Grieve for the Dear Departed

BRIAN MOORE

TELEGRAMS had been coming all day, punctuation marks of sympathy in the long story of people who nosed into the house from every part of Dublin, piled up wet overcoats in the hall, exchanged handshakes and gazed with doggy sincerity at members of the dead man’s family in the parlor, tiptoed into the spare room to mumble prayers and praise, then back to the hall to meet new people as they were leaving. There had never been so many visitors on any day of Daniel Kelleher’s life.

So the cable from New York was not noticed until evening. Then, when her mother had gone to lie down, Peggy took several envelopes into the kitchen. When she opened the fifth and saw whom it was from, she hurried upstairs to the big bedroom, its door ajar, no light inside.

“Are you asleep, Mama?”

“No, no.”

She went in. The blinds had not been drawn, and in the failed light between day and dusk she saw her mother’s outline by the window, sitting in the old wicker-and-stuffing chair in which she had nursed every one of them.

“What is it? Is that you, Peggy?”

“Mama, there’s a cable from Michael. Will I put on the light?”

“Just the bed lamp. And hand me my glasses.”

Mrs. Kelleher took the cable from her daughter, held it at arm’s length, her lips moving as she puzzled at the strips of words. She said: “When will he be here?”

“He must have left as soon as he got your wire. He’ll be in London tonight. He should arrive in time for the funeral.”

“All right. We must tell Arthur. I’ll come down.”

Peggy switched the lamp off. “Now, why would you? Just you try to rest a bit. I can hold the fort. Would you like some tea?”

“No. I’ll be down in a little while.”

Her daughter went out, closing the door quietly, leaving her in the familiar room with her old things and her new things: the silver-backed brushes, a wedding present thirty-seven years ago from her uncle priest, and beside them a new pincushion doll sewed for her last Christmas by her eldest granddaughter. Her dead husband’s shirts were in the dresser, his suits in the wardrobe, his slippers still under the big brass bed. Alone to grieve, she did not grieve. Since the death she had wept with friends who came to console her, wept when her children wept because she was a woman who, at the sight of a hearse, a neighbor’s distress, a sad film, was quickly, meaninglessly moved to tears. But now, isolated from the contagion of others’ sorrow, she thought of the death only as a background to this sudden homecoming of Michael, her eldest son. Flying home at last to father. Father. Wax statue face in the spare-room bed downstairs, a tape to keep the jaws shut, another tape to keep the shrouded legs from sprawling. Hairy knuckles laced in a pose of prayer, garlanded by the brown beads of a rosary.

AT THE family conference when her husband had the stroke, her other children had been against letting Michael know. Arthur, her second son, insisted his father would not wish it. Her daughters agreed, said the shock of their meeting might provoke a fatal anger. Besides, he was sinking fast. It might be too late.

Buf she knew what they could not. Years of lying in that bed taught her that Dan’s hate was mixed with pride.

— The other day down at the yard, Christy Madden was pointing me out, take Dan Kelleher, our foreman, said he, there’s a man with a son a doctor, and his eldest boy the head of a massive engineering company in America, all his daughters married to men with money. You know, said Christy. I remember his eldest boy, Michael, he was first in the whole of Ireland in his Junior Intermediate. Clever. Aye, clever, said I to Christy, but a blaggard, an ungrateful blaggard. But it’s true, he was clever, the lad, eh, Kate:’ Are you asleep, Kate? Oh aye, they never saw fit to make me supervisor, but never mind, I have my boys to point to. Eh, Kate? —

Besides, whether he wanted Michael home or not, hadn’t she a right to see her son:’ Hadn’t she? So she waited until the children were all gone and then, sitting in the sickroom, she looked down, cold, God forgive her! at that paralyzed face and wrote out a wire, wrote it in the way she knew for sure would bring Michael home. Surrender. I have a bad stroke and may not last. Can you come? Father. Looked at him, speechless on the bed, waiting his last end. What quarrel would not wither in the sorrow of a son at his father’s deathbed? And he, stubborn hater, what else could he do but forgive?

But God did not wait for that. When she came back upstairs He had reached out in His mercy and taken her husband, leaving her only the body, crumpled up on the bed like a thrown-off suit of clothes. Men and their quarrels. God had no time for that.

Quarrels, ah, she never knew the exact right of it, except that Michael had been disrespectful about the clergy, something he said in a debate his first year in university that was repeated to his father in a pub a few days later. Dan came home, furious, ordering him to go at once and apologize. Michael refused, and so Dan hit him across the face, calling him an atheist and a liar. Next morning Michael was not in his bed. A week after, they found out he was on his way to America. He wrote that he was sorry, but his father did not accept his sorrow. For Dan, with age, had become pi-odious, preaching, praying, narrow, too narrow not only for Michael but for the girls as well, complaining if they went to dances, asking questions that (if he only knew it) drove them out of the house and into marriages as fast as they could find men to ask them. And yet, with all his harsh talk, he held them, held them all. The letters Michael wrote to her were secret letters to his father, his father who would grab them off her and tear them up unread. He was her son too, hadn’t she a right to worry about him, hadn’t she a right to hear? Hold your whist, woman, he would shout, as he threw the torn letter scraps on the fire.

