Of Irish Blood (9781429987370) Read online

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  For my mother, Mariann Williams Kelly, and my aunt, Marguerite Kelly McGuire, the matriarchs, with love and gratitude

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I am grateful to so many people, not only for their help with Of Irish Blood but also for their embrace of Galway Bay, which made this sequel possible. Thank you to my sisters, Randy, Mickey, Susie, and Nancy, to my brother, Michael, to my brothers-in-law, Ernie Strapazon, Ed Panian, and Bruce Jarchow, and to my sister-in-law, Martha Hall Kelly, with whom I shared a memorable research trip to Paris as she was writing her novel The Rabbits of Ravensbruck. Thank you to all my nephews and nieces, who inspired me to write these stories, and to my cousins, those I’ve always known and those I met through Galway Bay, especially Tom Rauch and Nicole Temmi, our genealogists, and Tom McGuire, whose kindness makes so much happen. We are all grateful to the welcoming Keeleys in Carna, County Galway—Padraig Keeley, Erin Gibbons, her husband, Ned Kelly, and their children, Olwen, MacDarra, Rosa, and Fiona.

  I feel great gratitude toward all my readers and am touched by those of you who tell me my books make you want to learn more about your own families.

  Thanks to the amazing Irish-American organizations who have invited me to their events and festivals. I think I wrote Of Irish Blood so you’d ask me back! And book clubs. What fun it’s been to visit you in person or on the phone. I also loved speaking at universities, schools, libraries, and parish churches, and thank the extraordinary singers Catherine O’Connell and Mary Deady, for making many of these appearances so special. I’ve enjoyed going to bookstores, and especially thank Elizabeth Merritt of Titcomb’s Bookshop, Beverly Schreck of Barnes & Noble in Fort Collins, Colorado, and John Barry and all at Paddy’s On the Square.

  In Chicago, I thank Mary Evers, Marilyn Antonik, Father Roger Caplis, John Fitzgerald, Darrell Windle, the always wonderful Dave Samber of Polo Café, Rick Kogan, Katie O’Brien, Skinny and Houli, the parishioners of St. James, Roseann Finnegan LeFevour, Joan O’Leary, Cliff Carlson, all at IBAM, and, of course, The Group.

  In New York, Loretta Brennan Glucksman is an encouraging friend and Carole Hart is an inspiration. Thanks to Jean Doumanian, Dee Ito, Laura Jackson, Sheila Cox, Laura Aversano, and to Colleen Ambrose and Pamela Craig Delaney for their hospitality and counsel. I am very grateful to Lynn Garafola, Daria Rose Foner, and Eric Foner. Thank you to Mary Gordon, Mary Higgins Clark, Peter Quinn, Malachy McCourt, Alfie McCourt, Tim O’Brien, Brian Brown, Michael Carty, Jr., Ellen McCourt, Julia Judge, Charlotte Moore, Ciaran O’Reilly, the Irish American Writers and Artists, as well as The Kelly Gang.

  In Paris, I appreciate the help Sheila Pratschke, director of The Irish Cultural Centre (formerly The Irish College) gave me. Thanks also to Marcel and Elizabeth Gruenspan, as well as Dominique Faugeras.

  Thanks to Roberta Aria Sorvino, MaryAnne Kelly De Fuccio, Monique Dubois Inzinna, Danielle Inzinna, and Diana Berndt. In Ireland, I’m grateful to Patsy O’Kane and all at Beech Hill House Hotel, Aine and Colm O’Keefe, as well as Roisin Nevin, Pauline Ross, Antoinette O’Ceallaigh, Geraldine Folam, Maire O’Connor at Lough Inagh Lodge, and Sister Maive MacNaillais. Thanks to all in Kansas City, especially Marilyn Stearns, Jacob and Audrey Kenemore, Rosemary Stipe, Nancy Wormington, and the O’Neills. Thank you, Barbara Leahy Sutton, for a lifetime of friendship and support.

