ANGELA DIDN’T want to open her eyes. The room was filled with light, the bed was soft, she had slept a long time, and a delightful aroma was all around her. She realized that the sweet perfume was herself. She had never smelled that way in all her life. It was a very pleasant dream. She didn’t want it to end. She could not understand what exactly had happened at the Central Depot. There had been a lot of tears. She didn’t think any of them were hers.
“I’m Angela,” she had said. “I’m your new serving girl. I’m skinny and dirty and smelly and tattered and weak from motion sickness. But I’m a hard worker and I promise you’ll be satisfied with me, if you’ll give me just a couple of days.”
A beautiful woman with a kind smile and a shapely body embraced her. Her dress was a kind of pale blue. Angela felt the corset stays under it.
“I’m Mae Gaughan, Angela. This is my husband, Doctor Paddy, and my daughter, Rosina, my older son, Timothy, and my younger son, Vinny. We welcome you to Chicago. We are happy you survived the trip. We don’t need a serving girl. We have a couple of Negro servants who are wonderful. We need a little sister. We want you to come live with us and be our little sister.”
“I’ll work very hard,” Angela insisted, “just give me some time. You’ll see how hard I work.”
“Please be my little sister.” Rosina, a lovely young woman in a fawn-colored dress embraced her. “I’ve always wanted a little sister. We have a wonderful little brother. Don’t leave us . . .”
She was wearing corset stays too. Why had they dressed up for her, a worthless, dirty little servant girl?
“Give over, ya eejit, can’t you see that they’ve fallen in love with you and they want to adopt you into their family! You’ll have to love them just the way you loved all of us. Mae will be a better mother than I could be . . .”
“Don’t leave me, Ma!”
“I’ll never leave you, dear one. Won’t you have two mothers to love?”
Vinny, the little brother, grabbed her hand.
“Please stay with us. You’re so pretty. We’ll always love you!”
Tears, love . . . These people were mad! She’d better get on the train to New York.
Timothy, and himself with dancing blue eyes that took her breath away, tried to remove her battered old tweed blanket. She pulled it away from him.
“Just wanted to carry your luggage,” he said, his face turning red. “I’m glad my new little sister is part Viking . . .”
“I’m not Viking. I’m a pre-Celtic aborigine. We’ve been trying to civilize the Celts since they invaded our nice little island. Their menfolk are as bad as ever.”
She laughed when she said it, and they all laughed too. She handed her tweed bag to Timothy, who blushed again.
“You have a tongue in your mouth, little one.” Dr. Gaughan shook hands with her. “And wit in your head. You’ll fit in fine with the rest of the family. You’re most welcome. Now we have our carriage out here and we’ll take you home and get you a bite to eat.” He glanced at her eyes. “And clear eyes and no hint of fever in your forehead.”
“I’ll work hard . . .”
“I’m sure you will, little one, I’m sure you will.”
So it was concluded that she was a member of the family, the warm mother, the genial father, the sensitive sister, the adorable little boy—and Timmy with the blue eyes and the winning smile. She belonged to them and they all belonged to her. It would be a big responsibility. She would not let them down. And she would work hard.
The big Negro gentleman who drove the carriage bowed politely to her and welcomed her. His name was James Marshal, he said. Most folks just called him Mr. Marshal. His wife, who was the cook in the house, was Mrs. Marshal.
Angela would learn much later that polite speech to Negro servants was not typical. Also to Irish servants. Even by the Irish people for whom they worked.
She slept during the carriage ride and woke confused and uncertain, clinging to her rosary.
“You have a lot of sleep to catch up on, don’t you, dear?” Mae Gaughan said soothingly. “Take your time, you have nothing but time.”
Later, much later, Angela began to question the generosity and kindness of her new family. Weren’t they just a little strange, morbid perhaps, about their new child? Then she came to understand that generosity and kindness are a little strange, and that she should strive to imitate her adopted family.
The Gaughans lived in a big stone house on the edge of a park they called Union Square. They had a large garden of roses in the backyard, which the women in the family carefully tended. She would see that later.
Mrs Marshal fed her a “collation” of roast beef, warm bread, mashed potatoes, and steaming hot chocolate. She did her best with it, but she was almost too tired to eat.
