Eve's Daughters (31 page)

“Shall I send Clancy for the doctor?” she asked.

“No, she needs to go straight to the hospital. Send Clancy to Booty’s store
to ask if he’ll drive her there.” Aileen waddled away, seemingly unhurried, and Father O’Duggan turned to me. “We need to wrap your mama up nice and warm to drive her to the hospital. Can you fetch me her shoes and her coat?”

As I hurried to obey him, I saw him glance around our apartment. It was the first time he’d ever been inside it. We had very little furniture besides a dresser, our two beds and a kitchen table and chairs, but my mother kept the two rooms clean and cozy, decorating the walls with my colorful drawings. I wanted to tell him I’d made the pictures and ask him if he liked them, but his face was angry-looking. I laid Mother’s coat and shoes on the bed and backed away.

Father O’Duggan rubbed his hands together to warm them. When he exhaled I could see his breath. Each time the wind squealed outside the window, the curtain moved in the breeze. Mother coughed again, and I felt it like a blow to the pit of my stomach. I wanted her to wake up and be better.

It seemed to take forever for Booty Higgins to arrive with the car, but I finally heard a man’s heavy tread ascending the stairs. Crazy Clancy, our elderly next-door neighbor, ducked his head in the doorway, his face flushed with cold and whiskey.

“The car is out front, Father,” he said. “I left it running. Booty says to drive Mrs. Bauer yourself. His missus doesn’t want him to.”

“Thanks, Clancy. God bless you for going out on such a cold night.” Father O’Duggan shoved Mother’s limp arms into the sleeves of her coat, then pulled the two threadbare blankets off the bed and wrapped them around her as well.

“Will Mrs. Bauer be all right?” Clancy asked.

“I don’t know.” The priest buttoned his own coat before lifting Mama into his arms. “Don’t these apartments come with any heat, Clancy?”

“No, Father. We pay the Mulligans extra for coal and keep warm as best we can.”

“Dear Lord, have mercy . . .” he mumbled. “Run ahead and get the downstairs door for me, would you, Clancy?”

It seemed to take the old man a moment to comprehend the question. He looked from Mother to me, then patted my head with his quivering hand. “Don’t you be getting sick on us, now,” he said. I smelled the rich, buttery scent of whiskey on his breath. Clancy tottered down the stairs, leaning on the rail as if on board a tossing ship, then swayed across the hall to open the front door.

“Open the car door too, Clancy,” the priest called.

I saw a sheen of ice on the sidewalk and held my breath, hoping Clancy wouldn’t slip as he lurched toward the car. When he’d made it to the curb, he opened the door with a small bow. Father O’Duggan ducked his head as he bent to lay my mother on the backseat. “Thanks, man. I couldn’t have done without your help. I’ll be off now.”

I started to cry. I wanted to go with my mother, but Father O’Duggan hadn’t remembered me. I stood on the front stoop, wondering what I should do. Clancy cocked his head toward me. “What about the little girl, Father?”

“Aye, I nearly forgot. Surely the Mulligan sisters will watch her, don’t you think?” Father O’Duggan jogged up the steps past me and knocked on the Mulligans’door. Miss Aileen had gone back inside her apartment.

“I’ll be driving Mrs. Bauer to the hospital now,” he said when she answered his knock. “Could you and Miss Kate take care of wee Gracie for the night?”

Aileen frowned. “Ordinarily we would, but the doctor said our mother could pass away tonight . . . and then we’ll be having the wake here and all. . . .”

“I understand, but it’s just for one night. I don’t know who else can take the child. Mrs. Bauer has no relatives in the city as far as anyone knows. And she can hardly stay with old Clancy, now, can she?” he added in a low voice.

Miss Aileen’s face showed her irritation. “Well, in that case I suppose you’ll have to take her to the county orphans’ home.”

“Surely not! That’s a terrible place for a child. I can scarcely stand to visit there.”

“Face facts, Father O’Duggan—with no other family, she’ll end up in the orphans’ home anyway if Mrs. Bauer dies.”

“Aileen,” he said through clenched teeth. “She can hear, don’t you know?”

Yes, I could hear, and her words terrified me. I tried to wipe my tears but they fell faster and faster.

“Please, Miss Mulligan. Can’t you find it in your heart to take her?”

“I’m sorry, Father. We have enough to deal with.”

