Whiskey Island (35 page)

Terence was livid. A man with two good arms and legs, with an unscarred face, stood above him murmuring platitudes. The doctor put Katie Sullivan to shame.

Yet he couldn’t speak, because some part of him was also ashamed.

The doctor touched his shoulder in comfort. Terence shrugged off his hand, but the hand found its way back. “I’m not saying it will be easy, son. But it’s the test of what kind of man you really are. I wish you well.”

The room seemed particularly silent after he’d left, but it was only silent for a few minutes. Father McSweeney came back inside and walked over to stand before him.

“It’s time for you to stop mourning what will never be again.”

“That’s easy enough for you to say, Father.”

“I know, but you’ll lose more, you know, if you don’t pull yourself together. Lena needs a husband, not another burden. And that’s all you are to her now.”

The words were harsh, but despite the denial forming on Terence’s lips, he knew Father McSweeney was right.

The priest went on. “In God’s sight, she married you until death parts you. If she leaves you now, her very soul will be damned. Would you damn her that way, Terence? Will you force her to live outside her marriage vows? Or will you try to make something of yourself again?”

“What? What exactly can I make of myself?”

“It’s time you learned to read and write. There are jobs for men who can, intelligent men with agile minds. I believe that’s a fitting description of you.”

“And how do I learn what I need to know? I don’t see schools for men like me. I have no money to hire a tutor.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

Terence looked up.

“I approached James Simeon on your behalf.”

“Simeon?”

“I told him he was at fault, that the things that had happened to you would not have happened if even the most basic safety measures had been followed.”

“Did you think the life or health of an Irishman was worth a moment of his time, Father?”

“He heard me out. He knows your plight, of course, because Lena works in his kitchen.”

“Despite my protests.”

“She had little choice,” the priest said sternly. “And your protests have only made a hard thing harder.”

Terence felt another flicker of shame.

“Simeon has agreed to pay for a teacher to help you learn the skills you need to get a different sort of job. And when you’ve learned what you need, he’s even agreed to employ you himself, if you’re up to his standards.”

Terence frowned. He couldn’t yet grasp what the priest was saying.

“Terence, he’s trying to make things right. He claims if you tell anyone, he’ll deny it and cut off the funds immediately. Only you and Lena are allowed to know what I’ve told you this night. But he
is
going to help you.”

“No.”

Father McSweeney was silent, waiting for an explanation.

“He’s a blackguard. I’d sooner take money from a viper.”

“Would you, now?” The priest’s brogue, which was normally mild, thickened. “Oh, would you, now? You’d prevent a man from cleansing his soul, you’d sentence your wife to a life of hard labor, you’d doom yourself to a useless, meaningless existence? All because of your foolish, deadly pride? I’ll be praying for
your
soul, then, I will, for the rest of my days, Terence, and I doubt that our blessed Lord will hear a word I say!”

Terence had a knot in his throat as thick as a cabbage. “I want nothing from him.”

“And to that I say too bad. Because you will take this help, and you will work harder than you’ve ever worked at anything. For if you don’t, I will tell the world what a pathetic creature you’ve become, and I will counsel your wife to leave you, even if her own soul be damned!”

The lump in Terence’s throat swelled until he couldn’t breathe.

“This is your chance to make something of yourself again,” the priest said at last. “You
will
take it. And you will follow all the doctor’s instructions so that your body will heal as best it can. You will wash each day and eat the meals your wife struggles to cook for you. You will be respectful to all who try to help you, and you will say your prayers like a good Catholic. You will study harder than any man has ever studied, so that your family and the people of Irishtown Bend can be proud of you again. Do you understand?”

Nothing the priest had threatened could make Terence comply. Yet, in that moment, he knew that he would. Because Father McSweeney was right. As he never had before, Terence saw the remainder of his life as a road forking right and left. He saw himself walking down one branch of it, cane in hand, book tucked securely under his bad arm. Lena was beside him, and children followed in their footsteps. On the second fork he was alone, dragging a useless leg as he hopped slowly and painfully, crutch tucked under his arm. That Terence stopped and gazed across the land dividing the two paths. As he watched, the other Terence disappeared over a hill.

