Jim Fusilli - Digby, Attorney At Law

After seven years of night study, Francis Michael Digby was graduated from the Rutgers School of Law, Newark, and some time thereafter, admitted to the New Jersey Bar. His modest ambition already spent, he hung his shingle outside a storefront below the cold-water flat in which he was born in 1927, some thirty-five years ago, and settled into the agreeable life of a small-town lawyer.

With his family providing references, Digby became the attorney of choice among the Narrows Gate Irish who hadn’t escaped when the piers and factories began to shutter. Often, he was asked to represent both parties to a grievance. Thus it was with the Rooneys.

“A cross I need not bear,” Mary Catherine Rooney summarized with a terse nod.

“Seeing as I’m pushed beyond the brink of dignity…” Leaky Rooney explained when he turned up at day’s end, surprisingly sober and equally resolute.

Though Leaky and Mary Catherine seemed opposites-he gray, wiry, and devilish, she blonde, stout, and considerate-they were of a like mind on the issue at hand: Divorce was the only solution. Both parties instructed Digby to draw up papers.

Twice he nodded his compliance, pausing each time to wipe clean his wire bifocals. Eight years with Mary Catherine at St. Matty’s Elementary told him she wouldn’t budge while angry. Though drink could render him sentimental, Leaky, an emigre from Hell’s Kitchen across the Hudson, had a notorious and unpredictable temper. When Artie Meehan backed his Buick into Mary Catherine’s cart at the A P, Rooney took a baby sledgehammer to his collarbone. His arm and shoulder in a cast that made it appear he’d sprouted a plaster wing, Meehan came to Digby demanding redress. A civil suit would prove worthless, the attorney advised. What would you gain but his lasting enmity? Subsequently, Meehan moved down the shore, precise address unknown.

Now, their meeting at its end, Digby dropped his hands on his desk and hoisted out of his chair. “However regrettable, it is as you wish, Mr. Rooney,” he intoned, offering him a dark cloud of finality. Then, claiming a late meeting at City Hall, he headed to Franziska’s, intent on a steak sandwich dripping with buttery au jus and a mound of crisp onion rings.

Over seconds on side orders of roasted mushrooms and red cabbage, Digby deliberated. In matters such as Rooney v. Rooney, neither party actually wanted to nullify the marriage-he couldn’t cite precedent for divorce among the Narrows Gate Irish-and so a visit to his office was provocation, escalation and, ipso facto, part of the dance toward forgiveness. Digby understood his role was to bring them together, compelling dialogue. Inevitably, if only by the play of chance, a kindness would ensue and a spark would rise from the ashes. Then Digby would withdraw, returning to his role as public defender in minor criminal matters, filing Worker’s Compensation claims against the mighty Jerusalem Steel, and cozying deeper into the silky embrace of his undemanding life.

As he took the Buchanan Avenue jitney down to the eight o’clock showing of Taras Bulba at the Avalon, Digby decided he’d talk first to Mary Catherine, hoping her indignation had wavered. She’d once been a hazel-eyed beauty, and he remembered how she’d cried in class the day Roosevelt died. He assumed that somewhere beneath her now-matronly bosom remained a kind heart. He was confident she’d see her Leaky was pitiable in the first degree.

Digby bought a box of Good ‘n’ Plenty at the concession stand, nestled under a heating duct in the balcony, and as the Coming Attractions began to blare, fell into a deep, satisfied sleep.

While Digby dozed, Leaky Rooney was invited to leave the Shamrock. Throwing back another shot of Four Roses, he’d fallen off his stool and, arms windmilling, landed squarely on O’Boyle’s dog, a fourteen year old named Rat Catcher.

Her yelping echoing in his ears, Rooney drifted into the quiet alley behind the bar. As he ruffled sawdust out of his hair, the silence was broken, and he spun in dread, fearing he’d just heard his late mother’s cackle. Often, she’d told him he’d end up drunk and alone.

Groping his way to a stoop in the shadows, he brushed aside a broken bottle with his shoe and sat, dropping his head in his hands.

Then, as a glimpse of a desperate future took hold, he stood, hitching his drooping slacks. Mewling cats watched curiously as he wobbled over cobblestone, failing to avoid overstuffed garbage cans.

He knew she wouldn’t take the safety chain off the first door so he came around back and started up the fire escape.

“Mary Catherine!” he bellowed when he reached the second floor. His hands were covered in rust.

Third floor and Rooney tried to pry open Emmy Ahern’s kitchen window.

“Up one more, you idiot,” the widow Ahern instructed.

Mary Catherine sighed in resignation. “Go get your father,” she told Kevin and Robert, age eleven and ten, respectively.

“I thought you gave him the boot,” said Anna, the little one. “For good.”

Twelve-year-old Katie toed the yellowed linoleum, peeling it from the floorboards. “I’ll wager you don’t remember what it’s about. The fight,” she said.

Mary Catherine shrugged sadly while kneading a dishtowel. “No, I suppose I don’t.”

“He forgot your Lucky Strikes,” recalled Anna, who, though only seven years old, was an experienced busybody. “Remembered his L Ms, and a six pack of Piels, but he forgot your Lucky Strikes.”

Robert opened the kitchen window to begin his descent. “Mary Catherine! It’s me. Your loving husband. Your breadwinner.”

Since the layoff at National Can, he’d been trying his hand at roofing, with little success. Hence, his new nickname.

“I forgive you!” he added. “As God is my witness, I forgive you!”

Katie headed to the icebox. “I’ll reheat the stew, Ma,” she said.

Hours later, as they lay in bed, the children down and drowsing, Leaky Rooney said, “And to think I wasted my good and precious time with Digby.”

“Digby?” Mary Catherine turned toward him. “You saw Francis Michael Digby?”

“Indeed,” he replied, hands folded on his stomach.

“My Francis Michael Digby?”

“The same.”

She said, “I saw Digby.”

Rooney wriggled to sit. “That louse. Playing us against each other.”

Not so, she thought. He seemed quietly proper, as he was in grammar school. A good boy, a keen student, the nuns often said. Mary Catherine was proud her classmate had done well.

“You know,” Rooney said, “he was pushing those damned papers hard at me, then rushing to City Hall, him thinking who he is-”

“I suppose he was doing what we asked.”

“-pulling the wool, pressing on. Like I don’t know the game.”

“Means nothing now,” Mary Catherine tried.

Rooney was building toward a full head of steam. “Attorneys. Cocks of the walk…”

“Come on,” she said as she dropped a hand amid the tufts of prickly hair on his shoulder. “What’s the use of it?”

Moonlight peeked through the blinds. “You know what he wants?” Rooney said, “He wants you.”

“Oh my goodness.” She raised to her elbows. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Ah. I’m ridiculous, am I?”

“I didn’t say-”

Though still dizzy from drink, he spun and bent over to search for his shoes.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“Like you’d care.”

“For heaven’s sake-”