Sign of the Cross (45 page)

“I have never, ever forgotten you were alive, Sandra. I’m just curious about how much young Collins could cram into a three-day trip. He was a busy lad in New York.”

“What did we do during Monty’s visit, Brennan? We talked about you, but not only about you. We ate, drank, and had lots of laughs.”

“Did you now.”

“And Monty composed a piece of music for me that would put you, with your considerable talents, to shame.” “Is that so?”

“It is so. Shall we, Monty?”

“Shall we what?” Maura joined us in the middle of the room.

I made the introductions. “Sandra Worthington, Maura MacNeil. Sandra is visiting from New York.” I knew Maura had heard all about Sandra from Sylvia Stratton. If she hadn’t, her swift glance at Burke and then at Sandra would have told her all she needed to know. I said: “Sandra and I would like to share our song with you. Be sure to remind us.”

“You and Sandra have a favourite song already?” my wife quipped. “I’ve never known you to move that fast, Collins. But there was a bit of a line-up at the bar, so I’ve been out of touch for a while.”

“It’s a long story and it didn’t start here,” I answered, with one of those “tell you later” looks with which long-married people, however unfriendly, are able to promise revelations at a more convenient time. We all went to our table and sat.

“Now Sandra,” Maura demanded, turning to her new acquaintance,
“fill us in on what you do in New York.”

Sandra spoke of the school where she was headmistress. Brennan said she must be a brilliant teacher because she tutored him so well in high school math that he had aced his calculus exams in his first year in university.

“Anyone could have tutored him. All you had to do was sit him down at a table and make him open the book. Instead of the debauchery he engaged in every night. Amazing how the numbers clicked into place after that. Just had to keep him at it.”

“Keep at it?” He leaned back in his chair and looked down his nose at her. “It wasn’t always me who leaped up from the work table, suggesting a little R and R whenever your parents went out on one of their very frequent social engagements.”

“I don’t
leap
up from tables, Brennan, even,
especially,
in response to smouldering glances from black-eyed Irish reprobates. You must have me mixed up with one of your many other conquests.”

“Not a chance. I see you’ve had your ears pierced since I saw you last,” Burke said with a smile.

“That way I can keep my jewels on for the entire evening,” she said with deceptive sweetness. I caught her eye. “Should I?” she asked me.

“Go ahead. I’ll collect my royalties later.”

She leaned towards Burke and sang:

Woke up this morning, got yo’ earring in my mouth. Said, woke up this morning, woman, got yo’ earring in my mouth.

You don’t give me nothing else, babe, I take yo’ diamonds and go south.

He looked nonplussed for a beat or two, then burst into laughter and spewed whiskey all over Maura’s shirt. Maura, dabbing at the liquor dribbling down her front, looked delighted with the song.

Gratified by her little coup, Sandra tuned him out and gabbed with the Strattons about people and places they knew. She managed to give the impression that she had forgotten Burke’s existence. Unfazed, he sat smiling at her. She and the Strattons discussed the
future of the house in Chester. Rowan got up for another round of drinks and Burke asked for straight orange juice. He was sitting back lazily in his chair but his eyes were alert the whole time, rarely leaving Sandra’s face. But then she stole a glance at her watch and announced: “I have to be going.”

Brennan lurched forward in his seat. “Going? Where are you going?”

“Home,” she answered.

“What? Home where?”

“Needs a geography tutor,” she said to the table at large.

“You’re going to New York? Now?” Disappointment battled with disbelief.

“Well, not directly. I’m flying out early in the morning, and I have to get back to Chester first, then...”

“You’re going to drive to Chester at this time of night? You can’t do that. It’s snowing!”

“Brennan, how much have you had to drink?”

“Not enough.”

“We’re from New York, remember? It snows in New York.”

“How much driving do you do in New York, in the snow? She follows a line of cabs from East Fifty-Ninth Street, Bloomingdale’s,” he said to us in explanation, “to the East Seventies and calls that driving. That’s a far cry from motoring out into the country, to Chester, in the middle of the night in a fucking blizzard. Why not stay in Halifax?”

“You can stay at our place, darling,” Sylvia offered.

