Authors: Elizabeth Adler
“One toy would be sufficient,” Lily told him icily, but he just laughed and said mockingly, “I have a right to spoil my own ‘nephew,’ don’t I?”
“He is not your nephew, he is Liam Adams,” she reminded him, coldly.
“Well, my stepnephew then. Anyway, he’s the only kid I know, and a fine little fellow he is too.” He added provokingly, “I can even see a bit of the O’Keeffe in him somewhere, even though we are only ‘step.’”
Life with Dan in Back Bay was very different from being married to John on Beacon Hill. When Dan was in Boston the house was constantly full of people: ward bosses, state senators, politicians of all kinds and from every level. They were polite, burly men, Irish for the most part, and there always seemed to be a parade in the offing, with brass bands and balloons and fireworks and horses, or a charity picnic, or a campaign to be fought.
Whenever Dan left for Washington the house would fall silent and Lily didn’t know whether she was relieved to see him and all his cronies go or at a loss to know what to do with herself now they were not there. Finn never came to visit when Dan was away and she thought despairingly that she was the loser after all.
“A
ND THAT, MY DEARS,”
I said to Shannon and Eddie, “was the state of affairs when Ciel arrived in Boston.”
“Explosive, I’d say,” Eddie said, helping me up from the rock where I had been sitting. My bones creaked as usual; age is not kind in taking away the coiled tensile springs of youth, when everything slides and turns like clockwork, lubricated by secret oils and cushioned by new, unworn cartilage.
But once I’m on my feet I can still hike up and down this hill with the best of ’em.
“Step this way,” I called, sounding like Dan O’Keeffe selling those blasted red suspenders. “I want to show you something.”
They scrambled after me up the hill to a place where the little stream fell from an outcropping. Behind it was a cave tall enough to stand up in. I edged my way into it, brushing away spiderwebs, and beckoned them to follow.
We stood in the cave with the crystal stream tumbling in front of us and the sunlight turned it a dozen different colors. “It’s exactly like being inside a rainbow!” Shannon exclaimed as Eddie brushed a spider from her hair. We stood for a few minutes listening to the lovely rushing sound of the water and the mysterious rustling noises coming from the shadows at the back of the cave.
“Bats, probably,” I said briskly, and Shannon was out of there like a shot from a gun.
“Ciel and Lily used to come here as children,” I explained. “Mammie told me it was their secret place. They would make wild plans to run away and live in it, and they would carry food up here and hide it, but of course when they came back it was always gone. Lily told Ciel the fairies had taken it, though she knew perfectly well it was just mice and small wild creatures. But a fairy story was always better than the truth anytime for Lily, and I suspect that that was part of her trouble. She only ever saw things the way she wanted to see them.
“Anyhow, my dears,” I said as we reached the road again and Shannon’s waiting red Fiat, “tonight after dinner I shall tell you what finally happened to them all.”
I could see they were agog to know finally how it all turned out, and as I soaked myself leisurely in the bath I felt sad because this was the part that had hurt Mammie most to tell.
I almost never wear black anymore because I find it does nothing for an older skin; just look at all those sallow black-veiled widows and you’ll see what I mean. Still, to-night,
because I thought the story suited it, I wore black. Lace, of course, early Valentino with a tight waist and one of those flirty bell-skirts over pink satin. Far too grand for dinner at home, but I felt like it. I rubbed up the diamonds and flung them on and added a touch of lipstick and scent, and I was ready again to tell my story.
T
HEY CALLED THE LUXURY LINERS
the “grayhounds of the ocean” because they made the crossing in a speedy seven days, and Ciel flirted and danced her way across the Atlantic, having herself a great old time.
When the liner finally docked she hung excitedly over the rail, searching for her sister in the milling throng below. And then she saw her: a tall, wonderfully elegant woman in a little fur jacket and hat who turned every head as she strolled toward the liner. People parted to let her pass, stopping to look at her, wondering who she was, because she certainly looked like “a somebody.” Ciel laughed. Nothing had changed. Lily was the same beautiful, autocratic Lily; people still stepped back to let her pass, and stopped to look at her, and Ciel was sure, still rushed to do her bidding.
“Lily,” she yelled, waving frantically. Their eyes met and Lily’s face lit up with happiness and relief. “Thank God, you’re here at last. I’m coming on board.”
