The Crow of Connemara Read online

  “Colin? Do you have any idea what time it is here?” Her voice was simultaneously sleepy and irritated.

  “8:30, give or take a couple minutes.”

  “Yeah, in the morning. Saturday morning.”

  “I wanted to get you before you left the apartment.”

  “It’s a cell phone, dear; you’d get me whether I was in the apartment or not. And on Saturday, ‘before I leave the apartment’ means, oh, somewhere before one in the afternoon. Maybe later. It’s Saturday, damn it.”

  “You complain a lot. What happened to the ‘Don’t worry what time it is, little brother, just call me whenever you get a chance’ story you gave me when I left?”

  He heard her yawn; a male voice muttered something indistinctly in the background. “My brother Colin in Seattle,” he heard Jennifer say. “Go back to sleep.”

  “Oops,” he said. “Jen had company last night. Sorry. Anyone I should know?”

  Colin thought he heard the sound of bare feet on hardwood; she’d left the bed. “Hah, you’re not in the least bit sorry, so don’t even try to apologize. And no, you don’t know him, and as to whether you will ever know him . . . well, that’s not decided yet. It probably depends a lot on when you come back here.” She yawned again, sounding a bit more awake, and he heard dishes clattering in the background: she’d moved to the kitchen.

  “What would Mom and Dad say?”

  “I’m not in the habit of discussing my sex life with them. And not with you either, little brother. Speaking of which, how’s yours? You know Mom’s half-terrified you’re going to bring home some young undergrad coed, probably from the Music department, with a grandchild already incubating in her belly.” Colin heard something liquid being poured, and Jen taking a cautious sip: coffee. He took a sip of his own before he answered.

  “Not much chance of that at the moment, I’m afraid. I’m too damn busy. So who’s this paragon?”

  “His name’s Aaron Goldman.”

  “Aaron Goldman? He’s Jewish?”

  “Yes.” He could almost see her eyebrows raising with the affirmation, as if in challenge.

  “And how has that gone over with the parental units?”

  Her sigh scratched at the speaker of the phone. “It’s not 1950 anymore, Colin. In case you hadn’t noticed, we’re in a whole new century, and Irish Catholics marry Jews all the time now. They marry Latinos and African-Americans, too. Guys marry guys, women marry women. Or have you regressed back to another era since you went to the left coast? I thought things were more liberal out there.”

  “Sure, all that goes on, just not in the Doyle family. Heck, I remember Tommy getting lots of grief back in high school for dating a Methodist. Somehow, I can’t see Dad letting his grandchild go to temple wearing a kippah.”

  Another sigh rattled the speaker. “I’d like to point out that I’m neither married, pregnant, nor considering a conversion. And Mom said she thinks Aaron is very nice, thank you. Now, let’s talk about you, since you called . . .”

  ...They had, though he hadn’t told her then what he’d already been thinking.

  “Hello?” he heard Jen saying now. “Earth to Colin.” Colin shook away the memory.

  “Sorry,” he said. “Just not enough sleep. So Aaron’s still in the picture?”

  “He is, but I do have an extra bed in my office at the apartment, and you can have that if you decide to stay with me instead of Mom.”

  Colin nodded. “Good. I don’t think I slept more than a few hours last night. I’ll probably end up crashing pretty soon, and I’d rather do that at your place, if you don’t mind.”

  “Not a problem for me, though it might be for Mom. But we can decide that later. Right now, let’s get you to the hospital. Everyone’s there.”

  Colin lifted his chin in agreement and started walking down the corridor to where the signs pointed to the baggage area. “So . . . tell me about Dad,” he said as they walked. “He’s going to be all right, isn’t he?”

  He saw her eyebrows raise at that, but he also saw her press her lips together again, as if to hold back the comment she wanted to make. “I’ll fill you in once we’re in the car . . .”

