Obit (3 page)

“And how is your trip to New York, Mr. and Mrs. Collins?”

“This is only your first night, Brennan. She . . . she just has to get used to you,” Maura tried.

“Stuff it, MacNeil. I don’t want to hear it.” Brennan lit up a cigarette and fanned the smoke away from us. We heard an ostentatious cough behind his shoulder. He had fanned the smoke into the face of the returning Sandra. “Shit,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“So many bad habits, Brennan, so little time and space in which to indulge them.”

Maura sought to redirect the conversation: “What did you make of Brennan’s father, Sandra? Brennan seems to think there’s a death threat against Declan!”

Sandra stared at Burke. “Really!”

Brennan was silent, so Maura filled the gap. “A death threat disguised as the obituary of someone named Murphy, or so Collins tells me. Do you have it with you, Brennan? I haven’t seen it, though the whole thing sounds a little, well, over the top.”

“Let’s leave that aside for tonight,” Brennan replied.

“Well, he was unpopular with somebody,” Sandra told us. “Remember that shoving match?” When Burke gave her a blank look, she continued: “Don’t you remember a rather bulky man coming to the house and your father nearly slamming the door on your mother’s nose, trying to head the guy off? It’s funny, I haven’t thought of that in decades. It was when we were older, so you may have been passed out drunk at the time.” He started to protest but she cut him off. “I was in the living room.”

“Go on.”

“There was a man at the door, heavyset, taller than your father, and he spoke with a thick accent.”

“What kind of an accent? Like my father’s, you mean?”

“No, not an Irishman. Just New York, outer boroughs.”

“What did they say?”

“I couldn’t make it all out, or maybe I’ve forgotten. But I do remember your father telling him to get the fuck off his property. I had never heard my own father swear, ever, so I was absolutely agog at the scene. The man made a reply to your father about the house. Declan said something like: ‘I paid cash for it.’ Or I think it was: ‘I gave the gougers a great stack of bills for it.’ I was picturing a man in a top hat and moustache walking away with a tottering pile of money. So Declan said it was his house and he didn’t want this other guy in it.

“There was more arguing, then the guy accused your father of stealing, said he’d seen Declan stuff an envelope into his pocket. Declan told him to F-off or whatever, and gave him a shove. The guy shoved back. They stared at each other and the man walked away.”

Sandra sipped her wine, then went on. “Declan could be intimidating, no question. But he had standards. He didn’t approve, for instance, of some of Brennan’s shenanigans. The company he kept, the carousing, the bimbos, including the one he was with when the rest of us were sitting around the Burkes’ dinner table waiting for him — Declan took him by the scruff of the neck when he came in, and delivered some choice words in his direction.”

Brennan sat back with his arms across his chest, glowering across the table.

“Let’s give him a break, now, Sandra. Monty is no stranger to bimbos, either. One at least, as I witnessed when I walked in unannounced last year and —”

“Tales about you would round things out nicely here, Maura. So keep that in mind before you start in on me.”

“Are you suggesting —” my wife whirled on me as if she had only just realized old Monty had been sitting there all night without an unkind word being directed his way “— that I ever dragged home some bit of scruff and —”

“All right, everybody, cool off here,” I demanded. “If, on occasion, there’s an unsavoury story about us, Sandra, we all come by it honestly. He’s a Burke, I’m a Collins, she’s a MacNeil. In the
Ulysses
obscenity trial in 1933, here in New York, the judge took judicial notice of our nature when he ruled the book was not obscene. As for
sex being a recurring theme in the minds of the characters, the judge said: ‘— it must always be remembered that his location was Celtic and his season spring.’” Burke and MacNeil joined me in some cathartic laughter; Sandra rolled her eyes and shook her head.

“Sorry I’m late!” We all turned to see a man in his thirties, tie askew, greeting a group of people at the table next to ours. The man was nearly out of breath. “I stopped in at the house to get the music she wants for the funeral. Look at it! A bunch of little squares, and no hint of what note it starts on. How am I supposed to sing that?”

Brennan twisted around in his chair. “Let me see that.” The man looked at him for a moment, then handed over a sheet of paper. “Those are called
neumes
. Chant notation,” Brennan explained.

