Illyria Read Free Page B

weren't hungry.
    "I really don't," I said quickly. "I can read fine. Aunt Kate said you should take me to see Dr. Gordon and he'll tell you."
    "Aunt Kate." My mother glowered. But she did take me to see Dr. Gordon.
    And it was true, Dr. Gordon said I didn't need my glasses. Someday I would, when I was older, but for now, as long as I didn't get headaches, I could do without them.
    17
    "Hooray!" said Rogan. He had grown two more inches, and was now a full head taller than me. "You look a lot better."
    Aunt Kate regarded me more measuringly.
    "I'll take you to my salon." She rubbed the ends of my hair between her fingers and grimaced. "Alain will know what to do about this."
    The next time she went into the city, I went with her. My hair was trimmed, not cut, by Alain, a man who wore one chandelier earring and motorcycle boots.
    "Beautiful eyes," he said. He glanced at my aunt in the mirror. "How old?"
    "She'll be fifteen in October."
    "Ohhhh." He smiled at me and arched his eyebrows rakishly. "You're in high school!"
    "In the fall," I said.
    He nodded, bending to snip my bangs. "Boyfriend?"
    I looked up to see Aunt Kate staring back at me from the mirror, the blue Tierney eyes brilliant and faintly threatening in that elegant, ageless face.
    "No," she said.
    When Alain was finished, Aunt Kate paid him, then took me to lunch at O'Neals' Baloon.
    "Good," she said. She watched approvingly as I ate my hot fudge sundae. "This will grow out nicely, Maddy. You look very glamorous."
    Rogan had changed as well. He wasn't just taller--his voice had grown, too. At night I'd listen as he stepped onto the tiny balcony outside his room and sang "Wild Horses" in that eerie keening tenor. When he stopped, we'd double over laughing as all the Tierney dogs
    18
    began to howl, followed by a chorus of angry grown-ups yelling at them to shut up.
    In July Rogan joined the choir at St. Brendan's. Not the children's choir, which was all girls--not me, I couldn't sing--but the grown-up choir, which sang at ten thirty High Mass. Our fathers attended Mass on Saturday afternoon so they could play golf on Sunday morning. Our mothers and siblings went to twelve o'clock Mass on Sunday, for those laggards who slept late. Aunt Kate only went at Christmas and Easter.
    But I'd walk up with Rogan and sit in the middle of the church (High Mass was never crowded) and listen, bewitched, as his voice soared through the vaulted space, chanting the Kyrie and Te Deum and Gloria in excelsis. It made my flesh crawl. Not just me: I could see other members of the congregation shift uncomfortably in their pews, Tierney great-uncles and -aunts and the Connells' grandparents all staring fixedly at their missalettes until old Monsignor Burke sang the Recessional in his quavering voice, and the Mass was ended.
    Only Mrs. Rossi, our diminutive school secretary, seemed to feel as I did. Once she waited with me outside the church for Rogan to come down from the choir loft.
    "That was so beautiful, Rogan," she whispered as the rest of the congregation hurried to their cars. "You should be singing at St. Patrick's Cathedral."
    Rogan waited till she left, then made a face.
    "Another church? Screw that," he said, and we walked home.
    Back on Arden Terrace, we hung out with kids from school who came down from Mile Square Road. Our siblings and cousins were all in high school now, or college. One of Aunt Trixie's boys had
    19
    joined the military. My oldest sister, Brigid, was engaged. Occasionally Michael would pound Rogan, or try to, but Rogan was bigger now. After a while Michael lost interest in the sport and, concomitantly, in Rogan himself. We weren't watched as closely as we once were. When our parents went out to dinner at the club, Rogan and I were left alone.
    Or sort of alone. My sisters, perversely, paid more attention to me now than when I was younger; a chilly feminine vigilance to ensure I did nothing to embarrass them, especially with Rogan.
    So he and I would engineer