“Doing some prison visits, to tell you the truth. One of my fellow priests is under the weather, and I said I’d do his visits for him.”
“No such luck you’re going to Attica, I suppose.”
“No, one of the local lockups. As for you, take the day, take two, go sightseeing with your family. Take in a show. I’ll be wanting to see some holiday snapshots when we get back to Halifax, to assuage my guilt.”
So off to the parade we went, and bought a tricolour for Normie to wave from the sidelines. It was a spectacle indeed and it showed that the colour green is not restricted to the places Mother Nature intended; I tried but failed to imagine any of the Burkes taking part. When even the youngest of us had seen enough, I suggested to Maura that we pay a visit to Sandra Worthington. We were only a few blocks from her townhouse in the East Seventies.
“This is more like it!” Maura exclaimed when we got to Seventy-Second Street. The outburst earned her a dead-eyed glance from a tall
thin woman in tweeds, walking a long thin dog in a red sweater.
“Oh? The good socialist has a taste for the ritzier parts of town?”
“The quieter parts of town.” She pointed to a sign that urged people not to sound their car horns except in a situation of danger. “I’d like to get hundreds of these signs and post them all over Manhattan, starting in front of our hotel.”
“I’ll help you, Mummy,” our daughter offered.
Sandra wasn’t alone when we arrived but she seemed genuinely pleased to see us, and she made a fuss over Normie, who beamed at Sandra and her splendid surroundings. We made ourselves comfortable in the elegant uptown apartment, with its high ceilings, panelled doors and carved marble fireplace. When I’d been there the year before, I had noticed a page from a musical score framed on the wall. This time, now that I knew her better, I would not be shy about taking a closer look. But right now we were being introduced to Reggie Baines. He was tall and expensively dressed, with a jutting chin and greying blonde hair brushed back from his forehead.
“Reggie is an old, old friend. Monty and Maura, and of course Normie, are new friends from Halifax, Reggie.”
“Really. I’ve sailed up that way a few times. Fun town. I know some people at the Yacht Squadron. Do you sail?”
“Sold my boat.”
“Trading up? What did you have?”
“A tub. Traded up for a Stratocaster.”
“Stratocaster? Is that something just coming on the market? I’m not familiar —”
“It’s a guitar.”
Baines looked puzzled.
“We’re friends of Brennan,” Maura said. “That’s how we met Sandra.”
“Brennan? I don’t believe I know the name.”
“An old boyfriend, Reggie. Long in the past,” Sandra said. Normie stared at Sandra with humongous eyes. Father Burke was somebody’s
boyfriend?
“Can I get you anything? Scotch, gin, lemonade?”
“Lemonade sounds good,” Maura replied, looking ready to settle in for the afternoon.
“Wait a minute,” Reggie said. “Brendan. Was that the guy who
took you away from Dody Spencer’s birthday party? It was Dody’s seventeenth and I remember it was almost like a debutante party. Though of course, with her birthday in April, it was out of season. Still . . .”
“Oh, Reggie, they don’t want to hear about the days when I was young and foolish.”
But Maura, one of seven children of a Commie coal miner from Cape Breton, looked as if there was nothing in the world she would enjoy more than hearing about Dody’s deb party, in or out of season. “Do tell us, Reg. It’s either that or the Saint Patrick’s Day parade.”
“Tell us!” Normie begged.
“Oh yes, it’s that time of year yet again, when we’re all confined to our houses by that crowd stumbling up the avenue.” He sighed. “Where was I? Dody’s party. We were all waiting for Sandra and this
boyfriend
—” he might as well have said
gigolo
“— and they simply didn’t show up. Thanks to this Brian, or Brendan, or whatever his name was. What happened there, Sandra? That was just before I left for Yale, so I never did get the details. Or meet this
loverboy
. I heard you ended up with a bunch of tramps, in a bread line, or something.”
He turned to us. “Did you say this Brian is a friend of yours? I would have thought he’d have imbibed himself to death or got knifed in a brothel by now.”
Sandra spoke up. “I had invited Brennan to Dody’s party. He didn’t know most of the people there but —”
“I should say not.”
