cord from the furnace room and a high wattage portable light for illumination. She switched it on gratefully and debated where to begin.

An hour later she had gotten through two cartons. Anyone else would simply have heaved the contents into the nearest Dumpster, but she was too entranced. Life in the twenties had been so different, and some forefather or mother had hoarded every record of it. She found candy tins filled with receipts, moth-eaten leather albums with sample menus, hardcover ledgers with painfully neat writing and more painfully detailed expenditures. The menus were a find, and she set them aside to display. She was gratified to see that some of the signature dishes she served had been favorites then, as well.

The receipts went into trash bags, since most of them weren’t labeled or even decipherable. Then she took a closer look at the ledgers. She was still going over them item by item when she heard a noise in the tunnel. She looked up to see her aunt Deirdre in the doorway.

“Well, hello.” Megan closed the ledger and stood up to greet her. She and her aunt “Dee” had survived a somewhat rocky start to become friends. As a girl, Megan had resented her aunt for taking Peggy to live with her, but now, as an adult, she realized the necessity and was grateful for the care as well as the sensitivity that her aunt had displayed. Megan hadn’t been the easiest teenager to love, but her aunt had never stopped trying.

“Welcome to the mess.” Megan gestured to the still unopened boxes.

“You weren’t kidding, were you?”

Aunt Dee made up excuses to check on her at least once a week, and Megan had told her about the second storeroom during their last telephone call. Megan knew she was worried that Megan wasn’t handling the enforced time off very well.

“Look at these.” Megan handed her the album. “Same food, different prices.”

Deirdre scanned the pages. “I hate to say it, but I remember back nearly this far.”

“You weren’t even born.”

“Not that long afterwards. This is fun. What else have you uncovered?”

Megan showed her the stack of treasures. “I was just going over the ledgers. Considering Prohibition, we were doing awfully well in the twenties. I’m sure the tunnel helped, huh? All that bootleg booze?”

“We sold our share, there’s no doubt.”

“There’s a lot more to look through.”

“Want some help?”

“I’d be thrilled. Although once this is done, I’m not sure what I’ll do next.”

“Relax and read? Take up sewing?” Deirdre laughed at Megan’s grimace. “You’re not having fun, are you?”

“I miss seeing everybody. I miss all the regulars and the family dropping in, and the noise and even the work. And I miss cooking.”

“Nick says it won’t be that much longer before the kitchen’s done.”

The kitchen was going to be beautiful. Megan practically drooled every time she walked through. She could hardly stand not being able to whip up her famous Irishman’s stew or Lenten Cod Cobbler.

“Give me a box,” Deirdre said. “We’ll have fun.”

Megan explained what she was keeping and what she was tossing. “Anything interesting that we don’t want should go the Historical Society for a look,” Megan said. “Otherwise, toss.”

They worked in companionable silence for fifteen minutes. Deirdre never pried or made demands, and Megan was grateful.

“Aunt Dee, look at this.” Megan held up a cigar box stuffed with newspaper clippings.

“What is it?” Deirdre stood, putting her hands against the small of her back as she straightened. Cartons weren’t the most comfortable of seats.

“Articles and pictures about Glen Donaghue,” Megan said.

“My father Glen?”

“Looks like it.” Megan had seen photographs of the older Glen Donaghue, who had died when she was only four. Glen, her grandfather, had adorned the walls of the saloon along with other long dead ancestors. He had married in his thirties, and she hadn’t seen many photographs of him from before that. “What a good looking guy. A heartbreaker. I’m surprised he made it as long as he did without some woman snagging him.” Megan set the cigar box where her aunt could go through it, too. “He worked with Eliot Ness, didn’t he?”

“After Ness became safety director. In the mid-thirties sometime. Boy, the stories we heard when I was growing up.”

“These look like they come from an earlier era.”

“He was a Prohibition agent in those days.” Deirdre scanned the article. “A good one, at that. Some profession for the son of a saloon owner, huh?”

Megan perched on the edge of a box with her clippings. “I’ve been looking for information on Liam Tierney, and Nick brought home some letters from St. Brigid’s.” She explained about Maura McSweeney. “Some of the letters that were already translated mention a Liam who seems to be from Shanmullin, so it looks like that could be Liam Tierney, and one of the letters mentions a Glen, who was trying to uphold the law. Did they cross paths, do you suppose? Wouldn’t that be a hoot?”

“I don’t know much about Dad’s years with the Treasury Department. He didn’t talk about them.”

“A Tim is mentioned, too.” She tried to remember the wording. “Something about him carving out his own piece of the world…no, carving his own luck and threatening anybody who interfered.”

“Well, that one’s easy. She’s probably referring to Tim McNulty. Quite a celebrity in these parts. I know for a fact he was a member of St. Brigid’s. And Dad definitely knew him. There’s quite a story there, though I never heard it from Dad. I heard bits of it from Dad’s sister, Maryedith, just before she died.”

Megan remembered her great-aunt well. Maryedith had been sharp-tongued and intolerant, which was too bad, because she had also been the family historian, the one to remember all the family stories in Technicolor and Dolby Stereo. They’d all been forced to put up with her complaints and marching orders if they wanted to learn anything.

“She used to pinch my fanny every time she thought I was getting out of line, which was most of the time,” Megan said. “Not too easy to love, our Maryedith.”

