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Spirits

Robert E. Donohue

    Snow fell on Christmas Eve. It covered parked cars, lined streets, and drifted through tree branches over paths in the city parks of northern Manhattan. It swirled against apartment building faces, piled high in crystal mounds on fire escapes, and froze at the corners of casement window panes.
    By six o’clock Father hadn’t come home. Green peas simmered on the gas stovetop. Mashed potatoes had clumped and gone cold. Mother turned off the burner and placed fried pork chops in a white china casserole and added the potatoes and peas. She covered the dish with an aluminum pie plate and slid the whole into the oven.
    “Thoughtless man,” she mumbled.
    We sat at table and waited. Owen fidgeted. Patricia sat opposite me; Deidre at the far end—her usual place. She called the distance from us “forced exile” though none of us ever suggested that she remain apart. I was seventeen and the eldest. Patricia and Deirdre, twins, were sixteen months younger. Owen was not yet three. We were Irish-Americans, our parents both immigrants.
    I’d long ago set the table. Plates, cutlery, and slightly stained cloth napkins sat on a yellow plastic tablecloth. There were gouges at the edges of the wooden tabletop Owen had gnawed when teething.
    I knew that Mother, seated in her chair nearest the stove, was anxious to get to our cousins’, the Dolans, for our family Christmas eggnog celebration.
    “Enough!” she said. “Patricia, please serve.”
    Pat nodded and filled our plates.
    Deirdre rolled soggy peas around a tiny mound of potatoes. She wore a gray wool cap with earflaps tied at the top. She had knotted the cords and secured their frayed wool strands with a safety pin she’d taken from Mother’s Infant of Prague statue. Her hand pressed at her face; her blue polo shirt, with faded white lettering, was several sizes too large for her slight frame. She twirled ends of her hair with thumb and forefinger.
    Patricia trimmed gristle and fat from Owen’s pork chop, setting the center bone aside. She cut the meat to small pieces as he waited, barely contained, staring at the plate. He kicked wildly and clutched his toddler spoon and fork in his hands.
    “Be still, darlin,” Mother said.
    A florescent bulb buzzed above our heads. Mother rose and went to her room. It was understood Patricia would mind Owen, who grimaced, knowing he would be in her firm care. Deirdre’s potatoes and peas congealed to a marble-like solid. She poured ketchup over the mix. Patricia placed bits of meat in Owen’s hand, which he shoved into his mouth.
    Shortly after Mother left, Patricia lifted my brother, and he raced to the living room. She called to him, “I’ll be in to take you for your bath when I’m done here, Little Itch, so don’t get into that toy box of yours.”
    Deirdre drifted away.
    Patricia and I cleared the table and began washing dishes. The plaintive sound of Percy Mayfield slid along the narrow hall from a record player Deirdre had won at a church bazaar near Tenth Avenue the previous summer. I washed and Patricia dried. She spoke of a book report she had prepared on Thomas Merton’s The Seven Storey Mountain. We kept an eye on Owen, who lay on the floor next to Mother’s parlor chair, drawing with crayons onto the pages of a speckled notebook Deirdre had purchased for him. I heard the clatter of our rotary phone dialing from outside my parents’ bedroom.
    Years ago, when my grandmother had lived with us, the telephone company had fitted our phone with an amplifier to compensate for her loss of hearing. After she died my father neglected to have them remove the piece. Calls made, or received, in our home could still be heard throughout the apartment.
    “Hello.” I recognized my cousin Gwen’s voice. “This is the Dolans’ residence.”
    “It’s Aunt Ceci,” my mother said. “Will you put your mother on, dear?”
    Ten months separated the sisters, Maeve and Cecelia Ahearn, who had been locked at the hip since infancy. Mother was the elder; Aunt Maeve was the more grounded, given to romance novels and Sunday sherry tastings. She was also a master at Times’ crossword puzzles. Mother, the more restless, was prone to anxiety, convinced life presented risks that needed constant attention.
    The sisters had married on the same day at Our Lady Queen of Martyrs Church. Aunt Maeve had wed Walter Dolan, a Fordham University graduate, and my mother had wed Timothy O’Dwyer, an A&P Supermarket clerk six days a week and piano player at Sheehan’s Pub on Friday and Saturday nights.
