To Be the Best (16 page)

Madelana let out a knowing laugh. Jack resented her career because at heart he was a male chauvinist. In his own rather oblique way, he had told her that more than once, hadn’t he?

She picked up the knife and began to slice a tomato, and she was gratified to see that her hands no longer shook.

Later, after Madelana had eaten her chicken salad, she sat drinking a glass of iced lemon tea in the living room, aimlessly staring at the television set, not really seeing the mindless movie that was playing, and certainly not listening to it.

Lolling back against the cushions, she realized that she was much lighter in spirit. The constricted feeling in her chest had dissipated, and she had to admit that she was full of relief and felt better because she had finally resolved to terminate her relationship with Jack Miller.

Also in the last half hour, she had come to understand that this decision had not been quite so quick or so sudden as she had previously imagined. She had wanted to cut the umbilical cord between them for some time, but she had simply not had the guts to do so before.

She wondered why, wondered if she had stayed with Jack these last months out of loneliness – and the fear of being absolutely alone once more?

Patsy Smith had gone back to Boston to live, and Madelana didn’t have too many other close friends in New York. Then again, because she worked so hard and kept such long hours, she had hardly any time for socializing with the few women she knew and liked.

But Jack was a different matter.

Since he was in the theatre, his leisure hours started after the ten o’clock curtain had dropped. Their odd time schedules had somehow dovetailed neatly.

Several times a week she had stayed late at the store, or taken papers home with her and worked there, until she had met him at Joe Allen’s or Sardi’s for supper at eleven. And on other nights he had often come up to her apartment after the show, and she had cooked for him, and he had stayed over; and they usually spent Sundays together at his place on East 79th Street.

But when he was not in a play, like now, he wanted to see her every night, regardless of her work. That wasn’t possible, and she religiously stuck to her own schedule, refusing to be budged by him, and that’s when the trouble started. He loved acting with a passion; in a way, it was the centre of his life. Yet he couldn’t seem to grasp that her work was just as important to her as his was to him. And thus there was conflict between them.

Patsy had introduced them. She had known him for two years now, and she
had
loved him, and he
was
the one person she had grown truly close to in the time she had lived in Manhattan. In a way, he was almost like family, and perhaps that was why she had continued to cling to him when her deepest instincts had told her to run for her life.

Family,
she thought again, turning the word over in her mind, then she swung her head and looked at the framed colour photograph on the end table. They were all in it…her brothers, Young Joe and Lonnie, herself with baby Kerry Anne sitting on her knee, and her mommy and her daddy. How young they looked, even her parents, and there was such joy and love on their sweet and shining faces. Her family would have been charmed by Jack Miller, would have found him entertaining and likeable, because he
was
those things, but they wouldn’t have approved of him. Not as a boyfriend for her, at any rate.

Her parents and her siblings had considered her to be unique and great things had been expected of her, especially by her mother, and for as far back as she could remember. ‘You’re the one who’s going to go out and do it, mavourneen, ’ her mommy would tell her in that lovely lilting voice that had never lost its beguiling Irish brogue. ‘You’re the clever one, Maddy, the one who’s been blessed…kissed by the gods, to be sure, me darlin’. Why, you’re one of the golden girls, Maddy.’

Madelana became motionless, as if turned to stone on the sofa, suddenly hearing their voices echoing in her inner ear, every voice so clear and distinct and individualistic…Joe…Lonnie…Kerry Anne…her mommy…and her daddy…

They were dead, yet she still felt very close to them.

Each one of them had left little pieces of themselves behind in her; they were deeply embedded in her heart and very much a part of her, and they were with her all the time. She had the memories to cherish, and they sustained her and gave her enormous strength.

For a time she drifted off, as if in a trance, travelling back into the past in her mind, but after a short while she roused herself and stood up. She turned off the television, went and got her guitar and brought it back to the sofa.

Tucking her bare feet under her, she played a few chords, tuned it, then began to strum lightly, thinking of her family, reliving those happy times they had spent together. Each of the O’Sheas had been musically gifted, and they had enjoyed many lovely evenings over the years, playing their different instruments, harmonizing together or singing solo.