“I’ve been singing at Mass for years, including Gregorian chant, but I’ve never seen this stuff before. It was something my aunt pulled out of a trunk. I have no idea how to read it, and I have to know it by eleven tomorrow! Jesus.”

Brennan got up and dragged his chair over to the other table. He laid the papers out before him. “All right. This little square is called a
punctum
, a single note, and this we call
podatus
, one note above the other with the bottom note sung first. This mark shows where
doh
is, so this
Kyrie
starts on F.” Brennan sang it and I recognized the beautiful melody from his work with the choir at Saint Bernadette’s.

Sandra leaned over. Her voice was barely above a whisper: “You cannot imagine what a far cry that is from what I used to hear out of him at this time of night.”

“Hey, I know that one!” the man exclaimed.

“It’s the
Missa de Angelis
. I’m singing it myself, at a wedding later this week.”

“So, you sing in church too.”

“Yeah. I do.”

“I’m Roger Stanton.” He held out his hand.

“Father Burke. Brennan Burke.” The man eyed his dinner jacket and black tie. “I’m out of costume tonight.”

“Or
in
costume,” Sandra muttered.

“Thanks, Father,” Stanton said. “You’ve saved my ass here.”

Brennan turned back to us and caught Sandra staring at him. He cleared his throat. “Another drink, anyone? A sweet?” The women
decided on dessert. Burke brought out a fat cigar and fired it up. He gazed at Sandra through the curls of smoke.

“Where were we?” Maura asked.

“Excuse me,” came a timid voice from the mourners’ table beside us. “Father?” Brennan turned around. “No, I shouldn’t bother you on your night off —” The woman was well dressed but plain of face; her eyes bore evidence of earlier weeping. She was probably in her late thirties.

A man at the table spoke up. “Go ahead, Fiona, ask him. If it’s upsetting you this much, get it off your chest before the funeral.”

The woman took a deep, steadying breath and went on: “Father, could I speak with you for two minutes, somewhere . . .” Her eyes darted around the room.

“Sure. Let’s sit over there.” He gestured to an unoccupied table near the entrance. He got up, took the woman gently by the elbow and walked to the table. He pulled the chairs around so they were sitting nearly side by side. Sandra and I could see what was going on. The woman spoke urgently and Burke nodded from time to time. At one point he turned to her, smiled kindly, and wiped tears from her eyes with his thumbs. The confession continued and he listened intently. Then he made a discreet sign of the cross over her and began to speak.

A voice in my ear said: “Don’t leave town without calling me. Bring Maura over for dinner.” Sandra rose from her chair and mouthed the word “later” to Maura. I tried to restrain her, but she walked out. When she passed by Brennan, he looked at her, without expression and did not miss a beat in his conversation with the penitent.

He returned to our table a few minutes later and tossed back the remainder of his whiskey.

“She was tired,” Maura began.

“She was rude to walk out. Teacups would be rattling
chez
Worthington.” He shrugged as if to say: “What can you do?” We stayed on for dessert and avoided the subject uppermost in our minds.

†

The three of us walked to our hotel overlooking Carnegie Hall in
midtown Manhattan. Brennan’s parents had opened their home to out-of-town guests for the days before and after their granddaughter’s wedding on Friday. By the time Brennan had made arrangements to visit, his old room had been spoken for. But no doubt the idea of living it up in a New York hotel appealed to him. I offered him the extra bedroom in our suite for the two nights Maura and the kids would be in Philadelphia; he reserved his own room for the nights he wasn’t sharing with me. When Maura and I got to our suite, we saw that Tom and Normie had each claimed a room. I joined my son, and Maura slipped in with our little girl.

†

The next morning, I saw the family off at Penn Station. Normie was as excited about this, her first-ever train journey, as she was about the trip to New York. She kept waving and blowing kisses until the train was out of my sight. I spent the rest of the morning walking around midtown Manhattan, then had a leisurely lunch and took in a movie, enjoying the luxury of having no demands on my time. Late in the afternoon, I took the subway to the Burke residence in the Irish enclave of Sunnyside, Queens. They had half of a large brick house in the leafy area around Skillman Avenue, north of Queens Boulevard. Their corner lot was enclosed by a hedge. It looked as though the white trim on the windows had been recently painted. When I got to the door I could see Brennan inside the doorway with another man.

