Our Lady Of Greenwich Village (32 page)

After his meeting with the Cardinal, O'Rourke came out of the chancellery on Madison Avenue and started walking west to catch the Sixth Avenue subway down to the Village. As he passed the cathedral's side door on 50th Street, he stopped. He hadn't been in the cathedral since Bobby Kennedy's funeral and he didn't want to visit now. It was a place filled with bad memories, but for some reason he couldn't tear himself away. He stood looking at the cathedral's bronze door, afraid to go into St. Patrick's because of what might be waiting for him. Finally, as if being beckoned by some siren, he walked up the few steps and into the church that had meant so much to so many New Yorkers, including himself.

He stood in the back, thinking about his last time here. It was in the early morning of June 8, 1968, hours before Kennedy's funeral mass was to begin. He was an honor guard, standing silently by the coffin that was draped with the American flag. He was waiting to be relieved so he could catch last call at Hogan's Moat. The Irish are supposed to embrace death. Laugh at wakes and sing the praises of Tim Finnegan, dead until a noggin of whiskey—from the Irish
uisce beatha
, water of life—brings him back to life. But O'Rourke wanted nothing to do with death and he hated wakes and funerals with a passion. To him they were an embarrassment because he never knew what to say. And how do you say you're sorry to the pregnant widow because you took the wrong turn and her husband had his brains blown out? O'Rourke, that Saturday morning, had closed his eyes as if trying to deny the reality that had claimed him and the nation. Unconsciously, he had begun to nervously rock on his heels, back and forth. Then he heard the creak. He opened his eyes, but there was nothing amiss. He closed his eyes again and there was another creak. His eyes flew open and he saw there was no one near the casket but him. He could not take his eyes off the box and his mouth became dry.

The coffin squeaked again, and O'Rourke thought he was going insane. Was the Senator alive inside the box, trying to get out?

O'Rourke placed his hand on the box, as if to steady himself, and he felt the coffin move to one side. He put his hand on the other side of the casket, and the box shifted the other way.

O'Rourke then saw it was the old catafalque's fault. It wasn't level and the box was able to move when a hand gently touched it. He smiled. It was just Bobby having a little fun with him.

Now, inside the cathedral, O'Rourke could see that there was no box occupying the center aisle and somehow he felt better. He walked down to the high altar and then sat in a pew close by. Underneath the altar, O'Rourke knew, were the tombs of all the archbishops of the Archdiocese of New York. From the great ceiling of the cathedral, on long wire-strings, red hats called
galeros,
represented New York's dead archbishops, ten in all. O'Rourke stared at each and every one of them, wondering which one was Dagger John's.

As he sat there, he saw a man in a black suit enter the pew in front of him. He could see it was the Cardinal, strangely anonymous in his own church. Sweeney stiffly kneeled and with the purity of a young boy on the day of his First Holy Communion, placed his hands together, fingers pointed to the ceiling in prayer. Then he started to look up at the ceiling above the high altar. He was also looking at the
galeros
, very conscious that some day very soon, his own red hat, number eleven, would be among them. The legend in the Church had it that when a red hat fell from its mooring, a soul had ascended into heaven. “In that case,” thought O'Rourke with a small smile, “looks like all the Archbishops of New York are still doing time.”

O'Rourke felt a special contentment for he knew that he had piqued the Cardinal, just as he had been piqued by the ghost of Bobby Kennedy on that June day so long ago. Then O'Rourke also smiled, for it was obvious that Declan Cardinal Sweeney was searching for the
galero
that belonged to his ancient predecessor, the irascible archbishop, Dagger John Hughes.

O
'Rourke was in a daze. He stood outside his apartment building on Charles Street on a beautiful summer's day and felt as if someone had sucker punched him in the stomach. Slowly, like an old man, he started to walk west towards the river.

The note had been succinct. “I have to think the baby over. I'm going to my mother's in Tortola. I'll call you.”

O'Rourke got it: Don't call me, I'll call you.

Think the baby over. My God, what a way to put it.

Since O'Rourke won the Democratic primary on June 19th, their silences had been loud. Two bodies in the same space doing their best to ignore each other. The pregnancy had changed McGuire. She was sick every morning and she placed the blame squarely on O'Rourke. She had become depressed and silent. There were no smiles and no smart-ass asides to keep O'Rourke in his place. O'Rourke could actually physically feel them drifting apart from each other.