And now, quietly, almost to herself, Madelana started to hum one of the old folk ballads which she and her brothers had sung, and when she finally got the feel of it, found the exact beat she wanted, her voice rang out clear and true and pure in the quiet apartment.

‘On top of old Smoky, all covered with snow, I lost my true lover, come a-courtin’ too slow. A-courtin’s a pleasure, a-flirtin’s a grief, a falsehearted lover, is worse than a thief. For a thief he will rob you, and take what you have, but a falsehearted lover will send you to your grave. On top of old Smoky, all covered with snow, I lost my true lover, a-courtin’ too slow.’

She had arrived in New York shaking the dust of Kentucky off the heels of her silver kid boots.

That was in the autumn of 1977, when she was twenty-three years old. It was probably her wry sense of humour that made her characterize herself as ‘just a poor country girl, a hillbilly who knows nothing much about anything’, since, in point of fact, she was neither.

Her full name was Madelana Mary Elizabeth O’Shea, and she had been born just outside Lexington, in the very heart of bluegrass country, in July of 1954.

She was the first daughter of Fiona and Joe O’Shea and she had been adored from the moment she had opened her eyes to the world. She had two older brothers, Joseph Francis Xavier Jr, so named after his father, and Lonnie Michael Paul; Joe was eleven at the time of her birth, and Lonnie was then seven. Both boys fell in love with their beautiful baby sister, and it was a love that never dimmed during the boys’ short lives.

Everyone petted and indulged her throughout her childhood, and it was a miracle that Madelana grew up to be so unaffected and unspoiled, and this was due in no small measure to her own strength of character and sweetness of nature.

Her father was third-generation Irish-American, and a Kentuckian through and through, but her mother had been born in Ireland, and had come to America in 1940, at the age of seventeen. Fiona Quinn had been dispatched by her older sister and brother to stay with cousins in Lexington, in order to escape the war in Europe. ‘I’m an evacuee from the old sod,’ she would say with a bright smile, her green eyes
sparkling, enjoying being something of a novelty amongst her cousins and their friends.

Joe O’Shea was twenty-three in 1940, and an engineer who worked for his father in their small family construction business, and he was the best friend of Liam Quinn, Fiona’s cousin. It was at Liam’s house that Joe first met Fiona, and he had immediately fallen in love with the tall, lissome girl from County Cork. He thought she had the prettiest of faces and the most dazzling of smiles it had ever been his great good fortune to see. They had started courting, and to Joe’s delight, Fiona soon confessed that she reciprocated his feelings and they were married in 1941.

After their honeymoon in Louisville, they set up house in Lexington, and in 1943 their first son was born, just a few weeks after his father had embarked for England to fight the war in Europe.

Joe, who was in the US 1st Infantry Division, was initially stationed in England, and later his unit was part of the Omaha Beach Assault Force that landed in Normandy on D-Day, the sixth of June, 1944. He was lucky and survived this and other Allied offensives in the European theatre of war, and came home safely at the end of 1945, proudly wearing a Purple Heart pinned to his battledress.

Once he had settled down to civilian life in Kentucky, Joe had again gone to work in his father’s small business, and slowly life for the O’Sheas had returned to normal. In 1947, Lonnie was born, and with the addition of Maddy seven years later, Fiona and Joe decided it might be wisest not to have any more children, wanting to give as much as they could to the three they already had. Most especially, they were thinking of the cost of college educations for the two boys and Maddy. Joe’s father had retired, and Joe had taken over the little family business and was making a decent living. Whilst they were not poor, they were not rich either. ‘Middlin’ comfortable,’ was the way Joe would put it, and he
would always add, ‘But that’s no cause for celebratin’, or for bein’ extravagant.’

Joe O’Shea was a good husband and father, Fiona a tender, loving wife, and the proudest of mothers, and they were a happy family, unusually devoted to each other, and caring.

Young Joe, Lonnie and Maddy were inseparable – ‘the terrible trio,’ Fiona called them.

