Fire & Water (2 page)

Downstairs, the pub served as our parlor. The room was filled with dark fir wainscoting and worn velvet couches. It smelled of smoky scotch and pipe tobacco. Unlike many bars, Murphy’s was full of light; the front windows were always clean and clear, covered only by lacy café curtains and blinds that were brought down only after closing. The light found its way to the array of pampered orchids, narcissus, and hyacinths that seemed unbothered by cigarette smoke and loud talk. Thuds of darts and cracks of pool balls were percussion to the musical rise and fall of voices. We served enough food to qualify as a restaurant and kids often joined their parents. Always in residence was one or another stray cat adopted by the bar—or, more likely, fed by my father at the back door and allowed in by the same. They arrived thin and skittish and became fat and lazy. Dad always named them after foods like Tater Chips or Muffin or, when they came in two at a time, Corn Beef and Cabbage or Bubble and Squeak.

Upstairs, our flat looked like most regular apartments, but a couple of decades out of date and perhaps on the wrong side of the Atlantic. Doilies on the arms of overstuffed chairs. A small kitchen with chintz curtains and a matching apron in front of the sink. One small bedroom, one large. A few family photos on the vanity table. Everything was frozen, unchanged after my mother died when I was eight.

The melody of Dad’s voice, kissed by the music of his mother Ireland, sang out as I entered, “Ah, there’s my Kitten.” Dad’s dove-gray eyes shimmered under his wiry eyebrows. His shirt gaped a little where his belly spilled over his belt. Though in his mid-sixties and built like a short, stout fireplug, he scampered toward me and gave me a crushing embrace. “Look everybody. Our other guest of honor is here!” He pulled me through the room toward the huge round family booth in the front window where Mary K already sat with a club soda, a plume of cigarette smoke unfurling in front of her. “Look what Mary K brought,” Dad said, raising his palm to a new addition to his collection of flowers, a delicate blue bloom growing from a piece of mossy bark. “
Orchidaceae Vanda
. A blue orchid,” he beamed. He looked over at Mary K and wagged his finger. “Probably pricey, too. Nothing this one should be spending her hard earned money on.”

“Hush, Mr. Murphy. It’s rude to talk about the price of a gift.”

Alice greeted me next. A cloud of Shalimar reached me just before she did. Her hair color changed with each season and she always stacked it in various architectural shapes made stable by an impenetrable shell of Aqua Net. She’d gone extra blonde for this occasion, and her ’do was elevated to a celebratory height. She was a spectacular show of animal print and spangles, a pink fuzzy sweater with matching lacquered nails, and high heels that made her stand well over six feet tall. Alice was the bar’s first employee, brought on to cook. She and my mother had become best friends. I’d been named Katherine Alice Murphy in her honor.

It was Alice who took over all womanly duties after my mom died: cooking, putting my hair in ponytails, buying my clothes and my first Kotex pads, back when they were as big as twin bed mattresses. Alice lived in an apartment just a few doors down from the pub where we had girly slumber parties and watched old movies on her black-and-white TV.

“Katie!” Alice cried, covering my face with lipsticky kisses. “Look at your pink cheeks. Where are your gloves? Did you walk down the hill in this cold?”

She took my coat and tugged me farther into the room.

Ivan Schwartz stepped toward us. He took my hands into his tremulous ones and kissed me, first on one cheek, then the other. In his feathery voice he said, “Katherine. I can scarcely remember a prouder day.” His head wobbled as he spoke. Dr. Schwartz had been having his morning coffee and his evening brandy at Murphy’s Pub since the day it opened, long before I was born. He’d supervised my homework, coached me through AP chemistry, and helped me write my application to Stanford, his alma mater. Dr. Schwartz had been a respected heart surgeon at UCSF until Parkinson’s had robbed him of his steady hands.

“Sure you’re proud, you skinny old fart. Who the hell wouldn’t be goddamned proud of our Katie and her little dyke friend here!” a slurred voice shouted from the end of the bar.

I winced. I’d never heard Tully utter a mean word to anyone. And though he had only his usual coffee cup before him, he seemed unfamiliarly drunk. Ironically, though I’d grown up in a bar, drunkenness was rare in the “family.”

“Hey, hey there!” Alice scolded.

“That’ll be a dollar to you, Tully,” Dad said.