These last years, the letters were fewer. Sometimes there was money in them, and he was not too proud to take that, stuff it in his trousers, saying it was owed to them. Her married daughters made excuses when she asked them over. In avoiding him, they avoided her. She saw it in their eyes: half pity, and a half contempt.

Oh Michael, he was always her favorite. Tomorrow, he will walk in here after sixteen years with never once a sight of him. What will he be like now? She tried to see his face but saw instead a passport photograph, the one he sent her when he went down to South America on some job. Someplace in the heat with a lot of black men, was it any wonder she worried for that photograph face, for the son who wrote his little duty notes always with the same last sentence: love to father and yourself, God bless, Michael. But what, after sixteen years, did love mean?

Tomorrow she would know. Michael would be kind at least, he would help with money and Arthur would too, the children were good, they were a credit to her, every one of them, God had been good and her prayers for them had been answered. But oh! looking down now as the street lamps blinked suddenly lit in the avenue she felt alone, him dead, the harsh dialogue of thirty-seven years broken off forever. Quiet in this dark-filled room.

After a time she drew the blind and switched on her dressing-table lamp. The doorbell had been ringing: there would be new visitors downstairs. Maybe Arthur was back from the funeral arrangements? She put on her glasses, powdered her face, and went down, a tall woman, heavy breasted under her black mourning dress, her white doss of hair stiff as a guardsman’s helmet. A widow, one day old, going to face condolence.

OLD Canon O’Rawe pushed past Christy Madden in the hall, advancing plump, clerical, clean, and comforting as new goods. His pink, plump hands enclosed hers.

“Ah, Mrs. Kelleher, I’ve just been in to say a mouthful of prayers, poor Daniel, God knows, a mercy, I hear he had little pain, when our time comes all of us. may we hope for a happy end, yes. miss him, many people will, a Mass I’m saying Sunday, not at all, the least I can do, nine o’clock Mass Sunday, yes, mustn’t be keeping you now, not at all, not at all.”

Pink hands opened, releasing hers, plump, prompt retreat, skilled in saying the right thing and how could he mean one word of it, wasn’t there one of his parishioners dying every day, what was he to Dan or Dan to him? He moved to the hallstand, picking out his neat black hat, his white silk scarf, leaving Christy Madden to speak his piece, advancing now with cornerboy strut, humorous horseface stiff with sympathy.

“Poor Dan, ah, Mrs. Kelleher, Kate, I’m sorry for your trouble now. Sorry for your trouble.”

“Thank you, Christy.” (And is he drunk, I wonder?)

He gestured toward the back room, Saying, could he go in now, did she think? To pay his last respects.

She nodded and followed as far as the door. Better keep an eye in case he . . . With her husband’s old pals you could never be sure.

Christy hesitated in the doorway, then turned to her, hand shielding his mouth, a man giving a surreptitious tip on a good thing. “Ah, now he looks lovely, now. Ah. you’d not believe it. Now I never seen Dan look better.”

Her youngest daughter, Maura, standing with Dennis Comically, her husband, exchanged looks and giggles. But the other visitors in the dead man’s room pretended not to hear. They eyed the Mass cards strewn about the dead man’s feet, their heads bowed in prayer or mock prayer. Christy, unaware of his gaffe, moved toward the bed, stared with relish at the dead face, then knelt by the bedside to mumble a Hail Mary. Mrs. Kelleher kept her eyes from the face on the bed but waited, nonetheless. Get rid of him. Grief he pretends now, drunk and maudlin he’ll be in an hour or two. Oh Dan. have a look at your best pal, will you? Have a look at them all. every chancer you ever took up with, every boozy, boasting, small-minded one of them.

Christy stood up. dusting his knees. “I seen him last Tuesday, you know,” he whispered to her. “And he was looking grand. Grand. No denying it was sudden. Sudden. Ah, we never know. We never know.”

His eyes strayed wistfully over her shoulder to the table in the parlor with its parade of bottles. Let him die of thirst, she thought. Was a drink all he came for? And will I ever see him again? Is this your best pal, oh many’s the time, year in year out, what wee Christy Madden said, you told me. As if 1 ever cared one iota then, or do now.

She let Christy out without asking him whether he had a mouth on him. She could hear her meanness told that night in some pub. and somehow this comforted her. Let them know at last what I think of them. But anger left her at the sight of Arthur, who had come in and was hanging up his coat in the hall.

“How are you, Mama? We must have a chat. I’ve a lot of things to sec to and a surgery at eight.”

That was Arthur. At times like this, a man. he followed the tradition, he assumed command. Although to her, he was still a boy. Confusedly she remembered that from now on it would always be like this. Her sons would assume her husband’s authority. She nodded and went back upstairs with him following. He looked cold, so she lit the gas fire in her bedroom.

