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They took a cab, an expense people in that part of the city could not afford, though there was ample traffic on the streets: hand carts, people selling their wares; worn-out horses harnessed to all manner of business conveyances; and a lot of food traffic. But as expected, their more upscale vehicle drew a fair amount of attention, which was dangerous enough. Add to that the possibility someone would recognize her father, or at the very least, think they had money, and Maire soon realized dressing as a man was a good idea. Though there were certainly plenty of women about in the slums. Ragpickers, her father called them. But with the color of her hair and the quality of her dress, she would have stuck out like a sore thumb.
Her father pulled the collar of his coat up high and dragged his hat down over his face to conceal himself. The building they halted before was nothing but a ruin. She reached across for his hand, and he clenched it tight.
His Irish burr picked up when he spoke. “T’is where Mama an' I lived.”
The air blew frosty from his breath, dissipating into the sky alongside the smoke of a hundred chimneys and icy alleyways. Debris scattered around scorched doorways attested to the building’s failed battle with time, decay, and whatever fire had ultimately destroyed it.
“Which room, Papa?” she asked.
He pointed upward. “Third floor on the corner.”
A boy of about seven skipped by the base of the building, his younger brother on his heels. They were hardly clothed for such temperatures.
Maire plunged her hands further into her padded pockets. “There are so many children here,” she said.
Her father sighed. “T’was that way then. Ye lived just to survive,” he said. “Mama used to hang laundry out that side.” He drew a line in the air between the buildings. “She’d take in cleanin’ for pay, but wash that of the poorest people too, those who couldn’t do it for themselves. Didn’t make a penny off it. T’was good will, she’d always say.”
“When she died where did you go?” Gerritt asked.
“Here and there. Mostly there.” He laughed softly. Leaning forward, he tapped the driver, who snapped the reins. The wheels of the vehicle clacked across the pavement.
“Slums” was a fitting word. Buildings strained against each other for space and the fight to endure, only to lose to decline and death – unstoppable processes that affected both the people living there and their accommodations. Boys, men, young girls, and older ladies hung out open windows, watching them pass, their faces lined with age and dirt. Their pockets empty.
Where was the holiday for these people?
“What did you eat for Thanksgiving?” her brother asked.
“Whatever we could find, son.” Their father’s voice, curiously, returned to its normal tone. “You knew the holiday had come, but it was hard to find something to be thankful for except each other.”
The driver stopped at the corner of a vacant building. Her father looked across her at Gerritt and inclined his head. “Where I met your mama.”
Gerritt leaned forward. “Can we ... go in?”
Her father hesitated, whether from memories or for safety’s sake, she couldn’t tell, but eventually, he sighed and dismounted. She struggled to walk after him, her borrowed pants difficult to walk in. Her brother had laughed at her waddling motions, and Gerritt gave her an appraising glance.
They slipped in the entrance and her father pulled up short. Pushing his hat back, he glanced toward the far end of the room. Their mirth died.
“What is it, Papa?” she asked.
He scuffed his feet as he walked. “She stayed up there.” A staircase leaning on broken spindles stretched along the far wall. “But this ...” His voice caught, and he coughed. “This is where it all began.”
“Where what began, sir?”
He glanced at Gerritt. “The fight where I killed a man.”
The quiet that descended choked the room, and standing there, Maire tried to picture it. Gerritt’s mama, Amber, living here, or her Papa fighting, but she couldn’t. She walked up beside him, and he draped an arm over her shoulders.
“What happened, Papa?”
He gripped her tighter. “I lost my temper. I started out defending Amber and ended up not knowing when to stop. Gerritt’s real father saw the whole thing.”
Gerritt walked ahead of them into the opening to the alleyway. It was an extremely narrow place, brick walls but arms’ lengths apart towering up to the sky. “What do I write about this?” he asked. “I will say as much or as little as you want.”
“You write,” her father said without turning around, “about God’s grace. You write how I stabbed a man in the gut, yet God forgave me. You write how He blessed me with a beautiful wife, two great friends, and three wonderful children.”
Gerritt turned about, his expression perplexed “But I am not yours, sir.”
“You married my daughter, and that is good enough.”
Gerritt nodded. “Thank you. I guess if you think about it, if not for the events of that night I wouldn’t be here.”
“Nor I,” Michael said.
“None of us.” Maire laid her head on her father’s shoulder. “We love you, Papa.”
And Michael O’Fallen, the man with the Golden Voice, began to cry.
Gerritt’s pencil flew across the page, words and sentences spilling from his head. He had to get it all down, write all these thoughts pressing on him before they evaporated. And as he wrote, it came to him how like life today’s excursion was.
We go through our days, he wrote, with images in our minds of how things were. People never age. Time never changes. Always, things are exactly the same. When all along they advance, they revise without waiting. And so the very things in those memories that we combat, the things that shadow us, aren’t anymore what they were at all.
He halted to stretch his fingers and readjust his pencil.