Father O’Duggan opened his mouth as if to rage at the heartless old crow, but the rebuke for her lack of charity died on his lips. “Good evening to you, then,” he said abruptly. He jammed his hat onto his head and pulled her apartment door closed behind him. He stood perfectly still for a moment, with his fists bunched and his mouth set in a straight line, then he exhaled wearily
and crouched beside me. He seemed about to draw me into his arms to soothe away my tears, but his outstretched arms dropped to his sides as he realized he was nearly a stranger to me. He pulled his handkerchief from his breast pocket instead and pressed it into my hands.

“Come, then, button your coat. You can ride with your mother to the hospital.”

As we drove through the icy streets to Sisters of Mercy Hospital, the blast of warm air from the car’s heater couldn’t melt the fear that froze my heart. Was my mother going to die like old Mrs. Mulligan? What would happen to me if she did? Was there no one who wanted me?

As soon as Father O’Duggan carried Mother through the hospital doors, the smell of disinfectant and the hurried squeak of shoes on the spotless tile floors thawed the edges of my dread. I felt hope returning even before the orderly whisked Mother away on a rolling bed.

“There, now. The doctors will take good care of her,” Father O’Duggan murmured. “The sisters will restore her to health in no time.” I didn’t know what he meant because I didn’t have any sisters and, as far as I knew, neither did Mother. But his voice was soothing, just the same.

As he filled out a bunch of papers, I took a long close-up look at Father O’Duggan, face-to-face, not through a crack in the door. He was big and sturdy and solid compared to Mother and the Mulligan sisters, like a wall of flesh and bone that I could hide behind. The only other man I knew was Clancy—and he was wrinkled and frail like old Mrs. Mulligan. Clancy smelled bad too, but Father O’Duggan smelled nice, like the spices in Mother’s kitchen cupboard. He had tiny golden hairs on his wrists, peeking out from the cuffs of his black jacket, and sparkling golden hairs on his chin and around his mouth. He had removed his hat inside the hospital, and I could see the marks of his comb on his slicked-back hair. It was golden too. I stared at him from head to toe, fascinated. I had never seen shoes as big as his.

When an elderly woman, dressed in a strange black gown and headdress, asked him into her office, he reached for my hand. His hand was huge and warm and strong. It swallowed mine completely.

“Please, sit down, Father O’Duggan,” the woman said. I sat beside him. “Dr. Kelly has just seen Mrs. Bauer and . . .”

“What did he say?”

“She’s gravely ill, Father. It’s pneumonia. You might want to administer the Blessed Sacrament before you leave.”

It was a moment before he spoke. “She isn’t Catholic,” he said quietly.

“One of my parishioners owns the rooming house where she lives.”

“She should have been hospitalized days ago.”

“I know, but she has no one to take care of her, you see. No family . . .”

The woman made a slight nod toward me. “Where is Mr. Bauer?”

“He’s not . . . that is . . . Mrs. Bauer’s husband has divorced her.” He cleared his throat. “About the child,” he said softly. “Could you possibly find a place for her here, near her mother? It’s just for tonight.”

“We’re already full with this influenza epidemic,” the woman said, spreading her hands. “Even if we had a spare bed, which we don’t, the child would risk infection herself if she stayed here.”

“I see. Well, might you suggest another place?”

“There’s always the county home.”

“Aye. I know all about the county home, Sister Mary Margaret, and so do you.” His voice sounded angry and tight. “That place is like a black-and-white photograph. Everything in it is a dreary shade of gray, from the stone walls that surround it to the dingy paint and grubby bed sheets inside it to the grim despair on the children’s faces. I can’t leave this child there. They would bleach the very life from her.” He stood, as if suddenly impatient to leave. “Please call me at the rectory right away if there’s any change in Mrs. Bauer’s condition.”

He steered me out of the office, then stopped near the door to button my coat and pull my knitted hat over my ears. I was so tirēd I stumbled when I tried to walk, and Father O’Duggan swept me into his arms to carry me to the car. I leaned against his chest. It wasn’t soft and yielding like Mother’s, but solid and firm. The ground seemed a long way down.

He glanced at me from time to time as he drove away from the hospital. I tried to stop my tears, but they kept falling and falling just the same. I saw the concern in his eyes by the light of oncoming cars. “Are you warm enough, Gracie?” he asked. I nodded, even though I was shivering.

“Dear God, what to do with you?” he said with a sigh. “I would gladly take you to the rectory for the night if it weren’t for the bishop’s visit. There must be another answer besides the county home. . . .”

He drove in silence for another minute or two. Houses and trees flew past my window in a blur. Then Booty’s tires squealed as Father O’Duggan suddenly jammed on the brakes. He made a U-turn on the highway and headed back into town. Ten minutes later, he stopped in front of a neat brick bungalow with lace curtains at the windows. Smoke curled from the chimney, and lights glowed from the rooms inside like a picture from a storybook.

