“What!” Mark said, and Tommy loved the look on his face so much he threw back his head and laughed.
“It’s not as bad as you think,” Tommy said. “He was careless about some things, but the bottom line isn’t as bad as you think. On the other hand, it’s nowhere near as good as they think.” And he motioned to John Scanlan’s brothers and sisters, who were singing “Danny Boy” and sobbing happily.
“How the hell—”
“I took the keys from his dresser and let myself into the office one night after I went to the hospital.”
“And it’s okay? Everything’s there?”
Tommy laughed again, this time without pleasure. “Jesus, Mark, what did you think? That Dad cooked the books? That we were bankrupt? That John Scanlan had been playing the ponies on the side and buying fur coats for his secretary?”
“So he moved money around a little bit more than he should have. So on some things he robbed Peter to pay Paul. But more than that—forget it. Only in books, Mark. You don’t wake up one day and find out that Saint John of the all-cotton cassocks is leading a double life.” Both men looked toward the bandstand. Their aunt Marge had just poured a beer all over one of her brothers. James got up from the dais and hurried toward her. Monica’s nostrils were flaring. The bridegroom was laughing and she gave him a look that Tommy imagined could turn a man to stone. Something about its intensity reminded him of his father, and he pitied the young man in his rented tuxedo sitting, chastened, next to his niece. “I did always wonder about him and Dorothy,” Tommy said absently.
“Jesus!” said Mark. “You think he was doing Dorothy?”
“Ah, who cares now?” Tommy said, watching Marge wave her finger in his oldest brother’s distinguished face, knowing as surely as if he could hear her that she was reminding James Scanlan that she had once changed his diapers.
It was the wrong time to tell Mark that the company had been paying Dorothy $1000 a month for years, putting her on the books as a paraffin supplier. Tommy had been oddly unsurprised. Mary Frances already knew. Tommy had been sure of it when he watched his mother seat Dorothy in the third row at the funeral Mass. Connie had met the little girl at the funeral home, and when Tommy saw she was not at the Mass he had asked his wife what the child looked like. “What’s her name again?” he asked, and Connie had replied quietly, “Beth.” Then she had added, “I think she’s like Maggie, a combination of her mother and her father.” And Tommy let it go at that. He would keep the checks to the bogus paraffin supplier coming, and he would try not to think about the rest. He had known what his father was really like all those years, but he had never had to stare it in the eye until that moment in the hospital when the old man had tried to suck the soul out of his body as his dying act. Tommy would never choose to look that in the eye again, and he would never expose it to the eyes of anyone else. He looked at Mark and added quietly, “The point is that people are different than you think, but they’re not that different. Dad wasn’t Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He was just the guy you saw, and then the real guy. And they’re never the same thing. He did good work. But he wasn’t the Second Coming of Christ, like he wanted us all to believe. You’ll have some cleaning up to do, some loans to consolidate, some changes to make. But things are good.”
“So you’ll come?”
“I didn’t say that. Besides, maybe I want the top job.” His brother’s eyes grew big, and Tommy laughed again. “Just kidding you, brother. We’ll talk about it soon. But not today.” The two of them sat silently as couples whirled around the dance floor. Tommy’s uncle Brian and aunt Maureen danced by, both with tears in their eyes. Tommy remembered that even his father, that most unsentimental of men, had sometimes teared up over “Danny Boy.” Tommy himself had never liked it; it was difficult to sing along with. James went