“Timmy,” she said to that young man who stared at her as one dazzled, “my, uh, Irish tweed luggage . . . There is nothing in it of any great value, except to me . . .”
“We’ll take care of it, little sister!” he said, enveloping her in a big smile. Timmy was a nice, polite young man, but he could become a problem, especially because he made her heart leap a little. He was a man, and in general men were not to be trusted. But he was a nice man . . .
She was installed in the guest room which was big with windows that opened on the park and a big fireplace. The bathroom had not only “facilities” but a large tub filled with steaming water. Mae and Rosina helped her out of her clothes, wrapped her in towels, and led her to the tub. At first the water was too hot, then she reveled in it as someone might who was planning to rise from a tomb. This was all half-dream, half-vision by now. They washed her hair and then brushed it. Then they gave her a gown and a robe which must have been Rosina’s, put her to bed and said the last decade of the rosary with her. She was sound asleep after the third Ave.
Finally, she opened her eyes. The Doctor, Mae, and Rosina hovered over her like three protective angels.
“How long have I been asleep?”
“Twelve hours or so,” the Doctor said, glancing at his watch.
“I’m sorry.”
“Nothing to be sorry about. Do you mind if I listen to your lungs?”
“That’s what doctors do.”
They all laughed again.
“Breathe deeply.”
She did.
“Strong heart and strong lungs . . . no flow of blood for a while?’
“Over a year.”
“It will start again soon, and you’ll grow a bit and put on some weight and catch up. You’ve been through a rough time, and we’ll keep an eye on you.”
“I’ll try not to be a bother.”
“When can she begin to go to school?” Rosina asked.
“Perhaps when the second semester starts. Mom can take you over to St. Mary’s Academy during the Christmas vacation. I’m sure you’ll be brilliant.”
Rosina was in her second year at St. Mary’s. She would go on for the full four years, though most of her classmates would leave in the spring to begin their careers as stenographers and machine operators. Timmy was in fourth year at St. Ignatius College and would graduate in two years and then go on to Rush Medical college.
“I want to go there too,” Angela told herself, but kept the thought in her own head. “Not because Tim will be there—because I want to be a doctor.”
And that was that.
The next day Mae and Rosina took her downtown to Marshall Field’s to buy her some clothes of her own.
It was too much for poor Angela. She was overwhelmed by the size and the variety and quite incapable of making choices for herself. Moreover, her new family was far too lavish in its plans for outfitting her. She would absolutely not wear a corset, not with her skinny little body. It would be an affectation.
“I can’t make these decisions,” she said finally. “I don’t know what I need or what I like. I’m sure I’ll love your choices.”
They were delighted at the proposal. Now they could have all their fun clothing this cute little doll that had washed up on the edge of Union Park. The doll didn’t mind. They wanted to make her happy. She would make them happy.
She didn’t even protest the second corset and the corset covers for her scarcely existing breasts. Later, of course, she would change her mind when she discovered that, suddenly, she had a figure that some men liked and some young women envied.
“I’m sure you’re tired of hearing me say thank you,” she whispered at the end of the day. “I am very grateful to you for making me part of your family. I’ll never say thank you enough. Please imagine me saying it all the time.”
Both the other women wept. So did Angela.
Later Angela would say that the Gaughans had given her a new life and she would always be grateful. Still later, when tensions arose, she wasn’t so sure. And still later, fortunately when her foster parents were still alive and the final family ties were shaped, Angela realized that she had made a big contribution to her new family simply by being herself. That insight scared her for awhile. That she was capable of filling vacuums in the lives of others simply did not seem possible.
On Sunday night, when the Marshals enjoyed a day off, Mae cooked her famous pot roast dinner for the family and invited guests. Among the regulars were Peter Muldoon, the handsome young parish priest at St. Charles Borromeo, where Vinny went to school, and Dr. Calvin Crawford, the Dean of Rush Medical College. Angela resolved that she would keep her big Irish mouth shut tight, lest she embarrass her new family. Father Muldoon was a charmer, Dr. Crawford a pompous fool—and his wife Minerva a perfect match for him.
“So you came here expecting to be a serving girl,” Father Muldoon began their conversation, “and find yourself a member of the family . . . Do you find this a welcome change?”