“Thanks, Sylvia, but my bags are out at the cottage. I didn’t know I’d be staying in the city so late...”

“All right. I’ll drive you,” Brennan announced.

“No you won’t,” Sandra shot back.

“Why not?”

“I’m not going out in the country, as you put it.” She looked around at the rest of us. “There is land and there is water for Brennan. Water is the ocean, which he approves of and enjoys. Land consists of great soaring monuments to man’s creativity. Again, he approves. He thinks any place with a population density of less than thirty thousand people per square mile is primeval forest, teeming with voracious animals and bugs and gun-toting, cross-eyed, inbred
hunters. Go ahead, ask him.”

“How do you know what I think?” he protested.

“People don’t change,” she intoned in the manner of a wise old woman.

“I defy you to name anyone who has changed more than I have!” he exclaimed.

“Anyway, Brennan, I’m not driving anywhere with you. You’re drinking; you’re probably over the limit.”

“How many drinks did I have? Sandra, you’re giving out to me as if I’m legless here.”

“Brennan.” Maura cut in, and only then did it strike me how odd it was to have an argument going full tilt without her in the middle of it. “Do you ever wonder what it would be like if you were married? Exactly like this. You two sound as if you’ve been married for centuries.” He and Sandra looked accusingly at one another for several long seconds, then burst into laughter. I saw Rowan and Sylvia exchange glances.

Sandra reached over and touched Brennan’s hand. “Do something for me, Bren, before I go. Sing for me.”

“What would you like to hear?”

“Something Celtic.”

“Make it something sorrowful while you’re at it,” Maura added, “since we just met Sandra and she’s leaving us so
soon
when we would all be glad to help her make arrangements to
stay.
Something heart-scalding, as Brennan puts it.”

Brennan looked at Maura. “I’ll sing something so sad, it will tear the heart right out of you, throw it on the floor, pour scalding water all over it, and turf it out the door where it will be torn apart and eaten by jackals.”

“Does this mean you’re auditioning for my blues band?” I asked.

“These are the finer feelings I’m singing about, Collins. Nothing your little garage band could ever hope to express, musically or emotionally.”

He went to the stage and checked the mike, picked up an acoustic guitar and adjusted its tuning, then sat down. “This is an Eric Bogle song, ‘The Leaving of Nancy.’”

I thought someone had told me Brennan didn’t play any instruments but he was doing a creditable pick and strum on the guitar.
Well, it wasn’t the first time I had had to rethink what I knew of him, and it wouldn’t be the last. After the first few lines, Sandra lowered her head onto her hand, her eyes downcast. The evocative words and melody, and the beautiful voice, combined for an effect close to what Brennan said it would be.

My suitcase is lifted and stowed on the train, And a thousand regrets whirl around in my brain. And the ache in my heart, it’s a black sea of pain. I’m leaving my Nancy-o.

And you stand there so calmly, so lovely to see, But the grip of your hand is an unspoken plea. You’re not fooling yourself and you’re not fooling me. Goodbye my Nancy-o.

When the song was done he returned to the table, sat, folded his arms across his chest and regarded Sandra with hooded, dark eyes. She did not look up. Nobody had anything to say. Brennan rose, went to the bar for a shot of whiskey and downed it. Someone put recorded music on and we listened for a few minutes. Finally, Sandra stood and announced that she had to go. She said goodbye to us all and we asked her to stay in touch, meaning it.

Brennan got up with her. “One dance, and then you go. And be careful on that highway.” We all looked on as they waltzed to the Rankins’ gorgeous lament, “Fare Thee Well Love.” They danced the way they argued, as if they’d been at it for a lifetime. When the music stopped, Sandra put her face up to his, kissed him on the cheek, and turned to leave. He pulled her back and wrapped his arms around her, covered her mouth with his, and kissed her passionately for several long minutes. Then she pulled away, turned and walked out the door. He stood there so long it seemed he had forgotten where he was. But then he came back to us, doing his level best to look as if nothing had happened.

Brennan, Maura, and I walked home in the gently falling snow. There wasn’t a breeze.

Brennan looked up. “All right. So it’s not a blizzard.” Neither of us took the opportunity to needle him about it.