  A special roll of honor for those who helped prepare the Of Irish Blood manuscript—Kathy Danzer, Azure Bourne, Mary Kanak, Deb Spohnheimer, Nicolette Richardson, Alexi Schwartzkopff, Adrienne Royals, Katie McGale, the great Madeline Hart, and Jim and Toni Hart.

  All Irish Americans owe much to Patricia Harty, founding editor of Irish America magazine. So do I.

  Though a work of fiction, much research went into Of Irish Blood as I tried to get the history right. Specific references and a discussion of what is fact and what is fiction is on my website: marypatkelly.com. Thank you, librarians in Chicago, New York, Dublin, Galway, Paris, and Three Lakes, Wisconsin, for your help.

  I am very happy to be published by Tom Doherty/Forge and thank Tom Doherty; my one-of-a-kind editor, Robert Gleason; Kelly Quinn; Elayne Becker; and Terry McGarry. My agent, Susan Gleason, is a gift to me in every way. Thanks!

  To my husband, Martin Sheerin—your love, patience, intelligence, and knowledge of all things Irish fill me with gratitude always.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Other Books by Mary Pat Kelly

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Twenty million Americans of Irish Blood—surely enough to free Ireland.

  —MAUD GONNE MACBRIDE, 1895

  1

  BRIDGEPORT, CHICAGO

  JUNE 23, 1903

  “We’ll have to run for it, Ag.” I can see Johnny Murphy forcing his old nags into the traffic on Archer Avenue. Miss the horse tram and I’ll be late for work—again—and my niece Agnella for class at St. Xavier’s High School.

  “Come on,” I say to her.

  “Oh, Aunt Nonie. He’s pulled away from our stop. We’ll never catch up,” she says, panting.

  “Ah, now,” I shout, “what God has for ye won’t go past ye,” imitating my Granny Honora’s brogue. I start running.

  “You shouldn’t make fun, Aunt Nonie!” Agnella says, but begins trotting along beside me. One block left to Archer and Arch, where the brown brick bulk of St. Bridget’s chides us. Should have left earlier.

  Full summer now and the sun, finally serious about Chicago, turning our few trees green. A warm breeze too but from the west. So all clogged with the smell of the Stockyards.

  Now Agnella and I pound along faster. I’m too old and too corseted to be running hell for leather through the neighborhood, as I’ll be told by somebody I’m sure. Maybe my hobble skirt’s a bit too tight around the ankles. Fashionable though. We’re almost to Archer Avenue. I’m twenty-four, Agnella’s fourteen, but she’s already up to my shoulder. Her pleated black serge school uniform makes for easy running. Another tall Kelly woman. Though she’s a blue-eyed blonde, and I have ginger hair and greenish eyes.

  Johnny Murphy, the driver, sees us. I wave, but what does the amadán do but slap the reins on his swaybacked horses, making good his threat of yesterday morning. “I’ve my schedule, Miss Nora Kell
y, and I can’t be waiting for you every day.” Leaving us, when it’s not my fault we’re late.

  A big row at the breakfast table started by my sister Henrietta, Agnella’s mother. Some nonsense about my not wringing out my shift properly and who but her had to wipe up the drips on the bathroom floor. You’d think she’d be grateful we have an indoor privy—all thanks to our big brother Mike, the master plumber. Henrietta railed on about me to poor Mike, who was trying to enjoy a second cup of coffee before heading to his job site. Supervisor now. Doesn’t have to go out at the crack of dawn like my other brother Mart, who meets the fellows delivering newspapers to the little candy store Mike bought for him. Or James the youngest boy, who works for the railroad. My sister Annie’s out early too. A policewoman, if you could feature it, but then we’re four years into the twentieth century and we women are coming into our own, though Henrietta’s too busy feeling sorry for herself to see any opportunity. Not easy for her, widowed at twenty-one from a husband called Kelly, would you believe? She and her three children having to move back in with the family. Still that was years ago. Mam spoke up for me at breakfast but Henrietta got all offended and asked Mam didn’t she appreciate her and the way she runs the house and maybe she should leave and take the children with her though how they’d survive, she didn’t know. And that stopped Mam because it’s looking as if Henrietta’s kids might be the only grandchildren she’ll ever know, what with Mike coming up to forty already and not married, and the rest of us four stair-steps the same.

