Iron Behind the Velvet - Chapter 77

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~ The Form a Day Takes¹

Though she’d labored to repress it, the sober tensity wedged between her shoulder blades had awakened, slinking now into her wrists and hands. She’d have to tell Joe he was right – when she was anxious and working, she did keep a strained grip on her pencil. Judging from the stricture in her neck, she did the same with the telephone. 

Joe. The telephone. I should call him back. Noonish, he’d suggested. She glanced again at the clock. It was past that.

Edie had once offered a suggestion - well, several, Catherine recalled with a fond loneliness – an exercise as remedy for the stiffness. I remember what to do. She stretched her fingers wide, pulled them to fists, stretched them wide again … wider still … and, since there was no one rolled up knee-to-knee with her willing to lay into those pressure points, as Edie had phrased it, over the chair’s rolled arms she smoothed and smoothed her palms. The tufted upholstery was cushiony and snugly tacked, the nailhead trim even and tight. Clearly aged, possibly a find from Rosie’s shop, the wine-colored leather was worn soft in spots, almost velvety to the touch. Unlike her own desk chair – slick, ergonomic, accommodating … business-like, lest she forget, canting her forward to work – this one bid her rest, to reflect. A lumbar curve urged her shoulders back, nestling her to a receptive hollow, no matter the difference between her height and Eimear’s. She softened to its contours, its embrace …

A grand, French Cut crystal hung in the uncurtained window suspended from its apex, from the keystone of the roman arch. A pendalogue from an old chandelier, Catherine suspected, having seen dozens below with similar ornaments. Was it one of Rosie’s found treasures as well? She imagined so, a sparkling, a flashing, in the antique store’s front window remnant in her memory.  She’d love to show her Cullen’s collection of prisms, sorted by size and shape into the many shallow trays of an old metal dental cabinet, each rusty drawer wrenching open to candled dazzlement. 

Here there were no flaming tapers or torches, but an angling ray of midday sun grazed the beveled glass. Jeweled light glinted and winked within the facets. By late afternoon, the blinds behind her own desk would  be cranked closed against the heat and the glare, but Eimear’s office, like Martin’s galley kitchen, would dance with rainbows.

Martin. 

There’s nothing he can’t know now. Tell him … 

The liberty had been almost overwhelming. 

But for a moment she’d considered … not. Not … not telling him, but not telling him … everything.

Without taking his seat at the kitchen table, Martin had poured first her tea cup full, then his own. His brows raised in question, he’d tapped the ornate handle of the polished cream pitcher, but when she reached for it, he’d frowned.  

“Sugar, not toast,” he said, clearly, huffily … cryptically … admonishing himself. “And jelly for nothing.”

Confusion, she presumed, creased the corners of his eyes; hers too, most likely. Her gaze followed as his swept the kitchen – to the sideboard, where the half-finished bottle of The Green Spot stood, beside it a capped crockery jug … on to a trio of tarnished brass bells mounted high over the opposite doorway … back to the tabletop laid for tea. He scooped up the pot of preserves and hooked a finger through the handle of the empty toast rack, backed away. At the counter, he returned the silver carrier to a cabinet, set the jam jar on the window sill, his actions purposeful and quick. But then his shoulders rounded and he gripped the ledge of the sink, lingering long and silently at the view through the panes. Unwilling to leave him to aloneness, she rose and joined him, stood with him in mirrored contemplation – his spring-blossoming garden, the archway’s shadowed secrets, the flagstone path curving on to Eimear’s shuttered house … 

What must he be feeling? Concern, of course, for Flynn’s physical and emotional well-being, but Flynn’s job was at stake, its suspension a real-world setback, its possible loss an exceptional blow, socially, financially. For better or worse, for richer or poorer. Well in advance of the inevitable bad times, the vows were made. But for men like Flynn, like Vincent, the responsibility for poorer, for worse, was shameful, and that shame so isolating, that landscape so frighteningly pathless. And Eimear was Martin’s daughter – a daughter of the heart, to be sure, but as deeply bound as if by blood. Protective, cherishing of her, did he struggle with partiality? With anger at Flynn for bringing Eimear unhappiness? Hadn’t Eimear so described her sister’s tendencies – Rosie can be fierce and often a bit more on my side than is fair. It was only natural, only human, to gather one’s own close, to fend off all hurts with the raised shield and brandished sword. Martin loved Flynn, of that she was certain, but Eimear was his. And there was more, more he didn’t yet know. 

