He stopped himself short. He didn’t deserve these memories, not when he was the one who had put her in the ground, who had robbed those boys of their mother’s love. The war against the English ended but it seemed only days before it became a war of Irish against Irish, and in that war Frank Dempsey chose the wrong side—he stayed loyal to Michael Collins, the Chief, who had made the bad bargain and left them short of the full freedom for which they’d toiled. Cronin stood with the men who wanted full payment for the blood they had spilled. They had no time for talk of a three-step path to independence or of an Irish Free State. They wanted a completely free Irish Republic. What Cronin couldn’t stomach was the notion that he’d risked eternal damnation in service of a halfhearted victory. He wanted to punish Frank Dempsey and the men like him who’d put Cronin’s soul on a scale and shown him how little it purchased. It should have been a simple enough task, the kind of job that Frank himself had trained him to do, but Cronin had botched it. The bomb in the car was meant for Frank. What business did Bernadette have taking a drive so early in the morning? Where could she have been going?
The click of a woman’s heel on the front stoop shook Cronin out of his reverie. He hadn’t noticed her in the rearview mirror or through the windshield when she crossed the street two cars ahead of him but suddenly there she was, struggling up the front steps with a baby in her arm and holding a little girl by the hand. The baby could have been Gracie and though the girl was younger than Henry, with the car windows down in this awful heat, Cronin could hear her peppering her mother with the same sorts of questions that his Henry had for him. If Martin Dempsey lived here, then this had to be his family, and the sight of them stickpinned Cronin to his seat. Here he was, thinking about the men from his past who could bring sorrow to his doorstep and about the sorrow that he himself had wrought, while this family before him, one very much like his own, could not see the monster lurking at their gate. He sat in the car, sweating more than ever, and composed a silent litany. Lord, protect those in that home who are innocent. Lord, let me not be the agent of their undoing. Lord, though I am full of darkness, help me to restrain the evil I carry within me. But as soon as the door closed heavily behind the woman and her children, his thoughts returned to Alice and Henry and Gracie. They were the ones he would make any bargain to protect. They were the ones who deserved his prayers. Why was he wasting his breath on strangers?
He mopped his face with his handkerchief and added a final line: Lord, if I must act, understand what I do and why it must be done.
MIDTOWN
FRANCIS DIDN’T CARE WHERE he and Michael were going. As long as he was moving, life was grand. Since he had left the prison, where the best you could hope for was walking in circles, he had been on the move; whether by car, by ship, by taxicab, or even by the power of his own feet, his momentum had been constant. In the hotel with Martin he had felt like he was back in Mountjoy, with the four walls and the questions and Martin looking right at him. But Martin was snoozing and Francis had had a hot-lather shave followed by a lunch in the Oak Bar that could have filled five men, and now he was out on the street with Michael in tow.
The city was a revelation. Energy pulsed up through the sidewalk, propelling each of his steps. Everyone he passed seemed to feel it too. They moved quickly and with purpose. The men’s suits were new and sharply tailored, like the uniforms of palace guards. The women beamed, their eyes bright and their bodies surging beneath summer blouses and close-cut dresses. It was only the first week of June, but the city was alive with the promise of summer: the air was warm but not humid, it kissed rather than stifled. In Dublin, every soot-stained fa?ade—every English-built edifice rechristened in the name of the new Ireland—glowered at you, asking what business you had there. Eyes down and move along, that’s what the streets of Dublin said. It was a city of iron railings and weathered brick, and the people didn’t fare much better than the buildings. The worst parts of the city were overrun with thick smoke and women gone toothless by forty from too many children and not enough decent food or fresh air. The men, even in the best parts of the city, were angry-faced and closefisted, desperate to protect whatever they had carved from the nation’s piss-poor larder. But why think of Dublin here? If Dublin was hunched and cowering, then New York soared and carried the spirits of every man and woman with it. It was a city that said Look up! A vertical city, a transcendent city that set the mind on higher thoughts. Sure, times were hard, but New York at its worst was leagues ahead of Dublin at its best—and when had Dublin ever seen its best?
As they left the shelter of the hotel, there loomed behind them a sparkling equestrian eminence: a rider erect in the saddle, a goddess heralding his arrival. There were no somber marble wreaths, no veiled women forming a train of weeping and regret—even the horse looked haughty. Francis threw an arm around Michael’s shoulder and propelled him across Fifty-Seventh Street, dodging taxicabs and plunging into the scrum of pedestrians moving in the opposite direction. New York might be beautiful but if you stopped to admire it, you were cooked. Each new block was an island, each street a narrow ocean. As you put the last block behind you, each crossing washed you clean. Who had time to dwell on the then when the crush of bodies forced you to pay attention to the now?
Michael took a deep breath. It seemed years since he had been outside and under his own steam. The city itself had reanimated him, and now it carried him along through a fairy-tale world: inside every window sparkled constellations of diamonds. Even the windows were outlined in gold. Up the fa?ade of one building, gold tracery followed the angles of each window, scrolled around the doors, and illuminated a set of small stone figures carved into the cornice of the entryway. Michael tugged on his brother’s sleeve and pointed to these bird-bodied, lady-headed Harpies baring their teeth and talons. Francis smiled back at Michael. Their father had drilled enough of Homer and Virgil into them that he could tell a Harpy from a Fury at forty paces.
They walked down Fifth Avenue, drawn into the crowd, and all around was glittering commerce. Department stores rose like palaces, their windows offering a peek at the treasure hoard of the king. BERGDORF GOODMAN and BONWIT TELLER were chiseled in stone and scripted in gold. Their great revolving doors admitted a steady flow of pleasure seekers and disgorged an equal number of treasure takers. In the windows the mannequins, calm and composed, enacted scenes from a better world. Blank-faced, they danced in chiffon summer gowns or lifted champagne flutes above a picnic basket, their arms showcasing the freedom afforded by a light summer frock. The sun was high in the sky and everything sparkled—the windshields of the taxicabs, the chrome details of the fat black cars, the high windows of the towers that lined the avenue. They were in a city of glass and white marble, bleached and made clean by every sunrise. It was the city of the future that the adverts for the World’s Fair promised.