Lily Cigar Read online

  Lily Cigar

  Tom Murphy

  Copyright

  Diversion Books

  A Division of Diversion Publishing Corp.

  443 Park Avenue South, Suite 1008

  New York, NY 10016

  www.DiversionBooks.com

  Copyright © 1979 by Tom Murphy

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For more information, email [email protected]

  First Diversion Books edition October 2014

  ISBN: 978-1-62681-391-5

  More from Tom Murphy

  Ballet!

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  Epilogue

  More from Tom Murphy

  For all the Fitzgeralds, past, present, and future: William J.; William H. G.; Margaret Louise; Annelise; Desmond; Anne; Muffle and Sarah, with love.

  This book would not have been possible without the extraordinary research of Mary Vanaman O’Gorman, who worked tirelessly, imaginatively, and with surgical precision to unearth exactly the right materials from the enormous bulk of histories, diaries, and journalism of the period.

  1

  Lily looked at her mother. Mary Malone lay very still, thin under the thin sheet and nearly that pale, worn thin and worn out by the working and the fevers. Her breath came shallow now, and with a rasp to it, and the rhythms of Ma’s breathing were irregular.

  The doctor himself had said there was nothing Lily could do but watch and try to get some broth into her mother. But Lily had one last hope, one desperate plan, and she would try it this very afternoon, even if she were damned for all eternity for leaving the bedside.

  How fine he had been, the doctor, and how disdainful of their poor home! Tall he was, and all in black, with a fine clean shirt and hands he was always rubbing together as if to keep the dirt off, for the Malones’ one-room flat was far from clean, try as Lily did since Ma fell ill. He’d looked quickly about him, the doctor, and wrinkled his nose, not even trying to hide his disgust, and then he’d sighed, as though somehow Mary Malone had brought this on herself, willfully. And Lily saw in the doctor’s eyes a look she had seen too many times, a look that seemed to say: “Well, sure and I’ll be whistling for my fee from this sorry lot.” And the anger rose in Lily then, small as she was for her ten and a half years.

  For they hadn’t always been like this, so helpless, so trapped by the bad luck that seemed to follow them like some stray and hungry dog.

  Now, looking at the still, sad figure of her mother, wondering when to make her move, Lily remembered her dad.

  Big Fergus!

  She always remembered Big Fergus Malone when she felt bad; when her belly hurt because there was nothing to feed it; when Fergy, her brother, misbehaved yet again; when Ma turned all quiet and like to cried.

  What Lily remembered was the dash and color of him, the roar of his laugh and the way his green eyes flashed with fires from inside them, and he’d scoop her up in hands big as shovels, but gentle, too, for all their strength, and she’d go flying, flying, up to the very ceiling itself, he was that tall, but even beyond, near all the way to heaven itself. Nothing bad could happen when Big Fergus Malone was near.

  A fine big flat they’d had then, the whole bottom floor of this very house, where now they huddled in one small chamber three flights up. And he’d found himself a fine job, too, tending bar at Broderick’s Subterranean, which had led to nothing less than being invited to join the Red Rovers, the finest volunteer fire company in New York, a club, really, a good place to meet the kind of men who could help an ambitious fellow make his way. At least, that’s what Ma said, and she said it sadly and with the kind of grim resignation Lily often heard in the women’s voices, a tone of speaking that accepted the fact that their lot in life was not a happy one, that babies died and luck was fickle and the only thing quite sure to grow was debt.

  Sometimes Lily herself couldn’t tell the difference between what she remembered about Big Fergus and what she’d been told by Ma, by Fergy, or by friends.

  Because Lily had been only five years old the night Big Fergus raced off in his bright Red Rover uniform to help fight a fire at a sperm-oil warehouse and never came back.

  Ma was sleeping.

  Still, it was with a covert, sneaking little hand that Lily reached into the pocket of her one summer dress and found the coin. Her fingers closed around the penny as if the very touch of it could help. And help it might, help it must.

  Lily looked around the room where they’d lived these last five years. The ceiling was cracked and stained and there was no Big Fergus to fix it, nor talk to the landlord either, for all the good that might do.

