The Crow of Connemara (3 page)

Jen nudged him forward before he could move, and he went to his mother, kissing her on a dry cheek as she pursed her lips for an air kiss. “I'm sorry I wasn't here. I came as soon as I heard,” he told her.
Great. Starting with an apology right at the start.
She squeezed his arm, and released him.

“At least Tommy and Jen were here for your father and for me,” she said. “I was blessed to have that.”

He told himself that there was nothing personal in the words; it was only her way. But the sting of them also told Colin that his rationalizing was only a partial success. “Hey, Tommy,” he said as his brother came over to join them. Tom Jr. was a decade older than Colin; his hair already touched at the temple with the start of what Colin was certain would soon be a distinguished salt-and-pepper gray. Tommy had always been too old to be a true playmate for Colin; as a teenager, he seemed to consider Colin more a nuisance than anything else. When Tommy had reached college, he seemed to be more like a distant, usually absent uncle than a brother. It was Jen, three years older than Colin, who'd been his true sibling.

Tommy extended a hand—no offer of an embrace there. Colin shook his hand: Tommy had a politician's grip, firm enough to feel solid, but careful. He put his other hand over Colin's as if to make up for the lack of a hug. “Good to see you again, little brother. Just wish it weren't in these circumstances. How's school?”

“School's school,” Colin answered. If Tommy noticed the false smile that accompanied that statement, he didn't react.

Behind Tommy, the man in the business suit watched. He looked to be in his forties, with an athletic build that was beginning to sag and paunch, his hair thin on top and gray. Tommy followed Colin's gaze, releasing Colin's hand as if relieved. “Oh, Colin, this is Carl Harris, Dad's campaign manager.”

Harris extended his own hand. “So you're the grad student who's also the musician.”

“Yep,” Colin answered. “The black sheep of the family. They usually keep me carefully hidden.” Harris gave that a thoughtful half-smile.

“You're exactly what you should be.” Aunt Patty had come up behind Colin. He turned into her full embrace and an enthusiastic kiss on both cheeks. “You and Jen always were more like the O'Callaghan side of the family than the Doyle side. So sorry you had to come back like this, darling.” She hugged him again, tightly. Their glasses clashed slightly with the embrace—the O'Callaghans were also uniformly nearsighted. He could smell the musk of her perfume and the shampoo in her hair, which—unlike his mother—she had allowed to go naturally gray, though she kept it unfashionably long. Patty was his mother's older sister, now in her early sixties, the athletic figure she'd always had softening over the years. Aunt Patty had always been his favorite relative. Sometimes he felt that he had confided more in Aunt Patty than in his own parents. She was childless herself. She'd once been married to the stormy and temperamental Andrew Martelli, who had owned a small chain of shops selling Italian ices and yogurt. Aunt Patty had divorced Uncle Andrew two decades ago, for reasons that were talked about in hushed tones but never around Colin or the other children, though it became easy enough to guess why.

After divorcing Uncle Andrew, Patty had never remarried, though Aunt Patty's best friend, Rebecca, had moved into the old Martelli house, which Patty kept after the divorce, not long after. That Rebecca's “best friend” was also her lover was something that was never openly discussed by his parents, though it was an open secret in the family. “Hey, Aunt Patty,” Colin said as they hugged. “It's so good to see you. How's Rebecca?”

“She's fine, and thank you for asking, darling. She said to give you a hug when I saw you.” She kissed his forehead and hugged him hard. “So there it is,” she said, smiling.

Along with Jen, Aunt Patty had supported Colin when he had announced that he wasn't going to go for the PhD in History; that he intended to leave college to pursue playing music full-time. His parents had been appalled; Aunt Patty had been supportive.
“Oh, for Christ's sake,” she'd told them. “He's young, and that's the time to do these things. Let him go—he may just surprise you with how well he turns out.”

In the end, Colin had succumbed to the pressure from his parents and from Tommy:
Get the PhD now while you still have the energy. Go now, while that nice offer from Washington University stands. There's no future in music, especially for the traditional music you like to play. You can always do that as an avocation and a sideline, but with a doctorate, you could make a decent living, like Jen . . .
He'd listened to their incessant arguments for continuing his education, though he now regretted his capitulation.

He remembered a favorite saying of his father:
Regretting past decisions is useless. All that matters is making better ones in the future.
He wasn't certain his father would like the one he'd made.

“When can I see Dad?” Colin asked the group.

“I'll take you back to his room,” Jen said. “Okay, Mom? Then maybe we can go out and get some dinner and talk.”

His mother nodded. “Go on. We'll wait out here—they don't like lots of people in the room. Tommy, come here and tell me what you and Mr. Harris are thinking . . .” She turned away, her mind obviously already elsewhere.

“So has Mom been playing the stoic as usual?” Colin asked as they walked down the hall.

“She's being Mom, so yeah, I guess so. But this has been hard on her. Dad's always been around, and now . . .” She gave a shrug. “Well, you'll see.”

Three doors down, she turned into a room. Inside, there was the rhythmic sigh of the ventilator machine. On the bed, laced by tubes from the vent, IV, and catheter, a blood pressure cuff around his arm and an array of graphs on a flatscreen behind him, his father lay on a bed. Colin stopped in the doorway, trying to take it all in. His father's face was pale, the cheeks sunken, his hair disheveled. His hands lay like two dead birds on the sheets. His eyes were closed, a rubber tube ran into his nose, held in place with tape. His mouth was slightly open, and below, the blue bulk of the vent wrapped his neck over the tracheotomy site. The only indication that he was alive was the slow rise and fall of his chest in tandem with the life-support machinery and the relentless, slow beep of the heart monitor.