Tully tried with all his might to raise his weighty black eyebrows, his thin, rubbery face contorting with his effort. “What do I owe a dollar for?”

“The cussing jar, Tully,” Alice said winking a heavily mascaraed eye.

“For what? I didn’t say nothing!”

“G.D., Tully,” Dad said. “And Katie’s right here, plain as the nose. You know the rules. And you ought to pay extra for insulting our guest as well.”

“Katie ain’t even a kid no more,” Tully said in slurred protest. “The rule should only be for kids.”

“You don’t make the rules, Tully Driscoll,” Dad admonished.

“Ah, shit!” Tully slurred, reaching into the front pocket of his paint-splattered jeans.

“
TULLY!
” came the chorus.

“That will be two dollars since you’re reaching,” said my dad.

Some version of this exchange had occurred nearly every day of my growing up with one or another who had overimbibed or simply forgotten the family language rule.

The cussing jar had once served as my college savings account, but now it lived on as one of the bar’s unchanged rituals. Because Dad owned the bar, he got to make the rules. Whenever children were present, no profanity was allowed. He was reasonable. Newcomers got a fair warning.
Hells
and
damns
were often overlooked, but all curses that involved anatomy, sexual acts, the Holy Trinity, or a bodily function were strictly prosecuted. A buck apiece. The f-word was double, and there were a few five-dollar fines for the more colorful ribbons of profanity unfurled during soccer matches and Giants games. The World Series and soccer playoffs were exempt from fines.

Dad shook his head and spoke softly to me. “I’m afraid Tully’s pretty deep in his cups tonight,” he sighed.

“What got Tully drinking?”

“Oh, today’s the anniversary of Maggie’s death. Always a hard day for him, poor lad.” Maggie had been Tully’s wife. They were expecting a baby when she’d discovered her leukemia. He had lost her and their unborn child the year before I was born. I’d been the recipient of Tully’s adoration my whole life, inheriting all of the love he’d had for his own wife and child. Tully’s tender heart, it seemed, had never completely healed. Dad and Alice had long ago refused to serve Tully anything but coffee, but the other bars in the neighborhood did not have the same arrangement.

Dad clicked his tongue. “Came in tonight with a snootful, hiding a bottle in one of those big pockets of his. Won’t give it up. Better he should tie it on here than be out in the streets.”

“We didn’t have the heart to send him home,” Alice added. “He’d feel too bad tomorrow if he missed your celebration.”

Mary K stood up and stepped toward Tully at the bar. She pulled a twenty from her pocket, setting it on the bar. “Here you go. I’m feeling pretty good tonight, so the cussing is on me. Knock yourself out.”

“Oh Lord,” Alice moaned. “No telling what he’ll say when it’s paid for. I’ll put a fresh pot of coffee on, and a Glenfiddich for you, Katie?”

“Sounds great. But only one, then it’s coffee for me. I’ve got a double shift in the ER tomorrow.”

Mary K and I sat at the family table while various friends and regulars came by to congratulate us. Dad slid in beside me, Dr. Schwartz across from him.

Tully sloshed his way over to the table and plopped limply in beside Mary K. His eyelids were at half-mast. “Sorry about the dyke comment, there. Alice told me that was inna—innapro—Well, it was rude, now, wasn’t it?”

“No harm done,” Mary K said. “Say something bad about my Mets and I’ll have to slug you, though.”

Tully’s head swayed on top of his skinny neck. “I just don’t get it though. Pretty girl like you. Could have any fella you want.”

Mary K grinned at me and patted Tully’s shoulder. “That’s pretty much what my dad said. Difference is he said it with his boot planted against my butt while he kicked me out.”

“Such a pity,” Dr. Schwartz said. “It’s his loss and our gain, darling.”

Mary K gazed across the table to my dad. Her eyes glistened. “Thank you for including me tonight, Mr. Murphy.”

Dad blushed. “Oh, go on then. You’ve become like a second daughter to me, Mary Louise Kowalski.”

“Anybody but you called me that, they’d be saying good-bye to their teeth.”

Dad pulled his hanky from his pocket and blew his nose with a great honk.

“Train’s in,” Tully said, raising his coffee mug.

“All aboard!” came the chorus from the bar.