They ran into each other’s arms, oblivious of the curious stares of the departing passengers; they only cared that they were together again.
Lily stepped back, holding her at arm’s length, staring at her with tears in her eyes. “Oh, Ciel, you look wonderful.” She inspected Ciel’s russet Paris suit and little tip-tilted hat with the russet feathers and added, surprised, “And with such style.”
“And you must be the most beautiful woman in New
York. It was like the parting of the Red Sea when you walked down the pier, Lily. Nothing has changed.”
“Oh, how I’ve missed you,” Lily said, and they hugged each other again. “Promise me you’ll stay forever.”
They followed Ciel’s mountain of baggage onto the pier, and soon they were on their way to the Fifth Avenue Hotel. They held hands like children while Ciel talked nonstop about Ardnavarna, and Lily said hopefully, “I thought I had been banished forever, but maybe one day soon I can go home again.”
Ciel said sadly, “It’s not the same anymore. It’s lonely now, without them all. But being without you was the worst.” Remembering, she began to cry, and Lily put a comforting arm around her shoulders.
“All that matters is that we are together again now,” she said reassuringly. “And now we’re going to have some fun. Tonight we are going to see my friend Ned Sheridan in his new play on Broadway, and afterward he is taking us to dinner at Delmonico’s.”
That night Ciel wore deep-green panne, cut high at the neck and tight at the waist, with her usual clutter of diamond brooches as well as her mother’s huge pearls. She wore diamonds in her hair and her ears and her long red fox-fur coat. And Lily was her usual elegant self in blond lace, low-cut with long tight sleeves, and the Adams sapphires, and her black fox cape.
Ned Sheridan told them he was the proudest man in New York because he had the city’s two most beautiful women on his arm, and Ciel felt giddy with happiness as they toasted each other in champagne at Delmonico’s. She whispered to Lily that he was the most handsome man she had ever seen, and the nicest, and maybe Lily should have married him after all.
“Maybe,” Lily said, and Ciel caught the touch of sadness in her voice. But she thought it was obvious to anyone watching that Ned Sheridan was head over heels in love with her sister.
They took the train to Boston the following morning and
drove through Beacon Hill so that Lily could point out her old house, closed and shuttered, on Mount Vernon Street, and Finn O’Keeffe James’s house on Louisburg Square, and then finally to Dan’s house in Back Bay.
“Don’t bother to look around,” she cried, dashing up the stairs like a homing pigeon. “Come and see Liam.”
The little boy heard them coming; he hurled himself at his mother, and Lily swept him, laughing, into her arms, raining kisses on his face, his hair, his arms, anywhere she could find a place to put one.
He was almost two years old and tall for his age with a slender, wiry body, dark hair, and cool gray eyes. But his face was pale and he was coughing.
Worried, Lily stared at him. “How long has he been coughing like this?” she asked the nanny.
“Only since yesterday, Mrs. O’Keeffe. Sure and it’s nothing but a little tickle in his throat. The boy is fine; he’s been playing quietly with his bricks and his toys.”
“Liam never plays quietly,” Lily said angrily. “Haven’t you been here long enough to know that? If he is quiet, then he must be ill.” She put her hand to his forehead; it felt cool, but maybe it was too cool. Maybe he was cold. “Put him to bed at once,” she ordered, “and wrap him up warmly. I’m calling the doctor.”
She turned and saw Ciel standing in the doorway. “Oh, Ciel,” she said, “I’m so worried about him. He always gets this cough; the doctor told me he had a weak chest….”
“He’s a grand boy, Lily,” she replied, “and he seems fine enough.” He was peeking at her from behind his mother’s skirts and she laughed. “I’m your aunt Ciel,” she said, sinking onto the rug next to him. “I’m here to play games with you and spoil you.”
She grinned at him and he grinned back. He had a thin, cheerful little face and a sweet expression and she thought he was adorable, though he did not look in the least bit like Lily. He sat on the floor beside her and took up his bricks and said, “Let’s play.”
“No,” Lily said firmly. “You’re going to bed. And I am calling the doctor.”
The nanny whisked him away and a little while later the doctor called. He told them there was nothing to worry about, that the boy had no fever and his throat was just fine. “But Nanny said he was so quiet,” Lily objected.