  Outside, three stories down, the thousand weekday sounds of Mulberry Street rose to greet her ears, muffled by the tight-shut window, closed against evil vapors at the insistence of the several women who came bustling in and out each day with scant gifts of food and large doses of advice.

  Lily felt guilty about the penny: it was one of only six they had left. Still and all, as she had explained to her brother in a tight-lipped whispered argument that very morning, the saint might listen better if they made her a small gift “Not small to us, Lil,” said Fergy, his green eyes gleaming dangerously close to anger. But Lily soothed him and reassured him, as she’d learned to do early on, even if he was more than two years older. For Fergy was like a wild thing and there was no sense trying to cage him in or give him reins: only love worked with Fergus Malone Junior, and often even that was not enough.

  And where would he have got himself to now? Lily could imagine her brother, running with his rat pack of urchin friends, the despair of his mother when she had the strength to despair, a boy full of the devil, not bad or cruel, but wild, wild.

  Her fingers clutched the worn penny as if it held the secret of her future.

  Lily stood up from the low stool where she had been keeping her sick-watch. Ma looked exactly the way she had looked all morning, with no sign of getting better and no sign of getting worse. If only she’ll keep on sleeping, Lily thought desperately, if only she doesn’t wake and want something and find me gone. Yet the determination was strong in her. It could not be resisted: for if ever there were a prayer that deserved to be answered, it was this one. And was it so much to ask the saint? Was her father so lonely in heaven that he must have Ma’s company while his very own flesh and blood needed Mary Malone so badly here in New York, on Mulberry Street, in the year of our Lord 1847?

  Lily took a deep breath in the stifling room and walked soft
ly to the door.

  If Mulberry Street knew of Lily’s troubles or her scheme to acquire some heavenly intervention, the street and its denizens kept their own counsel.

  Lucky it was that the distance to St. Paddy’s was no more than four and a half blocks. Lily knew that if she walked fast she could be there and back well within an hour, and didn’t she know the way by heart, walking it as she did near every day of her life, to Mass and to classes?

  Squinting a little against the bright August sunlight, Lily made her way briskly up Mulberry Street.

  The air was clear for all the heat, and even the clamorous noise of the street was a welcome change after the morbid stillness of their flat.

  Three days it had been since Lily set foot out of the apartment.

  She picked her way over the hot Belgian-block paving stones, stepping around steaming piles of horse manure, around pyramids of tomatoes, cabbages, grapes, peaches, pears, past the pickle barrels, wrinkling her nose at the fishmonger’s, whose brave gilt and painted sign had a lobster gaily embracing an amorous salmon, belying the fact that its owner, Signor Garabaldi, bought all his stock three days old from other vendors. Lily smiled over the stench, thinking of some things her mother had said about such practices. But the smile faded and the girl walked on.

  Now Lily could see the blunt square spire of St. Patrick’s Cathedral pointing its sturdy sandstone finger toward heaven. Their own church, the first church in New York built for the Irish, and proud they should be of it Ma always said. Ma! Why did all her thoughts begin and end with Ma? What would life be like if…? Don’t even think it, goose, Lily told herself sternly, you have more important things to think on, a prayer to say, a miracle to work!

  She turned right on Prince Street sticking close to the churchyard wall.

  “All full up it is, bless us for martyrs.”

  Who had said that and why was she thinking it now? True, whoever said it and sad, for the churchyard of St. Paddy’s was not a small one, yet filled it surely had been these last several years, and wasn’t her own dad buried in the other graveyard up on Twelfth Street? Close by the churchyard wall, half in the afternoon shadow, Lily stole a glance across the street at the building she dreaded most of any she knew.

  The orphanage of St. Patrick’s Cathedral was not an ugly building, four stories tall and fine-looking where it sat under the elm trees on its well-trimmed lawn.

  But Lily knew from Fergy’s tales and from the simpering gossip of Fat Bessie with some of the other neighbor ladies who kept coming and going until Lily could see no pattern to it: but whenever anyone spoke of the orphanage, it was in secret whispers that implied dark and scandalous doings, souls lost, cruelties and other nameless terrors. Lily never knew precisely what these things were, only that they were to be avoided. Yet there were worse fates than the orphanage—no one would deny that.

