kept repeating with tears in his eyes. “If he had been born twenty years later, he would have been the first Catholic president, mark my words, Tom. That smart he was. Our mother used to tell us, ‘Boys, when your brother’s elected pope, don’t do anything to embarrass him.’ Little did she know about his way with the ladies. But president he could have had, Tom, if the time had been right.”
“He would have made an interesting president, Uncle Brian. We probably would have gone to war with the British.”
Brian narrowed his eyes, and then grinned. “You’re a great one for joshing, son,” he said. “It’s a grand affair, isn’t it?”
“I’m going to go dance with my wife,” Tommy said.
“Bless her,” Brian said, staring into the depths of his drink.
“Ten thousand if it’s a penny,” Tommy said to Connie as they danced to “Strangers in the Night” sung by as bad a Sinatra imitator as Tommy had ever heard. “Country club, open bar, prime rib, six-piece band. For something they threw together in a month, my brother did some job on this wedding.”
Connie hummed along with the music, and Tommy pulled her closer. Her stomach felt like a Tupperware bowl placed between the two of them. Suddenly Tommy remembered how the priests had made them slow dance at high school sock hops with a dictionary wedged between their pelvises. If anything, it had increased the consciousness of the near occasion of sin.
“Love was just a glance away, a warm embracing dance away,” sang Tommy so loudly that couples near them heard him over the electric din of the overeager organist, and several of them smiled.
“Maggie looked beautiful coming down the aisle,” said Connie. “But somebody should have told her to hold her bouquet up around her waist.”
“She did fine,” said Tommy. “Who did her hair? You?”
Connie smiled up at him.
“It’s the first time I’ve seen her face in three years,” he said as the music ended.
Now, adrift in that happy haze somewhere between sobriety and the point at which he started to cry uncontrollably at things like “Danny Boy,” Tommy saw his daughter across the room, laughing with a boy in a blue sports coat. The kid was skinny, with dishwater-blond hair that stuck up at the crown and a big mobile mouth full of teeth; he ducked his head whenever Maggie turned to look at him, but as soon as she turned away he would stare at her profile as though it was a crucifix and he a new seminarian. He reminded Tommy of someone, but he could not tell who. Maggie looked strangely grownup, perhaps because he was indeed seeing her face, seeing the lines of her square jaw, sharp now as the baby fat disappeared. “Still flat as a board,” he muttered to himself, sipping at his brandy, not meaning to speak aloud. “What?” said Mark, dropping into an empty chair next to him.
Another polka was ending, and suddenly, as if in some primitive hostile response, his aunts and uncles had risen to their feet at their tables, wedged in by the swinging kitchen door, and commenced an a cappella version of “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.” They all had fine voices, and had been well trained in the choir of St. Aloysius School; the singing was so loud that men playing golf on the nth hole, not far from the huge plate-glass picture window of the banquet room, turned, perplexed, looking for the source of some melodious buzzing that had reached their ears. Tommy could not contain his glee and joined in at the end, hoping the groom’s family would not offer some folk song as a rejoinder. But instead the groom’s father leapt to his feet with a cheer. “Erin go Bragh!” he cried, clapping his big slab hands.
There was much clapping, and the singers took bows, laughing and hitting one another on the back. “Jesus,” said Mark. “Oh, relax,” Tommy said, grinning as the band started on “Danny Boy,” the Lamplighters recognizing a good thing when they saw one.
“Tom, I need you to help me out,” Mark said, lighting a cigar.
“Not now,” Tommy said. Mark had been pressing him about Scanlan & Co. since the night of the wake. He thought it was the perfect plan for him to take over John’s job and have Tommy take over his own. “I’m thinking about it,” Tommy added, as his brother continued to stare at him. “I am giving it serious consideration. Honest to God.”