  On the drive to the hospital, Jen told him that there’d been little change since the phone call he’d received the day before, and the changes that had occurred weren’t heartening. His father had been found collapsed on the floor of his downtown Loop office by one of the janitorial staff, after his mother became worried about him not answering his phone and called the building owners. No one knew how long he’d been down, unconscious and barely breathing. The doctors were saying it had been a massive coronary event, that their father had been too long without oxygen, that there’d been too much resultant brain damage, and that his body was failing. His kidneys had shut down; the circulation to his extremities was poor.

  “They’re telling us it’s our decision to make. They can keep him on the vent and see if he improves, but . . .” Jen stopped, biting her lip. He saw her eyes filling with tears, and when she blinked, twin streaks rolled down her cheek. She took one hand from the wheel to wipe at them, almost angrily. Colin reached over to place his hand on her shoulder. He could feel her trembling underneath his touch.

  “S’okay, Jen. I wish I’d been in town and able to get here sooner.”

  “You’re here now,” she told him. “That’s all that matters. Mom and Tommy’ll be glad to see you.”

  Colin wasn’t quite so certain of that, especially not given the news that at some point he had to relay to them—when the time was right, which it certainly wasn’t now, not with his father’s condition. That has to wait. There’ll be a moment soon enough.

  He could only hope that was right. He sighed and laid his head back against the seat rest, watching the once-familiar landscape scroll by.

  Home. At least it once had been. Somehow, it no longer felt that way.

  Colin wasn’t so certain that Jen was entirely right as the elevator doors opened on the lounge of the Cardiac ICU unit. His mother and Tommy were sitting in chairs near the nurse’s station, conversing with his Aunt Patty and a man he didn’t recognize who was wearing a business suit. Tommy was also dressed in a suit; even from this distance, Colin could tell it was expensive. His mother was wearing a black dress and looking as if she were going out for an evening on the town. Diamond earrings sparkled below her carefully arranged and dyed-too-dark hair.

  Tommy looked their way as the elevator doors opened and nodded, as if in approval. He leaned down to speak in his mother’s ear, and she glanced toward the elevator. There was a frown on her face before she theatrically arranged it in a smile. He would see weariness in the way her face sagged, though, and that told him how much she’d been affected by his father’s illness.

  “Colin,” she said, rising and holding out her hands. “It’s so good to see you again, my dear.”

  Jen nudged him forward before he could move, and he went to his mother, kissing her on a dry cheek as she pursed her lips for an air kiss. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here. I came as soon as I heard,” he told her. Great. Starting with an apology right at the start. She squeezed his arm, and released him.

  “At least Tommy and Jen were here for your father and for me,” she said. “I was blessed to have that.”

  He told himself that there was nothing personal in the words; it was only her way. But the sting of them also told Colin that his rationalizing was only a partial success. “Hey, Tommy,” he said as his brother came over to join them. Tom Jr. was a decade older than Colin; his hair already touched at the temple with the start of what Colin was certain would soon be a distinguished salt-and-pepper gray. Tommy had always been too old to be a true playmate for Colin; as a teenager, he seemed to consider Colin more a nuisance than anything else. When Tommy had reached college, he seemed to be more like a distant, usually absent uncle than a brother. It was J
en, three years older than Colin, who’d been his true sibling.

  Tommy extended a hand—no offer of an embrace there. Colin shook his hand: Tommy had a politician’s grip, firm enough to feel solid, but careful. He put his other hand over Colin’s as if to make up for the lack of a hug. “Good to see you again, little brother. Just wish it weren’t in these circumstances. How’s school?”

  “School’s school,” Colin answered. If Tommy noticed the false smile that accompanied that statement, he didn’t react.

  Behind Tommy, the man in the business suit watched. He looked to be in his forties, with an athletic build that was beginning to sag and paunch, his hair thin on top and gray. Tommy followed Colin’s gaze, releasing Colin’s hand as if relieved. “Oh, Colin, this is Carl Harris, Dad’s campaign manager.”

  Harris extended his own hand. “So you’re the grad student who’s also the musician.”

  “Yep,” Colin answered. “The black sheep of the family. They usually keep me carefully hidden.” Harris gave that a thoughtful half-smile.

