It’s called decency. It’s being kind, generous, and understanding to those around you, even those you disagree with. It’s not plaster sainthood. This kind of virtue is capable of a tart comment but never a mean one; of a disagreement but never one that questions the other person’s own virtue; and even a moment or two of righteous anger when it sees a wrong. When the Goldmans first moved here, somebody wrote Jew on their garage door. The Kelly sisters went there immediately upon hearing about it, scrubbed the word off, and gave the Goldmans a rhubarb pie they’d made the night before. The Kelly sisters had grown up in the far west, where Catholics had not always been welcome. They had a good sense of what the Goldmans must have felt l.
Emma and Amy Kelly practiced such virtue every day. They were the slender, white-haired, old maid aunts who had raised David Egan after the death of his mother. They drove a 1939 Chevrolet that probably still hadn’t topped 25eajjj on the odometer and they dressed in the summery cotton dresses that they wore almost everywhere but Sunday mass.
That called for the dark blue velveteen dresses they were known for when they took their place in the choir loft. They had beautiful voices; you could hear the song of the green hills of Gael in them.
About the only time you heard them boast-and I can see their freckled girlish faces smiling as they’d say it-was when they boasted that they have never missed a Sunday mass, not even during the legendary flood of ‘dc, for twenty-seven years running. They liked beer upon occasion, a “naughty” story upon occasion, and soap operas.
Just as you could not convince a professional wrestling fan that his favorite sport was rigged, neither could you convince the Kelly sisters that soap operas were not lifelike. Their father was very much old country-true old country-spending his years as a key-and-lock man and a gunsmith. He’d often joined his daughters at church in singing hymns.
He had a great Irish tenor voice.
By the time the Kelly sisters reached the old mine road tonight, more than one hundred people had gathered to watch divers bring up the body of David Egan and a winch begin to haul up what remained of his black Jimmy Dean Merc.
Cliffie’s men let the Kelly sisters through the road block that had been set up at the top of the hill. Their sedan wasn’t far from where I stood with Molly, who was in the process of working through her shock. I keep a pint of Old Grandad in my glove compartment for just such occasions. She’d had three hefty belts of it.
The Kelly sisters were dressed in dark zipper jackets, corduroy trousers, and golf hats that at any other time would have looked cute and jaunty. But this was not a night for cute and jaunty.
I walked over to them. They’d been on my long-ago paper route. In the summer there was always a glass of Pepsi waiting for me when I stopped by to make my weekly collection. In the winter it was hot chocolate. And always, always there was the Kelly sisters’ interest in your life.
Conventional wisdom said that the Kelly sisters took such interest in the lives of the young people around them because they’d never had kids of their own. And I suspect that was true. But it made their interest no less valuable. You said things to the Kellys you might not say to your parents-no dark secrets, you understand, but daydreams most older folks would dismiss as foolish. Things like that.
Emma’s arthritic hand took mine and she said, “We hadn’t seen him since just after lunch. Was he drunk, Sam?”
They didn’t want lies. They’d lived hard working-class lives and while they needed the same number of delusions and hopeless hopes we all needed to survive, at a moment like this they wanted the truth.
“He was pretty bad off, Emma,” I said.
Amy was the one who reacted. She crossed herself. She was praying for his soul.
“Did anybody else get hurt?” Emma said.
“No. The other kid stopped in time.”
“Thank God,” Emma said. “At least it was just himself.”
The hardness of her tone surprised me. Amy put a trembling hand to her eyes to wipe away tears. But Emma’s eyes were dry, the blue of them cold.
She said, “Did they recover the body?”
“Yes. The ambulance took it away.”
Amy winced and brought her shoe up-an oxford -and squeezed it. “Ruined my new white Keds this afternoon on the side of the house. I’ve got them hanging on the wash line. Hope it’ll get the oil out.” Then, “But who cares about my shoes at a time like this?”
She was getting disoriented, which is how some people deal with bad news.
Molly came up. She started toward Emma but Emma pulled back abruptly, as if a plague victim had tried to touch her. “This isn’t a good time for your whining, Molly. And tell Rita the same thing. I don’t want to hear from either one of you for a long time. Maybe never.”
She was trying to deal with it her way, I realized now. Amy was somewhat dithering. Emma wanted to be strong and in this instance being strong meant measuring your words and not giving in to the moment.
“Sam, will you come over in the morning after mass?” Emma said.
“Of course.”
“You don’t want to go over there and look?”
Amy said to her sister.
“For what? So we’ll have some more bad memories?”
I’d never heard Emma speak to Amy this way. It wasn’t a barroom brawl but for two loving sisters it was certainly a cold question.
Amy looked at me, embarrassed. They weren’t public women. They left that to the Irish menfolk, the brawlers and bellyachers and bullies with all the storms they dragged around with them.
“Let’s go,” Emma said to Amy.
“But we’ve only been here a few minutes.”
“I don’t want to be here anymore,”
Emma said. She touched her sister’s arm. “I shouldn’t have spoken that way to you. I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, Emma,” Amy said. “We each have different ways of dealing with things is all.”
“See you in the morning, Sam,” Emma said.
“Good night, Sam,” Amy said.
“Good night,” I said.
I heard it before I saw it. And when I heard it I wasn’t sure what it was. Just some kind of whimper, some kind of curse.
Somebody shouted.
Something heavy and fast-moving slammed into me.
Rita had just jumped on Molly’s back. She had a handful of that lovely coppery hair and she was jerking Molly’s head back and forth.
I returned the favor, grabbing a handful of Rita’s hair and yanking on it hard enough to make her cry out. “Let her go, Rita.”
She wouldn’t let go. I wound more of her hair around my hand and jerked all the harder. This time she screamed. And let go.
When she was free of Molly, I shoved her away.
“You happy you came out here and ruined his night for him, Molly?” Rita screamed at her. “You and this asshole lawyer of yours? Maybe if you two hadn’t given him all your grief he wouldn’t have smashed his car up. Maybe he was so mad at you two he couldn’t think straight.”
We all need somebody to blame. Maybe in the future there’ll be something called a blame robot, a little metal guy that follows you around and takes the blame for anything you do wrong or anything fate decides to dump on you.
For Rita, Molly was handy. Her accusation made no sense. But it didn’t need to make any sense.
Molly slipped her arm through mine.
“Will you take me home?”
“Oh,” Rita said. “Isn’t that so sweet?
Maybe she’ll sleep with you if you’re real nice to her, McCain.”
Brainard came over. Slid his arm around Rita’s shoulder. The hurt I’d put on him had apparently faded. He said, “C’mon, Rita. These two ain’t worth botherin’ with.”
His gentleness surprised me. Guy his size, his temperament, being capable of such a quiet, soothing tone. Was it because Egan was dead or because Brainard had more feelings for Rita than he usually let on?
Molly led me away.
Halfway to her place, she said, “I’ve really got a headache.”