The Whipping Club (18 page)

             
He smiled at her.

             
“Do you really think I’m a dumb, rich girl?” she asked, holding out her fist.

             
“No,” he said, and they touched fists.

             
Ma walked past Johanna’s room. They were sitting on her bed, staring into space. “I don’t think I want to go to the balloon shop today,” Jo announced.

             
“Sure, think of something else interesting to do,” Marian said.

             
“I’m not the nanny, you know. I’m in this family, too.”

             
“Of course you are, Johanna,” Ma said, coming in and sitting next to her on the bed. Johanna propped up some pillows for them and grabbed her
Little Women
cut-out dolls to show Ma how she’d colored their faces purple and green. She and her ma could lounge around on the bed, too, talking about any old thing. But Adrian began jumping up and down on the bed. He felt Ma’s happiness at the three of them playing together. Jo offered to read tales about the ever-popular fairy queen in the most recent edition of her
Jack and Jill
magazine, but he interrupted with talk of his orphan friend named Rosemary who looked like the cartoon poster of Betty Boop that hung on Jo’s wall. Ma had the breakfast to make, she said, laughing now. Would he like white or black pudding, she wanted to know.

             
Rona had told them that she’d overheard her own ma on the telephone wailing that she’d been plopped down into the wrong family.

             
“That’s because your da is never at home for his tea,” Jo told Rona and she’d agreed. But now, Jo said that she knew that wasn’t all the way true, because her own da was always home with Ma for his tea and, somehow, she felt that Ma was rarely
really
there. Jo said she suddenly understood exactly what Mrs. O’Rourke meant because she, too, felt like she’d been plopped down into the wrong family, and she wondered how much her ma would miss her if something were to happen to her.

It was Ben’s jocular personality that got him into trouble up North. His wide grin, his laugh; when he got going, he sounded like a chimpanzee. On top of that, he was trusting to a fault. He gave everybody the benefit of the doubt, even those who looked dubious, even in unstable circumstances. He didn’t sense trouble in the air, the way most people did, didn’t have his guard up. Once, during his last year at Trinity, he allowed a needy student to sleep in his dorm room only to find his wallet and all his belongings gone before sunup, along with the thief. Outraged, Ben ran through the campus in the long johns he’d worn to bed looking for the swindler, his clothes gone from the wardrobe. This time, his youthful sincerity landed him in the hospital.

             
It was the twenty-seventh of July, Marian would never forget it, a Thursday afternoon. Jo and Adrian were washing and salting beefsteak tomatoes straight from the garden when the telephone rang with the news. She imagined him in front of a television crew on a street corner in Belfast, his raised voice pouring out of him, forgetting completely the dangers of the situation, the dreadful mood of the city.
It wasn’t a party you were at,
Marian wanted to say over the phone.
You weren’t thinking of your own welfare,
she wanted to rant.
You had no protection and you were covering a controversial political figure, a terribly heated news story
.

             
“Which hospital are you in?” she said instead.

             
“I’m at City Hospital, Belfast, in the emergency area. Still waiting to see a doctor. I’m all right.”

             
“You’re not all right, then. What do you mean
still
?”

             
“It’s been hours, the queue.”

             
“What happened?”

             
“They shot at me. A bullet landed in my arm.”

             
“They what? For God’s sake, Ben! Jesus, Mary, and Saint Joseph! What have the nurses said?”

             
“They’ve wrapped my arm. It took a bloody long time getting out of the rioting and over to the hospital, you know.”

             
“You’ve got to see a doctor immediately.”

             
“Ah, true enough. I’ve lost a bit of blood.” Whenever he started in with the
ahs
before a sentence, he was either half-asleep or downplaying something, the second instance the more common.

             
“Not serious?” she screamed. Adrian flinched and Johanna turned off the tap.

             
“It was a Catholic who’d done it. He threw a couple of rocks at the Prod I was interviewing, and then all hell broke loose soon afterwards.”

             
“And did the bowsie think you were taking sides?”

             
“I suppose,” he mumbled, lighting a cigarette. “It’s raving mad at the moment. I was just interviewing him,” he said, blowing smoke.

             
“Ben. Were you wearing your
Irish Times
news badge round your neck?” she asked, but immediately felt sorry for her sharpness, knowing he’d already realized his miscalculations and was in great pain, physically and otherwise. “You were a sitting duck out there, Ben. I’m sorry,” she added.

             
He exhaled and in the background she heard the emergency room chaos.

             
“I’m coming home tomorrow, just a one night check. Apparently they’re making a search for the bastards who started firing.”

             
They both knew that finding any individuals responsible for the damage was unlikely, and he was lucky to be alive.

             
“Which arm, Ben?”

             
He exhaled loudly.

             
“Have you spoken to Mr. Darby?”

             
“No,” he said, sounding cross now. “I rang the
Times
and left a message that I’m in hospital, but Mr. Darby is in a meeting.”

             
“Sure, you’ll be a hero at work. Should I come up there?”

             
“Are you mad, Marian? I’m coming out of this mess tomorrow, I said.”

             
“I’ll ring your ma,” she offered, shrinking at the thought, wishing she hadn’t offered.

             
“All right,” he said. “I’m to go to Mater Hospital in Dublin 7 for observation after this, as procedure. Two nights.” He sounded calmer now that she was to call his mother, though she suddenly realized that if she had not made the offer, he would probably have called the Mammy himself.