“But we were going out together. So Brennan borrowed his father’s car and came to pick me up. He was looking very elegant —” Reggie’s expression told us he knew better “— in a beautiful dark suit he had saved to buy. Or maybe he stole it, I don’t know. But when he arrived I was in a snit. About my shoes.” She looked embarrassed, but went on: “I had ordered a new dress, and it was fine. Kind of a pale aqua —”
“And a pillbox hat to match,” Maura quipped.
“It was after six,
dahling,”
Sandra corrected, with a laugh.
“So. No hat,” Maura acknowledged. How did women know these things? Normie’s eyes went back and forth between them, taking it all in for the future.
“Mother had sent my shoes out to be dyed to match my dress.
They weren’t done until the day of the party, and when I saw them, I threw a fit.”
“They’d replaced them with a pair of tooled leather cowboy boots!” my wife guessed.
“Almost as
bahd,”
Sandra agreed, in a self-mocking wail. “They were a bright turquoise, almost green.”
“Frightful,” I agreed.
“You’re bad, Monty. You two know Brennan,” Sandra stated. “You didn’t know him then, but try to imagine him even as you know him now, listening to that story about my shoes.”
New York City, 1957
“What’s this you’re telling me now Sandra? You had a pair of shoes dyed to match a green dress?”
“The dress is aqua, the shoes are green. I look hideous!”
“I don’t understand this. What colour were the shoes before you dyed them?”
“They were white, what do you think?”
“So why didn’t you just leave them white? Wouldn’t they go with more of your outfits if they were white instead of green?”
“Brennan, it’s April!”
“I’m not following you here.”
“One does not wear white until after Memorial Day. Obviously. Oh, what’s the point?” I can’t bring myself to budge from the car. Anything else will be too horrid to imagine. But he’s starting the engine. We’re going to have to make an appearance.
“What’s the difference?” he’s asking me. “Who’s going to notice?”
“Who’s going to notice? Everyone! I’ll be the laughingstock.”
Brennan is looking at me as if he has no idea who I am or what I am doing in his car. He yanks the steering wheel, and the tires make the most embarrassing squealing noise. Right here in Upper Manhattan!
“What are you doing, Brennan? Where are we going?”
“You’ll see what it’s like to have some fecking hideous shoes, you little pussacon.” I hate it when he calls me these Irish names. He calls me a pussacon when he thinks I’m being pouty. But I’m just being normal. He’s the one who’s from another planet.
“You turn around this instant, Brennan! I cannot miss Dody’s party. I will never live it down.”
“Start livin’ it down, Princess.” Where is he taking me? We’re on the bridge to Queens. Now where are we? What is this horrible place? It looks like an old warehouse and it’s got a cross painted on the side. And who are all those people shuffling outside in a line?
“Where are we?” I hope he can’t hear the panic in my voice.
“We’re where I’m supposed to be tonight, but I bribed my little brothers to cover for me so I could take you out.” He’s parking. Is he serious? Now he’s yanked off his jacket and tie. We’re out of the car, and he’s pulling me!
“Get your hands off me, Brennan.” Inside there is a food counter and racks of obviously secondhand clothing. A man is ladling out soup, a woman is serving bread. There are cold sandwiches, and Jell-O for dessert. These people, you have to feel sorry for them. They appear to be absolutely desperate. I know I look out of place in my dyed satin shoes, skimpy little aqua dress with spaghetti straps, and my hair all done up.
Here comes his little brother Terrence. “Do we still get our money, now that you’re here, Bren?” He’s paying them to be here in his place.
“You’ll get your money, you little gobshite. What are you supposed to be doing?”
“I’ve got the balls!”
“You what?”
“It’s me that’s puttin’ the balls in the toy bags for the kids.”
“So do it!” Brennan gives him a shove and sends him off.
Now it’s Patrick coming over. He’s so sweet. He’s got a big spoon in his hand; his face and shirt are sticky with red Jell-O. “So you’re here after all, Bren.”
“Go get a clean spoon and keep it out of your gob.”
“Oh, hello, Sandra.”
