Jan Burke - Dear Irene

Steven’s smile widened a bit and he squeezed my hand. He closed his eyes, still smiling, and said sleepily, “I’ll dream about you.”

God, how I enjoyed that.

I was striding down the hall, feeling my oats, when I happened to look up in one of those round mirrors that are sometimes placed at the intersection of two hallways. I saw the reflection of one very angry Frank Harriman making his way purposefully in my direction. I was fairly certain he hadn’t seen me yet, and I didn’t feel like facing his wrath. I looked to my left and saw a door marked “Chapel.” I ducked inside.

It was dark and quiet in the small room. There were about six short pews and an altar with a large flower arrangement on it. Beyond the altar, a section of the wall held a large, stained glass crucifix, which was illuminated by a lamp of some kind behind it. To one side was a statue of St. Anne, Mary’s mother, a set of votive candles flickering below it. I lit one for old times’ sake, or perhaps for the comfort of ritual. I strolled over to the altar and read the tag on the flowers: Donated by Bettina Anderson. I’d have to tell Barbara about this.

Hey, Barbara-Babs-Kelly-O’Connor, I just happened to see Lizzy-Betty-Bettina-Zanowyk-Anderson’s flowers while I was cowering in the chapel at St. Anne’s.

That’s one thing about being an Irene, I thought. They can sing that old song to you every time they say good night, but Irene is Irene. Sort of elemental. Not like Bettina-Elizabeth or, say, like Steven’s mom, Peggy – no, Maggie-Margaret.

Something nagged at me then, and it wasn’t just guilt over the fact that I was hiding from my fiancé. I sat down.

Was it something I had heard earlier in the day? Or in the conversation with Steven’s parents? But when I started thinking of the Kincaids, I grew distracted, wondering if they would fly out to California anyway. A stranger’s reassurance that Steven was all right probably wouldn’t count for much against a mother’s worry.

I sat stewing over that and Thanatos and Frank and – well, yes, religion. I can’t go into a church or chapel without trying to pin myself down on exactly where I stand on the subject. I’m not an atheist. Being an atheist takes more faith than I’ll ever have in any religion. It was also too late to make a good agnostic out of me – too much faith for that. And I wasn’t sure I could really count myself in or out as a Catholic. I wasn’t much at home in Catholicism anymore.

But when you grow up in a religion that allows a day to honor someone named “St. Christina the Astonishing,” it’s just not easy to make yourself feel at home any other place, either. I thought of all the Greek mythology I had been reading. Were there lapsed pagans in those days? Did they falter in their faith? Maybe faith was based on something different in ancient Greece and Rome.

If one could base one’s faith on gratitude for unexpected help, appreciation for all life’s narrow misses and a sense that too much undeserved good had come your way, I supposed that I did have faith.

“Hello, Cassandra,” a voice said behind me.

And it was going to be tested immediately.

“HELLO, JIMMY,” I said without turning around. I made myself stare at St. Anne’s beatific plaster smile; focused on that while I talked myself into not showing him how afraid I really felt.

He reached up and touched my hair. I felt a shudder pass through me, but suppressed any other reaction. I thought of Edna Blaylock and Rosie Thayer and Alex Havens. I thought of Steven Kincaid and Johnny Smith and Rita Havens.

He moved closer to me and whispered into my ear, speaking too low for me to recognize his unsynthesized voice. “I’m almost sorry that it has come to this, Cassandra. I had other ideas. You are the daughter of a champion of justice, and for his sake, I wanted more for you.”

I was trying to think of how he had decided that I was the daughter of a champion of justice, when he solved it for me. “Oh, I know you weren’t his daughter by birth, but you might as well have been, you know. Your tributes to him – the articles you wrote about him after he was murdered – it was clear to me that no one else loved him as you did. I so appreciated it when you avenged Mr. O’Connor’s death. You really are Irene O’Connor in some ways. That’s why I thought you’d understand.”

“What was O’Connor to you?”

“Oh, so you don’t know everything after all, do you, Cassandra?”

I didn’t answer. He laughed.

“One of his very first stories was about my mother’s murder. Unlike those who just reported a ‘killing of a female inmate,’ he told her story. He knew how unfair it had all been. I saved it.” I heard a rustling sound and a fragile, yellow clipping was extended over my shoulder. It had O’Connor’s byline on it, all right. I couldn’t resist taking it from him. I read it, feeling Thanatos’ eyes on me as I did.

He must have been very young when he wrote it, but O’Connor had owned a moving style of writing from the day he first walked on the job. He painted Pauline Grant as a young woman to whom fate had been overly harsh. “Somewhere a young boy has been praying for the day when his mother will come back home to him. Who will explain to him what has become of her? As he grows to manhood, what faith will he have in justice and mercy?”

O’Connor, I thought to myself, you were the real Cassandra. You saw this coming, and no one paid heed. I handed the clipping back over my shoulder. I set aside the kind of aching longing I could so easily feel for O’Connor; I set aside a fleeting sense of hopelessness.

But as if he knew what I was feeling, he said, “Ah, you do miss him still. I understand. Time doesn’t heal every wound. Not the loss of a mother to a son or a father to a daughter.”

His daughter. I was chosen for Cassandra because Jimmy Grant thought of me as Irene O’Connor. “I happen to be proud of the man who gave me the Kelly name,” I said. “But what’s in a name?”

Saying it made me realize what had nagged at me about the conversation with Steven’s parents. Margaret-Maggie. Margaret-Peggy. I had heard the same names from the women at Fielding’s Nursing Home.

Margaret Robinson – Peggy Davis. Margaret Robinson whose profile at Mercury didn’t quite match the others. Who lost a child and then took another as a repayment. And whose journey to the River Lethe had, perhaps, allowed her adopted son to begin his long-awaited revenge.

“Did I tell you my father was a war hero?” the voice behind me was saying. He was speaking louder now; I was sure I already knew who he was. “I want you to understand. My mother loved my father. He was killed at Pearl Harbor. He was trapped in the hold of one of those ships, but he helped other men escape before he died. My mother was only nineteen when I was born, and she was widowed by the time I was five. But she was the best mother in the world.”

We heard sounds out in the hallway. “It’s time to go,” he said. “Look at me.”

I kept my gaze straight ahead. “Aren’t you afraid to take Cassandra from a sanctuary?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Oh, come now. You read your mythology. A man by the name of Ajax dragged Cassandra from Athena’s temple – a sacred place – and killed her. But the gods punished Ajax for his irreverence.”

“This is my game, Miss Kelly. You don’t make the rules. I do. Now turn around and look at me.”

“I know who you are. I don’t care to look at your face.”

I felt the cold, sharp tip of a knife laid up beneath my chin. I swallowed. “All right.”

He laughed and moved the knife. I slowly turned around and looked into the face I knew would be there.