08 Irish Cream by Andrew M Greeley

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

12

“THAT GORGEOUS little redhead I saw at Mass,” Katie McBride said. “She’s the one in Damian’s paintings, isn’t she? The one with the two white hounds?”

“She is,” Nuala agreed.

Before she could say something negative about our kids, a bad and thoroughly Irish habit, I interrupted, “She has her mother’s beauty, her great-grandmother’s red hair, and her dad’s Irish smile.”

We all laughed.

“I was astonished by the work in the Gallery on Oak Street. He is very gifted, isn’t he?”

“Very,” Nuala said solemnly, as she searched for the tone of the conversation.

We were sitting on the deck in front of our cottage, sipping port and Bailey’s. The sun had set. The sky was dense with stars, the Lake content, the temperature comfortable if you had a sweater over your shoulders. Across the Lake the twinkling lights of Chicago defined the sky and swiftly moving lights marked the planes that O’Hare was firing off like firecrackers.

Tom McBride was indeed a little guy. However, his whimsical smile and his quick brown eyes suggested a gift of laughter and love. It must have required a lot of the latter to woo Kathleen O’Sullivan away from her father. He was silent through most of our conversation, but nodded approval for his wife’s story as she told it.

“I’m so happy,” she went on, “that you have helped Damian. I admit that as much as I wanted to believe that he had some artistic talent, I also wanted his exhibit at the Reilly Gallery to be … well, less than adequate. If he is really good—and he is—then my family has done him a great injustice. I went along with it, even when I had reasons to be suspicious, so I did him a great injustice.

“I thought I grew up in a wonderful family,” she went on. “I have come to realize that it is in fact deeply dysfunctional. I am exploring this with a psychiatrist—not my husband—because I want to understand it and I want to avoid its influence on the family I will raise.”

She touched her swelling belly.

“The first hint I had of the family culture,” Tom McBride said quietly, “was the debate about our marriage being at the Notre Dame Grotto. It made no never mind to me. Katie thought it was a site for kids in their early twenties. I watched in dismay as they all brought pressure on her for us to marry in the Grotto as her parents and all the children had with the same doddering old priest presiding. It scared the hell out of me.”

“Tom couldn’t believe,” Katie added, “that this was a serious attempt to exorcise his Boston College background. It became a celebration of our family unity …”

Her voice trailed off into the twilight.

“How can we help?” Nuala asked.

“I assume that you are attempting to reverse that terrible plea bargain that my father imposed on the case of the death of Rod Keefe. I was at the club that night of course. I knew that Damian was far too drunk even to open the door of the car.

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