Eileen stepped forward. “And you have affixed these family matters of strangers to your own wedding? Why?”
“Simple,” Temple said, stepping forward to meet her, “my and Matt’s work, our hearts are committed to being good with people, and you, dear people, have been living under a cloud of well-meant misconception for almost two decades.”
“You certainly are direct,” Patrick Kelly said.
“I’ll be more direct.” Matt went behind the bar. “There’s some world-class Irish Whiskey here. I understand your families’ separate devastating losses have caused a breech between the sisters and their husbands. How about a toast to new understanding? Also, we have a toothsome nonalcoholic champagne for anyone, and especially Father Hernandez, when he comes along.”
“He’s—?”
“One of the finest and dedicated priests I’ve known. And I’ve known many. I used to be one.”
Jaws dropped.
Keeping separate, but edging forward like newborn zombies, the couples approached opposite ends of the bar to accept the Irish “water of life”, pronounced ‘whiskey’ in Gaelic, in glittering Baccarat glasses.
Kevin sipped the straight drink the color of his wife’s hair. “Now you are my kind of ‘Whiskey Priest’,” he said, turning an insult into a compliment.
Matt smiled. “I’m afraid I’m Polish, but I do envy the Irish their humor, their heart, their dash.”
“Are you Irish Catholic?” Eileen asked Temple, eyeing her red hair, which the Phoenix’s beauty salon had styled into a dazzling sunset cloud. Temple never wanted to sleep on it again and lose the effect, but that would be rather counter-intuitive on a wedding night.
“I’m an Anglo-Celtic mutt, but am I Catholic? No.”
“Not even Lutheran?” Maura asked.
“No. I’m not Lutheran, although I’m from Minnesota and realize the Catholics and the Lutherans are not fond of each other.” These sixty-something couples would know that rivalry well.
“Episcopal then!” Eileen was sure. “She seemed at home with the liturgy,” she told her husband Patrick.
“No.” Temple was amused.
“What then?”
“Besides my wife?” Matt put in.
“I’m UU.” Temple waited.
“UU? Is that for a Utah University?” Patrick wondered.
“Well, my parents are out at the reception, and are Unitarian Universalists, but I appear to have fallen away some.”
“‘Unitarian Universalists’ are that all-of-everything equally church,” Kevin said. “How can you fall away from nothing?”
Temple shrugged. “It avoided a lot of angst.”
“UU,” Maura mused. “That’s why you wouldn’t object to a Catholic wedding ceremony.”
“No. My only ceremonial requirement was a train as long as I am tall, five feet.”
“That was indeed an impressive train,” Eileen agreed.
“And your gown was lovely and very modest, like a nice Catholic girl’s.” Maura beamed at Matt.
“Let’s face it,” Temple said, glancing down. “I haven’t got much to be modest about.”
“She has an Irish sense of humor,” said Kevin.
Eileen sipped thoughtfully. “You two keep treating this occasion as a celebration. And it is, obviously, for you. But you keep trying to pull us into it. We’re all strangers to you.”
“I do want you all involved,” Matt admitted, taking Temple a tall crystal flute of Father Hernandez’s champagne. “I’ve married the love of my life, we’ve got the job offer of a lifetime, and I’ve been honored to be asked to officiate, by Michael/Max, as an ex-priest and a counselor who learns more than he informs, over the correction of a tragic family…disintegration.”
He had poured another Jameson’s and now went to the coffered door, balancing the precious Baccarat glass on his palm like a butler.
“Presenting the world-renowned Mystifying Max, magician, counterterrorism agent and prodigal son.”
Max stepped through door on cue in his borrowed Fontana brother silver-gray tuxedo. It was always a performance with Max, Temple thought. A pose that kept him one step removed from that act of terrorist violence that had changed everything in his life.
“My God.” Maura stepped toward him, her right hand reaching for what must have seemed a mirage. “You’re the image of Kevin when I married him.” She covered her mouth with the other hand as her eyes floated in sudden tears and she swallowed a sob.
Kevin quickly stepped between her and their son, partly to shield her emotional meltdown, partly in anger. “Explain yourself, Michael. Your mother always understood your grief at Sean’s loss, but you didn’t understand the depth of hers, with you growing so distant, almost the same as dead, from the family. An occasional postcard from Europe with a performance venue pictured on it. We understood survivor’s guilt, but not the lengths you took.”
Max took the drink from Matt’s hand. “They told me,” he nodded at Matt and Temple, “that telling you would be my moment of penance. If I only had to explain just my seventeen-year-old self. I’ll start there.”
He looked at Eileen and Patrick apologetically and sighed.
“You were so right to worry. Sean and I were stupid kids who did exactly what you four ‘stuffy’ parents warned us not to do on our high school graduation trip to the old country. We scooted right up to Northern Ireland to view the Troubles firsthand. And drink even more beer without being carded.”
As the parents stirred and prepared to condemn the risk, Max gestured them to be seated.
“Please sit down.” Temple indicate two roomy loveseats set at right angles around a large travertine coffee table equipped with crystal coasters. Each couple took a sofa as Max’s narrative continued.
“Yes, we promised that we, with our good grades and love of family history, would benefit from seeing the Old Country before we moved on to college. They call it a ‘Gap’ year now.
“It was all innocent stupidity.” Max advanced into the room, looking at his mother. “It’s such a strange thing, Mom. America is a melting pot, yet we all still cling to our ethnic origins.” He looked around, “Irish being a common one, but Polish as well.” He nodded at Matt.
“To be seventeen having your first look at an another country, an island, among people who look exactly like you, speak with the same lilt, drink the same ale, laugh at the same jokes…to feel at home so far away from home. It was inebriating. We courted the colleens. The black Irish and the red-haired girls who seemed so exotic and yet familiar at the same time. Far more interesting than our American high school girls. Besides, we’d gone to all-boys’ high school with the Christian Brothers.
“We competed to drink ourselves under the table, we competed to spirit a girl away from the pub to…wherever. We met one stunner of a Black Irish rose. Older, early twenties, but so much the better. We wanted to win her to ourselves to sample whatever undescribed bliss that had been cruelly hidden from us.”
Max shrugged. “I won. A hollow victory. The pub bomb exploded while I was ‘off-campus’. But that was not the only bomb that day. The other bomb that exploded my life was one Kathleen O’Connor, as damaged a young woman as had lived through the hell of Magdalene laundries called “asylums”, where young pregnant girls were overworked and abused for being victims of institutionalized ignorance and family assault.”
“Oh,” Eileen breathed rather than said. “That Judi Dench movie Philomena.” She rose and went to sit beside Maura on the Kinsella-occupied couch. They looked at each other for a long moment before Maura reached out for Eileen’s hands.
“Philomena?” Patrick asked. “I had a nun named that in eighth grade. We never saw any such movie, Eileen.” He glanced at the sisters’ twined hands. “And you two haven’t been so cozy since— He eyed Kevin with a question in his eyes.