Eve's Daughters (61 page)

“No! You can never take her there! If Karl sees her he might make trouble!” I was so upset I began to cough uncontrollably.

“I’ll get help . . . a nurse . . .” Patrick cried in alarm. I shook my head. At last I got my coughing under control again. I lay back against the pillow, exhausted and wheezing.

“Emma, the doctors say you’re going to be here for a few more weeks. You’re still very ill with pneumonia. Even if you went home, you couldn’t take care of Grace.”

“Why did you make her part of your life? She knows you now, and after I’m well . . .”

“I want to continue to be part of her life. I told the bishop that I will either take proper care of my daughter from now on, or I’ll quit. I can’t have my child starving, her mother freezing. I can’t believe that would be God’s will. My priestly vows don’t change the fact that I have responsibilities as her father.”

“But I don’t want anyone to know.”

“They won’t know. I’ve asked for an increase in my coal allowance at the rectory. It will make its way into your coal bin, anonymously. And I’ve arranged for a line of credit for you at Booty’s store. No one but the three of us will know who’s paying your bills. But you have to tell me what you need from now on . . . what Gracie needs. You have to let me help you.”

“You swore you’d never tell Gracie the truth. You swore on your Bible.”

“And I’ll keep my promise. But I want to be part of her life. I want to talk to her, be her friend. I’ve held her in my arms, Emma. You can’t ask me to go back to the way things were before. You can’t ask me to pretend to be a stranger again. It isn’t fair to Grace . . . or to me.”

“No, Patrick! You can’t! I appreciate all your help, but things
have
to go back to the way they were! There’s no other way to disguise the truth!”

“Emma, listen. . . .”

“No. Please leave now.”

He drew a deep breath and lifted his chin, composing himself. Then he shoved the curtains aside and strode from the room.

When the doctors finally discharged me a month later, Patrick borrowed Booty’s car to drive me home from the hospital. He brought Gracie with him. I was so happy to see her again, I didn’t want to let her out of my sight or out of my arms.

“What on earth are all those bags for?” I asked when I saw the backseat full of parcels.

“Those are all my new clothes, Mama. Wait until you see. I have warm stockings and a nightgown, and Mam knit me a new pair of mittens—and she even made me a dolly.”

“I can’t wait to see everything, sweetie.” I glanced at Patrick and saw him staring very intently down the road. We might have been an ordinary family, returning from a trip to Grandma’s house—but we weren’t. Gracie chattered away happily. I had never heard her so talkative before.

“Mam sent home some food to eat too. I helped bake the soda bread. It’s my job to put the raisins in. She says no one else can do it as good as me. Can we have some for a treat when we get home, Mama? Can Father O’Duggan stay and have some too?”

“He’s probably too busy,” I said quickly. But Gracie turned to look up at him, her eyes full of longing.

“Are you too busy?” she asked. I sensed Patrick’s struggle. He didn’t want to hurt Gracie by refusing, but he knew I didn’t want him to stay.

“Your mother will need to rest when she gets home,” he finally said.

“Oh.” Gracie managed to convey the full measure of her disappointment in a single word. I looked at their faces, so hauntingly alike, and knew that Patrick was right. I was being unfair to both of them by keeping them apart. I lifted Gracie’s chin and smoothed the hair from her forehead.

“I’m not too tired for a tea party, sweetie. And Father O’Duggan is welcome to stay.” She and Patrick smiled simultaneously, like images in a mirror, and my heart nearly shattered.

Before I could recover, Gracie started chattering again. “Mam said you might be in farm for a while. What does that mean, Mama? Are you in farm?”

I looked to Patrick for help. “I think she means ‘infirm,’” he said, grinning.

“Gracie, infirm means that even though your mother can leave the hospital, she might not be completely well and strong for a while.”

“I’ll take care of you, Mama. I promise I will.”

When we arrived at the apartment, I discovered that someone had been there before us, tidying up, filling the shelf with canned goods, building a fire in the stove. The coal scuttle was full.

“Oh, it’s so good to be home!” I said, sighing. Patrick had to make two trips up the stairs with Grade’s things and all the food his mother had sent. As he paused for breath after the second trip I said, “Would you stay and have tea with us?”

“Only if you’ll sit down and let Gracie and me fix it.”