Madelana was something of a tomboy when she was growing up and wanted to do everything her brothers did; she swam and fished in the creeks with them, went hunting and trekking in the hills, always tagging along on any expedition, but invariably holding her own.

Riding was her favourite sport and at this she excelled. She became an accomplished equestrian at an early age, being fortunate enough to work out at various horse farms in and around Lexington where thoroughbreds were trained, and where her father did jobs from time to time.

She loved horses, had an understanding of them, and like her father and her brothers, she was keen on racing, and her greatest thrill was to accompany them to Churchill Downs in Louisville when the Kentucky Derby ran. And it was she who cheered loudest of all when a horse they favoured won.

From a young age, Maddy was determined never to be outstripped by her brothers, and they, so adoring of her and immensely proud of her good looks, intelligence, independence and derring-do, forever encouraged her. But their mother was constantly shaking her head at the blue jeans and plaid work shirts, and the boyish, boisterous antics, and she tried to instil in her more ladylike ways.

‘Whatever’s going to become of you, Maddy O’Shea?’ Fiona would demand, clucking with exasperation under her breath. ‘Just look at you…why, to be sure, anybody could be mistakin’ you for a stable lad in that get up, and your
friends so bonny and feminine in their pretty dresses. You won’t be finding a nice young man to go a-courtin’ with, no, not looking like that, you will not, me girl. I aim to enrol you in Miss Sue Ellen’s dancing class if it’s the last thing I do, so you can be learnin’ a bit about deportment and gracefulness and femininity. I swear I will, Maddy O’Shea. Be warned, me girl.’

Maddy would respond with a vibrant laugh and a jaunty toss of her chestnut head, for this was an old threat. And she would hug her mother tightly then, and promise to mend her ways, and they would sit down at the kitchen table for a cup of hot, steaming chocolate, and talk and talk their hearts away, and they were never anything but the best of friends.

And eventually, just to please her mother, Madelana did attend Miss Sue Ellen’s School for Dancing and Deportment in Lexington, taking ballet and tap. As it happened, she discovered she had a natural aptitude for dance, and she enjoyed her lessons, and it was here that she quickly learned to move with lightness and elegance, where she acquired the dancer’s agile grace that she would never lose.

In later years, when she looked back, Madelana took comfort from the fact that she and her brothers had had such a marvellous childhood. There had been large doses of the Catholic religion rammed down them by their mother, and a good deal of discipline from their father, and they had had to work hard at school and to do chores in the house and yard, but it had been one of the happiest times of her life, and it had made her all the things she was.

Nobody was more surprised than Fiona when, towards the end of 1964, she learned that she was pregnant again, and the following year, at the age of forty-one, she gave birth to Kerry Anne.

Although the child had been unexpected, she was loved,
and her christening was a happy affair. The only thing that slightly marred their joy that day was Young Joe’s imminent departure for his tour of duty in Vietnam. He was a private in the US Army and just twenty-two years old.

Sometimes tragedy strikes a family many times in quick succession, and it is so incomprehensible, so inexplicable, it defies belief. So it was with the O’Sheas.

Young Joe was killed at Da Nang in 1966, one year after he had shipped out to Indochina. Lonnie, who had joined the marines and was also serving in Vietnam, lost his life during the Tet offensive in 1968. He was twenty-one.

And then to their further horror and heartbreak, little Kerry Anne died of complications following a tonsillectomy, shortly before her fifth birthday in 1970.

Reeling from shock and stunned by their enormous grief, Fiona, Joe and Maddy cleaved to each other, were barely able to handle their anguish and the pain of their sudden and terrible losses over five short and fatal years. It seemed to them that each new blow was more ferocious than the one before, and it was a suffering they found unendurable.

Fiona was never really to recover, remained forever after bereft and grieving, but despite this, and even though she needed her only living child by her side, she insisted Madelana continue her higher education at Loyola University in New Orleans, when she became eighteen.

Madelana had set her heart on going there some years before, and her parents had approved of this small college run by the Jesuits. Even so, she was reluctant to leave her parents, her mother in particular, who was so dependent on her, and she was more than willing to change her plans.