“Monty, this is my brother Patrick. Pat, meet Montague Collins.” We shook hands. Patrick Burke was probably six feet tall, an inch or so shorter than Brennan. He had a stereotypically Irish face, clear blue eyes and sandy blond hair. He wore a soft blue crewneck sweater over a shirt and tie. Patrick was a much more approachable-looking man than his older brother.

“What will you have, Monty? There’s cold beer in the fridge.”

“That would be fine, Patrick, thanks.”

“Brennan?”

“Same.”

I followed them into the kitchen, which had a linoleum floor patterned
in large blue and grey squares. The table was of grey and white Formica with a strip of chrome around the edge. Six of the chairs matched; two did not. The kitchen had not suffered any upgrades since the 1950s, and was the better for it.

“What brings you to New York, Monty?”

“I had a long trial scheduled and the matter was settled. An unexpected holiday. I’ve never had a chance to spend more than a few days in New York.” I didn’t say my last visit was to probe into Brennan’s background while Brennan, who was in the city with me, remained oblivious to what I was doing when we weren’t together.

“Monty and his family are coming to the wedding,” Brennan put in.

“Even though I’ve never met the bride and groom. The bride is Katie . . .”

“Right. Daughter of our brother Terry and his wife, Sheila. The groom is Niccolo. And you’ll be more than welcome. Now, what are your thoughts on this dog-eared obituary, Monty?” he asked, as he set the beer down and pulled up a chair to join us at the table.

“I think you’re being very clever in your interpretations, but I’m wondering whether you’re being a little creative as well.”

“I’ve pretty well come to that conclusion myself,” he said.

“It could be about your father but it could just as easily be what it purports to be, the obituary of Cathal Murphy. Has it been determined whether this Murphy actually existed?”

“The name meant nothing to Teresa or Declan, or so they claimed. I couldn’t find any reference to him but my efforts consisted of calling a couple of funeral homes and looking in the Queens phone book. As far as I know the funeral arrangements, which were to follow, never appeared in the paper. But I wasn’t very systematic about it.”

“Your father’s reaction?”

“I thought he was going to drop right then and there. But there could be another explanation for that, an organic one. Physical.”

“Do you remember whether he reacted as soon as he began to read, or was it halfway through, near the end, or what?”

Patrick looked thoughtful. “He started to read it aloud. In a stagy brogue, as a matter of fact, with an editorial comment or two thrown
in. ‘Cathal Murphy, God rest his porr oul soul, flew up to meet his maker at the age of seventy-three —’ But he was speaking softly by the time he got to the sons’ names and he clammed up entirely after reading about the brother, Benedict. It was then, if my memory is serving me at all well, that he began turning grey in the face. But his behaviour could have been a reaction to the story of this other man’s life; it may well have struck a chord with Declan, reminded him of disturbing things in his own past. Whatever it was, Mam was staring up at him in alarm.”

“Now, your mother,” I said. “Could you tell whether she had any reaction to the article itself, or did her concern just reflect the change in your dad?”

Patrick shook his head. “I don’t know. My eyes were on Declan. It was only when he finished reading that I noticed the expression on her face. I took Dec by the arm and tried to sit him down. He was having none of it.”

“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Brennan put in.

“What does your mother say about the obit?”

The brothers looked at each other. “She’s not saying,” answered Brennan shortly, “which speaks volumes in my mind.”

“No wonder she kept mum with you grilling her like that.”

“Patrick, you’ve had how many weeks to try to prise some information out of the woman, and haven’t made any progress.”

“Well, you didn’t help matters any. You were brutal!”

“I wasn’t brutal. She’s my mother!” Brennan snapped. “I was direct, that’s all.”

Patrick looked at me. “Direct, he calls it. ‘Mam, you can’t have lived with the old man all these years and remained in —’ how did you say it? ‘— a cloud of unknowing. You’re no fool, neither are we. So tell us what you know.’”

“What’s wrong with that?” Brennan demanded.

“There are gentler, more oblique ways to bring her around. If only you had the patience —”

“I’m here for a limited time. This write-up, if it pertains to Declan, is not only an allegory of his past, it’s also a death announcement. We’d all do well to bear that in mind.”