I watched them work side by side, heating the water, arranging three mismatched cups on the tray, slicing the soda bread. Patrick’s hand swallowed Grace’s completely as he helped her guide the knife. He looked so solid and protective beside her, yet he was so gentle and patient with her. I thought of my own papa.

We ate our little meal companionably, as if we belonged together. I’d rarely seen Gracie so happy. But my heart was breaking, and I knew that Patrick’s was too. All too soon it would have to end.

“Gracie, why don’t you take this last piece of soda bread next door and see if Clancy would like it,” I said when we’d eaten our fill. “Let him know that we’re home again, okay?” After she had skipped off on her errand, I turned to Patrick. He was jiggling the grate in the stove to remove the ashes before adding more coal. “You were right,” I said softly. “It would be much too cruel to expect you to walk out of Grace’s life again. I can’t do that to either one of you.” He stopped with a shovelful halfway to the door. His eyes shone with hope.

“You mean . . .?”

“Yes. You’re already part of her life now. You have to continue . . . but promise me you’ll only be Father O’Duggan, the priest, to her . . . not her father. You can’t play favorites with her, Patrick. No one can ever know she’s your daughter.”

“I’ll figure out a way to include her with all the girls in my parish. I’ll make it work, Emma, I swear.”

“I know you will.”

He closed the stove, then peered out the front door to see if Gracie was coming back. When he saw no sign of her, he walked over to where I was sitting and pressed something into my hand.

“What’s this, Patrick . . . coal?”

He shook his head. “It’s a diamond-in-the-making. God will use pressure and stress to turn it into something beautiful, something precious. He’ll do
that in your life too, if you’ll let Him, Emma. He’s in the business of redemption. We sinned, but He gave us Grace. We—”

He stopped when Grace skipped back into the room. “Mr. Clancy said thank you very much and welcome home,” she said.

Patrick quickly shoved his arms into his overcoat, then bent to caress Grace’s head. “Take good care of your mother, all right? And thanks for the tea.”

I said good-bye and watched Patrick walk away, as I had so many times before.

That was the last time we spoke until Patrick showed up at the Regency Room one night, four years later, wearing a suit and tie. I nearly fell off the piano stool when I saw him from across the room. My love, my longing for him, hadn’t diminished in the least. He asked O’Brien for a table near my piano, then sent a message that he wanted to talk to me when the set was over. My fingers could barely find the right keys.

“Emma, why are you still hanging around with that gangster?” Patrick asked as soon as I was seated across the table from him.

“Is that what you came here to talk to me about?”

“No. . . .”

“Then drop it, all right?”

He stared down at the table, toying with a book of matches. I remembered the warmth of his hands, the touch of his strong, gentle fingers. I wanted to lift his palm to my cheek and feel his warmth again, then kiss the knuckles of his hand. But Patrick didn’t belong to me.

“Emma, the other girls are making fun of Grace,” he said eventually.

“They’re taunting her, badgering her. When I bumped into her today after school she was crying. It seems there is a great deal of speculation and gossip among my parishioners about her father. . . .”

My hands flew to my face. “Grace and I should move away! You can’t be seen with her! They’ll know!”

“Emma, they don’t suspect me, they . . . they think she’s a bastard. That’s what Bridget Murphy called her, but she’s only repeating what she’s heard at home.”

I saw him struggling for words, a rare thing for Patrick, and I sat back to let him empty his heart without interruption.

“The word shocked me, but only because I realized that she had spoken
the truth. And for the first time, I really saw what my sin has done to my daughter.”

He dropped the matchbook and leaned back in his chair, his hands dropping into his lap. We both waited until he could go on. “I lectured all the girls about kindness and Christian compassion—not that it’ll do any good with that heartless lot—but I didn’t know what else to do. I felt so helpless, so . . . so angry, mostly with myself. Those schoolgirls hadn’t caused Gracie’s tears—I had. How had I ever imagined that by spending ten minutes with her every week, tossing her a smile and a couple of nickels, I could somehow fill the role of a father in her life?”