He’s a Nosy Nelly, Eimear had said. He’ll ask why you’re here. Martin leaned into her shoulder and she looked up at him. He was pale, his crosshatched cheeks stained a feverish rose, his white hair damp at the roots.  Suddenly not ageless, but aged; not eternal but vulnerable. Could she add to his troubles? When she told him about the threatening phone calls Eimear had received, Martin’s inescapable fear would double every passion. 

And just last night, not in some shadowed alcove, but here in this everyday room … Vincent, face to face. Even in the midst of these pressured troubles, the awesome encounter would yet resound. She had no doubt Martin could accept, that he already had, but that knowledge, that truth beyond knowledge – so well she knew – could strike like a storm. Terror in wonderment with rich collapse.²

Yesterday, at lunch, Martin asserted he’d spent a lifetime believing the unexplained to be glorious, but today he knew it to be so.  The secret would change his life forever. He was no less a part of this swirl of energy than she, than Vincent, than Eimear, Flynn, Rosie, even Wren, even – somehow – Billy and Sebastien. Than this churchyard, this place, a bridge longstanding between their worlds. Its reach far, wide, deep and long, perhaps more encompassing than she could yet fathom, the concurrence had caught them up; they would ride it through together. 

Through …  together. The tangle of her feelings was unnerving.

There’d been a moment the night before when Vincent thought Martin … lost, when, without thought of consequence, he’d waived the protection of darkness and knelt at the priest’s chair, determined to bring him back, unwilling  to let go of what was just grasped, admitting to her his relief, as greedy as it was compassionate, that Martin only slept, that their friendship was not cut off before it was well begun. She’d understood then, and it was underscored now, she herself determined to be steadfast and strong, to be supportive, and at the same time desperately, selfishly needful. She could hardly be glad for the intimidation Eimear experienced, but that menace had brought them vitally together, compelled them below, speeding them across that last, most fundamental, most exclusionary boundary. Or for Flynn’s despair, his spiraling descent, but this … this tailspin, was a magnetic summons. Vincent’s. 

Bráithre. I will be that brother.

Siordheirfiúracha. Eternal sisters.

Mo pháistí. My children.

If great change could only be preceded by chaos; if they awakened from the dark nights of their souls to embrace a new unity …  

It’s what I wished for. A further wish, a fuller wish. Have I been greedy? 

But nothing, surely nothing, would obstruct … nothing would rescind … 

Not now.

Martin reached out for the jam jar on the wide windowsill, inched it closer to a cobalt apothecary bottle already in line with a squat red electrical insulator, a sizable green crystal on a brass base – the last a lamp finial, she thought, perhaps half an old doorknob assembly. “Just so,” he murmured, trilling his fingers before the collection, and trilling still, drew them slowly away. Ah. I see. The late day sun would gleam through the golden marmalade, the colored glassware. Something certain to look forward to, something beautiful. He patted her hand, closed his over hers. His touch was warm, his smile down at her troubled but encouraging. She considered this preface, that overture. 

“I knew you were here last night,” Martin began for her, “keeping Eimear company. And your Vincent knew to come for you. When he left here, I imagined him …”  He offered a short, soft chuff – of wonder, she inferred. “… your splendid escort Below. I slept easy, convinced the voice of blessing whispered in my heart, that a circle of light had been drawn, convinced of its protection, its strength … that on the shore of dawn waves of astonishing possibility would break. I slept, eager for the furtherings of the new day, this new …” He turned up one palm, traced an arc in the air … inclusive … reverent.  “Our new world.³ But when I saw you again this morning, charging out the door after Eimear, the blood all high in your faces … I knew to worry instead, and I had but the tick of time to wind up over it before the police cruiser delivered our Flynn.” A hush gathered between them. “You stayed with her overnight. There was … is … a reason, yes?”

How she would have loved to tell him No, no reason. No reason other than an invitation to sit down to leftover lasagna and easy conversation, to draw from its hiding place a young girl’s chalk drawing of an extraordinary boy in the light of a magical moon,  to delight and marvel in the recognition and awakening of this– Tears welled in her eyes, in her silent voice. This ancient belonging. Our belonging. 

“We didn’t stay here.” She swallowed hard. With the disclosure, more than worry would gnaw at him – fear, anger, limitation. But to trust him with less would be more damaging. “I think you should sit down, Martin.”

His grip tightened around her fingers. He drew a spiky breath that wheezed out to an answer she didn’t expect.  “I’m all at sixes and sevens,” he said. Without explanation, he crossed behind her to a glass-doored china closet. She turned to watch, leaning back against the enameled cast-iron sink. With a demonstrative glance at her over his shoulder, he brought out a silver caddy, its long double trays rowed with sparkling sugar cubes. “Sugar, not toast,” he repeated, his voice quivery with the mustering of courage to cross a threshold he must. “I’ve no toast made, so we don’t need the toast rack, and if there’s no toast, we’ll not be needing jam. But sugar …” He held the carrier aloft. “Sugar we do need.” He set the caddy between their place settings; his lips pressed thin. “And hot tea,” he added as he pulled her saucer away and his. “Tsk, ’tis cold, this.”