  Only my brother Edward has a wife, and they live away in Indiana with her people. Mam always says her greatest sorrow is that her own mother back in Ireland never knew any of us. And Granny Honora had agreed. Bad enough to have to say farewell to your children but to never set eyes on grandchildren …

  I remember Mam talking to Granny Honora right before Granny died, the two of them wondering why we didn’t find mates when even in the worst times in Ireland and the early days in Chicago people couldn’t wait to pair up. Better chance with two working together, Mam said, and now with plenty of good jobs going and her children blessed with work, they stayed clustered at home.

  Granny said, “Ah well, maybe they’re only taking their time. I’d say young Honora won’t be lollygagging.”

  But that was then. Granny’s gone four years now and me still not married. Granny was the only one called me Honora. Named after her. But I was always Nora in school, and Nonie in the family, which seemed right because she, Granny, was the true Honora Kelly. Henrietta held my name against me. Said she should’ve been called after Granny. “You carry the name of two women who helped this family,” Granny had told her which shut Henrietta up. Still, there’d be no bickering at the breakfast table if Granny Honora were still alive.

  Nor would we be rushing out at the last minute and have to run for our lives to catch Johnny Murphy.

  “Johnny!” I shout. He’s trying to maneuver the tram past—of all things—a Model T Ford bumping along leading the parade. Rare enough in Bridgeport. I’m trying to talk Mike into getting an auto. Now that would be the bee’s knees.

  “Wait! Wait!” I yell.

  So close now—if I can get a grip on that pole—I stretch out my right hand, pulling Agnella along with my left. Suddenly I’m flying, swinging up onto the platform with Agnella beside me, just like that. And each of us held by one big hand of this fellow. Now I stumble into to him and doesn’t he hug me to himself, laughing.

  And that starts it, God forgive me. A kind of enchantment. In Granny Honora’s stories, women in Ireland are whisked off to fairyland where they dance and feast through the night, only to come home the next morning to find a century has passed. Is that what’s happening to me?

  “Thank you,” I say when I get my breath. Agnella and I stare at this giant of a fellow. She nods and hurries toward the back of the car, but I smile right into his face. “One in the eye for Johnny Murphy,” I say, “but I’d best pay my fare now.”

  “No, no,” he says. “All taken care of. When I saw you and your sister…”

  “Niece.”

  “Niece, then—but the both of you running flat out, you reminded me of this game filly I own who can’t bear to lose so I had to lend a hand.”

  “Game filly? A horse?” I say, ready to get mad but he laughs again and raises his straw boater hat. Wearing one of those new cream-colored suits that show the dirt.

  “I’m Tim McShane, miss. Or is it missus?”

  “Miss,” I say, “Miss Nora Kelly,” and stick out my hand. And doesn’t he take it in both of his and wink at me. Much too bold for the Archer Avenue tram at eight in the morning with every eye on us.

  I pull my hand away and walk back to where Agnella waits with our friends Rose and Mame McCabe in the seats they save for us every morning since they board the tram earlier at the Brighton Park stop near where they live in a boardinghouse run by my Aunt Kate. The sisters work with me at Montgomery Ward, telephone operators too, taking orders for the catalog, the three of us, which my sister Henrietta finds suspect.

  “Nattering away to strangers all day? Not what I’d call proper.” But my brother Mike loves to get us telling stories about the orders we get. He calls us “the Trio”—me the oldest at twenty-four. Rose with her big hazel eyes and round, sweet face is twenty-two. Mame’s just twenty-one but regal somehow—dark eyes, high cheekbones, straight nose … mine turns up a bit. All of us old to be unmarried, as Henrietta reminds me often. “Old maids, the lot of you,” she’ll say to me.

  “Better than being a crabbed widow like you,” I say back to her. Cruel, I know, but that tongue of hers sets me off before I even realize it.

