“Well, if it’s too painful . . .”
“Sam, I see how you came to be a newspaper feller.” He slapped his leg in frustration. “You can’t stop pumping!”
I laughed and said I’d ease up.
“No, I’ll spill, but there’s a lot to it. Goes back to just before the war, about when that picture was made. Cait was bein’ sparked by John O’Neill’s nephew, Colm, who’d never liked the name Margaret and so called her Cait. She’d loved Colm since they was little kids. They were set to marry. But when the fighting started, Colm took it into his head to fight for the Union like his uncle, then a cavalry lieutenant. Irish lads were pouring into the armies by the tens of thousands. Course, many didn’t have a choice, as they hadn’t cash enough to buy a substitute in the draft. Still, signin’ on was the thing to do. Colm joined Meagher’s Irish Brigade.”
“How’d Cait feel about it?” I asked.
“Oh, she was dead against it. Said it wasn’t his country, nor his fight. But Colm was a charmer, could talk anybody into anything. He had his way.”
“What happened?”
“He got killed.” Andy’s tone was flat. “At Antietam. Holding the green regimental flag up even in death, we were told—though I always thought that part was malarkey.”
I felt a strange tumble of emotions, a sense that things existed just beyond my understanding: dream wisps tantalizingly near consciousness.
“It changed Cait like day to night. She’d taken care of me as far back as I remember. But after Colm’s death she didn’t care about me anymore. Or anything else, exceptin’—”
“Wait a second,” I said, charged with currents of excitement. “Didn’t your mom say the portrait was taken before her marriage?”
“There wasn’t none.” Andy looked at me. “Cait had Colm’s baby, but there was never a marriage.”
“Had his baby? You mean, after . . . ?”
“A boy, born seven months after Colm died. Soon as the war ended, John O’Neill came around spreadin’ the same old blarney. ’Cept now he was a Fenian general and instead of savin’ the Union it was savin’ Ireland. The war had all been a big training ground. Now all the boys that wasn’t dead or maimed would have a go directly at the big thing—a free Ireland.”
“Was that supposed to console Cait?”
“I don’t know what happened between ’em directly,” Andy said.
“But O’Neill was part of what changed her. She got a new purchase on life, a partial one anyhow. Along with the baby she had the Fenians. Took to ’em like religion.”
“So that Colm hadn’t died in vain?”
“That’s my guess. She’d carry on his work, so to speak.” He gave me a shrewd glance. “You’re some quick.”
“I gather you didn’t think much of it.”
“Mother sided with her, long as they’d pretend she was married. But I fought Cait every step, arguin’ that the family came first, that she’d already given up enough; but she acted like I wasn’t talking to her at all. Finally she moved out. And by then even Mother realized how far it’d gone—too far to ever change back. So we lost her.”
“I’m sorry, Andy.”
“Makes me sick. The politicians speechify, the generals make battle plans, the old women sew and give their pennies, the boys rush out to die, and the girls they marched off from ain’t never the same.”
I tried to think of comfort to offer.
“Colm was a fine lad,” he said softly. “I looked to him as my hero. Cait was lively and vital and laughed so sweet it’d make your heart jump to hear her.” He took a slow breath. “Well, she still looks enough like the girl you were studying’ so close, Sam. But now she never laughs, not even with her son. And I don’t care how many glorified speeches they make, Colm died like an animal led to slaughter.”
My vision danced oddly. McDermott. . . O’Neill. . . O’Donovan . . . Cait. What was it about the confluence of those names that stirred a vague dissonance in me? “O’Donovan takes care of her and the boy now?”
“So Mother thinks,” he said. “They work in the Fenians together is all I know. O’Donovan was Colm’s pal, though most of us couldn’t see why Colm let him be around so much. They went off to war together. It was O’Donovan who brought back the tale of the flag. I never fancied him, even before. I never liked the way he eyed Cait. But she’s gone his way, not the family’s.”
I rubbed my eyes and saw the portrait again in my mind: the dark hair tumbled on her head; the lips with an echo of a smile; the prideful glint of something—mischief? challenge?—in her eyes. It was hard to imagine her perpetually somber.
“She’s never married, then?”
“No, nor likely to; that part of Cait’s sealed up.”
“She must still be nice to look at.”
“You’re not the first to be taken with her looks, friend Sam.”
Maybe so, I thought, but how many had grown up in another century with a piece of her dress on their quilts?
Chapter 10
The Irvington ball grounds baked beneath a brilliant sun. It was the hottest day yet. Sunshades and straw hats dotted the crowd. The Stockings were loose and relaxed, out of New York with the winning streak—I with my life—intact. Andy and Sweasy got celebrity treatment. Surrounded by family members and reporters, they signed autographs, greeted friends, and gave youngsters tips. The rest of us were clearly secondary, even George—which probably accounted for his lackadaisical play: the star shortstop muffed several grounders and failed to hit with his usual authority.
There were no pool sellers here, no whiskey vendors, no fancily dressed sports. I stashed the derringer in the bottom of the cash box and stretched out, luxuriating in the sunshine, enjoying the game like a fan.
It wasn’t much of a contest, despite the young Irvingtons’ surprising fielding. We finished seven innings in two hours, all we could spare before returning to Jersey City and the evening train