    “Maeve, has Michael come home? I called Tim at his job and the girl said he left with Michael hours ago.”
    Patricia stacked plates in the metal sideboard cabinet, making a racket. I shushed her. She glared, but quieted her work.
    “Mike’s not here. When are you coming for the eggnog?” Maeve said.
    “We’re not ready to do the eggnog. I told you that Tim and Michael left work together.”
    “Well, they’re not here.”
    “Tim knows we’re to do the eggnog. I hoped maybe he had Michael drive him straight to your place.”
    “Maybe they stopped at O’Rourke’s,” Maeve said.
    “Tim wouldn’t dare. Frank O’Rourke knows Michael’s underage.”
    “He’s served him before.”
    “Oh dear, Maeve, if I call O’Rourke’s Tim will have Frank deny that he’s there. Can you send one of the kids to the corner?”
    “Kevin! Go up to O’Rourke’s and see if Uncle Tim and your brother are there. Tell your uncle that Aunt Ceci’s here and she wants him.”
    “Mom, Aunt Ceci’s not here.”
    “Kevin, just do as I say!”
    Seconds later, Maeve continued. “Kevin’s on the way. Did you know today was the A&P Christmas party?”
    “Christmas party? They’re at that party and getting drunk then, the two of them. They’re not at O’Rourke’s at all. How will they get home in this weather? That man’s a fool.”
    “Michael is driving, Ceci, not Tim.”
    “Michael will drink when he realizes his uncle’s too drunk to care. Where is the party?”
    “Michael told me last week. Yonkers—the Pink Elephant, by Getty Square. But it started at 1:30. It’s long over by now.”
    “In Yonkers? Can Gwen drive me? I hate to ask with the snow and all, but I can’t let that man do this.”
    “She’ll be there in ten minutes. But Cecelia, before you go say a prayer and take some Phenobarbital.”
    “He never got the tree, never bought Owen’s Matchbox cars. The lights are still in the basement. No tree in the living room and he’s getting himself and your poor boy drunk. There’s no Christ in that man’s Christmas whatsoever.”
    “Prayer and Phenobarbital,” Maeve said.
    Mother called me to her room. She sat on a tufted bedcover, her ample hips sunk deep in the mattress. It cradled her as she stared at her feet, or perhaps the linoleum. She raised her head. Lips set pencil-line straight, a writing pad on her lap, the words Yonkers and stewed written out.
    “Francis, get the statue of the Virgin. Take your sisters and brother into the living room and the four of you say the rosary until I’m back.”
    A framed print of a dolorous Madonna and infant Jesus hung above my parents’ bed. The Virgin’s eyes gazed off at some vision I always wondered at.
    I asked where Father was, though I knew.
    “Never mind! I’ll be back in an hour. You and the others say the rosary until then.”
    “This isn’t good, Mom, you popping into bars, looking for Dad by yourself. I’m going with you.”
    “You can’t,” she said.
    “I’m not asking. Patricia will watch Owen. Deirdre is fine alone.”
    She placed the pad on the end table and turned the lamp off. The room darkened. She went into the bathroom and ran water in the sink.
    I heard Deirdre shuffle down the narrow hall. We met near the kitchen. She sat on the floor, her back braced at the apartment door. She fitted galoshes over her flip-flops. A green threadbare scarf was wrapped around her neck; the gray wool cap was in place.
    “We having Christmas this year?” she asked.
    “Where do you think you’re going?” I said. “Dad’s not well. Tell Patricia that when Owen is out of the bath she’s to watch him until we get back. Mom wants you all to say the rosary.”
    “What about the eggnog? The whole family hug affair?” She smirked.
    “No eggnog, or Christmas. We may be having a wake if it’s as bad as it sounds,” I said.
    “The old man shitfaced?”
    “Stop talking like that,” I said.
    Deirdre stared over my shoulder. Her eyes glazed, moist, but without tears. Her lips formed a puzzling smile.
    A muffled car horn beeped three times outside.
    “I’m coming with you,” Deirdre said.
    Mom was at the door. She stared at Deirdre. I thought she would object, but she did not. She lifted a handkerchief from her dress pocket and wiped sweat from her chin. She took a scarf and gloves from the closet and handed us our coats.