Dad smiled and put his hanky back in his pocket. “Ah, what we won’t put up with from family. This here is a patchwork family made of orphans and misfits of all sorts. You’re one of us by now, I suppose.” Dad nodded toward Tully. “We’re a little like the mafia, though. Once you’re in, we never let you go.”

“Good to know,” Mary K said, then sipped her club soda.

Tully lifted his head though his eyes remained closed. “I just don’t get it. How is it a pretty girl like you don’t like boys?”

Alice stepped to our table carrying a coffee pot. “Ah, shut yer yap, will you? The way you smelly brutes behave sometimes, it’s amazing that the species has survived at all. Mary K, I might just have been better off if I was more like you. None of my four husbands was worth his weight in kitty litter.”

Tully’s head seemed suddenly too heavy to hold up, and it fell to the table with a thud. Alice placed a folded towel under his head. Soon his gravelly snore prompted chuckles. Alice patted his back. “They’re so adorable when they’re sleeping.”

Everyone coaxed stories from Mary K and me about our upcoming positions. They delighted in the details of the kinds of surgeries I’d get to perform, gasped at stories of children with injuries and birth defects. Mary K talked of the newest innovations in liver transplants, to everyone’s stunned amazement—none more than Dr. Schwartz. He held up his gnarled, trembling hands. “Oh, what I wouldn’t give to be starting out today.”

Alice filled my coffee cup. “So when do you girls start your new jobs?”

I took in the rich coffee aroma and looked over at Mary K. “I’ve got a few more days in my last rotation in the ER,” I said. “I’m taking a few weeks off before I start in pediatrics. Never had a vacation.”

The conversation meandered until Dr. Schwartz started to make moves toward leaving. He stood between Mary K and me, his curved body hunched over his cane. “Your mother would be so proud, Katherine.”

Tully lifted his head and took a slow glance around the table. “Yup, that’s the truest words you ever spoke, Ivan.” Soon Tully’s face scrunched, looking like a crumpled brown bag. He tried to fight tears, but they squeezed from the corners of his wrinkled eyes. “Poor Elyse. Poor Elyse,” he wailed hoarsely. He wiped his nose on his sleeve.

“All right then, sad sack,” Alice said, helping Tully up. “Doesn’t a weepy drunk just break your heart?” She appeared like Dorothy, trying to help a limp scarecrow to his feet. “Let’s let him sleep it off, shall we?”

My dad scooted out of the booth and tucked his shoulder under Tully’s arm. “Come along. There’s a cot in the storage room with your name on it.”

Suddenly, Tully broke away from Dad and leaned in toward me. His breath reeked of whiskey. Tears streamed down his weathered cheeks. “If Elyse woulda known how great you’d turn out, being a doctor and all, I’m just sure she wouldn’ta taken all of them pills. It’s a sorry shame.” Tully crumbled and went to his knees, sobbing.

Alice’s hand flew to her mouth and her eyes got wide.

“Tully!” Dad nearly yelled, his nostrils flaring, “Just shut your drunken mouth. We’ve had enough of your palaver for tonight.” With a newfound force, Dad took Tully’s entire weight and began to drag him away from the table.

Tully shouted over Dad’s shoulder. “No, Katie. Elyse shouldn’ta done it. All them pills. She shouldn’ta—”

The stunned faces around the table made me feel hollow inside.

“Never mind Tully,” Alice said to me with panic in her eyes. “You know how he is when he’s been drinking.”

As my dad dragged him away, Tully continued his lament. “Poor Elyse. Poor little Elyse. She shouldn’ta done it, Angus.”

Alice and Dr. Schwartz’s stunned faces showed that Tully’s words were more than drunken blubbering. Mary K’s face wore every question that ran through my mind.

When Dad reappeared beside the family table he looked exhausted and defeated. “Kitten,” he whispered. I looked up into his soft face, his gray eyes reddened with tears.

My heart turned to lead in my chest, weighted down by the twenty-year-old secret.

“A weak heart,” I said. “Mother died of a weak heart. She was fragile. That’s what I’ve always been told.” I stared into my dad’s eyes, then looked to Alice, who sat with her fingers over her lips. Dr. Schwartz shook his head. Mary K sat in rare stunned silence. “So, is that the truth, Dad? Was it her heart? Or is Tully telling a family secret that everyone but me seems to know?”