In essence we are afraid of what isn’t there. My mother has done this for years. She holds in her heart her memories of New York, of my real father, and all the horror of her past, when the building is but an empty a shell.
Take also myself and Maire. I gave up everything for her. My writing. My future. My pictured plans. When there was no baby, I felt our marriage was false, and I ran. But I was wrong.
God took Michael O’Fallen’s life and created a whole family – people who love him for who he is, not for how well he can sing, or how much money he has, and I love Maire just the same, for who she is, not for what I decided we’d have.
He stared down at the words. Had he just written that? That he loved her? But the flutter in his chest said it was true.
I love Maire O’Fallen Finnegan, my wife, and someday when the time is right, I’ll tell her so.
“Did you see the crowd?” Michael called from across the room backstage. “All these people are here for you, Papa.”
“For us,” their father said.
Maire’s stomach pitched at the thought, and she bent over at the waist. The increasing rumble of voices from the auditorium attested to his words and added to her discomfort. Hundreds of people, maybe a thousand even, and lights on her. And eyes on her. All the planning in the world, all the walk-throughs beforehand, all the practice with the orchestra, didn’t make that any easier.
She held herself upright, though her legs were about to give way. She would not embarrass her father in this. Gerritt. Where was Gerritt? Revolving in her position, she sought the doorway for his face.
“Maire? You all right?” her brother called.
No, she wasn’t. She would pass out or puke one. “I don’t know how you eat this up like you do,” she mumbled. “I think I might lose my lunch.” If she’d had any lunch to lose. The best she had been able to manage to get down at their last meal was a handful of crackers.
“Take a deep breath or you will ...”
The door opened mid-sentence, and Gerritt walked in. She threw herself at him. He stumbled backward with her in his arms. “I’m going to die,” she said, “Die of fright and then of embarrassment.”
He laughed softly. “You’ll be fine.”
“Only if you hold my hand.” She smashed her cheek to his suit coat.
“That will look great. Won’t it? This isn’t supposed to be a comedy.”
She attempted to laugh, but it came out flat and affected. “Oh,” she moaned, “I can’t do this.”
Peeling himself away from her, he grasped hold of her cheeks. “Maire Finnegan, get a hold of yourself. Do what you did at home. You weren’t nervous then.”
No. Because she was looking at him. At that moment, he was the only person in the entire room. That night seemed like years ago now.
“Where will you be?” she asked.
His brows drew together. “On the front row with your mother. Why?”
“I have to see you.”
He smiled. “I’ll be right there, looking only at you. How’s that?”
She craned her neck back. “Gerritt, kiss me.”
His eyes grew wide. “Here? In front of your family?” He lowered his voice with the question.
“You kissed me in front of them before.”
“Yes, but that was our wedding.”
She tugged at his lapel, and he shifted his position to relieve the strain on his neck.
“Please, Gerritt, it’s necessary.”
He raised his gaze over her shoulder. She could imagine the looks he was getting from her father and brother. But then, her stomach squirmed again, so she tossed her caution aside.
“Kiss me,” she begged, all too loudly.
He tilted her chin and lowered his lips to her mouth. Parting her lips she beckoned him in and her head purged, all conscious thought fleeing in an instant. It was only him and her and this moment. She clung to him, her urgent need driving her forward. He pulled away at last, and the warmth he left behind engulfed her.
He gazed down into her eyes. “That better?”
“Uh huh.”
His chuckle joined with that of her father and brother from the other side of the room. He took her hand and raised it to his lips. “Sing like an angel, my wife, I will be listening.” And with that, he was gone.
She stood in place, staring at the door, then turned herself about.
Her father’s eyes were twinkling alongside her brother’s. She raised her chin. “Think what you will,” she said. “I’ve seen both of you at your weakest, and I have stories.”
Gerritt seated himself, giving a smile to Anne O’Fallen. She was an old hand at this, but he didn’t know what to expect. He certainly hadn’t expected Maire’s reaction to his appearance, nor the performance she put on. He sighed. She always found a way to make him do things he would never do. Up. Down. Up. Down. One minute they avoided each other. The next they’re kissing. Everyone probably thought they were crazy.
The room darkened and the chatter of the crowd fell to a lull. The orchestra picked up a tune. He recognized it as the love song Michael sang to his wife. He glanced at Anne for her reaction, but found her face riveted on the stage.
The curtains parted and he started to see Maire standing there, alone. This wasn’t Maire’s song. It was her father’s.
“What?” he whispered, and felt a hand on his sleeve. He glanced over at Anne, only to see her nod toward the stage.
“Good evening,” Maire said. “My name is Maire O’Fallen Finnegan. Michael O’Fallen is my father. You would expect him to lead off this concert, but I begged permission to change the order of things.” She skimmed across the stage. “Rumors spread about us, many of them untrue, but the one about his reluctance to appear in public isn’t one of them. I’m afraid I have the same bug. I haven’t his charisma or that thing that draws people to him either. What I do have, all I need, is seated on the front row.”
She met his eyes. “This is for you Gerritt Finnegan.”