“Is it the baby?” he asked.

“What do you think?” McGuire responded curtly.

“I think it's the baby.”

“Well, you're right.”

“Doesn't the baby still make you happy?”

“I'm not sure,” she said. “I'm not sure at all about this child.”

“What are you not sure about?”

“That this child should be brought into this world.”

“Don't talk like that.”

“Don't
you
talk like that,” she snapped, and O'Rourke knew it was not the time to have a drag-out with her.

Then this afternoon, after work, the note.

He walked along Charles and passed the synagogue near the corner of West 4th Street, the Congregation Darech Amuno. O'Rourke's father used to do free plumbing for the rabbi back in the 1950s. One of his fellow Irish supers asked O'Rourke's father why the freebie and the response was classic O'Rourke Senior: “Because the rabbi's a fucking good guy and he's also a man of God.” O'Rourke walked past the house of poet Hart Crane, who had committed suicide by jumping off the stern of a boat, and envied him. He continued on Charles past Bleecker Street, past the back of the Sixth Precinct and the Bomb Squad and came to a stop on the corner of Charles and Hudson. He crossed over to the Sazerac House restaurant where his friend Nick Pinto used to work, then turned south and headed in the direction of the World Trade Center.

He walked on Hudson past Ruby Fruits lesbian bar and the Cowgirl Hall of Fame. Past Christopher Street, he found himself in front of St. Luke's in the Fields, the oldest church in the Village. Well, finally, the Episcopalians seemed to have something on St. Joseph's over on Sixth Avenue—they were the oldest. He was drawn to the side yard which was surrounded by wonderful brick buildings built in the 1820s. There wasn't a soul in sight and he found himself face-to-face with the statue of the Blessed Virgin, glorious in her patina, except for her prayerful hands and nose, which glistened like silver from all the hands that had rubbed her throughout the years. This Virgin was the opposite from the ones that had been tormenting him in his dreams. Although her face was uncovered, he could not see this Virgin's eyes. It was weird. They were open, but they were blanks; there were no eyes. But unlike his dream Virgins, she had a wonderful smile. No teeth, just a line of a warm smile. It reminded him of Rosanna's smile. And she had a big bust like Rosanna. Then O'Rourke noticed something very strange about this Virgin: she had patina streaks under her eyes, as if she had been crying. Crying, but smiling at the same time. At the base of the statue was a plaque which called Mary, “the Blessed Mother of Christ.” There was a veneer of begrudging Protestant respect there somewhere, mused O'Rourke.

O'Rourke placed his hands on the Virgin's clasped hands and made a simple prayer. “Please save my baby.”

The Virgin and O'Rourke were surrounded by the sounds of the city—cars and horns and the laughter of kids returning from school with their mothers. He looked up behind the Virgin and saw the mitered edge of the huge former Federal Archives Building, now just known a little too grandly as The Archive. When he was a kid, he had played stickball off it. Now Monica Lewinsky lived there.

He caught a whiff of the PATH across the way on Christopher Street. For some reason the PATH—O'Rourke still thought of them by their old name, the Hudson Tubes—still had that strange smell of its own. It didn't smell like the subway or any other thing in New York. It smelled like a city full of moldy sweat socks. It was as if New Jersey was exporting an aroma on New York in revenge for some wrong.

“Please save my baby,” he said again.

The Virgin stood upright, as if she was noncommittal. O'Rourke wondered if the Virgin was listening to him. Then it came back to him from his childhood. His mother had taught him all his prayers in Irish, just as she had been taught her prayers in Irish by the nuns in the orphanage in Sandymount. O'Rourke knelt in front of the Protestant's Mary on one knee and it flowed out of him, nearly fifty years after he had learnt it:

O'Rourke stood up and clasped the Virgin's hands with his. “
Agus is beannaighe toradh du broinn Iosa
,” he repeated. “And blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.”

He looked the Virgin in the eye. “Womb,” he repeated. “The fruit of Sam's womb.” O'Rourke stood back and said, “You must save my child. For if you don't, who will?”

Still feeling deflated, O'Rourke exited St. Luke's yard and walked to the corner of Christopher Street. He could see the twin spires of St. Veronica's across the street, one of the old, dead Irish parishes that was established to care for the Irish who worked on the docks, now also dead. In its heyday it must have been one of the noisiest parishes in the city because it was stuck between the old 9th Avenue Elevated Line on Greenwich and the Highline running down Washington Street.

