Ma made me an offer. “I’ll tell you what, Maeve. You can borrow my gray wool suit. I pressed it last night, just in case.”
She said it as if she were handing me the keys to the city.
And in her mind, she was.
Ma worked in a high-end department store called R. H. Stearns in downtown Boston. She’d been there years in the alterations department, working as a seamstress. But her real ambition was to be a saleswoman. More than anything she fancied herself a fashion adviser to wealthy women—the kind of society mavens with enough money to buy designer gowns and a different fur for every outfit. To this end she wasted precious quarters on copies of Vogue and McCall’s every month, poring over them, memorizing each page. She’d bought the gray suit years ago when she first began applying for a sales position, but they passed over her year after year. Perhaps it was because she was so skilled a seamstress, or perhaps because they thought she was too old, at forty-three, or maybe too Irish. But in any case the gray suit, the proud uniform of her future self, still hung in her wardrobe, outdated now.
“The blue dress fits better,” I told her.
“This is a job interview, not a date.” She was hurt. I could hear the wounded pride in her voice, as if she’d just proposed, been turned down, and now had to get up off her knees from the floor. “Also I fixed that hat of yours, the one with the torn net. I steamed it back into shape but in the end I had to take the net off.” She got up, went to the sink. “Where’d you get a hat like that anyway, Maeve? It’s a Lilly Daché! They cost a fortune!”
Trust her to notice the label.
“It was a gift,” I fibbed.
“Well, you certainly didn’t take care of it. And a ‘Thank you’ wouldn’t go amiss.”
“Cheers, Ma.”
She started to wash up.
I stared out the window, pressing my palms tightly against the coffee cup for warmth. Sitting here in the kitchen just before the day truly began, looking out into the darkness, calmed my nerves. The city was shadowy, lit only by streetlamps. But still the North End was already awake and opening for business.
The fruit seller across the street, Mr. Contadino, was setting up his stall, squinting as he cranked open his green-striped awning in the icy wind, the air swirling with snowflakes. He had on a flat cap and a heavy woolen vest under his clean apron, and a pair of knitted fingerless gloves protected his stubby hands. Soon he would light the chestnut stove—a large iron barrel near the shop doorway with a coal fire in the base and fresh chestnuts roasting in the top. He sold them tender and hot in little brown paper bags for a penny. Contadino’s chestnuts were a glowing beacon of civilization in the North End. The smell of the buttery flesh roasting and the delicious combination of cold air and the crackling fragrant heat radiating from the belly of the stove made it all but impossible not to stop as you passed by. Men collected there, speaking in Italian, smoking, laughing, warming their hands. In the morning they held tiny steaming cups of espresso, and in the evening cigar smoke, sweet and luxuriant, billowed around them in clouds.
As Ma was fond of pointing out, Contadino knew what he was doing. That chestnut stove brought him twice as much trade as any other fruit seller in the neighborhood had. “See, the Italians are smart. And they don’t drink. We made the right choice; we’re better off here.”
Here was the North End of Boston. Waves of immigrants had made the North End their home over the years. It had been a Jewish ghetto before the Irish took over, but most had since moved south; it was firmly Italian now. We had second cousins living in the South End, but Ma always considered herself a North Ender, valuing privacy over familiarity. “We don’t have to live in everyone’s back pocket,” she used to say.
“A suit looks more professional.” Ma hated to lose an argument. “Just because you’re not working doesn’t mean you can’t look respectable.”
Respectable was one of Ma’s favorite words, along with ladylike and tasteful. Quaint, old-fashioned words. To me they sounded as relevant as bustle and parasol; faded echoes from another era when good looks, pleasing manners, and modesty were all that were required in the female arsenal. Nowadays, they just made you seem backward.
“I’ll think about the suit,” I told her, watching as Mrs. Contadino, wrapped in a shawl, came out into the cold with her husband’s coat. He waved her away, but she won in the end; he had to put it on before she would go back inside.
Then I remembered what day it was.
“It’s the eighth today, isn’t it?”
I saw her smile. Maybe it pleased her that she didn’t have to remind me. “That’s right. It’s a sign. Mark my words: it’ll bring you luck!”
Underneath Ma’s worldly exterior a superstitious child of Ireland still lingered, clinging to all the impossible magic of the supernatural.
“Do you think?” I swallowed some more coffee.
“Absolutely! You were born at night, Maeve. That means you have a connection to the world of the dead. If you ask for their help, they’re sure to come.” She topped up my cup. “I’ll be going to mass later if you want to join me. I’m sure he’d like it if you came too.”
It had been a long time since I’d been to mass. Too long.
I looked out at the pale gray dawn, bleeding red-orange into the sky. “Go on, Ma, tell me about him,” I said, changing the subject. It was also a tradition, something we did every year on the anniversary of my father’s death. And who knew, maybe today it would make a difference; maybe against all reason, my dead father would lure good fortune to me.
“Oh, Maeve!” She shook her head indulgently. “You know everything there is to tell!”
Every year she protested—not too hard.
“Go on!”
And every year, I insisted, for old times’ sake.
She paused, teasing the moment out like an actress about to play a big speech. “He was a remarkable man,” she began. “A graduate of Trinity College in Dublin. A true gentleman and an intellectual. Do you know what I mean when I say that?” She took a long drag. “I mean he had a hunger for knowledge; a deep longing for it, the way that some people yearn for food or wealth.” She smiled softly, exhaling, and her voice took on a tender, dreamy tone. “It made him glow; like he was on fire from the inside out. His eyes used to burn brighter, his whole being changed when he was speaking on something that interested him, like literature or philosophy. He was good-looking, yes,” she allowed, “but if you only could’ve heard him talk … Oh, Maeve! His voice was a country—a rich green land populated with mountains and rivers …”
She had the gift, as the Irish would say, an ear for language. Her talents were wasted as a seamstress.
“He drew you into other places. Other worlds. He made the obscure real and the unfathomable possible. He would’ve been a great man had he lived. There was no doubt. His brain was like a whip.” She flicked a bit of ash into the sink, pointed her cigarette at me. “You have that. You have a sharp mind.” Her words were an accusation rather than a compliment. “And his eyes. You have his eyes.”
There was just one photograph of Michael Fanning. It sat on the mantelpiece in the front room, a rather startling portrait of a handsome young man staring directly into the camera. His broad, intelligent forehead was framed by waves of dark locks, and his features were fine and even. But it was the fearless intensity of his gaze and the luminous pinpoints of light