“A great surprise, Father. They must have been desperate for a new sister if they would settle for someone like me. They’ve been very kind and good. I am afraid that I’ll say or do something stupid and they won’t want me anymore.”
“I doubt that, Angela. They seem to be very proud of you, as well they might be.”
More compliments, and this one from a priest.
“They love me, Father, each of them in their own way. I cannot account for it, but I am very grateful.”
He nodded wisely and smiled, a warm and gentle smile that set her at ease.
“Is it not the way God is with us. He does not consult with us but takes us unasked into his family and showers his exuberant love on us because of his generous spirit.”
Angela thought very carefully about that.
“I suppose you are correct, Father Muldoon, the Gaughans are like God. That explains a lot, doesn’t it?”
“They are indeed extraordinary people. You will attend St. Mary’s Academy?”
“After Christmas, I will meet with the nuns to learn whether they want me. I hope they do, because Rosina will be there too, and that will be a help to me.”
“I don’t think there’s much doubt about that. Mae Gaughan tells me that you play the piano and speak French.”
“A little bit of both, and neither very well.”
He smiled again. “And after St. Mary’s?”
“I will try to enroll in Rush Medical College. I want to be a doctor. I don’t imagine Dr. Crawford would think that a good idea . . .”
“He and our host are arguing about the theory that disease is spread by miasmas, swamp-like areas which are thick with disease. We know, don’t we, that inoculation prevents smallpox?”
“You have been inoculated, Angela?”
“By my doctor in Ireland.”
“And as a doctor, you would not be afraid to be assigned to a pest-house of smallpox victims?”
“Sure I’d be afraid, but I’d do it because it was my duty and I wouldn’t get sick.”
“Because of God or your inoculation?”
Trick question.
“Is there a difference?”
He chuckled.
“You are a very interesting young woman, Angela Tierney. If I can assist you in your education, don’t hesitate to call upon me. I do have a little influence in certain quarters.”
“Thank you, Father.”
Angela was not prepared to admit that she was an interesting young woman, not even on the testimony of a nice young priest. He had not, however, dismissed her plan to study to be a doctor. She shifted her attention to the discussion between Dr. Gaughan and Dr. Crawford.
“We have five major plagues here, Calvin: smallpox, diphtheria, malaria, cholera, and typhoid fever. The first two we can route with more inoculations; malaria for some reason seems to be ebbing, and we have medications which seem to control it. Cholera is a matter of impurities in drinking water. If we should reverse the flow of the river, the water in the lake should be free of cholera. Only typhoid would remain.”
“So you would advocate mass inoculations and the sanitary canal. And who, Patrick, would pay for these vast expenditures?”
“The same government which found a way to pay for the horrors of the recent war between North and South. The saving of so much human life would be well worth the cost.”
“Would it, Patrick? How many of these immigrants who become sick so easily would ever become useful citizens? Are we not really better off without them?”
“I cannot accept such a view, Calvin. The immigrants are willing to work hard at back-breaking tasks. I see their contribution as essential to the well-being of the Republic. We could not have rebuilt this city so quickly after the fire without their work.”
“And how would they remove the miasmas from our swampland? You cannot really believe so completely in this germ theory? No one has ever seen a germ, I might remind you. We might better spend what little money we have for public health funding by clearing away the lands which generate the miasma of disease. Your germ theory is not proven, and nothing will ever be able to prove it.”
“Miasma is part of the same mythological folly,” Dr. Gaughan insisted, “as bleeding patients into weakness from which they die before the germs finish them off.”
“Paddy,” Mae Gaughan intervened, “I wonder if you could interrupt your discussion to cut the roast for us.”
Dr. Gaughan smiled slightly, grateful that his wife had cut off an argument which would grow more intense, yet sorry to yield the field of battle.
Timmy was sitting next to her at the table. He whispered a question:
“Who do you think has the better of the argument, pre-Celt little sister with the long silver-gold hair?”
Angela’s face warmed at the compliment. He was a smooth one. Dangerous? Probably not too dangerous.
“Our father, of course. Dr. Crawford is a pompous fool!”
Timmy struggled to control the laughter that seemed always to lurk inside him, at least when Angela was around.
As they left the dining room to split into men and women, he touched Angela’s arm.