    “Both of you are to remain silent unless spoken to. Pay no attention to anything that’s said, and stay in the car unless I say otherwise.”
    I nodded. Deirdre was still. I wondered at the ease of Deirdre’s sway. How was it I needed to plead with Mother where Deirdre asserted? How was it she merely appropriated what it was she wanted?
    Patricia appeared, holding Owen, his wet, wiggly body wrapped in a bath towel. I could tell she knew what was up and what was expected of her.
    “Patricia, you take the child to the Rosens’ after the rosary. Ask Ida if you can stay there until we return,” Mother said.
    She opened a window in the kitchen and called to the black-and-white Ford idling in the street below, “We’re on our way.”
    We left the apartment building and walked carefully to the car, which was parked just outside the lobby door in six inches of snow. I helped Mother into the front passenger seat.
    “Hi, Aunt Ceci,” Gwen said.
    “Hello dear. Thank you so much, I really appreciate . . .”
    “No, it’s fine. I’m glad to do it,” Gwen said.
    My sister and I stood huddled in the cold, Deirdre shivering as we waited for the rear passenger doors to open. I tapped the passenger window, and Gwen flipped the locks.
    “Hi Frankie. Hi, Dee.”
    Deirdre nodded. I smiled. We slid onto the mammoth rear seat. Deirdre sat close to the far door, her legs folded beneath her. She opened and closed the armrest ashtray cover repeatedly. The noise of the aluminum against the tin base grew more irritating as the taut spring attached to the lid snapped and screeched. When I looked at the rearview mirror, I saw Mom’s eyes like slits, her face rigid in feigned calm.
    “Do you know where we’re going, sweetie?” she asked Gwen.
    “Broadway all the way to Getty Square.”
    “Yes dear. That’s right. You’ll need to take care though. It’s looking dangerous out there—the snow and ice and all,” Mother said.
    “Don’t worry, Aunt Ceci.”
    “I don’t remember this car. Is this your father’s?”
    “No, it’s Billy Whalen’s—my boyfriend. He’s at college. Can’t drive in freshman year, so he asked me to—”
    “Do you know where Getty Square is?” Mother interrupted.
    “Yes. I promise I’ll get you there. Sit back and relax.”
    “Thank you, honey. I’d close my eyes and pray a little, but I’m afraid of the icy roads, so I’ll keep them open and be quiet. Are you sure you’re okay to drive?”
    “Yes, I’m fine. Try to relax.”
    “You two okay in the back?”
    She did not turn. I nodded. Deirdre continued to flip the ashtray lid and I felt sure the spring would break, or I would scream. But this wasn’t the time for argument. For a moment I wondered when the time ever had been right for arguing with Deirdre: never.
    “I’ll sit quiet. I’ll just sit and say a prayer,” Mother said.
    We drove six miles along Broadway to the bar. The radio played Christmas favorites mixed with popular songs. I noticed how comfortable Deirdre seemed, looking at whatever it was she saw out the car window as we drove through the night. Was it the holiday store lights, the gray-white sameness of snow-covered cars, the spray of slush thrown off by the occasional sanitation truck that passed? I suspected there was something vivid going on in her head—something I would never grasp.
    “It’s just up ahead, Gwen. Let me off in front of that neon sign and I’ll be right back,” Mother said.
    She turned and stared at us. Deirdre avoided her gaze.
    “You two stay here. Francis, watch the front door and I’ll wave if I need help.”
    “Be careful getting out. Watch the curb,” Gwen said. “The snow’s piling up—sidewalk’s icy.”
    Mother inched across the pavement and entered the Pink Elephant through a lacquered black door fringed with blue plastic holly leaves. A red Bristol board sign that read Makin It Merry at the Elephant was attached to the door. She soon reappeared and waved to me. Gwen sat on the front bumper, smoking a cigarette. Deirdre remained in the car.
    “I don’t like what I see in here one bit. Stay close and let me talk,” Mother said.
    I opened the door and stepped into the overheated space. A smell of beer and whiskey and the pinched odor of urine flooded from inside. As dark as it was near the door, the barroom seemed darker. Several men slouched at the bar. Shelves were stacked with liquor bottles. Draught taps sat at the center of the bar. A dim glow behind the bartender offered little light.