He carried both to the sink and tipped the brew into the drain. The tap ran until the water steamed, then he rinsed and warmed the cups, returned them to the table, poured new servings. “A cuppa, always, be the news sweet or ill.” He gestured at her empty chair. “Sit, sit.” She complied and scooted closer in. A set of tongs was lodged over the caddy’s handle, patinaed and strange, the grippers like the paws of a lion. She worked them open … closed … captured a cube for her cup … looked up at him. He sighed and scrubbed at his face. “As will I.” 

But he hadn’t.

A room or two away, a telephone rang. Trampling in on its heels, louder and closer, a second line clamored. Martin waved off their droning insistence, but, arrested, his chin lifted, he gazed glazedly over her head through the muffled round-robin of recording messages. Before he could settle into his pulled-out chair, the ringing began again, another chorus of mumbled urgencies. Mrs. Sheedy, she made out. Hospital. Baby. Critical. Prayers. The gnarled joints of his fingers paled in his grip of the ladderback.

The last communiqué dwindled to quiet, yet Martin still stood, the corner of his mouth skewing to a solemn dimple. Still weighing his obligations against his loves, she hazarded and was immediately graced with the understanding that the two were profoundly conjoined.  At last he turned from the hush, turned to her, his tender focus creating an insulation, a brightening circle of vigilant shelter that pulled her close, reassured her, relieved her. He was ready for the truth. All of it.

But the nearest telephone rang again; then the farthest burred. And neither had finished when one of the brass bells fastened above the doorframe jangled. Only decoration, she would have maintained, only a rusty vestige of some decades-earlier in-house call box. It clanged again. 

Martin clapped his hands – once – and on cue the reverberation stopped, leaving behind an empty echo, a vacuum of silence that would be filled.  

“In ainm Dé,” he grumbled into steepled fingers.⁴ “Someone’s in the narthex.” The bell racketed yet again. “What’s the time?” He swiveled to give the clock a glare. “Ach, aye, it’s young Brendan Curren, here for a confab. A seminarian,” he explained, “nearly through his studies and ready to call it all a wash. He’ll wander back if I don’t show up out front.” He smoothed the broad black cincture at his waist, adjusted the pleats of his cassock. “I’d planned a philosophical session: May the companionship of your doubt restore what your beliefs leave out.⁵ But I know just the thing. I’ll assign him the two marriage counselings I’ve on my calendar today, one couple chomping at the bit to get on with it, the other in ashes, and whether there’s a phoenix lurking there, I’m not sure. The opposing perspectives – this fork or that – should be illuminating. And they’re both home visits, so right off he’ll go. And once he’s gone, I’ll mute the ringers and the answering machine and close the doors between the rectory and the offices. I can’t today … I just can’t …” His touch was light on her shoulder. “Earlier, you asked if you might make a call, yes?”

  

Joe. She nodded.

“Straight down that hall to the end,” he said, pointing the way out of the kitchen. “My study. I won’t be long.”

“And then …”

“Yes, Catriona. And then.”

She started down an uncarpeted hallway, pausing in passing in the doorway of a narrow bedroom, spartan in its decoration. Whitewashed plaster walls, a single, lace-curtained window. A single bed with a wrought-iron headboard, its coverlet plain and white and neatly drawn, deeply tucked under the one pillow. A single armchair, a tall armoire of dark oiled wood. No mirror over the oak dresser, but a framed print. The Sacred Heart. Pompeo Batoni. She’d once taken in a small exhibit of the painter’s works at the Met while on a long lunch from her corporate firm. 

Martin’s study, though … She had to smile as she navigated a room as  mobbed with books as Father’s chamber. Bookcases crammed full; tomes in stacks on the floor, short and tall and slanting. His desktop was as she might have predicted: a busy place. A stark black telephone wired to an answering machine with a flashing message light prompted a license she didn’t think he’d mind; she switched both to silent. A tooled leather Bible fat with ribbon and torn paper placemarks, a dark-red-beaded rosary – garnets, most likely – draped across it. Open texts she had to examine: Aquinas, a volume of his Summa Theologica – Providence, she noted with a sigh. A paperback book of blessings beneath a worn-edged, cloth-bound edition – The Poetry Cure. A clutter of belongings: handwritten pages of words and music, a bronze paperweight in the shape of a dog, a wrinkled felt ballpark pennant, a long-handled spatula … Father Seamus’s tramp art box. And in the office chair, half-wedged between the seat and the arm, a lone, fleece-lined, man’s slipper.  She tugged it out, sat down, grateful for a recouping moment in the comfortable, comforting hush before she dialed.