We stopped at the house on Dresden Row. It was plain that there was a whole world of conversation Maura wanted to explore but she was no fool; there were times when the best course of action was to say absolutely nothing about the subject on everybody’s mind. She told Brennan she’d see him soon; she told me I should stay rather than drive and risk arrest; then she turned and went into the house.

Brennan and I started walking in the direction of St. Bernadette’s; without any conscious thought, we kept going down Morris to Water Street and turned right. The cool air was invigorating and the light snow enchanting. “A walk in the snow has great significance in the culture of this country, you know,” I told him.

“Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau,” Brennan answered. Catching my look of surprise, he said: “I’ve always been a fan.”

“Yes, I can see that you would be. He went for his walk in the snow and made his decision to retire from politics.”

“And you’re thinking I have some kind of decision to make?” he asked, and stopped to light up a smoke.

“Do you?” I stopped and waited.

“My decisions were made a long time ago, Monty.” He inhaled deeply, blew out the smoke and resumed walking.

“So, what now?”

“Now that I’ve just been face to face with the woman I’ve loved all my life? What can I do?”

“Get O’Flaherty to don his wedding vestments?” I ventured.

“It’s a temptation that’s always out there, to chuck it all and get married. But as much as I would enjoy having a woman in my life, I know I would never be happy, or at least not for long, if I abandoned the priesthood. That would not be good for me or for the unfortunate bride. Whether I’m a good priest, or an obedient one, well, that’s always an open question. There’s the other unedifying option. Continue being a priest of the Church, with a mistress tucked away on the side.”

“I know a little hideaway that may be coming on the market in Chester.”

He shot me a look, then went on. “Wouldn’t that be an enticing life to offer a woman. Sit by the phone and wait for those occasions when my testosterone levels are higher than my aspirations to a life
of the spirit. The other choice is that I try to keep behaving myself, at least to the extent that I’ve been able to up to now. This whole presumptuous conversation, of course, ignores a key fact that was obvious to us all tonight. The woman we’re alluding to couldn’t wait to see the back of me.”

“I don’t think we can assume that, Brennan.” He gave me a carefully neutral glance. “The fact that she had to leave tonight had nothing to do with you. She has an early flight, and her bags are in Chester.”

“Still, she could have —”

“She could have stayed in Chester and not come to the city at all. But she came to see you. What more do you have to know? At least it gives you something to work with.”

“The fact that she came to see me was likely nothing more than a friendly gesture.”

I knew, but was not about to say, that Sandra had discovered something about him she had never suspected, that he had been at her side when she gave birth to their child. I knew this went a long way in softening her attitude towards him.

“Did you mean that, when you said you’ve loved her all your life?” I asked him.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“It’s been more than twenty-five years, for one thing.”

“What, you’re thinking I’m fickle, along with all my other character flaws?” He looked amused.

“Well, things tend to fade over time. And you must have met other women who captured your attention. You haven’t exactly lived in a cloister.”

“It’s no secret,
now,
that I’ve had the occasional involvement I shouldn’t have had. But no serious threats to my vocation, or to my memories of Sandra.” He brought the cigarette to his mouth and inhaled deeply. “Well, with one potential exception. Oh Christ. Sandra was right: I’ve had too much to drink.”

“I’ve seen you worse and you didn’t let a stray word escape your lips.”

“Made weak by my affection.”

“Marc Antony.”

“I’ll try to be more like Augustus.” He pitched his cigarette to the snow-covered sidewalk and ground out it with his heel. “I’d better get home and sleep it all off.”

I stood there thinking over his words. Who was the possible exception, or was it potential exception? Potentiality, actuality. Obviously, I had not yet recovered from the tensions of the past year, if I was wondering just how loaded the word “potential” was in the mind of one steeped in the metaphysics of St. Thomas Aquinas.

But Brennan had taken my arm and turned me in the direction of our respective houses. He said: “We were speaking of Sandra. And whether or not I might renew my acquaintance with her. Perhaps Father Burke and his attorney will pop in to see her when they go to New York. And take it from there.”

“New York? What are you talking about?”