Martin’s smile was more pained as he tried to tally up the dent his brother’s largesse had made in the budget for Michael’s medical care. Michael himself looked like a little boy dressed up for some fancy family outing: his aunt’s wedding, his brother’s First Communion. With his thin neck, large head, and black hair pomaded flat against his skull, he resembled a dapper, man-size lollipop.
Michael hadn’t known where they were going, but the pieces were falling into place. Martin had sent him a photograph of his family and here they were in the flesh. The wife was Rosemary, the daughters were Katherine and Evelyn. Rosemary seemed nice enough: she’d given Michael a hug and a kiss on the cheek when he entered and had looked at him with pity and concern. He was sure that she had said something kind, something comforting. Once he had been relieved of the bottle, Kate immediately instigated a game of peekaboo with Michael, popping her head behind her father’s armchair and then reappearing, her chubby, cheeky face exploding into what he surmised were peals of laughter. He reciprocated with a pop-eyed look of surprise while trying to let on to the adults that he was playing a game and not slipping to some new, deeper level of enfeeblement.
But where was Yeats? Apparently he hadn’t made the trip from the Plaza. Perhaps he had become accustomed to the high life. Perhaps Yeats was merely a cantankerous old bollocks who kept his own hours and was frequently detained by the goings-on in the spirit world. Could any halfway decent medium summon him away from Michael and toward some dimly lit table, where the poet would be put to work pecking out cryptic nonsense on a Ouija board? Or was he right now in some celestial parlor, sitting down for a chat with sharp-penned Swift and mad-brained Blake and poor doomed Keats, talking poetic meter and the oddities of a language in which Keats and Yeats did not rhyme?
Now he had done it: drifting off, and all adult eyes were on him, wondering what was happening in the head of poor doomed Michael. He looked from face to face, offering a wry smile, a raised eyebrow, a wink for Martin. I’m still in here, he wanted to convey. I just can’t get out.
ROSEMARY HAD BEEN curious to meet Martin’s brothers, and so far it had been quite a show. Though Martin had told her the outlines of his life back in Ireland, she hoped that meeting his brothers would fill in some of the blanks. She knew that he had been born in Cork, where his father taught at the university. She knew that his mother, a musician of some local renown, had died in an automobile accident when Martin was twelve and that shortly afterward, his father had moved the boys to a remote town halfway across the country. Martin had chafed at small-town life and wasn’t much fonder of his father, whom he blamed for uprooting the family while the shock of their mother’s death was still fresh.
She knew more of Michael than of Francis, thanks to his letters. She couldn’t follow most of Michael’s theological meanderings, but truth be told, neither could Martin. And as tight as their budget was, she tried never to begrudge the twice-yearly payments they made to the seminary: Michael had a vocation, a calling from God, and that was not a thing to be questioned. Francis, who was harder to figure, was the one who gave Martin fits. Rosemary and Peggy had their differences, but Martin and Francis were oil and water, or, as Martin had said, chalk and cheese.
And now they were all together for Sunday dinner. As Martin settled everyone around the table—the girls arrayed on one side and Francis and Michael along the other—Francis insisted that they pop the cork while the champagne was still cold. He’d had the concierge procure the bottle and pack it in a bucket filled with ice, but the ice had melted and the bucket had been abandoned on the front stoop. Rosemary brought four glasses from the kitchen and Francis chuffed the cork, letting it ricochet against the ceiling. Champagne frothed from the mouth of the bottle and when each had been served, they raised their glasses.
“What shall we toast?” Francis said. “To families reunited?”
“To a speedy recovery for Michael,” Rosemary said.
“To the memory of Francis Dempsey, may his soul rest in peace,” Martin said.
Francis did a double take straight out of a holiday pantomime. “I’m not dead yet,” he said.
“Ach,” Martin said. “Show some reverence.”
“Says the man who missed his own father’s funeral.”
Rosemary interrupted before the brotherly rough-and-tumble became any rougher. “Tell me, Francis,” she said. “What sort of funeral did your father have?”
“Oh, it was grand,” he said. “Father Hogan was his dour old self. Ashes to ashes and all that. Lengthy eulogy on the noble service Da performed all those years, educating the sons and daughters of Ballyrath, bringing the light of knowledge and so on and so forth. Da would’ve hated it.”
“Father Hogan getting the last word,” Martin said. “That should’ve been reason enough to keep Da going for a few more years.”
“It was never a fair fight between those two.” Francis dropped his voice into the gruff bark that best matched his father’s tone. “In a battle of wits, that man is completely unarmed.”
“That’s the real reason he didn’t want Michael in the seminary,” Martin said. “He was afraid he’d turn into a little Hogan.”
“Instead of a little Da.”
The three of them turned toward Michael, who was making faces across the table at Kate. He seemed to sense the pause in conversation and the turn of all the adult eyes toward him. He straightened in his chair and resumed slicing a piece of roast beef.
“Michael wasn’t the only one who disappointed him,” Martin said. “A university professor, and what did Da get from his sons? A musician, a convict, and a priest. I don’t know which of us he thought was the worst.”
“He’d been a classmate of Joyce’s, for God’s sake!” Francis said. “He never liked the gatch on that one, though. Always mincing around, giving out about God and art. And don’t get him started on what that fellow did to The Odyssey!”
“Do you mean Ulysses?” Rosemary said. “Have you read it?”
“Only enough to know which pages to show interested buyers. Too bad for them the rest of it’s all whinging about lemon soap and kidney pie.”
Rosemary stifled a laugh. “Oh, there’s more to it than that,” she said.
“So you’ve read it?” Francis looked impressed. “Quite the libertine you’ve married, Martin.”
There was a knock at the door, one that started and did not stop, and all Martin could think was that it was Mrs. Fichetti, come to complain about the racket. But this racket was his family. He was ready at last to give her an earful. He turned the knob and yanked the door open.
“Thank God you’re home!” Peggy’s voice filled the apartment as she brushed past Martin, dropped her purse on the armchair, and made for the dining room at top speed. “I just had to get out of there!”