For a moment, the room seemed to shift in his vision, like an old movie lurching in its sprockets. He saw flecks of light at the edges of his vision. “Oh, my God,” he whispered, and Jen took his hand.

“I know,” she said. “It was really hard, the first time I saw him this way.”

“There's been no change?” Colin blinked, taking a deep breath before moving to the bed. He touched his father's hand; it felt cold, and there was no response when he squeezed his father's fingers.

“No. If anything, there's been further deterioration, according to the docs. The question is, how long do we keep him on the vent, and when do we take him off—or do we? But go on, talk to him. They say that he can still hear you, even if he can't respond.”

“Hey, Dad,” Colin said. “It's me, Colin, back from school. Sorry that it took this long to get here. I wish you'd wake up, Dad, so we could . . .” His throat closed up then, and he couldn't finish. He felt unbidden tears well up in his eyes, and he blinked them back. He took a long, slow breath, patting his father's hand. “Anyway, you just rest and get yourself better. Everyone's praying for you, Dad.” He hesitated, then: “Love ya, Dad.”

It was as if he spoke to a cut log or a bronze statue. There was no response, no indication that anything he'd said had been heard or understood. The words hung in the air and vanished. Whatever spark had once inhabited his father's body was gone; he was an empty shell tossed up on a beach. Vacant.

The exhaustion of the long hours of travel and the sleepless night before hung about him suddenly, dark and heavy and silent. Colin stepped back from the bed. Jen's arm went around his waist and she leaned against him, but he could barely stand himself. A nurse came in and slid around them. “Just here to check his vitals,” she announced. “You can stay if you like.”

“Thanks,” Colin said. “But we were just leaving.”

Back in the lounge area, they found that his mother had made reservations for the group at
Gene & Georgetti
, an Italian steakhouse on North Franklin Street. Tommy and the mysterious Mr. Harris had already gone ahead, and his mother and aunt were getting ready to leave even as Colin and Jen returned. Colin's eyelids were beginning to feel as if they were made of lead. He sighed at the announcement, thinking of two hours or more in the restaurant with his family, and dreading the inquisition that he knew would come when they'd finished talking about his father, and the revelation that he might have to make then. “I'm a little underdressed for the place, Mom,” Colin protested, but she waved her hand.

“They won't care. I've reserved the Bar Room for us, anyway, so no one will see you. We need to discuss the situation with your father, now that you're finally here.”

Turning a concern into a criticism. Well, that's normal at least.

“Mary,” Aunt Patty interjected. “Look at the boy. He's about ready to fall over. He's not in any shape to talk about anything yet. Let him get a good night's sleep so he can think clearly. We can all talk in the morning.”

His mother's lips tightened. “I suppose,” she said. “Well, we need to eat anyway, so the rest of us can still go. Colin can take a cab back to the house . . .”

“Mom.” This time it was Jen who interrupted. “I need to get back to my place and take care of the cat, and my contacts are killing me, anyway. I'll take Colin home with me; he can have the bed in the back room. Why don't you guys go on to the restaurant; I'm not feeling that hungry right now and we'll fix something at the apartment after Colin gets settled. His stuff's in my car, anyway.”

“Thanks, Jen,” Colin said hurriedly. “That sounds good to me.”

“I thought you'd be taking your old room at the house,” his mother protested. “I had Beth come in and clean it.”

“I can stay there tomorrow night,” Colin told her. “This'll give Jen and me time to catch up a bit.”

“Catch up? You call her often enough from school. I've been hearing everything about you secondhand from my daughter . . .” his mother began, then sighed. Colin decided that it was, perhaps, a measure of how worn out she was herself by her husband's crisis that she didn't pursue the accusation—against which, he had to admit, he didn't have a good argument. For the first time, he noticed the heavily-drawn lines in his mother's face and he realized just how much the last few days had cost her, and how much she had to be hurting.
She and Dad have been married over forty years . . .
He knew he had no sense of what that kind of commitment might mean, or how he might feel if someone he'd been with that long might be leaving. The realization humbled him and made him want to apologize again, but he resisted the impulse.

“Fine,” his mother said, with a face that indicated that the word tasted sour in her mouth. “Let's all have dinner tomorrow night at the house, and we'll talk then about the decisions we need to make.”

“How's your dad, Hon?” Colin heard someone say inside even as Jen unlocked the door to her apartment. He set down his luggage in the hall and took the gig bag from his back, leaning it against the wall. Jen tossed her keys into a bowl on a small table next to the door as she shut it behind the two of them. There was another set of keys already in the bowl, and the implications of that suddenly hit Colin.

“He's about the same,” Jen answered the voice as someone stepped out of the kitchen. “Aaron, this is my brother Colin.”

Aaron Goldman wore his dark hair close-cropped, his face adorned with a full beard. His eyes were as dark as the hair and deep set. He was wearing a dress shirt and tie; his suit jacket hung over one of the chairs in the front room as if he'd just arrived himself. He had the build of someone who had once been a runner but was now mostly sitting behind a desk. He came forward—expensive shoes, Colin noted—and extended his hand. “Hey, Colin. Jen's told me a lot about you.” The handshake was firm and didn't linger too long.