“Come with me, Grace,” Father O’Duggan said. I slid across the seat behind him and climbed out on the driver’s side. We followed a sidewalk that led around to the kitchen door. Father O’Duggan knocked softly, then opened the door and stepped inside. “It’s me, Mam.”

A plump, white-haired woman stood by the stove, waiting for the kettle to boil. As I followed him inside, the warmth of the tiny kitchen engulfed me like bath water.

“For goodness’ sake! What’s wrong?”

He kissed her cheek. “Nothing, Mam . . . not with me anyway.”

“Sit down, take your coat off. I was just fixing m’self some tea . . . or maybe you’d like a wee drop to warm you on such a cold night?” She indicated one of the cupboards with a tilt of her head.

“Just the tea, thanks.” He remained standing.

I was half-hidden behind Father O’Duggan’s legs, and she didn’t appear to notice me. She bustled around the kitchen—retrieving the cups, warming the pot, measuring the tea, lifting the kettle off the stove when it boiled—all in one smooth, practiced movement.

“Listen, I need to ask a favor, Mam. I just drove a woman to Sisters of Mercy Hospital. They think she has pneumonia.”

Mam clucked her tongue in sympathy as she pulled the tea cozy over the pot. “I shouldn’t wonder if we all caught pneumonia, what with the weather such as it’s been lately.”

“The thing is, you see . . . she has no family here in the city, and so there’s no one to take care of her child.”

“Aren’t any of the other families from your parish willing?”

“The woman isn’t from my parish.” He waited until she paused to look at him. “It’s Emma Bauer.”

Mam froze. Her expression was so cold as she turned away from us that I expected frost to form on the inside of the kitchen window as she stared out. “And why is a divorced woman’s child any of your business, might I ask?”

“Will you take her for the night, Mam?”

“I will not. Emma Bauer is a shameful woman who divorced her husband, and if you had half the brains God gave you, you wouldn’t be mixing yourself up with the likes of her.”

“Mixing up! The doctor said she might die!”

Mam’s face turned an alarming shade of scarlet, and her chins quivered with anger. “And if she does die, how are you going to explain to your parish
why you’re stuck with her child? Not only is the woman divorced, she isn’t even Catholic!”

“For the love of mercy, Mam, it’s not the child’s fault! She’s just a babe!”

He scooped me up in his arms so abruptly my hat fell off. He snatched his own hat from his head and threw it to the floor beside mine. “We’re all sinners. Every last one of us. Will you look at the child, for the love of God?”

Mam did look at me then, and her eyes suddenly filled with tears. She groped for the kitchen chair with one hand and sank into it. She stared at Father O’Duggan for a long moment, then turned away, pulling a linen handkerchief from her sleeve to dab her eyes. He set me on my feet in front of him again, resting his hands on my shoulders.

“Her name is Grace,” he said quietly. “Like the grace of God which covers all our sins.”

“Aye. I know the word,” Mam whispered.

“Will you take her, then?”

Mam reached out and stroked my hair. Electricity from my woolen hat had made it stand on end, and she gently patted it down again. “There, there . . . such a pretty child. Would you like me to take care of you till your mam’s feeling better?”

Before I knew how it happened, I was curled up on Mam’s lap, enveloped in her soft arms and warm bosom. I closed my eyes and wept, secure in the comfort of her embrace and the familiar, floury smell of her apron.

Father O’Duggan bent to retrieve his hat. “I’ll come by in the morning,” he said hoarsely.

Mam nodded as she slowly unbuttoned my coat and slid it from my shoulders. “There, now . . . we’ll get on fine together, won’t we, Gracie?”

I loved Mam from that very first night. She must have heard my stomach growling because as soon as Father O’Duggan left, she set a bowl of bread pudding in front of me. It was thick with raisins and fragrant with cinnamon and cloves. I had never tasted such a wonderful treat before. After I’d washed it down with a glass of milk, Mam took my hand and led me toward her spare bedroom in the back of the house. I got no farther than her sitting room, though. I stopped and gazed around in amazement. If ever a house was made to fit a person, Mam’s cottage fit her. The room was small and soft like Mam, the furniture plump with pillows and topped with a white frosting of doilies, like her cap of lacy white curls. The house was as cozy and warm as her embrace,
even when you weren’t standing near the stove. Framed pictures stood on every flat surface—photos of men, women, and children; all ages, shapes, and sizes.