A.D. 1890
, the cornerstone read. A century and a decade ago. He entered through a side door and found himself beside a plaque for the Reverend Daniel J. McCormick, who had built “this beautiful temple.”

The brass plaque said that “he was born in this city November 29, 1852.” O'Rourke smiled. No immigrant McCormick—he was proud to be a native New Yorker—but it was obvious that he was a famine baby. Did his parents meet on a coffin ship escaping Black '47? The young Dan McCormick had been ordained a priest in St. Joseph's Seminary, Troy, New York, on December 22, 1877. He died around the corner, in the parish rectory, now Mother Teresa's AIDS Hospice, on January 23, 1903. An old fifty-one.

Father McCormick had built a fine church. Now catering largely to the Ecuadorian community, there were still signs of the Irish it had originally been built for. In the back, left over from World War II, was a listing, by street, of all who had served in the armed forces. Of the nearly five hundred names, almost all were Irish. St. Veronica's Parish, according to the list, ran all the way up to Abingdon Square, where St. Bernard's took over. St. Veronica's was the start of the Irish-Catholic West Side, which extended all the way up to Hell's Kitchen in the West 50s, where many of the Irish had become Westies, like the fathers of Cyclops Reilly and Séan Pius Burke. O'Rourke remembered the last of the Village docks, before the container ships, from the early 1950s, but wondered what it was really like just before and just after World War II. Irish babies galore with Baptisms, First Holy Communions, and Confirmations by the truckload. It must have been something. O'Rourke thought of his own baby and envied the long departed St. Veronica Irish because he feared he might never see a child of his own receive the sacraments of the Church.

O'Rourke remembered that his mother used to take him here when he was a child. At that time, the family had lived on Bethune Street, just three blocks away. He remembered one mass when he was being rambunctious. “Mammy, why is that man wearing a petticoat?” he asked loud enough so the whole church could hear. That man was the priest and the petticoat was his alb. She hushed him, and when that did not work, she said the magic words, “No Li-Lacs.” Young Tone got the message and shut his trap. Duly, he was delivered to the chocolate emporium for his lollypop. O'Rourke looked around St. Veronica's and saw that they had not removed the confessionals like a lot of the Catholic Churches had. The four confessionals, two to a side, stood adamant. Thinking back nearly fifty years to the alb caper, he realized he had finally confessed one of his long lost sins.

Above the left front altar O'Rourke saw the Virgin Mary. She was a giant version of Rosanna's statue. He did not go to her, but stared at her from the back of the church. He had just had a long chat with her across the street. She knew what he wanted, but O'Rourke did not feel confident that she would respond.

In the back, near Father McCormick's plaque, was another Virgin,
Nuestro Senora del Quinche
—Our Lady of Quinche. Ecuadorians surrounded her glass case and it was easy to see that she was a people's Madonna, an adored protector. Children were held up by their parents to touch the glass of the Madonna and her child. O'Rourke was proud of what was happening before him, as if the Irish had handed the church over to a new generation of immigrants, the new Americans. O'Rourke smiled because the politician in him was coming out. He wondered if the worshipers were citizens and registered Democrats.

He started to leave, when he spied the statue of St. Patrick. O'Rourke was delighted. The Ecuadorians may have commandeered this parish, but Patrick would not leave. O'Rourke placed five bucks in the slot and lit an electric candle. There was a handwritten note by the coin slot that read “Pray for my son John” and O'Rourke did. There were a few old Irish left in the parish and O'Rourke wondered if John's mother was one of them, perhaps living in a rent controlled apartment on Weehawken Street.

O'Rourke got up to leave when he was overcome by it all. The 500 Irish World War II veterans, Father Dan McCormick, the Catholic Virgin up above, the Protestant Blessed Mother of Christ over at St. Luke's, and now
Nuestro Senora del Quinche
. And, of course, St. Patrick. And John's Irish mother, God bless her. For in this church of death for an Irish culture that no longer existed, O'Rourke suddenly felt hope because, for the first time, he knew what he had to do.

“Go,” Father McCormick commanded.

“Go,” said St. Patrick, the three Marys, and John's Irish mother.

“Go to Ireland,” they all said.

And O'Rourke knew that the answer to the survival of his unborn baby awaited him in the land of his birth.