Tears filled his eyes. He could hardly speak. “Father, would you hear my confession?”

“With the greatest of pleasure, my son.”

Lena returned that night, exhausted and beaten. She was late, but she doubted Terence would find that a problem. He would snarl, or perhaps he would be coldly silent. It hardly mattered. One was as terrible as the other.

On the way home she had thought of nothing but James Simeon’s interrogation. He had been drinking. This she knew and understood. Men often said things when they were drunk that they forgot by the morning. Perhaps Simeon had been angry that his wife was traveling to Europe. Perhaps he had been making sure that Lena knew how small and insignificant she was in his sight. But the third alternative, that he might really expect her to submit to him if she wanted to keep her job, was the one that angered and terrified her.

Her life was so precariously balanced that this new and frightening possibility could send it crashing around her.

Without her job at the Simeon house, how could she earn enough to keep food on their table? How could she send money to their families, pay for a doctor, put aside pennies for the Tierneys’ passage?

And yet, she couldn’t stay. She couldn’t take the risk that one night, when the house was silent and she was alone with him, Simeon might force himself on her.

By the time she opened the front door, she was sadly resolute. She would tell Terence tonight, perhaps not all that had been said, but enough to warn him that she wasn’t safe any longer. If he cared at all, he would be glad she was leaving the Simeon house. He had despised her working there since the beginning, nearly as much as he despised everything and everyone else in his life.

She was surprised to find lamps lit downstairs, but she supposed Rowan had come home to take care of this small detail. The light was a warm greeting after a cold ride on the streetcar and an even colder walk to Whiskey Island. She noted with surprise that there was a crackling fire on the hearth.

When she walked into the sitting room, Terence got slowly to his feet. Her eyes widened, and she nearly told him to sit down. But something stopped her, something about the way he threw back his shoulders and lifted his chin. He had bathed himself and combed his hair, and his clothing was fresh. The scar on his cheek was visible in the lamplight, but his beard had thickened enough to make it merely a curiosity.

“Terry?”

“You’re late. I’ve been worried about you.”

“It’s cold, and the walk seemed longer than usual.”

“You’re nearly frozen. Come stand by the fire.”

She passed in front of him, careful not to brush him in case he lost his balance. “I’ll get your supper in a moment, after I warm up a bit.”

“There’s food left from last night. It will do.”

She was glad to hear him say so. “Should you be standing? Doesn’t your leg ache?”

“Not so I can’t bear it.”

“What would the doctor say?”

“It’s what he did say, that I’m to use it as much as possible, and I’m to try to use the arm, as well. I’ll need help exercising both. He showed me how.”

She was astonished. Dr. Conner had come today? Terence had listened, and planned to follow his instructions? “He said you’ll be getting better, then?”

“Better, yes. Never back to the way things were, but better, if I work at it.”

She clasped her hands at her chest. “You’ll walk?”

“With a cane always.”

“Just a cane?”

She saw something she’d thought never to see again. He smiled. “Aye. And we can’t expect much from the arm, but perhaps there’ll be more use from it someday than there is now. And it’s my left arm, after all.”

After a terrible evening, she’d only hoped for nothing else to go wrong. She hadn’t hoped for this return of the light in her husband’s eyes. Her mind darted in every direction at once. It was more than she could understand.

“There’s more, and you might as well know it all.” Terence lowered himself to the chair and took a deep breath before he spoke again. “Mr. Simeon has agreed to pay for a tutor for me. Father McSweeney told me today. I’m to learn reading and writing and numbers. If I learn quickly and well, he’ll employ me himself. We can’t tell anyone what he’s agreed to. I’m sure he’s afraid every man harmed in his foundries and ore boats might demand his help if they believed him to be so generous. But for once luck has found us, Lena.”

