A Season in Purgatory Read Free Page A

social workers had they not received a vocation. No one ever spoke about Agnes, except Kitt, who went to visit her before Christmas each year and on her birthday. Once she took me with her. Agnes thought that I was Constant, whom she had never seen other than as a baby, and Kitt nodded for me to pretend I was. It would have been too complicated, she said later, to explain who I was and what my relationship was to her. Agnes, except for her vacant look, had the appearance and voice of her father. But her mind was that of a ten-year-old. Kitt brought her silver rosary beads, blessed by the Holy Father in Rome, because Agnes claimed someone always stole her beads. Kitt was infinitely patient with her. Agnes, with her unpainted lips, talked incessantly of the Virgin Mary and the power of prayer. “I’ll call you on Sunday,” Kitt said to Agnes on leaving. “Oh, goody, goody, Trinity Sunday,” replied Agnes, clapping her hands.
    Dear sweet Kitt. I believe that she loved me, as I certainly loved her, but that all happened later and is no more than a subplot to the story that I have to tell. Only my own participation in that emotional turmoil brings me to mention it so early in this account. My knowledge of the events that follow is mostly firsthand, the rest comes from conversations with Constant and Kitt, and, occasionally, their far less well off cousins, Fatty and Sis Malloy. “I’m the one who talks too much,” Kitt once said. “They’re all down on me. Even Pa, and let’s face it, I’m the apple of Pa’s eye.”
    For reasons pertaining to their moment in time, Gerald and Grace Bradley were neither accepted nor received by the society of their city, for the Irish—even the rich Irish, and the Bradleys were very rich—were considered in those days to be not altogether correct. “They’re not the kind of peopleyou invite to dinner,” said Leverett Somerset, in his snubbing way of speaking. He loathed the Irish, particularly the Bradleys. The Bradley money had not been fashionably come by. It was not from insurance, or banking, or stocks and bonds. Gerald’s father, Malachy, who amassed the nucleus that Gerald later turned into the Bradley fortune, had been a butcher who prospered in the grocery business and, before he died, became the president of a small bank in the Irish section of the city. In later years, Gerald always referred to his father as a banker, but those who remembered, especially people like the Somersets, always referred to him as a butcher. Gerald attended the Catholic schools of the city, Catholic University in Washington, and law school at Harvard. His early financial circumstances were further enhanced by his marriage to Grace Malloy, the daughter of a plumber who had prospered in the plumbing supply business. By the standards of the day, the combined incomes of the two newlyweds made them well-to-do. In a relatively short time, Gerald was thought to be the finest Catholic lawyer in the city and was personally responsible for the legal affairs of the bishop and the Church. Already a genius in money matters, particularly in the acquisition of real estate, Gerald doubled, trebled, quadrupled, et cetera, into the stratospheric level, the original butcher and plumber money, at the same time that Grace was giving birth to Bradley child after Bradley child.
    The Bradleys were inordinately admired by the Irish community from which they sprang but were shunned by the Protestant community who controlled the business, politics, and society of the city. In those days, the Irish, the Poles, the Italians, and the Jews resided on the east side of the city, while the Protestants lived more graciously on the west side. It was a surprise to all when Gerald Bradley bought the old Scarborough house, once lived in by Governor Scarborough, in the fashionable section known as ScarboroughHill. It was doubly surprising when Gerald Bradley then tore down the venerable house and built in its place an even larger