Page 18 of Christmas with the Irish Devil
We fall into silence. The fire snaps. A log settles. Somewhere a pipe ticks. The world is a clock. She breaks first. “Tommy heard from a man in Eastie. Torrino’s boy has been visiting the storage bays after hours. You may need to make a call.”
“I already did,” I say. “The call was a bullet.”
She inclines her head. Her eyes shadow. “Then you will make the next call. The one that tells the street this was justice. Not panic.”
“I will,” I say.
She sits now, finally, in the chair across from me. The old roles. Parent and son. General and field officer. “How will you play it?” she asks.
“Wallace had a gambling debt. He took a bridge loan through a Torrino front. They used the marker to pull our union boys off the south pier for two hours a night. In that gap they ran pallets through Bay Six, then laundered through the Clover. I have the manifests. I have two night watchmen ready to swear. The story is simple. A man took money where he should not. He was warned. He ignored the warning. He paid the price. No one else needs to learn a new lesson.”
“The police?” she says.
“Paid to look away. Tired. Understaffed. They will stamp and file and go home. If they come back, they will find nothing worth the walk.”
She nods. “You learned your father’s arithmetic and did not inherit his appetite for headlines. That is to your credit.”
She walks to me. For a second I think she will touch my head the way she did when I was twelve and shaking with anger. Shedoes not. She places two fingers on the rim of my glass and lowers it to the table.
“Enough,” she says. “You need a clear head to decide what boy you are tonight.”
I cover my eyes with my hands.
“Do you love her?”
I do not answer right away. I walk to the window and look at the grounds. The grass shines like an old bottle. A rook lands on the sundial and cocks its head, a small black judge. I put my hands behind my back so she will not see them shake.
“I do,” I say.
“Then you will let her go,” she says.
I turn. “No.”
“You will let her go,” she repeats. “Because if you keep her, she will rot in rooms you do not even notice are dark. She will wear a smile like a knife and you will not see the bleeding until she is on the floor. A woman like her needs clean floors and quiet promises. You can give her neither for long.”
“I can give her protection,” I say.
“Protection is a wall,” my mother says. “It is not a life. And you do not know how to build a door into it.”
“I will learn,” I say, and I hear the boy in my voice and hate him.
She rises. She crosses the room. She puts her hand on my cheek. She has not done that in years. It breaks me a little. “If you love her,” she tells me, steady and soft, “let her go. And if you do not, clean it up before it gets worse.”
8
AOIFE
Early next morning, I pack. Fast. Clean. No inner monologue, because anything I say to myself will only pull out the tears.
The knife roll goes first. I lay it flat on the counter and slot each blade into its pocket. Chef’s knife. Boning. Petty with the little chip near the tip. My fingers are steady. The cotton ties bite my palms when I pull them tight. I add my mother’s old tea towel—white once, now cream with tiny green shamrocks. I knot it like I’m tying off a vein.
Journals next. Not all. Just the ones I can’t leave. The black spiral with the soda bread trials. The cheap notebook with the barmbrack tweaks and the tragic date-night menus that turned into smoke alarms. The small one with the oil stain shaped like a crescent moon. I hesitate over the O’Connell family book. That cracked leather. Those centuries of hands. I should leave it. I don’t. It goes in the bag, under the others, the way a secret goes under the tongue.
Clothes. I don’t think. Two pairs of jeans. The black dress that makes me walk like my grandmother at Mass. Two sweaters. Six pairs of socks. Underwear I won’t be embarrassedto hang on a radiator. The boots that forgive a long day. I take my grandmother’s Claddagh from the dish beside the sink and slide it into my pocket, crown toward my heart without thinking. Old habits are faster than grief.
The fairy lights throw soft gold across the room. They make my tiny place look like it has decided to be kind. I should turn them off. I leave them on. I don’t want the last thing I see of this apartment to be a black, blank wall.
My phone sits on the table, face down. It could be a bomb or a prayer. I do not touch it. A note for the landlord, quick as a ticket—keys in the box, thanks for the radiator that clanks like an old man’s knee. I set it on his mat downstairs. I tie the key to the rail. I breathe.