“I’ve been down to the church,” Arthur said, “it’s all arranged. We’ll move the body tomorrow night and the funeral will be at ten on Wednesday. I’ve been to Devlin’s too and ordered six cars and a hearse.”

“Michael will be in time for the funeral then,” she said.

“Michael? Mama, surely you didn’t send for him?”

“I did.”

Arthur looked angry. “You never told me.”

She changed the subject. “Who’ll sit up tonight?”

“Dennis and Kevin,” Arthur said. “I sat last night, and I have an early surgery in the morning. I’d sit again only I’m dropping on my feet.”

“I know,” she said. “Yes.” So his sons-in-law would be Dan’s last company at home. Dennis Comically and Kevin Dunning, both mockers behind his back, they would wake him through this last night under his own roof. Because it was the custom. But would Dennis and Kevin grieve for him? She doubted it. They married the girls, not an old cantankerous railway foreman.

“If Michael had only arrived tonight,” she said. “He could have sat.”

“Michael.” Arthur’s voice was bitter. “I doubt if Father would have been keen on that.”

“Oc.h, what do you know?” she said. “He was fond oF Michael. He was fond of all of you.

“Fond? For all Michael ever did for him?”

Jealous of each other. Brothers. And their father was jealous too, jealous of everyone else.

“Why did you send for Michael anyway?” Arthur said. “I thought we agreed not to.”

“Because,” she said. “His father would have wanted him here.”

“He never asked for him,” Arthur said sharply. “Never.”

“How could he?” she said. “When he couldn’t speak.”

Tears surprised her at the memory of that dropped, speechless mouth. Why did Dan’s hate live in all of them?

Her son was glad as a doctor for her tears: tears, he had learned, bring relief. He put his arms around her shoulders and pulled her toward him. “Now, Mama,” he said. “Now, Mama.”

But she wept, at last. Why had she blamed Dan when they were all of them the same, all haters, even she? Why had she cared more for them, her children, than for him? He had not been all she wanted, there had been times in their life together when the sight of him spilling his pipe ash on the carpet, sitting on the edge of their bed cutting his toenails, groaning about preferment, about others who had better luck, yes, there had been times, times too many to think of, when she had felt her heart stiff’ with hate for him, times lately when she watched him at prayer by his bedside, righteous as a pharisee, an old man full of hate and pride and caring for no one, not even her. Times, times . . .

But he was my children’s father, he never did any disgraceful thing. His weaknesses were small and I knew them, I forgave them, I stayed with him. He did his best, what more could any wife ask, and he died in the state of grace, what more could any man want? And Dan, you came to our house years ago, I never think of that now, but no one had asked for me and I wanted you to ask and you did and I told my mother yes and oh Dan, I was glad of you, glad of you once, always glad of you. We had our life together, I was proud of the family we raised, we put up with each other for their sake, but I should be proud we managed that loo, for it was not an easy thing for either of us. And now I grieve for you, only I am left to grieve, only I knew you, only I will remember, lonely I will be, the loss of you about this house, I must leave this house now for you never will, even though they carry you out tomorrow, you never will.

“Lonely,” she said aloud. “I’ll miss him.”

A voice said at the door: “Dr. Kelleher? Is Dr. Kelleher there?”

“Yes,” Arthur said, getting up.

“You’re wanted on the phone, Doctor.”

“I’ll be down in a minute. Now, Mama, don’t cry, we’re all here. All the family. We won t let you be lonely.”

“Yes, dear. Go on down now.”

The family, ah, what can any of them do for me, children, children, none of you can take a husband’s place. I never knew he meant that to me, 1 had my mind on you, all of you, educating you, feeding you, praying for you, bursting with pride that you all did so well for me, proud of the boy in America, the doctor, the sons-in-law, the grandchildren. And all these years I took him for granted, I never even saw him about the house, never thought for him, only for you children, children. And oh! yesterday, him lying in the bed with one side of him dead already, I wrote out that cable never thinking, thinking only of me, of Michael, a child I wanted to see again, cold to my husband, cold to his paralyzed face, writing down what he could no longer stop me writing, taking from him the only thing he had left, his pride, his right to hate. And then, God forgive me, I remember going downstairs to send it and alterwards I went into the kitchen and ironed the sheets and pillowcases for the spare-room bed, knowing they would be needed soon. Only thinking of Michael coming, of the neighbors, of the house being tidy for death.

And when I came back upstairs, he was gone. His stranger eyes watching me from the bed, watching me as though for the first time he saw me, saw what I hid from him all those years. Saw me and left.

She raised her head, sobbing, her breathing harsh in the quiet of the bedroom.

“Oh, Dan. Come back, Dan. Forgive me.”

Frightened at the loud sound of her voice, she listened. Had anyone heard?

She switched on the table lamp. In the dressingtable mirror, her face, a road after rain, blurred, swollen, changed. Had no one heard?

No. She shook her head. No one.

Not even him.