    Mother’s breathing was audible. She spoke to the bartender, a bald stout man. The sweat on his forehead glistened. He wore a green collared polo shirt and red striped apron. His stomach bulged. He appeared childlike—facial skin smooth and blemish-free—he looked like a sweating baby in an overgrown man’s body.
    “Excuse me, where is the billiards room?” Mother asked.
    “In the back.” He pointed. “You looking for someone?”
    “Thank you. I’ll see for myself.”
    I saw a beam of light down a narrow corridor. A door swung open and a small man in a tattered, red-hooded pullover stumbled forward. He hurried past. Other men were visible through the door.
    “He’s there!” Mother said.
    “Lady, you looking for someone?” the bartender asked.
    He muttered to the men at the bar, who were focused exclusively on their drinks.
    “Somebody’s in the shitter for sure,” one of them mumbled.
    Mother moved quickly. I followed. I saw my father, his right leg lifted at the edge of a pool table, his left leg settled on the floor. The heel of his hand rested on the felt cover; a pool cue draped across the fingers of his right hand. His body was stretched as he readied himself to take a shot.
    “Tim?” Mother said.
    He thrust the cue forward, missing the ball, and turned, startled. He fell back and rolled from the table, bracing himself and avoiding falling to the floor. As he struggled to right himself, he smiled.
    “Ceci! Ceci! Cecelia!” He sang, “Does your mother know you’re out Cecelia? Does she know that I’m about to steal ya?”
    “Tim, stop it. Get outside. Where’s Michael?”
    Father placed the pool cue in a corner and stared, as if he didn’t recognize me. He gazed down the long hall at the backs of the men at the bar.
    “Cecelia, why don’t you and your friend have a drink? Remember Bear Mountain Lodge? Remember how much fun?”
    “My friend? He’s your own son, you idiot! Get outside, or I’m calling the priest. Just get outside this minute! It’s Christmas Eve—for God’s sake, Tim. Christ’s birthday. Where’s Michael?”
    “Michael who?”
    “Your nephew, you old fool.”
    “Oh, you mean Michael Dolan. See you didn’t use the lad’s surname. There’s lots of Michaels out there, but there’s only one Michael Dolan. You forgot the Dolan part. Men need respect. You sure you won’t have a drink, Cecelia? I could . . .”
    Mother shouted toward the barroom, “Bartender, help us here, please!”
    “Right there, Ma’am.”
    My father leaned against a cigarette machine; his knees buckled. The barman took hold and twisted him about.
    “Okay now, Timothy, outside like Mother says.”
    “Am I cut off? Cause if I’m cut off . . .”
    “You, Tim? Cut off? Never. It’s Christmas is all. The family needs you to put up the tree. Get the kids’ presents ready. You know like you said before, Christmas is all about the kids, remember? You got to be home with them.”
    “I love my kids. I love my kids. Anybody says I don’t love my kids . . . What’s your name?”
    “Guenther!”
    “What? Guenther? What the hell kind of name is that? You a Kraut?”
    “Tim, shut up, for God’s sake!” Mother said. “Show some respect. Thank you Guenther, I appreciate . . . Francis, give a hand with your father.”
    “Where the hell’s Frankie? Time he was tossing back a few with his old man. Can’t spare the time to have a drink with his father? When I was his age I’d . . .”
    “Francis, hold him steady,” Mother said.
    Then she added, “Guenther, will you kindly see if my nephew Michael is in the men’s room and tell him we’re leaving?”
    “Yes Ma’am, of course.”
    The outside was bracing cold, but I felt free as we stumbled toward the car.
    “Hi, Uncle Tim,” Gwen said. “In the back with you—nice and warm there.”
    “Gwennie! Where’s Billy? Were you and Billy at the party? I didn’t see your Billy at the party. You kids getting married? Is he mad at me too? Is Billy mad, Gwennie?” He sang, “Who’s sorry now? Who’s sorry now?”