He stopped again, this time biting his lip so hard I feared it would bleed. I started to speak but he held up his hand. “No, let me finish. I went inside St. Michael’s to pray. The first thing I saw was the crucifix above the altar and Christ hanging there in silent torment. How had Father God ever endured it? To watch His beloved Son suffer unjustly? To see Him scorned and mocked? I had just a taste of what He endured when I saw my own child mocked, and I wanted to murder every last one of those girls. I can’t understand how God could ever forgive me. I don’t understand why He hasn’t turned His face away from me, why He hasn’t destroyed me for what I’ve done to His Son—and to you and Gracie.”

Patrick rested his elbow on the table and propped his forehead on his hand. I didn’t want to think about his words and the long-suffering of God. I couldn’t. I deserved His wrath too. I stared at Patrick’s thick golden hair instead, remembering the texture of it beneath my fingers. Finally he looked up.

“Gracie interrupted my prayer, Emma. She followed me into St. Michael’s to ask . . . to ask if I knew where her real father was and why he didn’t live with her. I didn’t know what to say. I told her she had to talk to you about him. Then . . .” Patrick swallowed hard. “Then she asked if I would be her father. She begged me to let her call me Daddy . . . just once . . . in secret.”

“You didn’t let her!” I was horrified.

“No.” Patrick’s jaw trembled. “But I longed to hear her call me Daddy every bit as much as she longed to say it. It nearly broke my heart to tell her no. I’m a priest—it’s my job to comfort and console people who are in pain. But I couldn’t give my own daughter what she needed the most in all the world—someone to call Daddy.”

Patrick closed his eyes and lowered his head. “Forgive me, Father,” he whispered, “for I have sinned.” When he lifted his head again, his eyes pierced mine. “This is why God hates sin, Emma. Why He forbids adultery . . . because
He loves us. Sin hurts
us
. But it hurts the innocent people we love the most.”

I didn’t know what to say. The image of Gracie being taunted and crying for her daddy made me see my sin afresh as well. It was as though Patrick and I had tossed a pebble down a slope eight years ago, and now we watched in helpless horror as it turned into an avalanche. Our daughter stood in that avalanche’s path.

“I think Gracie and I had better move away,” I said again. “I knew this wouldn’t work—living so close to you.”

“You’re missing the point, Emma! She needs a father! She longs for one, like all the other girls have. She doesn’t understand why her father abandoned her, why he doesn’t love her. And he’s
me!
I’m the one who abandoned her, not Karl Bauer! Moving someplace else isn’t going to change how Gracie feels or make her stop wanting her father. And if you do move, I’ll find you. I won’t let you take my daughter away from me. I came here tonight to tell you that I’m going to do much more than throw her a couple of nickels from now on. I’m going to walk her home from school every day, protect her from the other girls, listen to her fears and her dreams. I’m going to be a father to her!”

“You can’t! People will see the resemblance!”

“Emma, I don’t care!”

“Please! For Gracie’s sake . . .”

“They’re calling her names now. How can it get any worse? At least this way she’ll have a father—not a priest, a father. Someone who loves her and cares for her. Someone she can run to and confide in when she’s upset.”

“You promised you would never tell her!”

“I’ll keep my promise. I won’t tell her the truth.”

“I can’t let you do this, Patrick!” I was desperate to stop him, but he wouldn’t listen to me.

“I didn’t come for your permission, Emma. I came to tell you the way it’s going to be. I told the bishop the same thing this afternoon. I’m Grace’s father. And I will be a father to her, no matter what it costs me.”

“But anyone with eyes to see will know! Your hair . . .”

Patrick shoved his chair back and stood. “I’ll keep my hat on.”

Over the next few years, I watched from a distance as Patrick became Grace’s confidante, her ally, her friend. He’s the reason she started going to church every week. He even let her borrow his pajamas. When she left home
for nursing school, he maneuvered a way to take her there himself, all the way to Philadelphia.

I thought he might move on to another parish once she was away in school, but he didn’t. I met him on the sidewalk in front of Booty’s store one day as I was going in and he was coming out. His right eye was blackened with an enormous shiner.

“Hello, Emma.”

“Patrick! What on earth happened to your eye? Did you run into a door?”

“Just a bit of a scrap with Denny O’Hara. He’d had too much to drink, you see.”

“So he attacked a priest?”

“Nay, Emma,” he said quietly. “He attacked his wife and little ones.” His words chilled me when I remembered Patrick’s own past.