“I’m happy that Dad is now your father too,” he struggled in his embarrassment. “It means you are part of the family.”
She scared the poor young man as much as he scared her. Interesting . . .
“Timothy, I have been absorbed into this family by an abundance of love which is almost god like . . . I wasn’t asked and I don’t deserve it, but I’m happy to be your sister and Rosina’s sister and Vinny’s too.”
She turned her back toward the drawing room, so she would see only the tiniest beginning of delight on his handsome face. She would keep Timmy at bay, but not too far away, by gentle teasing. Some day he might seek his revenge, but, she shivered slightly, that was beyond the boundaries of the distant future.
Minerva Crawford attacked her as soon as she was seated at the outer fringe of the women in the drawing room.
“Child! That surely isn’t the natural color of your hair!”
“I’m afraid that it is, Mrs. Crawford. Out in the West of Ireland they say it is a sign of aborigine blood, pre-Celtic like the Indians are pre-American.”
“It looks like straw . . . You simply must do something with it.”
“In the West of Ireland they say it looks like a field of fresh wheat in the morning sun and is a sign of fertility and God’s love.”
“How disgusting!”
“I like it.” Rosina, big sister, came to her rescue.
“You are not entitled to an opinion, young woman. Whatever they might say in the West of Ireland, a place which I haven’t visited and hope never to, it simply won’t do in the United States of America. Mae, you must do something about it if she is going to live in this house!”
“If I have to change the color of my hair to live in this wonderful house, I will leave it.”
“Mae! Will you listen to her! You must send her to the Academy immediately. The nuns will teach her some respect! She is simply not acceptable in your family.”
“She is new in this land, Minerva. We will see that she has time to adjust to American customs.”
“Well, I certainly hope so. I suspect that hair is the result of some sickness, the bad airs which cause disease. Maybe that’s why the rest of her family is dead.”
“My family died because of the famine which the English imposed on Ireland,” Angela replied. “Rather than starve they ate meat which was poisoned. It had nothing to do with the color of our hair.”
“Mae, this child needs to learn some respect for her elders.”
“Well, we’ll see how she gets along with the nuns.”
Minerva Crawford took that as agreement. Angela accepted it as approval from her new mom, whom she had begun to adore. Rosina grinned triumphantly.
Their interview with the Mother Superior at St. Mary’s Academy did not begin any better.
“You have a strong Irish accent, young woman,” Mother Superior observed.
“West of Ireland, Sister.”
“You have Gaelic?”
“My parents spoke it at home, God be good to them, and I picked up a little. We studied it in school.”
“English is not your first language.”
“It is in the national schools, Sister.”
“You can read English.”
“Oh, yes, Sister.”
“Would you read this piece of oratory, please.”
She handed Angela a card. It was “Let no man write my epitaphs.”
Angela began to read it and then, in the kind of bravado that she couldn’t resist, she put the card aside and recited it from memory and with feeling.
Sister grinned.
She then fired questions about arithmetic and catechism, quite unrelated to one another, cutting off the answer to one question and shifting quickly to another. Angela enjoyed the challenge and fired back her answers briskly and confidently. Sister continued to grin.
“She plays the piano too, S’ter,” Rosina said meekly.
“Ah, you took piano at school, did you?”
“No, S’ter, I play by ear.”
“Do you now? Can you play something classical for me?”
“A little bit of Mozart’s Night Music, maybe S’ter . . . Not very good, I’m afraid. Are you sure you don’t want to go back to arithemetic?”
“You are a difficult child, Angela, but I do want to hear what you do with the Night Music.”
Angela went to the upright piano in the corner of Mother Superior’s office, ran her fingers over the keys to become familiar with them, paused at a key that needed tuning, sat for a moment to get in the right mood and, eyes closed, began to play. She made it very sad music, perhaps not what the composer intended. There were tears in her eyes when she finished. She looked up at the nun and thought she saw tears behind the thick lens.
“You are a very talented young woman, Angela Tierney. Should we admit you, I’d be privileged to provide you with music lessons every week.”
“Thank you, S’ter. But I want to be a doctor.”
“All the more reason to play the piano: to keep your sanity. Mae?”
“I think it would be wonderful.”