She’d long finished her conversation with Joe, one that calmed his agitation – Cathy? What the– You hung up on me! I called back and nobody answered! – and stirred hers – Rosie, yeah, I tried the number at the campus guest residence last night … late … and first thing this morning, too, but she wasn’t– Well … I didn’t talk to her, and I’m not trying again, and really, Radcliffe, I’d rather not have this little chat right now – when Martin leaned in at the open door, catching her with the paperweight from his desk in her hands, turning the odd little Chinese dog this way and that. 

“Tis hideous, isn’t it? ’Twas part of Seamus’s box there, one of his treasures, the only thing I took out and kept out all these years. The wee pug reminds me of him, I suppose. Scrappy, stubborn thing. And playful and always smiling. A good man to have on your side.” 

She returned the figurine to its duty – weighting a jumble of receipts and business cards.  “Seems like he always has been … on our side.”

“May the angels protect him.” Martin scuffed in with a fogging mug in each hand, lodging an elbow behind the door to start its close, aiding it along with his knee and hip until the latch caught. “I started us over,” he explained, placing the two teas on a cleared octagonal table situated in the middle of the room, a table that found its double in Father’s chamber, laid there though, always, for chess. He angled a flanking wing chair her way, held out his hand. “Now … you’ll tell me, yes?”

His first words … afterward … were but whispered, a prayer breathed against his knuckles. Lily, she heard as he pulled his fist away and tapped his heart. I will not falter. 

He reached across the table, took her hand again, the fierce energy of their physical bond renewed. “You have these tapes? With you?”

“I do.”

“I want to hear.”

“I don’t think so, Martin. It’s …” Too … tangible. Too undeniable. Once he’d heard … “Evidence. We were planning to make a report at the 47th this morning.”

“Why not yesterday, when she came to you? You were only blocks from a station house. Flynn’s station house. His mates would–”

“Jurisdiction,” she interrupted, stating the reality with more dispassion than she felt even now. “Ultimately, it’s a Bronx matter.” Her impulse had been the same – to pack up and hurry to the 1st, to Greg Hughs, a friend –her friend – to Flynn’s Sergeant, to engage without delay the full force and protectiveness of the police family. That Martin might conclude she’d failed to competently advise Eimear was crushing, but the further reason, the truest, for waiting … he’d named already. “You understand, don’t you? This is Eimear. Flynn …”

“Yes,” Martin said after a long moment, the word infused with every bit as much meaning as Vincent might deliver it. “Flynn … first. 'Twould have wrecked him worse had she done any different.” 

He … disappeared … for a moment … retreated … his eyes closed, his face tipped skyward. When he again met her gaze, she wasn’t sure if she saw hope or denial in his bright eyes. “What you found on the front porch that the postman disposed of and sanitation carted away – some kids in the neighborhood pulled such pranks a while back. Something they saw on television, they swore. ’Twas crude, but only shenanigans. I thought, maybe, I might recognize a voice on the tapes, match it to one of the confessed ruffians.”

The phone calls at home and at work, the cold revenge in the man’s voice, the brutal promise. “It’s not kids, Martin. It’s someone, some associate of the perpetrators of the attack at the Yeshiva.”

“I want to believe it’s … bluster. Sound and fury that signifies nothing.”⁶

“I know. But there’ve been drive-bys. She’s noticed … repetition. And I saw–”

“Sunday night, after an evening’s session at Behan’s, a tire went flat. Was that–”

“A deliberate puncture to the sidewall. Not a road hazard.”

Martin paled. “They’re watching her, where she goes. They know ..."

When she’s alone. He couldn’t say it aloud and she didn’t want to. 

“I’d planned to stay with her … here … last night–“

“Could you not convince her to stay with you? Far from where they’d look for her? What justification did she give for heading home instead? The roses needed watering? Mab needed fed? Ach, aye,” he cried at her acknowledgement. “I’d have done it! Had she but called me, told me! I’d have positioned myself in the night shadows of the porch with my cane in both hands. The miscreants would have to get past me, God save ‘em …”    

“When they came too close,” she went on, “we went below.”

“Below! Had Vincent already …”

“He was right there. We went … together.”

“Ahhh.”

“And this morning, Vincent told her, promised her …” She stumbled over the word Martin so needed to hear, the hope, the possibility, having come from him. “Braíthre,” she whispered, beginning another story altogether, one accompanied by tears, hers and his. “He’ll come to Flynn.”

