Charming Billy Read Free Page B

stick. Maeve did, too.”
    Dan Lynch was chuckling, his hand around his small glass. “I remember Billy saying that AA was a Protestant thing, when you came right down to it. Started by a bunch of Protestants. He said he didn’t like the chummy way some of them were always calling Our Lord by his first name. I drove him to the first meeting and waited to take him home, ’cause Maeve didn’t want him driving, and when he came out he said you could tell who the Catholics were because they’d all been bowing their heads every ten seconds while the Protestants bantered on about Jesus, Jesus, Jesus.”
    (And sure enough, up and down our stretch of table, heads bobbed at the name.)
    Sister Rosemary said, “He didn’t like them calling God a Higher Power, either—which I guess was the official AA term.
Nondenominational, you know. He said it only proved that none of them had a sense of humor. He said you’d have to be God Himself to get higher than most of these guys had been.”
    There was a bit of low laughter. “Billy had an irreverent streak,” Mickey Quinn said. “I liked that about him.”
    “The way Father Joyce explained it to me,” Dan Lynch went on, “the pledge was the Catholic take on AA. He said it was like Holy Orders itself—you signed on and there was no going back. An unbreakable oath never to take another drink. Billy thought it was the real thing.”
    “But he broke it.”
    “There’s plenty of priests that break their Holy Orders, too,” Dan Lynch told them.
    “Well, it got him over to Ireland, anyway,” cousin Rosemary said. “I tried to talk him and Maeve into going over any number of times, but I never could do it.”
    “Maeve isn’t one to travel,” sister Rosemary said. “She’s a homebody. Always has been.”
    Kate leaned toward us all, folding her hands on the table: a tasteful ring of diamonds, a gold bracelet, a professional manicure. “I often wondered,” she said slowly. “I never had the heart to ask him, but I wondered if Billy went to visit the town Eva came from. While he was there.”
    Her sister shook her head. “Billy would have said so if he had. He wasn’t one to keep things to himself.”
    Kate paused only a moment to consider this. “But he might not have wanted it to get back to Maeve, you know,” she said. “He might have thought she wouldn’t want to hear about a pilgrimage like that.”
    “Who would?”
    “She knew about Eva?” Bridie said, whispering too, adding, “Thank you,” as the waiter took her empty plate.
    “I’m sure,” Kate said. “Thank you.” And then: “Actually, I don’t know. I’d imagine she knew something about her.”
    “He must have told her something.”
    “Dennis would know,” Mickey Quinn said. “They were always real close.”
    But Dan Lynch objected. “I was the best man at Billy’s wedding,” he said. “We were pretty close, too.”
    “Well, did he tell Maeve about the Irish girl?”
    Dan waved his hand impatiently. “I’m sure he told her something. You know, it’s not the sort of thing men talk about. And I’ll say this for Billy, you never heard him mention that girl again, once he married Maeve.”
    “Ask Dennis,” cousin Rosemary whispered.
    The selected dessert was brought in: two scoops of vanilla ice cream in cold stainless-steel bowls. Hands in laps to make the poor man’s job easier as he reached between their shoulders. Thank you.
    “I remember watching Maeve come down the aisle,” Dan Lynch said, lifting his spoon, holding it like a scepter. “She was on her old man’s arm, but it was clear as you watched her that she was shoring him up, you know, keeping him straight. She was smiling as sweetly as any bride, but there was a determination in the way she walked, you know, the way she held her shoulder up against his, like it was a wall about to topple. She took hold of his arm when they got to the first pew, I mean a good grip, right here.” He demonstrated, taking hold of his own