  “You’re exactly what you should be.” Aunt Patty had come up behind Colin. He turned into her full embrace and an enthusiastic kiss on both cheeks. “You and Jen always were more like the O’Callaghan side of the family than the Doyle side. So sorry you had to come back like this, darling.” She hugged him again, tightly. Their glasses clashed slightly with the embrace—the O’Callaghans were also uniformly nearsighted. He could smell the musk of her perfume and the shampoo in her hair, which—unlike his mother—she had allowed to go naturally gray, though she kept it unfashionably long. Patty was his mother’s older sister, now in her early sixties, the athletic figure she’d always had softening over the years. Aunt Patty had always been his favorite relative. Sometimes he felt that he had confided more in Aunt Patty than in his own parents. She was childless herself. She’d once been married to the stormy and temperamental Andrew Martelli, who had owned a small chain of shops selling Italian ices and yogurt. Aunt Patty had divorced Uncle Andrew two decades ago, for reasons that were talked about in hushed tones but never around Colin or the other children, though it became easy enough to guess why.

  After divorcing Uncle Andrew, Patty had never remarried, though Aunt Patty’s best friend, Rebecca, had moved into the old Martelli house, which Patty kept after the divorce, not long after. That Rebecca’s “best friend” was also her lover was something that was never openly discussed by his parents, though it was an open secret in the family. “Hey, Aunt Patty,” Colin said as they hugged. “It’s so good to see you. How’s Rebecca?”

  “She’s fine, and thank you for asking, darling. She said to give you a hug when I saw you.” She kissed his forehead and hugged him hard. “So there it is,” she said, smiling.

  Along with Jen, Aunt Patty had supported Colin when he had announced that he wasn’t going to go for the PhD in History; that he intended to leave college to pursue playing music full-time. His parents had been appalled; Aunt Patty had been supportive. “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she’d told them. “He’s young, and that’s the time to do these things. Let him go—he may just surprise you with how well he turns out.”

  In the end, Colin had succumbed to the pressure from his parents and from Tommy: Get the PhD now while you still have the energy. Go now, while that nice offer from Washington University stands. There’s no future in music, especially for the traditional music you like to play. You can always do that as an avocation and a sideline, but with a doctorate, you could make a decent living, like Jen . . . He’d listened to their incessant arguments for continuing his education, though he now regretted his capitulation.

  He remembered a favorite saying of his father: Regretting past decisions is useless. All that matters is making better ones in the future. He wasn’t certain his father would like the one he’d made.

  “When can I see Dad?” Colin asked the group.

  “I’ll take you back to his room,” Jen said. “Okay, Mom? Then maybe we can go out and get some dinner and talk.”

  His mother nodded. “Go on. We’ll wait out here—they don’t like lots of people in the room. Tommy, come here and tell me what you and Mr. Harris are thinking . . .” She turned away, her mind obviously already elsewhere.

  “So has Mom been playing the stoic as usual?” Colin asked as they walked down the hall.

  “She’s being Mom, so yeah, I guess so. But this has been hard on her. Dad’s always been around, and now . . .” She gave a shrug. “Well, you’ll see.”

  Three doors down, she turned into a room. Inside, there was the rhythmic sigh of the ventilator machine. On the bed, laced by tubes from the vent, IV, and catheter, a blood pressure cuff around his arm and an array of graphs on a flatscreen behind him, his father lay on a bed. Colin stopped in the doorway, trying to take it all in. His father’s face was pale, the cheeks sunken, his hair disheveled. His hands lay like two dead birds on the sheets. His eyes were closed, a rubber tube ran into his nose, held in place with tape. His mouth was slightly open, and below, the blue bulk of the vent wrapped his neck over the tracheotomy site. The only indication that he was alive was the slow rise and fall of his chest in tandem with the life-support machinery and the relentless, slow beep of the heart monitor.

  For a moment, the room seemed to shift in his vision, like an old movie lurching in its sprockets. He saw flecks of light at the edges of his vision. “Oh, my God,” he whispered, and Jen took his hand.