  Henrietta loves to tear down the McCabes. Jealous because we three are always so well turned out thanks to Rose’s skill as a seamstress. Any outfit I can draw Rose can make. Mame’s wearing one of mine now—deep brown skirt with a burnt-orange fitted jacket. Though Rose copied her own navy blue cotton from Woman’s Home Companion. I had offered to design a dress for Henrietta that Rose would sew. She’d only laughed.

  But now both McCabes shake their heads at me. Rose clicks her tongue.

  “Oh, Nonie,” Rose says. “That’s Tim McShane.”

  “I know,” I say. “He introduced himself.”

  “No decent woman in Brighton Park would even speak to him.” Agnella nods along with Rose and then Mame speaks up.

  “He is a bit of a bad hat, Nonie. Trains racehorses at the track in the Park.”

  “So? What’s wrong with that? Mike and my cousin Ed go to the track all the time.”

  “But they don’t spend their time with gangsters. They say Tim McShane does all kinds of things to the horses to make them win,” Mame says.

  “Or lose,” Rose puts in. “And he’s Dolly McKee’s fancy man.”

  “The singer, Dolly McKee? But she must be years older than he is,” I say.

  I was twelve years old the first time Mam took me to the McVicker’s Theatre to see Dolly McKee perform and Dolly wasn’t young then. Still gorgeous though up there under the spotlight in that sparkly dress, singing “Love’s Old Sweet Song” with Mam crying next to me thinking of my father, who died so young. Still able to fill a theater all these years later is Dolly McKee, and living like a queen in the Palmer House. So she picked out Tim McShane. Interesting.

  “Dolly is always at the track, and they say she owns the horses Tim trains. Took up with him years ago,” Rose goes on.

  “You two have his seed, breed, and generation,” I say. “Why haven’t you talked about him before?”

  “There’s a new boarder come to Aunt Kate’s who works at the track. A little runt of a Cavan fellow. He’s been telling us all about Tim McShane,” Mame says.

  “And now he’s very kindly rescued Ag and me. I wonder, did I thank him properly?” I stand up but Ag and Rose pull me down.

  “Nonie! Please!”

  “Maybe I’ll ask him for tickets to Dolly’s show,” I say.

  “Oh, Non
ie! You wouldn’t!” Rose says.

  “Not like you two to be so skittery,” I say.

  “A man to stay away from,” Mame says. “According to the little Cavan fellow.”

  “Look there, he’s getting off anyway,” Rose says.

  The tram stops at LaSalle right near the new City Hall. Tim McShane steps off then looks up to see the four of us pressed against the window. He tips his hat and gives a half bow. The McCabes and Ag lean back, but I wave at Tim McShane and incline my head. He smiles. Oh!

  And, of course, our supervisor Miss Allen is annoyed as the three of us come sliding into our chairs and clap the headphones over our ears just as the nine o’clock start bell rings. Mad at us for cutting the time so close and madder still that we’d made it and she couldn’t scold us. Not a bad sort really, Miss Allen, but not from Chicago, unmarried, no family here, a neat, well-dressed woman. Devoted to the company.

  “You are Montgomery Ward to the world,” she says to us now as she does every morning. “Your voice, your diction, your cool professional manner creates confidence in our customers. They need to trust you.”

  I take out the dog-eared script she’s written for us and begin. Twenty of us in a long row push the plugs into the switchboard, then say in the clear, unaccented voice that Miss Allen demands, “Good morning. I am a Montgomery Ward operator, ready to take your order.” No deviation, as Miss Allen walks along behind us, listening.

  We start together. The Good-Morning Chorus, Rose calls us, but with each call and order the pace changes. “What sizes? What colors? How many?” we ask.

  “How much?” they come back. “How long before my order gets there?”

  Men mostly.

  My first caller’s new to the telephone. I imagine him standing next to the cracker barrel at a country store, shouting into the round black receiver. Had to be heard in Chicago, after all. He repeats his name and address twice, sure I wouldn’t get it right the first time.

  “I’ll send your seeds out COD on the next train,” I say to him three times.