    Deirdre sat, her back pressed at the inside of the car door. She began flipping the ashtray lid again. Her eyes bore into Father’s and his were fixed on hers. His face went slack, with a turn at the corner of his mouth as though sadness had suddenly taken him. I thought he might cry. He had one knee on the back seat and a hand on the rim of the door entrance, unable, or unwilling, to move, staring at Deirdre, as Mother shoved from behind.
    “This one of your girlfriends, Gwen?” he asked.
    “For God’s sake, Tim, will you shut up!” Mother gave a forceful push at his rear end.
    Deirdre grinned. Father’s hand came free; his body twisted and he dropped into the back seat. Deirdre stood in the floorboard well. She watched as Father fell across the bench. Mother and I propped him to a sitting position. Mother sat on his right. I was on his left, and Deirdre, half on my knee, wedged herself against the door.
    My cousin Michael appeared. The bartender held him beneath his armpits and shoveled him across the icy sidewalk.
    “Mush!” he shouted as he moved Mike to the car. Gwen grabbed hold of her brother, and he tumbled into the front passenger seat. The bartender took the pool cue Mike had removed from the bar.
    “Tim, you’re going to hell for what you did to that boy,” Mother said
    “Me? Never gave the boy a drop.”
    He stared at Deirdre, and she at him.
    Mike turned to Mother. “Aunt Ceci, I am sorry. Did I miss the eggnog?”
    “Michael, where are your car keys?”
    He fumbled in both pockets of his bomber jacket until he found a metal loop with keys and a Saint Christopher medal attached.
    “Give those to your sister. Now, we’re taking you and Uncle Tim home.”
    Gwen opened the glove box and thrust the keys inside. She started the engine. The heater motor roared and the windows clouded at once.
    “Oh God, Aunt Ceci, does my mother know I’m drinking?”
    “Hey, Einstein,” Gwen said, “I hope you enjoyed yourself at the Elephant, because there’s a special Hell waiting at home.”
    “Does your mother know you’re out Cecelia?” Father sang.
    Deirdre cleared a circle in the condensation of the rear window with the end of the sweater sleeve she bunched about her knuckles. My father’s gaze remained on her. Her grin widened. She turned and stared at the rear window and the night outside. She untied her cap’s knots. The flaps fell about her ears and the sides of her face.
    “Does she know that I’m about to steal ya?” she sang.

* * *

    It was eleven at night when Patricia’s husband, Ed, called to let me know. Deirdre was gone. She died at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. When the phone rang I knew what I would hear, and though relieved at the end of her suffering, and my own, I feared I hadn’t done enough.
    Countless treatment centers and rehabs, run-ins with police, stolen family valuables, novenas and rosaries, petitions to every conceivable support group. Her spiral lasted five years from the day our mother died.
    “Pat said you’re not to feel it’s your fault,” Ed continued. “She’d tell you herself, but she won’t come out from beneath the bedclothes. Is there anything you need, Frank?”
    “No. Thanks. What does the hospital want from us?”
    “Nothing for now. I’ll take care of the funeral people in the morning. They’ll need to know about visiting hours and if Deirdre’s to be buried with your parents and brother?”
    “Mom would insist on a wake. If Patricia agrees, tell them Deirdre’s to be with Mom, Dad, and Owen. I’ll convince Father McMahon to come to the funeral parlor and pray with us. Thanks again, Ed. I have to go—I need time and quiet. Tell Patricia I’m heartsick for her. She knows she has my love. Good night.”
    I sat, my feet frozen to the floor. My hands shook as I clasped my fingers together and buried my face in them. Whatever held me intact to that moment vanished.

* * *

    I last saw my sister early one morning, months ago, as I walked to the subway. Spotted her through the window of Daly’s on a stool, arms flailing as she regaled her bar mates. Her hair was matted—filthy. Three glasses of beer and as many shot glasses before her. The dissolute look of her I’d come to know frightened me anew. She wore a tattered blouse that had been Patricia’s. It was torn at the collar and shoulder seams. Her lower teeth were gone. As she noticed me, her smile dissolved. She slid from the stool and stumbled toward the window. I recognized her rage, but as she screamed at me the windowpane muffled her venom. I understood the feeling though. I cast my eyes to the ground, turned, and walked away with a knot in my stomach and a ringing in my ears that lasted for blocks.
    Those were her final words to me. God knows what they were.

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