Dennis Lehane - The Given Day

“That’s just great!” He raised his glass higher. “Congratulations to the both of you. I’m so happy for you.”

Connor laughed and raised his own glass.

“To Connor and Nora!” Danny boomed.

“To Connor and Nora!” The rest of the family raised their glasses and met them in the center of the table.

It was between dinner and dessert that Nora found him as he was coming back out of his father’s study with another refill of scotch.

“I tried to tell you,” she said. “I called the rooming house three times yesterday.”

“I didn’t get home till after six.”

“Oh.”

He clapped one hand on her shoulder. “No, it’s great. It’s terrific. I couldn’t be more pleased.”

She rubbed her shoulder. “I’m glad.”

“When’s the date?”

“We thought March seventeenth.”

“Saint Patrick’s Day. Perfect. This time next year? Heck, you might have a child for Christmas.”

“I might.”

“Hey — twins!” he said. “Wouldn’t that be something?”

He drained his glass. She stared up into his face as if searching. Searching for what, he had no idea. What was left to search for? Decisions, clearly, had been made.

“Do you—”

“What?”

“Want to, I don’t know what to say …”

“So, don’t.”

“Ask anything? Know anything?”

“Nope,” he said. “I’m going to get another drink. You?”

He walked into the study and found the decanter and noticed how much less was in it than when he’d arrived earlier in the afternoon.

“Danny.”

“Don’t.” He turned to her with a smile.

“Don’t what?”

“Say my name.”

“Why can’t I—?”

“Like it means anything,” he said. “Change the tone. All right? Just do that. When you say it.”

She twisted her wrist in one hand and then dropped both hands to her sides. “I …”

“What?” He took a strong pull from his glass.

“I can’t abide a man feels sorry for himself.”

He shrugged. “Heavens. How Irish of you.”

“You’re drunk.”

“Just getting started.”

“I’m sorry.”

He laughed.

“I am.”

“Let me ask you something — you know the old man is looking into things back in the Old Sod. I told you that.”

She nodded, her eyes on the carpet.

“Is that why you’re rushing the wedding?”

She raised her head, met his eyes, said nothing.

“You really think it’ll save you if the family finds out you’re already married?”

“I think …” Her voice was so soft he could barely hear it. “I think if I’m wed to Connor, your father will never disown me. He’ll do what he does best — whatever is necessary.”

“You’re that afraid of being disowned.”

“I’m that afraid of being alone,” she said. “Of going hungry again. Of being …” She shook her head.

“What?”

Her eyes found the rug again. “Helpless.”

“My, my, Nora, quite the survivor, eh?” He chuckled. “You make me want to puke.”

She said, “I what?”

“All over the carpet,” he said.

Her petticoat swished as she crossed the study and poured herself an Irish whiskey. She threw back half of it and turned to him. “Who the fuck are you, then, boy?”

“Pretty mouth,” he said. “Gorgeous.”

“I make you want to vomit, Danny?”

“At the moment.”

“And why’s that, then?”

He crossed to her. He thought of lifting her up by her smooth white throat. He thought of eating her heart so it could never look back through her eyes at him.

“You don’t love him,” he said.

“I do.”

“Not the way you loved me.”

“Who says I did?”

“You did.”

“You say.”

“ You say.” He took her shoulders in his hands.

“Off me now.”

“ You say.”

“Off me now. Unhand me.”

He dropped his forehead to the flesh just below her throat. He felt more alone than when the bomb landed on the floor of Salutation Street Precinct, more alone and more sick of his very self than he’d ever expected to feel.

“I love you.”

She pushed his head back. “You love yourself, boy. You—”

“No—”

She gripped his ears, stared into him. “Yes. You love yourself. The grand music of it. I’m tone-deaf, Danny. I couldn’t keep up.”

He straightened and sucked air in through his nostrils, cleared his eyes. “Do you love him? Do you?”

“I’ll learn,” she said and drained the rest of her glass.

“You didn’t have to learn with me.”

“And look where that got us,” she said and walked out of his father’s study.

They had just sat down again for dessert when the doorbell rang.

Danny could feel the booze darkening his blood, growing thick in his limbs, perched dire and vengeful in his brain.

Joe answered the bell. After the front door had been open long enough for the night air to have reached the dining room, Thomas called, “Joe, who is it? Shut the door.”

They heard the door shut, heard a soft muffled exchange between Joe and a voice Danny didn’t recognize. It was low and thick, the words unintelligible from where he sat.

“Dad?” Joe stood in the doorway.

A man came through the doorway behind him. He was tall but stoop-shouldered, with a long, hungry face covered in a dark, matted beard shot through with tangles of gray over the chin. His eyes were dark and small but somehow managed to protrude from their sockets. The hair on the top of his head was shaven to a white stubble. His clothes were cheap and tattered; Danny could smell them from the other side of the room.

He gave them all a smile, his few remaining teeth the yellow of a damp cigarette left drying in the sun.

“How are you God-fearing folk tonight? Well, I trust?”

Thomas Coughlin stood. “What’s this?”

The man’s eyes found Nora.

“And how are you, then, luv?”

Nora seemed struck dead where she sat, with one hand on her teacup, her eyes blank and unmoving.

The man held up a hand. “Sorry to disturb you folks, I am. You must be Captain Coughlin, sir.”

Joe moved carefully away from the man, sliding along the wall until he reached the far end of the table near his mother and Connor.

“I’m Thomas Coughlin,” he said. “And you’re in my home on Christmas, man, so you best get to telling me your business.”

The man held up two soiled palms. “My name’s Quentin Finn. I believe that’s my wife sitting at your table there, sir.”

Connor’s chair hit the floor when he stood. “Who the—?”

“Connor,” their father said. “Hold your temper, boy.”

“Aye,” Quentin Finn said, “that’s her sure as it’s Christmas, it is. Miss me, luv?”

Nora opened her mouth but no words left it. Danny watched parts of her grow small and covered up and hopeless. She kept moving her mouth, and still no words would come. The lie she’d given birth to when she’d arrived in this city, the lie she’d first told when she’d been sitting naked and gray with her teeth clacking from the cold in their kitchen five years before, the lie she’d built every day of her life on since, spilled. Spilled all over the room until the mess of it was reconstituted and reborn as its opposite: truth.

A hideous truth, Danny noted. At least twice her age. She’d kissed that mouth? Slid her tongue through those teeth?

“I said — you miss me, luv?”

Thomas Coughlin held up a hand. “You’ll need to be clearer, Mr. Finn.”

Quentin Finn narrowed his eyes at him. “Clearer about what, sir? I married this woman. Gave her me name. Shared title to me land in Donegal. She’s my wife, sir. And I’ve come to take her home.”