“I daresay he just felt like playing quietly. Sometimes children do, you know,” the doctor replied wearily. He was only too used to Lily’s frantic calls, sometimes in the middle of the night, and almost all of them unnecessary.
Ciel said, “You worry too much, Lily. He looks like a fine strong boy to me.”
“Oh, what do you know,” Lily shouted, stamping her foot. “I’m the one who has to look after him. I have to be so careful. He’s
everything
to me.
He’s all I’ve got.”
Astonished, Ciel stared at her. “But you have your husband, Lily,” she said. “And your lovely home, and your life with Dan.”
“I just meant that Liam is all I have left … of John,” she explained. “I just love him so much, Ciel, I couldn’t bear it if anything were to happen to him.”
Dan had promised to be home that evening and Lily paced the house like a nervous cat, wondering what Ciel was going to think of her diamond-in-the-rough husband. Ciel was upstairs getting changed for dinner when he arrived, his derby on the back of his head as usual and a spotted kerchief knotted around his throat. Lily took one look at him and groaned, wondering why he must always look like an Irish street politician heading for the nearest saloon. She urged him upstairs to change and then went to check that the dinner table was set precisely as she had instructed.
Dan loved his little stepson dearly and was heading to the nursery to say hello when he bumped into Ciel on the stairs. They looked each other over, smiling. “Can this vision really be little Ciel Molyneux?” he demanded, taking her hands in his big paws.
“And can this handsome man-of-the-world really be
Daniel O’Keeffe, son of Padraig?” she demanded back, and he threw his arms around her in a great bear hug.
“Did y’ever think we would be doing this? Huggin’ each other and kissing? Brother-and sister-in-law?” he asked, beaming at her.
“I’m only glad it’s true,” she retorted. “I can’t think of anyone I would rather have for my brother-in-law. Except maybe Finn,” she added with a touch of her old mischief-making.
“Sure and didn’t I ask myself, on my very wedding day, why it was
me
your beautiful sister was marryin’ and not my brother? When the two of them had been thick as thieves when they were kids? But I’m glad to say I was the fella she chose and I’m proud to tell you, sister-in-law, that she has made me a very happy man. And I hope to put many more little fellas in that nursery before too long.” He winked conspiratorially at her. “I only wanted to take a peek at the wee lad and then Lily told me I have to change into something ‘respectable’ for dinner with her sister.”
Laughing, Ciel watched him tiptoe exaggeratedly along the corridor to the nursery. She thought what a nice man he was and how good-looking, and she thought her sister was a lucky woman to be his wife.
Dinner was a jolly affair; the wine flowed and, despite Lily’s withering glances, Dan told his stories of how he got his start. He talked to Ciel about Washington and the White House, and promised her a visit there before too long. Then the conversation veered back to Ardnavarna and a look of sadness crossed his face.
“I’ve never told you how much I’ve wanted to go back there,” he said to Lily. “When I first came to Boston and Finn and me were living in a windowless hovel, I used to dream of Ardnavarna. I dreamed of the greenness of its gardens and the rustle of the rain on the leaves of the alder trees and the sweetness of the air filling my lungs, instead of the gray, stinking, filthy streets of the North End. How many times did I imagine myself wading in the peaty river, fighting a salmon, or striding the fields with a shotgun after
the pheasant. The only trouble with those dreams was that they were in the past, and being where I was then, I had only the terrible present, and no dreams or even hopes of any future that I could see.
“It just goes to show how a man can be proved wrong,” he added triumphantly. “And if we think Ireland is God’s own country, then America is surely God’s
chosen
country, because I’m not the only poor ignorant Irishman to make it big here. As I tell my voters, ‘It’s the land of opportunity, and all y’have to do is get off yer lazy backsides and grab those opportunities.’”
“Dan,” Lily protested frostily.
“I’m sorry for my earthy talk, Lily,” he said calmly, “but I’m a man who calls a spade a spade, and a backside is what it’s always been. A backside.”
Ciel laughed at her sister’s scandalized face. “I seem to remember you using worse words, Lily,” she reminded her, and Lily laughed, but she was wondering how she could ever go home to Ardnavarna again, with Dan O’Keeffe her husband.
“Well, well. A happy family reunion,” Finn said from the doorway, and their heads swung around to look.