“Hi, Pat.”
“You’ll be needin’ some clothes, then? They’ve a whole bin full of sweaters there, Sandra. And don’t worry; they won’t cost you a cent.”
Brennan is grabbing him by the arm. The poor little guy looks nervous. But Brennan just ruffles his hair and sends him off with a big wink. About me. Well, I guess I am the odd one out.
“Come here, Sandra. Spear some food onto people’s plates and be gracious about it.” I try to be, and it isn’t really all that bad.
It’s over now, and we’re on our way to my place. He hasn’t said a word. Now we’re at my door. He isn’t moving, he hasn’t turned the engine off, he’s just waiting for me to go. The only thing he says by way of good-night is: “Anybody comment on your shoes?”
“So that’s where you were,” Reggie said. “I never did get it straight.”
“I told you before. It was a Catholic charity, Reg.”
“Right,” Reggie sniffed. “The Pope in Rome probably got half the money from it!”
“Half the soup, you must mean,” Maura said. “So,” Sandra told us, “somebody learned the social graces that night.” Reggie harrumphed at that, but Sandra went on: “It changed me, though I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of saying so.” She spoke in a conspiratorial whisper: “Maybe I was the first soul he saved.”
Everybody laughed, though perhaps for different reasons, if Reggie’s expression was any indication. Then Maura brought the room down. “I don’t know whether you heard, or maybe it was in the papers, Sandra, but somebody tried to kill Brennan’s father.”
“What? I didn’t see anything in the papers. What happened?”
“I was there!” Normie burst out. “It was at Katie’s wedding party. Somebody shot Katie’s granddad, Mr. Burke. The guy got away!”
“Shot him in the chest,” I confirmed. “Just missed his heart.”
“My God!” Sandra was horrified. “Do they know who it was?”
I shook my head. “The police don’t have a suspect yet. And if Declan knows who did it, he’s not saying.”
“Is he going to be all right?”
“Oh, yeah. He tries not to let on it happened.”
I glanced at Reggie Baines. He looked as if somebody had just farted in the Knickerbocker Club.
Sandra chose that moment to offer us fresh drinks. Normie held out her glass for a refill, but Reggie declined, saying there was somewhere else he had to be. When he was gone, I went to the framed
page of music on the wall.
“Tell us about this,” I requested. The notes were done by hand. The sheet had been torn through the middle, then lined up again. The piece was written for traditional Celtic instruments and, when I sang the melody line to myself, it sounded like a lament. I gently removed it from the wall, took it over and propped it up so I could play the top line and some of the accompaniment on her piano.
“It’s sorrowful, it’s haunting, and it’s so very, very Irish,” Maura remarked, almost to herself.
Even in the small snippet we had, the piece managed to express an overwhelming sense of loss. “Where’s the rest of it?” I asked.
Sandra shook her head. “You lost it?” No comment. “You tore it up.”
“I wasn’t very receptive when I first got it. I should have been, I guess. It’s the only piece of music anyone ever wrote for me, which explains why it’s there on the wall. Really, I suppose, it was sweet of him to —”
“That’s passion, babe, not sweetness,” I snapped, jabbing the music with my finger. Even I was taken aback by the sharpness of my tone. “I hope you didn’t underestimate him while you had him in your life.”
Nobody spoke for a while. I played the piece again, this time picking out a different part of the accompaniment. Then I placed it carefully back on the wall.
“When did he write it for you?” I asked her, more gently this time.
“When we parted for good.”
We were silent again. Then Maura suggested we all go out for dinner. Sandra joined us for a Saint Patrick’s Day scoff of moussaka and kleftiko at a nearby Greek restaurant. She listened with wry good humour while Normie prattled on about her good friend Father Burke, who, despite his distant, unseemly past as a boyfriend, might some day be found worthy to join the heavenly host. Normie intended to conduct a discreet investigation with a view to having him declared an angel. His old flame kindly kept her own counsel till the conversation turned to more neutral topics. I did bring her back to the Burkes momentarily, when I asked her to recount the story of the man who confronted Mr. Burke at the house that day, back when
she and Brennan were in their teens.