“'‘Tis the last rose of summer,
Left blooming alone ...”*
She came from everywhere and nowhere at once, her voice as pure and clear as the beating of his heart, and she filled his being until, overwhelmed, his senses lay exposed and raw before him. He tasted her lips again, ambrosia on his tongue, and held the curve of her spine as it shaped beneath his hands. His desire rose up, an ache that stung his nostrils and blurred his vision.
The song ended to enthusiastic applause, and her father emerged and kissed her on the cheek. Yet even then, Gerritt sat there unable to move, unable to think of anything else but the love grown so great inside he might burst.
The concert proceeded. Her father sang and then her brother. Her brother brought a standing ovation from the crowd. Gerritt wasn’t surprised; Michael was the best. Maire returned afterward to sing a song in Gaelic with her father and another with her brother.
And all through the remaining performances, his body pumped its demand for satisfaction of this thirst, this appetite that choked him. He sailed through the time on the crest of it, barely conscious of the closing song, or the hush that came after Michael’s greatest hour.
He had but one thought, one passion, to quench the hunger raging within.
Maire rose into Gerritt’s arms, her legs wrapped about his hips as he closed the door with his foot. “You were perfect,” he mumbled into her neck. He careened across the room and deposited her on the dresser, the mirror pressing cold onto her back.
Her senses reeled, his fervor biting her lips and dragging at her tongue. “Gerritt,” she said in a breath, and gasped when his kisses traveled down her throat.
His hands pushed hot on her flesh, sliding her skirt up her calves and over her thighs, possessing her more with each movement until her breath fled with a hiss. She pulsed against him, straining at release from whatever storm swirled inside her at the touch of his fingertips.
But, her mind tore in two, her body responding outside of the terror building in her head. She ignored it. This was his right, to claim her, and he’d been patient. He’d never asked of her what she wouldn’t give. She was his wife, and she loved him.
He rose before her, his eyes black with desire, and lifted her bottom, sticky, from the dresser and headed toward the bed. “I need you, Maire,” he said. “Now. Like this.”
This. The word splintered in her brain. This. This. This. This. And the horror returned. The dock. The water swishing underneath. The wood cutting into her bottom. The slap of his flesh as that man took her again and again and again.
A scream fled from her throat. Clawing, kicking, and pummeling with her fists, she sought escape. “No, I can’t. Stop. Don’t touch me.”
Her mind unreasonable, her eyesight lost in the darkness of her thoughts, it wasn’t Gerritt’s face she saw any longer, but his – Daniel Boon.
“Let me go. I won’t do this. You have no right.”
Gerritt grabbed Maire’s wrists and held them tight. Where had he misstepped? And what had he done wrong?
She stared up blankly at him, fear framed in her vision.
“Maire,” he said, “It’s me, Gerritt.”
But, she was lost to him, gone some place he couldn’t follow, some place she didn’t know how to slip away. She screamed again, blood curdling, and it scraped him to the bone.
“Maire, it’s all right,” he pleaded. Yet, the words leaving his mouth, he knew that wasn’t true. The very thing he feared the most had happened.
She punched him, and he let her, her fists smacking hard on his chest and thudding along his jaw, her nails scratching his neck. His tears flowed. He couldn’t fix this. He couldn’t fix her. He couldn’t make it all disappear, and slowly, like an infection, it was destroying them.
“I hate you,” she shrieked. “I hate you. I hate you.”
The crash of the door sent him spinning around and Maire flying to her feet.
“What are you doing to her?” Michael yelled. “I knew it. I just knew something was going on. All this time, you’ve been hiding it. My own best friend ... and I almost believed you.”
“You leave him be.” Maire turned on her brother. Thrashing him with her fists, she attacked him in a rage. “He’s all I have. He saved me, saved me, and you didn’t. You were gone, but he was there for me. He drove the dreams away. He made me safe. He protected me. And I love him. Let him be. Let him be. Let him be.”
Michael stood there stunned. “What ... what is she talking about?”
Gerritt stood to his feet. Coming up behind her, he grasped her by the waist, and tenderly, he turned her about. Seating himself on the bed, he wrapped her tight against him and stroked her head. Sobs shook her frame. “It’s all right, Maire,” he crooned. “You’re safe. There’s no one here to hurt you. No one. He’s gone now, and he’s never coming back.”
He rocked her back and forth, murmuring in her ear, while inconsolable, she cried.
Two shadows appeared at the door, and he glanced into the face of her parents. Sorrow welled up, a pasty lump in his throat. He took hold of her face and forced her gaze upward. Her eyes shone red, her face crimson. He wiped at her tears with his thumbs.
“Maire,” he said, “We have to tell them. They deserve to know.”
“No,” she wailed, “It’s my secret. Mine.”
He kissed her forehead. “It’s our secret, Maire, and they’ll love you anyway. I can’t do this alone anymore. I need their help.”
She collapsed against him, clutching at his shirt. “Please, don’t.” But her protest was feeble.
He raised his head. “Please,” he said, “sit, and I’ll explain.”