“Then it’s settled, unless you protest too strongly, young woman.”
“Oh, no, S’ter, I’d like to be able to read notes.”
“She talks French too,” Rosina insisted.
Angela blushed. The love of her new family was superabundant, but embarrassing. Why were they that way? Father Muldoon said they were like God.
She replied in French, saying that her accent was not from Paris but from le petit ville Carraroe in Connemara.
S’ter replied in French that she had the gold and silver hair of Carraroe too and Angela remarked that it was said to be like a new wheat field under the morning sun, but she thought it looked like newly harvested straw.
“Well, Mae, we can’t be party to losing this gifted young woman to a public school, can we? I think next semester we will put her in some first-year courses and some second year, where she will have her sister to protect her against the young women who may yearn for hair like newly harvested straw. Then they will be able to do their third and fourth years together.”
“Thank you, S’ter,” Rosina and Angela said together.
“I see that Ms. Tierney is the kind of child that works very hard. Normally I would praise that, but, Mae and Rosina, we may have to insist on some occasions that she should relax and perhaps play for family singing or take other kinds of recreation.”
“I’ll see to it, Sister,” Mae promised. “And thank you very much.”
As they left St. Mary’s, Angela said in a soft voice, “Don’t tell Mrs. Crawford. We don’t want to break her heart.”
“What should we tell her, darling?”
“Tell her that Mother Superior is taking me under her personal supervision.”
The next three years were happy ones for Angela. She moved into Rosina’s bedroom. “We can be real sisters,” Rosina exclaimed. “We can talk about boys and fight with one another just like sisters do.”
“I don’t mind talking about boys, though they’re a pretty boring subject. But I won’t fight with you, Rosina. I’ll never fight with you.”
It was a promise Angela kept through the years to come, some difficult.
She bonded with the family wolfhound, Sir Charles, who also moved into the bedroom and made himself at home. She learned how to read notes. She improved her French accent. She had the highest grades in her class and graduated summa cum laude. Her body belatedly burst into full and enchanting womanhood. Her charm and wit won over most of her potential rivals in class. She kept Timmy at a distance, but not too great a distance. Indeed she was his date at the graduation dinner for the graduates of St. Ignatius College (a six-year school) and dazzled everyone at the Palmer House with her white classic dress and her gold and silver hair, which looked like a blooming wheat field under the rising sun.
The Gaughans urged their children to invite their classmates to songfests in their parlor several times a year, the first one at her first Christmastime in Chicago. Tim’s friends from St. Ignatius were bemused by her even then. She was, as he put it, a mixture of sweet and tart, fun and serious, laughter and tears, sister and wife, that men his age found irresistible.
“Mistress and wife,” Rosina murmured.
Angela fell in love with many of them, one after another, without ever speaking to them. Tim was another matter. She asked Father Muldoon if it were a sin of incest to fall in love with a foster brother.
“I haven’t done it and I don’t plan to do it. But I want to know if it’s a temptation.”
“Tim,” said the wise young bishop as he was now, “is not a temptation to resist, Angela, but a temptation to love, which is a much more serious problem.”
“I know that.”
She was not sure, however, what it was that she knew or didn’t know.
Dr. Gaughan was a rich man, but not because he was a doctor. His fees for intricate surgeries were small for ordinary people. He had made his money in real estate and construction when he came home after the war with dreams of suffering and death that, despite his amiability, he could never force out of his life. He was a gentle, sympathetic father, but one able to draw lines that you would not think of crossing. Angela was acutely sensitive to these lines and did not wander near them. She played a slightly different role in the family than did the other children. The doctor treated her more like an adult than the others, an adult he could be frank with.
He was careful with his investments, unwilling to expose his family to the various panics that wracked the country in the decades immediately after the war. He had, however, bought a “shack” on a small lake just north of the Illinois–Wisconsin border to which the family journeyed for the month of July. It was in fact more than a shack, but the plumbing was outside and the water came from the wells. Isolated from the city and its newspapers and the demands of their friends, the Gaughans were supposed to relax and refresh themselves. There was a small beach and a pier in front of the house and small rowboats. They often were in their swim garments from breakfast to supper. A small town with a soda fountain was in walking distance, and a decent-sized forest in which young and old could hike. Life was relaxed, informal and seemingly unregulated. Only as Angela realized the two adults kept it closely observed, aware as they were of the four young people who were guests. Seamus McGourty, a classmate of Tim’s at St. Ignatius College, with fiery and unruly hair, was theoretically Tim’s guest, but he was also Rosina’s companion.