 *****

A peck at the Eimear’s office window drew her attention, drew her from her chair to the casement. A small brown bird eyed her from an outdoor perch, a twist of variegated yarn in its beak, she noted before it fluttered off, for the nest it must make.  She brushed her palm over the smooth granite slab sill - honed, she knew to describe the finish – wide enough for sitting, over the rougher stone trim of the arch. Splitface, not chiseled. Kanin and Dominic would both be proud she remembered the distinction. 

The clear beveled panes framed a delicate, natural, Tiffany-mosaic landscape: A spreading tree’s dark branches, still leafless though tipped this day with lush saucers of blooms, wide-petaled, pink and cream and pale butter yellow. The new green never again so purely, lushly, green, season of joy for the bee.⁷ A glimpse of robin’s-egg-blue sky. 

Across the yard, the dormitory wing – two stories of brick-red stucco and shake siding and triads of tall, stone-cased windows topped with leaded transoms. Earlier, the playground resounded with the hoots and peals and trumpets of children let loose from instructional confines – and from therapy and medical treatment heartbreakingly necessary – but now, well into noon, all was quiet save for muted traffic and the insistent, eager twitter of birds. No horns, Catherine noted. And is that the aroma of fresh-baked bread? She breathed in the drifting scent. Have lunch. The food’s good. Real, Eimear’s invitation had promised. But until this moment, she’d have sworn schoolhouse rolls – silky, high-risen, and golden-buttery-brown – were a thing of fairy tales.

“You sure you don’t want something to eat? The cafeteria’s still–“

Whirling, Catherine clapped a hand to her heart, the surprise staggering her into one of the office visitor chairs which revolved and rocked and sent her wobbling into the corner of Eimear’s desk. A stacked-high in-box crashed to the floor. Zivah, in her stocking-feet Catherine gaspingly noted, stood in at the doorway.

“Oh, sorry! Eimear’s always after me to put taps on my socks.” Zivah sailed into the room and went down on her knees – as did Catherine – to gather the tumbled files and letters. “About lunch. It’s shepherd’s pie today. The kids love it. They don’t seem to realize the cooks camouflage a dozen vegetables they’d turn their noses up at if they were separate on their plates with a blanket of mashed potatoes. I have to warn you, though. The young ones we read to for half an hour, but you might want a nap after.”

Catherine crawled around the desk and fished a last stapled report from underneath the credenza behind it, pushed to her feet, and dropped into Eimear’s chair, envisioning – nearly tasting – the proffered meal, even the quiet time afterward. She’d wolfed too many lunches still at work, pencil in hand, phone on her shoulder. “It’s tempting,” she said, patting the stuffed folder before her, “but I should get these things on to Eimear.”And sit with her, if she’ll let me. Get some clothes together to wear to work tomorrow unless I want to leave Woodlawn before daybreak. Figure out where I can leave my car tonight. And get below before–

She couldn’t finish her own thought. Before what?

Zivah rose from her knees, a sheaf of papers in her hand, going to the window rather than depositing the retrieved documents in the righted tray. She made an effort, Catherine thought, to shield a check of her watch. 

With Zivah’s attention elsewhere, Catherine did the same. Wren’s verdict, Edward’s fate. A somber weight settled in her stomach. 

“Look at that, would you?” Zivah directed with the lift of her chin.

Catherine crossed the room to her side, peered out, peered up. The sky, a clear, spring-blue not ten minutes before, now scurried with diaphanous white wisps.  Mare’s tails, her father had called them. High cirrus clouds charmingly shaped by upper winds. Forerunners, though, of a coming storm.

“Mare’s tails and mackerel scales make tall ships carry lower sails,”⁸ Zivah said. “Something hopefully not too wicked this way comes.⁹ I hope we get the afternoon recess in.”

The weight doubled. Eimear’s heartache, her fear. Flynn’s torment, his suffering, his darkness. And doubled again. 

Vincent?

Click HERE for Chapter 78

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Martin’s Mystery Box - photos of the contents (from Chapter 31)

1. John O'Donohue. The Inner History of a Day. To Bless the Space Between Us. 2008.
2. Siegfried Sassoon. Storm and Sunlight. 1918.
3. John O'Donohue (paraphrased): On Waking and A Blessing is a Protective Circle. 
4. In ainm Dé. Irish: In the name of God.
5. John O'Donohue. For Priesthood. 
6. William Shakespeare. Macbeth. Act V, scene 5.
7. Marge Piercy (paraphrased). More Than Enough.
8. A traditional nautical weather rhyme.
9. Ray Bradbury. Something Wicked This Way Comes. 1962.