“Trouble in—”
“You’re as bad as the old woman. Now, what’ve you got to tell me?” Martin dropped down on the sofa and crossed his legs. He couldn’t help but notice his brother’s suit: pale gray and expensively made, it was distinctly Savile Row. Rather than flaring winglike before wasping back to his waist, the jacket was cut close to his frame. His tie was a deep crimson overlaid with a grid of white diamonds—a harlequin pattern.
“It’s Da.” Francis fidgeted with his hands before folding them in front of him, as if in prayer. “He’s dead.”
Martin heard himself say, “How?” but what he thought was, This can’t be real. He’d had too much to drink and hadn’t gotten into bed until dawn and now he was in a dream with Francis and Mrs. Fichetti and Da is dead. That had to be it. He was sitting in nothing but his boxer shorts, and Rosemary and the girls were nowhere to be found, and here was Francis, dressed like a gentleman instead of a prisoner, and he was telling Martin that he had just seen Michael, and now he was saying that their father was dead. Martin reached for the box of cigarettes on the coffee table and plucked one out. He lit it in one clean motion, hoping that this exercise of will would snap him awake.
“His heart. Doctor said he must’ve had a bad heart.”
Martin took a drag of his cigarette. “Did he suffer?”
“Now, that’s a big question, isn’t it?”
“You know what I mean. Did he linger?”
“No one knows. One of the neighbors found him, facedown in the garden. Said it looked like he’d been struck by a bolt from the blue.”
Martin tried to conjure an image of his father’s face, but what he got was faded and ragged around the edges, like a photograph left in the rain. He foundered for something to say. “When did it happen?”
“It’s been two weeks,” Francis said.
“Two weeks! And you’re only telling me now? You couldn’t have sent a telegram—a letter, even?”
“I thought you should hear this in person, from someone who shares your blood.”
“You came all this way to tell me that Da is dead?”
“Would you’ve rather gotten the news alone, with nothing but a torn envelope in front of you? We’re family. That’s what family does for family.”
Francis offered a weak smile, a show of sincerity, but there was something odd in his manner. He had an edge in his voice and Martin couldn’t tell if he was making a joke or saying it straight. They had shared a bedroom almost from the moment Francis was born, and Martin thought he knew his brother’s every twitch and sigh, but Francis had changed. He had acquired expressions and ways of speaking that Martin could not decode. Or maybe nothing had changed, and Martin was simply out of practice.
“Look, it’s more than just that,” Francis said. He went to the front window, looked up the street and then down the other side. The sun was on the curtains, the heat of the day already coming into the apartment. “Come with me and I’ll explain everything.”
“I’ve been up all night—”
“Get yourself dressed. Something nice. Something sophisticated.”
What was the point of arguing? Here was his brother, appearing as if by magic. If this was a dream, then going off with his brother was the logical next step. His head was still scrambled by the late night and the lack of sleep, the shock of seeing Francis and the news of his father’s death. This last item was the hardest to account for. He did not know how or what to feel about it; it was curiously without shape or weight. He knew that there would come a time when the full force of his father’s death would hit him—his absence not only from the world, but from Martin’s life—but for now, the fact of his father’s death didn’t change anything, or so he thought in those earliest moments. It would matter later—or so he hoped, because if it didn’t then Martin must be a cold, soulless son of a bitch. I’m in shock, he told himself, even as he knew that he was not.
WOODLAWN
EVERY TIME ROSEMARY CAME back to the house, she felt the old routines waiting for her, like a shawl that hung by the door. All that she had become—Martin’s wife, a mother twice over—melted away in the face of those older identities: list maker, load bearer, peacekeeper, daughter. Married or not, she would always be their daughter, but she had hoped that a family of her own would alter how her parents thought of her. And it had—just not in the way she had imagined. Her father took it the hardest, which shouldn’t have been a surprise. She was the oldest, and hadn’t he always expected great things from her, or at least that she would lead a husband to great things? Her hasty marriage to Martin put a stop to all that. A penniless immigrant musician, he had called Martin. Rosemary’s dirty little tinker. What kind of a girl would—
The baby helped. Kate was fat-faced and full of smiles and from her earliest days had reserved a special grin for her grandfather—as if she knew that he was the hardest to win over and the easiest to disappoint. Evie was only a baby but she was more standoffish; more like her grandfather than Kate was, and so more likely to vex him. He was still awaiting a grandson so that he could pour his ambitions directly into a more reliable vessel.
Where Rosemary had made a hash of her father’s designs, her sister, Peggy, was sticking with the plan. In one week she would marry Timothy Halloran, a Fordham Law School graduate who had landed a job in the Manhattan DA’s office. The wedding would be held at the best church, St. Barnabas, with a reception to follow at the best banquet hall, the Croke Park Club. The original guest list had topped five hundred, with its legions of cousins, aunts, and uncles reinforced by squads of favor seekers looking to score points with the father of the bride: Dennis Dwyer, the vice chairman of the Bronx Democratic Committee, was a man whose goodwill could deliver half the Bronx come election day, not to mention a fortune in contracts for all manner of city services.
The wedding gave her father a chance to do what he did best: turn any family milestone into a campaign rally. It was not only the public launch of his younger daughter’s glorious future but also an opportunity for him to demonstrate to the voters and the power brokers that, despite rumors to the contrary, Dennis Dwyer was still a man who could not be ignored.