being “That Jack, now what a fine fellow he is” and “That Joe, you can’t beat him for a good yarn,” wasting away from lack of ambition until they were only death’s-heads with a lifetime of jokes to their credit. Sometimes John Scanlan thought he owed them everything, because they had haunted him every day of his life, his own old man among them, putting in his time at the Department of Public Works, leaving a life insurance policy just large enough to cover the two-night wake and the plot at St. Ann’s. In the hospital they danced in his head whenever he rested, and he would sit up suddenly and begin to add up columns of figures as though possessed, as indeed he always had been. Tommy could tell when his father had been having these spells because John would look at his middle son suspiciously, noticing his resemblance to those hail-fellows-well-met of years gone by.
Tommy came to the hospital every day, apologizing for Connie’s absence, saying she was sick, which was true but not the problem. She said she hated hospitals, although she did well enough in them when she was having the kids. She said sometimes that it was a good thing that her own mother had died suddenly, turning a lavender blue one evening at the kitchen table and sliding to the linoleum floor, dead somewhere between the edge of the table and the legs of the chair, because Connie could not have borne being with her in the hospital. Connie could not have borne being with her anyway, Tommy thought.
Margaret was there most afternoons, too, and after a while it occurred to Tommy to wonder how she had so much time on her hands. “It’s summer,” his sister had said, but that didn’t seem reason enough. She had taken to carrying a book with her whenever she came to the hospital, and for the first few days Tommy thought it was the New Testament. Waiting out in the hall for his father’s room to empty of visitors, he had looked at the title: Jane Eyre, An Autobiography.
“How come you’re reading Jane Eyre?” Maggie asked her aunt, peeking over her father’s shoulder.
“Just for fun,” Margaret said.
“You’ve never read it before?” said Maggie. “It’s a great book.”
“Is it religious?” Tommy asked.
Margaret laughed. “Tom, honey, underneath this habit—it’s me. Average girl. Good dancer. I’m allowed to read books that aren’t necessarily religious, or even edifying.” Tommy looked skeptical.
“Inside every nun is a woman,” she added.
“Do me a favor, Peg,” Tommy replied, using her old childhood nickname. “Don’t tell Dad that. He’s had one stroke already.”
After the men had left, all the men who did business with John Scanlan, and all the ones who wanted to, the ones who owned the cement and construction and candle and casket companies, Tommy went into his father’s room, his daughter and his sister behind him. Buddy Phelan had brought a fruit basket, which was still wrapped in its tinted plastic. There was a bottle of Canadian Club and two cans of ginger ale on the bedside table.
“That Monica was in here an hour ago,” John said to Maggie, “sweet as can be. More there than meets the eye, I bet. She said all you girls were having a grand time at the seashore before I gave you such a scare. What’s your problem down there, little girl?”
“I’m tying my shoe,” said Maggie, who did not want him to see her face.
“You shouldn’t be coming to see me here wearing those sneakers, like you’re going to play basketball instead of going to call on your grandfather. You girls don’t have good sense. Your cousin Teresa was here yesterday, wearing a scapular under her little shirt. Can you beat that? The Sacred Heart shining through the white of her blouse, like a big stain. The girl’s an imbecile.”
“She has Sister Luke. She’s very religious. She loves stuff like that.”
“Nuns,” John Scanlan snorted, and Margaret laughed. “The only one I’ve ever known with the sense God gave her is your aunt. Don’t be a nun, girl. Give me your word.”
“I don’t know, Grandpop,” Maggie said, thinking of the scene at the Malones, and the flames licking the corner of the development house. “It sounds kind of peaceful.”
“Ha,” her grandfather said. “Peaceful. Who gives a damn about peaceful. That makes for a dull life, girl. Remember that. How’s your brother?”
“Which one?”
“All of them, for Christ’s sake. How the hell am I supposed to keep track of