A clear picture of James Simeon winding a lock of her hair around his finger filled her mind. “Mr. Simeon?”

“Yes. And I’m sure, at least partly, it’s because of you.”

For a moment she couldn’t breathe. Her eyes lifted to his.

“He sees you every day, and feels a responsibility for you and for what he’s done,” Terence continued. “Now, when he sees you, he’ll believe he’s put things right.”

Her mind continued to dart from sentence to sentence, picture to picture. James Simeon’s pallid face and icy eyes. James Simeon moving closer and closer, telling her things about his marriage she had no right to hear.

James Simeon restoring the light in Terence’s eyes.

“I was wrong when I tried to stop you from working in the Simeon house,” Terence said. “I’m sorry, Lena. I’m sorry about so much.”

She wanted to cry. She would have cried, if the tears weren’t frozen inside her. How could she tell him what she had decided on the streetcar home? For she knew what Terence did not. Simeon wasn’t offering his help out of some deeply hidden urge to do good. He was offering it to keep her in his employment.

To keep her there until some night when he’d use her as casually as he used the linen and silver on his dining room table.

She realized she had to speak, that Terence was waiting for her to say something. In his own way, he had laid his proud soul bare. “Terry, I—”

He held up his hand. “I know I’ve turned your life into a hell on earth, Lena. But that’s going to change. I’ll study hard and learn everything I can. And I’ll make you proud of me again. I swear it. If it’s the last thing I do in this life, I’ll make you proud of me.”

She was flooded with love for him, made sweeter because of its absence for so long. She sobbed and moved to him at the same moment, kneeling to lay her head in his lap. He stroked her hair with his good hand and murmured soft endearments.

She sobbed, but Terence would never know it was because very soon she would no longer be proud of herself.

February 9, 1883

J
ust yesterday an old woman came to speak to me about her husband’s soul. She claimed her husband, dead these three long years, had visited her in a dream to tell her she must give all she has to the church or he can never enter the gates of heaven.

I asked how she would eat and where she would sleep if she gave what little she had to a church that suffers far less than she does. “Father,” she told me, “I’ve little need of anything but your blessing and a promise that, when I die, my dear husband and I will be forever with those we love.” For this she was willing to give up all she owned.

My blessing has no price, and I sent her home with it, along with the savings she’d brought as the first payment on her departed husband’s soul. Did she know, I wonder, how gratefully God must look upon such a sacrifice? Her husband, as I remember him, was not a kind man or a particularly good one. But in death she has forgiven him his faults, and now she hopes, by her own suffering and poverty, to redeem his soul.

Surely God looks lovingly upon such forgiveness and radiant confidence in the divine spark in others. Would that we could all follow her example.

Would that I could forgive as easily.

From the journal of Father Patrick McSweeney—St. Brigid’s Church, Cleveland, Ohio.

22

February 2000

C
asey’s mother, Kathleen Donaghue, had always said that keeping a saloon was no excuse for neglecting family life. On Sunday the Donaghue sisters had been garbed in their best for a trip to St. Brigid’s. Then—with doors locked to the public—Kathleen and Rooney had prepared a bountiful dinner in Whiskey Island’s kitchen for their three daughters, and often for extended family, as well.

In the years after her mother’s death, Megan had followed the tradition, taking on more of the burden of planning and preparation as Rooney drifted away. After he left for good, she and Casey tried to continue, but with limited success. The elaborate dinners dwindled to simpler meals, the weekly ritual to twice a month, then monthly.

Today they were reviving the custom. It made sense to broach the subject of Rooney with Peggy in a convivial, family atmosphere. Casey hoped it would make a difference.

“Ashley’s helping me set the table,” Casey called into the kitchen. Casey had brought down what was left of the family china from the attic upstairs, and she and the little girl had covered one of the larger tables in the center of the room with a white linen tablecloth, adorning it with Kathleen’s precious silver candlesticks.

“Dinner will be ready in about ten minutes,” Megan called back.