  “I know,” she said. “It was really hard, the first time I saw him this way.”

  “There’s been no change?” Colin blinked, taking a deep breath before moving to the bed. He touched his father’s hand; it felt cold, and there was no response when he squeezed his father’s fingers.

  “No. If anything, there’s been further deterioration, according to the docs. The question is, how long do we keep him on the vent, and when do we take him off—or do we? But go on, talk to him. They say that he can still hear you, even if he can’t respond.”

  “Hey, Dad,” Colin said. “It’s me, Colin, back from school. Sorry that it took this long to get here. I wish you’d wake up, Dad, so we could . . .” His throat closed up then, and he couldn’t finish. He felt unbidden tears well up in his eyes, and he blinked them back. He took a long, slow breath, patting his father’s hand. “Anyway, you just rest and get yourself better. Everyone’s praying for you, Dad.” He hesitated, then: “Love ya, Dad.”

  It was as if he spoke to a cut log or a bronze statue. There was no response, no indication that anything he’d said had been heard or understood. The words hung in the air and vanished. Whatever spark had once inhabited his father’s body was gone; he was an empty shell tossed up on a beach. Vacant.

  The exhaustion of the long hours of travel and the sleepless night before hung about him suddenly, dark and heavy and silent. Colin stepped back from the bed. Jen’s arm went around his waist and she leaned against him, but he could barely stand himself. A nurse came in and slid around them. “Just here to check his vitals,” she announced. “You can stay if you like.”

  “Thanks,” Colin said. “But we were just leaving.”

  Back in the lounge area, they found that his mother had made reservations for the group at Gene & Georgetti, an Italian steakhouse on North Franklin Street. Tommy and the mysterious Mr. Harris had already gone ahead, and his mother and aunt were getting ready to leave even as Colin and Jen returned. Colin’s eyelids were beginning to feel as if they were made of lead. He sighed at the announcement, thinking of two hours or more in the restaurant with his family, and dreading the inquisition that he knew would come when they’d finished talking about his father, and the revelation that he might have to make then. “I’m a little underdressed for the place, Mom,” Colin protested, but she waved her hand.

  “They won’t care. I’ve reserved the Bar Room for us, anyway, so no one will see you. We need to discuss the situation with your father, now
that you’re finally here.”

  Turning a concern into a criticism. Well, that’s normal at least.

  “Mary,” Aunt Patty interjected. “Look at the boy. He’s about ready to fall over. He’s not in any shape to talk about anything yet. Let him get a good night’s sleep so he can think clearly. We can all talk in the morning.”

  His mother’s lips tightened. “I suppose,” she said. “Well, we need to eat anyway, so the rest of us can still go. Colin can take a cab back to the house . . .”

  “Mom.” This time it was Jen who interrupted. “I need to get back to my place and take care of the cat, and my contacts are killing me, anyway. I’ll take Colin home with me; he can have the bed in the back room. Why don’t you guys go on to the restaurant; I’m not feeling that hungry right now and we’ll fix something at the apartment after Colin gets settled. His stuff’s in my car, anyway.”

  “Thanks, Jen,” Colin said hurriedly. “That sounds good to me.”

  “I thought you’d be taking your old room at the house,” his mother protested. “I had Beth come in and clean it.”

  “I can stay there tomorrow night,” Colin told her. “This’ll give Jen and me time to catch up a bit.”

  “Catch up? You call her often enough from school. I’ve been hearing everything about you secondhand from my daughter . . .” his mother began, then sighed. Colin decided that it was, perhaps, a measure of how worn out she was herself by her husband’s crisis that she didn’t pursue the accusation—against which, he had to admit, he didn’t have a good argument. For the first time, he noticed the heavily-drawn lines in his mother’s face and he realized just how much the last few days had cost her, and how much she had to be hurting. She and Dad have been married over forty years . . . He knew he had no sense of what that kind of commitment might mean, or how he might feel if someone he’d been with that long might be leaving. The realization humbled him and made him want to apologize again, but he resisted the impulse.