May got married in 1931 at St. Mike’s to a fella named Jack, but it wasn’t Jack Diamond. There was a Democrat district worker officer, name of John F. Marrin, Jack, who done a few things for me. I liked Jack. I liked him for a number of reasons. He was young, strong, healthy, didn’t drink much, was good to his family. I liked his sister, Alice, a quiet religious sort of girl. Most of all, I liked the fact that he wasn’t going nowhere, that he was content to be who he was, and wasn’t going to get mixed up in what Costello was calling Our Thing, especially if he knew what was good for him.
I gave my sister the choice of marrying this Jack, Marrin not Diamond, or spending the rest of her life locked in her room. You may laugh at that today, but back then we really did things like that, and everybody had a crazy cousin or uncle living in the attic, who only came down at mealtimes, and sometimes not even then, and if they did that often enough, one day one of the kids would tiptoe up the stairs to see if Uncle Dan was all right and there he would be, dead, and so you’d have to plant ’im, and that would be that.
May thought about it for a while, not that there was much to think about, and then she give me her answer and it was, how about that, yes. When I told Jack, it was like he won the Irish Sweepstakes, he couldn’t believe his luck. “Take care of her, treat her good. You hit her, you’re a dead man. I’ll give you one of the apartments at 440. I’ll make sure you have a good job, plenty of money, people to watch over you. Only one thing.”
“What’s that, Mr. Madden?” He was polite too.
“You don’t brag about our relationship. You don’t mention to nobody you’re my brother-in-law. You keep your wife out of my clubs, out of my business and out of my life unless I send for her. Clear?”
He nodded.
“I picked you because you’re a good man, Jack. Because I trust you. Think you can handle it?”
Another nod.
“Do you think you can handle her?”
“I’ll sure try, Mr. Madden.”
“Good lad.” I handed him two packages, one large and one small. “Open the big one first.”
He tore the brown paper off an elongated box, reached inside and extracted one of Frenchy’s prize shotguns.
“Watch it, it’s loaded,” I cautioned. “For home use only. I don’t expect you to ever have to get involved in any rough stuff, but if trouble comes looking for me and finds you or your family instead, this will help you settle it. Now open the other one.”
Inside was the biggest diamond ring he’d ever seen. “That’s your engagement ring. Give it to her tonight. Don’t tell her where it come from. She’ll know anyway.”
I saw the picture in the paper a few days later. She was wearing a beautiful diaphanous dress with a plunging neckline and a ruffle at the bottom, her long arms bare and elegant. There were three rows of pearls around her neck, a double strand and a single. Her hair was marcelled in high style, but just a couple of curls were peeking out from beneath a broad-brimmed hat of the very latest fashion. Her left hand, with its carefully polished nails, rested lightly on her hip, displaying a diamond-studded watch, which I’d given her, and on her ring finger, Jack’s rock. “Miss Madden Engaged to Mr. Marrin,” the story said.
What struck me most, however, was her face. Her mouth was crimped in the Madden smile, a small crooked tight-lipped slash that the three of us shared with our mother, and which on her signaled a private emotion so deeply buried no one could ever excavate it. Her blue eyes were angled ever so slightly to the left, as the photographer had probably commanded, but they were still looking right at you, unblinking, frank and wise. They were looking right at me, and always would be.
Marty gave the bride away. Big Frenchy was the best man. Ma and Alice Marrin were the bridesmaids. There were no guests. May cried. I didn’t, because I wasn’t there.