             
She told the kids to go out to the garden for the garlic.

             
“Sure, you’ll learn how to tap dance with your left hand soon enough,” she said, trying to bring out his humor.

             
“All right, then. I’ll see you tomorrow,” is all he said.

             
She flipped on the telly, fiddled with the rabbit ear antennae, the damn static snow. Fourteen civil rights demonstrators were shot dead by British paratroopers. Twenty-two explosions by the provisional IRA left nineteen people killed by noon. Direct rule from London had been imposed. There had been demonstrations from Coalesland to Dungannon in County Tyrone. Belfast, especially, was a divided city.

             
An hour later, Ben called back to report that the doctor who treated his arm explained to him that the
re had been a significant loss of blood. A shame it took so long to get the ambulance to the scene. He might suffer from partial paralysis of the arm as a result, might suffer some depression related to the shootings, the bombings, and the devastation he’d witnessed. He could return to work as soon as he felt able. Would he be able to use his right arm? Marian asked. The doctor said only time would tell and put the injured limb in a sling. No physical activity, not even typing, for at least six weeks.

             
When the kids reappeared through the door, they held out their hands filled with dirty garlic bunches. Marian handed them children’s scissors and asked them to deadhead the lavender rose bushes. She put a cold towel to the back of her neck. It took a tragedy for her to reach for the black rotary phone to ring up Beva Ellis.

“Hullo?”

             
“Hullo, Beva. This is your daughter-in-law,” Marian said, unable to keep the tension from her voice.

             
“Hello,” Beva said, brightening a bit.

             
There was a part of Marian that felt sorry for Beva’s losses. Ben once mentioned that for weeks after his father’s heart attack she had been bedridden. She wondered again if Beva had blamed her for her husband’s demise, though her voice now seemed eager without a hint of resentment. “I’m calling you because Ben’s been hurt up North.”

             
“Benjamin hurt? What happened?” she said, the melodic tone of the old Beva voice triggering Marian’s memory.

             
How many times had she replayed Beva’s words in her head, “Grovkofskys do not intermarry!” She had bellowed those words during their meeting, when Beva was starring in a melodrama that would finally tear apart the family. “Come in the kitchen, Benjamin so I can put my head in the oven,” she had said in all seriousness.

             
Sam had fallen into his chair holding his stomach. “Bring me a glass of milk, Beva.”

             
And Marian looked at the size of the stone on Beva’s finger as she left the dining room with her son. There’s a reason the word
Jew
is in
jewelery
, the nuns used to say. Marian picked up her plate, the food spread around the sides as if she had been fingerpainting, and she looked into the kitchen where Beva was scolding her son. “Benjamin, listen to me. We gave you a full childhood. A star tennis player for the Maccabi association, now a star journalist, an educated member of Jewish society. I am proud of you. But you are so brazen in your

ignorance. You are about to assimilate, water down your essence.”

             
“It is not my essence,” Ben argued. “My essence is human.”

             
“You’re a Jew. You don’t belong with her.”

             
Marian walked into the old kosher kitchen: the two sinks, the two cutting boards, the two of everything she’d dare not ask Beva about. She handed the leftover plates to Ben. He placed them with the others on the far countertop. She felt Beva’s displeasure with her presence and Ben held out his hand.

             
“What’s all this, Beva?” Tatte said, coming into the kitchen. “You’re ruining the Sabbath, Beva.”

             
“Grovkofsys do not intermarry,” she repeated. “I have my faith to protect, Sam. My Judaism. You didn’t lose your mother. You didn’t lose your brothers to Hitler. And I won’t lose my son.”

             
“Who said anything about losing your son? Benjamin knows what he’s–”

             
“Benjamin has intellectualized his Judaism. It’s not coming from here.” Marian remembered how Beva had thumped her heart as she walked back into the dining room. Marian’s heart thumping now, she put her hand on the back of her neck. “Beva, Ben was shot by a political fanatic, in Belfast.”

             
An
inchore,
a curse over his house, is Beva thinking that?
Marian wondered. No reaction, just silence on her end of the phone. “No need to worry, he’s grand,” she continued. “He’s lost some blood. You know Ben. He was right in the center of things. They couldn’t get the ambulance in right away, but he’s grand.” Marian could almost see the woman on the other end of the line shaking her head, the muscles in her neck tight like stilts. “He hasn’t lost a limb, Beva, but he could have.” Her words rushed out of her to fill the silence. “He’s being transferred from Belfast to Mater Hospital tomorrow for two nights and the doctors expect we can take him home on the Sunday. Will we have tea this Sunday, then? We can all visit him in hospital and then bring him home.”

             
“All right,” Beva said hesitantly.

             
“I’ll come with the car at noon. My mother would like to join us,” she added. There was other news as well, Marian wanted to add, but not over the phone. She’d introduce her to Adrian on Sunday. Her own ma had not asked too many questions. In fact, she hadn’t asked any questions when she’d learned through Father Brennan about the addition to the family. Funny, really, and not so funny at all, how easily her mother accepted Adrian now, how her community had accepted him. Of course, Father Brennan would have explained, there’d been no other option at the time. But with Beva, Marian had no idea what her response would be, had no idea if time’s passing had softened her.