Charming Billy Read Free Page A

her presence in the shoe store was Billy’s salvation, or at least his second chance that through willfulness and indifference he had let slip. But if she was as plain as they’d always said her to be during all the years Billy was alive, a plain girl approaching thirty with an alcoholic old father to take care of and no prospects—if Eva had been the beauty—then Maeve was only a faint consolation, a futile attempt to mend an irreparably broken heart. A moment’s grace, a flash of optimism, not enough for a lifetime.
    “I didn’t know,” cousin Rosemary whispered. “Was Billy having trouble even in the beginning? Even when they were first married?”
    We all turned to Kate, whose memory had already proven keen. She was the older sister, the only one of them gathered here who had attained real wealth (although it had already been well noted that her husband wasn’t here today, hadn’t come last night), and so she could speak with some authority, while the rest might only venture a guess.
    “Well, he always drank,” Kate said. “But for a very long time it seemed he drank harmlessly. I remember him feeling no pain when he was on leave, before he went overseas, but that was understandable. I remember the night he came home and told us that Eva had passed away. He went straight to bed afterwards and I called Dennis to see if I could learn anything
more and Dennis said they’d both had quite a lot to drink the night before, which was understandable, too. It was probably as hard for Dennis to tell him as it was for Billy to hear the news.”
    His sister Rosemary said, “I remember he had one too many at Jill’s christening. I was worried about him riding the subway home.”
    “But for years he never missed a day of work,” Kate told us. “And he was there to open the shoe store every Saturday morning from the time he started into the early sixties, when Mr. Holtzman finally sold the place to Baker’s. I don’t think Mr. Holtzman ever knew he drank. Certainly no one at Edison knew until near the end.”
    But Mickey Quinn held up his hand. “They knew,” he said wisely.
    “But not until fairly recently,” Kate said. “Maybe when he went into the hospital in ’73, the same year my Kevin graduated from Regis.”
    But Mickey Quinn frowned and shook his head slightly, apologetically, as if over something that was only slightly askew. “They knew,” he said again. “We all knew. I left Irving Place in ’68 and the fellows in the office knew Billy was a drinker even then. They covered for him, mostly in the afternoon. He’d go out on a call after lunch and not come back to the office and they’d cover for him. Everyone liked him. They were glad to do it.”
    “I think Smitty might have covered for him, too,” his sister Rosemary said. “In the shoe store. Do you remember Smitty? Mr. Holtzman’s assistant—the little bald man?” He was remembered. “I went in there one Saturday, we were looking for Betty’s First Communion shoes, and Billy was just coming in from lunch. I had the feeling he’d had a few. I mean, he was fine, and the kids were always happy to see him, but I
noticed Smitty did all the measuring and got out all the shoes. Billy mostly sat. Which wasn’t like him. He was sucking a peppermint.”
    “When was this?” Kate asked as her wealthy husband, trained at Fordham Law, might do.
    Rosemary paused to calculate. “Betty was in second grade. 1962.” Almost in apology: “He was drinking in ’62.”
    Dan Lynch raised his hands. “Well, what does it mean? He was drinking before that, too. Down at Quinlan’s. Saturdays after work. Sunday evenings. Hell, I was always there, too, and my liver’s fine.”
    “So when did it become a problem?” cousin Rosemary asked.
    “He started AA in the late sixties,” Kate told her. “And then again around ’71 or ’2.”
    “He took the pledge on that Ireland trip. That was ’75.”
    “What good did it do?”
    “I thought it would