“Some of my colleagues would say, Angela, that I am taking quite a chance by inviting four young people who are in the early phases of attraction to the opposite sex into an environment that is seemingly unregulated.”
“It is wise to keep that caution in mind,” Angela had replied. “It would be a shame to ruin the vacation.”
“To say nothing of some lives.”
“I won’t let that happen,” she promised.
He seemed surprised by her response.
“I’m delighted to hear that. You are, I believe, the youngest of the four in years, but much older in experience and insight.”
“I should think,” she charged on, she hoped not being too candid, “that one very dark night of modest swimming Indian style would be quite enough, not that I would think that Rosina’s virtue or mine would be at any great risk.”
Dr. Gaughan laughed. “You are a very perceptive young woman, Anglea Tierney.”
“I’ll be in charge, Doctor, which is what you’re asking of me. I had similar thoughts myself. You have made my thoughts more clear.”
“We cannot help but notice that there is a certain attraction between you and Timothy.”
“Since that first day at Central Depot. His eyes are too magical altogether.”
“As is your wheat-field hair.”
She felt her face grow warm.
“We are very young, Dr. Gaughan, and we have many important things to do in our lives before we think of marriage, much less talk about it. In principle, however, I cannot exclude it as a possibility for discussion someday in the future.”
“Mae and I certainly would not want to exclude it either. In some ways you are years older than Tim, and in some ways so much younger.”
“That is exactly how he makes me feel!”
Angela was exhausted when the conversation ended. They had covered many matters and clarified her world. They had also made it more complicated. Her quick tongue and her “way with words,” as the nuns called it, had caused her to be much more candid than she would have expected. Now she was safer but more vulnerable.
So the days at the Wisconsin shack were uneventful.
For Angela, however, there was one jarring moment that would haunt her for years. She and Tim Gaughan had taken a long and leisurely hike through the forest to the cornfields beyond. Then, instead of retracing their steps to the lake, they walked down a country road and then around to the road that merged with the trail to the shack.
The day, which had started out cool and pleasant, had become hot and humid. Tim said there would be a thunderstorm by nightfall.
“Why don’t we sit down and rest for a few moments,” she suggested. “We don’t have weather like this in Ireland.”
“Sure.”
Perspiration had soaked the light blouse and the short skirt she was wearing.
“Hot,” she complained.
“You’re very beautiful, Angela.”
“Why, thank you, Tim! You may need spectacles, but that’s a nice compliment.”
“Would you mind terribly if I kissed you?”
What do I say now?
“I don’t suppose I’d fight you off . . .”
In fact, come to think of it, Angela wouldn’t mind that, at all, at all.
He put an arm around her, led her face to his, and kissed her very gently. His salty lips rested on hers and she did not resist the sustained contact.
“Thank you, Angela. I liked that a lot.”
Angela had yet to be kissed passionately. She knew that Tim’s kiss was not passionate. It was something less and something more. It had jarred her to the depths of her soul.
“You’re very good at this sort of thing, Timothy,” she said, recovering her smooth, conversational voice. “Lots of practice, doubtless.”
“I love you, Angela. I fell in love with you the day you came into our family. I will always love you.”
He leaped to his feet and walked rapidly toward the shack, uncertain perhaps about what should happen next.
Her first thought was that she would not tell Rosina that night about the kiss. Her second thought was to wonder if Ma had been watching. Would Ma approve? She glanced around hastily. No shadowy or translucent shape. Why did she think of Ma? Because Ma was always watching. She was the only one who might have seen them. Then she wondered if she should have prolonged the kiss. She sighed deeply. They might both be in serious trouble if she had. She rose and, her body now sheathed in perspiration, walked unsteadily back to the shack, went to her room, put on her swimming costume and plunged off the end of the pier into the lake. She swam vigorously halfway across its narrow span and then turned around. Was it a mortal sin?
Nonsense. How could anything so tender possibly be a sin at all?
