07 Irish Stew! by Andrew M Greeley

Author:Andrew M Greeley [Greeley, Andrew M]
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

17

“ISN’T HE a wonderful man, Dermot Michael?”

“Who?” I looked up from the New York Times.

“Uncle Ned!”

“The trouble with him, poor dear man,” I replied, “is that he has so little confidence in himself. He’s let the General intimidate him.”

“Give over, Dermot, you’re just saying things like that to tease me. You know as well as I do that he intimidates the General and just about everyone else including poor Nora.”

I didn’t know that at all. At all. Yet Ned Fitzpatrick’s ironic and reckless integrity would scare anyone.

“Well, thank goodness I don’t intimidate anyone.”

“Sure didn’t you intimidate me something terrible in bed last night?”

“You started it!”

“And weren’t you after finishing it!”

Our flirtation with ecstasy the night before had apparently perked my wife up. She had run with the dogs, leaving me in charge of Socra Marie for a half hour. She charged up and down the stairs like she used to. She held the child in her arms and pretended to dance with her, much to the brat’s apparent delight.

“You know, Dermot Michael,” she said as though she were pondering a great philosophical truth, “I think this daughter of ours is developing a personality of her own.”

“Ah?”

I gave up on the New York Times editorials. They were pompous bunk anyhow.

“WELL, she has a very strong will and a mind of her own and she wants to be the center of attention all the time and she has a great sense of humor and she knows she’s beautiful and wants to be told that repeatedly.”

“Sounds autobiographical.”

My wife cocked her head, trying to be certain she’d understood me.

“Fair play to you, Dermot Michael! She’s my daughter, isn’t she?”

“No doubt about that!”

“Now let’s be serious again!

She put the daughter back in her bassinet, where the child returned to kicking her legs up and down as though she were riding an imaginary bicycle.

“About what should we be serious?”

“About poor Seamus, naturally!”

“What about him?

“Who’s trying to kill him and when he tries again?”

“There’s going to be another effort?”

“Oh, yes, that’s the whole point. If we can stop the next effort, then the mark of death will leave him until his natural time comes around.”

There were metaphysical and theological issues in that sentence I did not want to address.

“Tell me again why we’re concerned about that nine-fingered shite hawk.”

“How should I know, Dermot Michael? Why should we be concerned about the Haymarket riot that happened a hundred and fourteen years ago, even if it is nice to meet Ned and Nora and Josie again? I suppose because Ned thinks it’s time to tell the truth and he wants us to do it for him just like we told the truth about the death of Myles Joyce?”

Ned Fitzpatrick, now happy in the World-to-Come with his wife and family, suddenly decided that the truth about the bomb should be told and nudged my wife’s psychic sensitivities?

That laconic, ironic, brave and tender man surely had better things to do. What difference does history make to the blessed?

Still, what did I

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