“Apparently men thought so, too. She lived alone all her life.”

“What did she tell you about Tim McNulty and your father?”

“Well, you’ll see why he never told me himself once you’ve heard the story.”

Megan’s curiosity was royally piqued. This was almost enough to make her forget her problems. “There’s iced tea in a cooler upstairs. We could sit on the picnic table. We can take the cigar box and ledgers up with us.”

“I like the sound of that. You’re on.”

“Switch on your flashlight and prepare to depart.” Megan closed up the larger box and stowed her new treasures under one arm.

“I waited a long time for this, you know.”

“What? To find these clippings?”

“No. To be your friend.”

“I’m sorry I was so awful all those years, Aunt Dee. I know you did what was best for everybody. We owe you a lot. All of us.”

Deirdre switched on her flashlight as Megan flicked off the portable. “You don’t owe me a thing. I did it because I knew someday we’d sit upstairs in the sunshine and have iced tea together. It was worth the wait.”

1925

Castlebar, County Mayo

My dearest Patrick,

You ask why I never married, an odd question in these closing years of my life. The answer has to do with choices, of course.

I had mine. In my youth there were two men who asked me to share their homes and bed. The first, a farmer, had a sizeable brood of children that needed raising and a wife newly in her grave. I had no interest in the man or the children, and particularly not in the farm, which had neither beauty nor tillable earth. I was careful, of course, not to tell him this, only that I was a woman not inclined toward marriage nor with any of the gifts such a woman needs. He gladly searched elsewhere.

The second man was not so easy to refuse. He was a good man, a handsome man, and life with him would not have been difficult. Perhaps we might even have traveled, read the books I love so well and talked about them, watched our children grow older and laughed about them in our twilight years.

But marriage is never a certain prospect for a woman. We are born to serve. Duties to church, duties to parents, duties to those superior to us. We are inferiors, overworked, poorly paid, if paid at all, often undernourished, if there are men who must be fed first. I watched our own mother suffer at the hands of our father, dear Patrick. You saw less of this, leaving home when you did. But I watched her carefully as her spirit was extinguished, heartbeat by heartbeat, shout by shout. I did not learn to hate men, only what our society allows them to become.

I said no to my beloved. I told him I would live with him outside the bonds of marriage so that my choices remained my own. Being the godfearing man that he was and wanting children, he refused.

And now I have shocked you. Perhaps you pray for my soul? Or perhaps you pray for Ireland’s, where decisions such as this are forced upon women. I no longer know you well enough to guess which.

Your sister,

Maura McSweeney

chapter 20

T
he first time Glen Donaghue approached Clare McNulty, a cloche hat covered most of her shining brown hair, but the ends curled enticingly at her nape and forehead, and the hat mirrored the blue of her eyes. He knew who she was, and he knew she was the last woman he should be seen with. That didn’t stop him from picking up the rosary she dropped as she started out of St. Brigid’s after the earliest morning service. It was warm in his hand, and smooth, and even without lifting it to his face, he smelled the soft fragrance of roses.

“Oh, thank you.” Clare stopped and smiled. “It was my mother’s. I would be so sorry to lose it. She made it herself, of rose petals she shaped and dried.”

“A garden of roses to crown the Virgin’s head.” Glen smiled and held it out to her. “It’s lovely and fitting.”

“Really? My friends think I’m hopelessly old-fashioned. Their rosaries are sterling and jet.” She gave him a side glance before she added, “I’ve seen you in church before.”

Clare walked through the doorway and extended her hand to the usher who was collecting money for candles that morning, speaking a few words before she started down the stairs.

Glen knew he could delay following her by engaging the old man in a conversation himself. By the time it ended, Clare would be gone, and he could not be accused of rudeness.

Good sense did not prevail. He caught up with her easily, because she was walking so slowly. “I’ve seen you, too. But usually not alone.”

“Oh, I’m my father’s greatest treasure. He makes certain I’m under guard.” She sounded as if this was not something she appreciated.

“Aren’t fathers supposed to love their daughters?”

“You sound like a traditional man, Mr….?”

“Donaghue. Glen Donaghue.”

“And I’m Clare McNulty. I said treasure, not love.”

“There’s a difference?”

“We don’t have to love what we treasure. We only have to value it for whatever it’s worth to us.”

“And you’re worth something to your father?” He wondered what exactly.

“Women have been property to bargain with for centuries. If there was ever a time when we weren’t, I’ve yet to hear about it.”

“This is the twentieth century, and we have laws against slavery. How can you be forced to do something you don’t want to?”

She changed the subject. “I left home before anyone even knew I was up. That’s why I’m alone. I come to this service whenever I can.”

“I know who your father is.” He debated the next sentence, but in the end, he knew he had to tell her the rest. “I’m the last person he’d want you to talk to. Me and my kind are the ones he’s probably trying to protect you from.”

She stopped, and for a moment she looked concerned. “You’re one of Squeaky Frank’s men?”

He laughed. “Do I look like one of his men? And with a name like Dona
ghue?
”

“You look young enough to be in knee pants when you do that.”

“Do what?”

“Smile. Laugh. The corners of your eyes crinkle like a little boy’s.”

“I’m afraid I’m old enough to be a booze agent.”

Her eyes widened; then she laughed, too. “So that’s what you meant. Tell me, did you station yourself at the door hoping I’d drop something?”