That night as they all sat on the screen porch watching the stars and she brought glasses of chilled lemonade to the others, she whispered to Tim, “Thank you, that was very nice.”
Would he try to kiss her again? Angela found herself hoping he would.
Compared to the kiss in the sunlight, the naked swim in the starlight was boring. Splashing and giggling and nothing remotely like physical contact, made interesting only by Sir Charles’s unexpected appearance.
And Ma’s.
A woman was next to her in the lake at the edge of the band of four young people and one delighted dog, a woman spun out of starlight and barely there.
“Well now, ain’t you the terrible sinful young woman?”
“I knew you’d be here and yourself hiding there in the lake when himself kissed me?”
“Och, sure, I didn’t think you noticed . . . and isn’t this lake comfortable compared to Galway Bay.”
Sir Charles jabbed at her belly with his big snout and then sniffed for the other human he knew was there but couldn’t quite see.
“Suspicious dog.”
“Any special reason to be here tonight, Ma?”
“Only watching you having fun?”
“You like me fella?”
“And what do I know about matchmaking? Sure you could do worse.”
“And the family, up there in heaven, do they like him?”
“Up isn’t exactly the right word, chiara, but what wouldn’t they like? Now I must be going . . . We love you . . . Always.”
“Just like Timmy?”
“Like but different . . .”
And she was no longer outlined against the stars. Sir Charles barked furiously in protest.
“That was exciting, wasn’t it?” Rosina asked. “What if there were moonlight?”
“Maybe we’ll find out next year.”
Timothy would kiss her again, not on the vacation but at such events as graduations and birthdays. Angela tried to dismiss such contacts as a family exchange of affection. But her lips still tasted his long after he touched them.
The song nights continued with their classmates and other St. Ignatius boys after Tim enrolled at Rush. They were not quite as much fun with Tim up in his room studying anatomy. Now Rosina’s young man, Seamus McGourty, was at Rush too, so they were, as they told each other, temporary widows.
Tim, however, was her partner at the St. Mary’s dinner at the Palmer House.
“I was afraid I might not be asked,” he said ruefully.
“How could I not ask you, even if I wanted not to ask you,” she replied. “I wouldn’t have been able to live in the same house as you.”
It was the kind of remark that made Tim dizzy. She couldn’t keep him in his present position—close enough, but not too close—for much longer. He would graduate from Rush at the age of twenty-one, old enough to marry. She and Rosina planned to attend a “normal” school the nuns had established for their students who showed an interest in schoolteaching, a program that Bishop Muldoon had established. For Rosina it was a career decision, for Angela, a postponed decision. She needed more education before forcing her way into Rush—and before she made up her mind about becoming a doctor. In the latter decision there would be no room for Tim, whom she now loved dearly and in whose closeness to her when they danced quite paralyzed her thoughts.
She often thought about it at night. In three years she had become a happy, adored member of a generous and loving family, graduated from the Academy, led her class academically, learned to read notes, and made many friends—all accomplishments that would have seemed impossible dreams on that cold December evening at the Central Depot. The earlier years of her life had disappeared to the outer fringes of her memory. Soon they would be forgotten altogether, nightmares that had never happened, not really. Ma, Pa, the little kids, the canon, her teacher, Eileen—who were they? She was not better than they were, only more lucky. In two years she would graduate from “normal” school, ready to teach. She would be a good teacher, like her mentor back in Carraroe. Would that not be generous enough? She loved and was loved by a big, handsome, brilliant man with a wonderful smile and innocent blue eyes. They had never spoken of love, much less marriage. Yet, though she still kept him at a respectful distance, they were in fact very close.
Did she have any obligation to give back? She had asked Father Muldoon, who told her that everyone had to choose their own vocation or combination of vocations.
She still slept under her Irish tweed blanket which had become an icon, a reminder, a prayer rug. Timmy had brought it to her after he had it cleaned.
“I thought you might want this,” he had said shyly.
“Thank you very much, Timothy,” she had said, unable to hide her tears. “It reminds me of what I don’t want never to forget.”
“I thought it might.”
That and the rosary which she carried with her everywhere, even to dances.
She patted the loyal Sir Charles.
“We have a lot to decide, don’t we, Charlie?”