  The Baptists might get you, or the streets.

  Lily shuddered as she passed the big front entrance to the orphanage, and she quickly crossed herself to ward off bad luck.

  Here was the corner. St. Jude was getting closer.

  Lily turned left on Mott Street quiet after the bustle of Mulberry. There were none here but the occupants of the churchyard and the birds in the trees. She passed the curling wrought-iron fence and walked in through the open gate. Up the stone stairs and into the vast dim space of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

  There were no clergy inside this afternoon.

  Two old ladies in their eternal black dresses and blacker shawls knelt mumbling toothless prayers in the back row of pews. Suddenly, irreverently, Lily found herself wondering who the saint was that you might pray to, to have your teeth come back.

  The iron rack of votive candles was down in front and to the left. The fat little candles guttered and smoked. Lily knelt on the cool stones and closed her eyes.

  Will the prayer work better if I pay the penny first and light the candle? There was no one to ask this urgent question. Lily decided that if she were the saint, she’d want to see some hard evidence of good faith first. Before granting the wish. It was only fair.

  Slowly then she stood up and reached out to steady herself against the iron candle rack. Its strength seemed to flow into her as she reached for the penny. Lily looked at the precious coin before dropping it into the iron slot. Worn it was, almost beyond identification, yet a penny for all that, and one of their last.

  Would St. Jude know that it was more than a penny to them?

  The coin rattled and clanged with a noise beyond its size or worth as Lily dropped it down the slot. Then she reached for one of the long, slender lighting tapers and lit it from a votive candle, hesitated for a moment until she found the ideal fresh candle to light a fat new one right at the edge of the rack closest to the altar, where the saint and maybe even Himself might be sure to see it. Surprised at the steadiness of her hand, Lily held the long taper until the fat votive candle ignited. Maybe I can get two for a penny! But one was all she needed. Slowly, gently, Lily blew out the taper and knelt to pray. “Oh, St. Jude, protectress of lost causes…” Lily recited the whole prayer and then added a verse or two of her own. Then she crossed herself again and stood up and walked out of the dark church into the dazzling afternoon.

  Lily was halfway home when the pains of hunger hit her with the force of a sudden knife wound in the belly.

  She stopped, shivering, and looked about her. There was the greengrocer’s. And on the counter in front of his shop was a neat pyramid of the best-looking pears Lily could ever remember seeing. She walked a few steps closer, transfixed. If I hadn’t spent the penny on a prayer…But then Lily remembered why she had spent the penny. Still she stood, small and silent, staring. The pears seemed diffused now. Her eyes were misting. She turned, and just as she turned, Lily felt a hand on her shoulder.

  It was the grocer’s wife, a round, red woman who might be gruff or merry, you never knew. She smiled at Lily and handed her a pear.

  “Here, child. Lily, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Lily couldn’t remember the lady’s name.

  “Take it, and good luck to you, Lily.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  I will bring it to Ma. It’s just what she needs, after all that broth.

  Lily held the pear as if it were the most fragile crystal, hugged it close for fear of dropping the precious thing in her excitement, and walked faster now, down Mulberry Street and into her own dark doorway and up, up the stairs.

  Ma looked exactly the same, only a little paler now. Or maybe it was just that everything outside was so very bright, so alive. Lily set the pear carefully on the dresser and moved closer to the bed. At least her mother hadn’t woken up while Lily was out praying for miracles.

  Lily looked around the little room. It was just as she’d left it. Fergy was still out then. She wished him luck. Sometimes her brother would arrive out of breath and dirty, holding a few carrots, and even, once, a chicken. Lily never asked him where these treasures came from, for she was sure he’d not earned the things. Her eyes in their journey around the room alighted upon the pear. And wasn’t it a little miracle, all on its own? Maybe the first answer from the saint!

  There was a faint noise from the bed.

  Lily moved closer. Ma’s breathing had changed. It was coming faster now, with a kind of grating noise.

  “Ma?”

  Mary Malone’s thin hand fluttered on the sheet. Lily reached out for it.

  Ma’s eyes slowly opened. With an effort that looked to Lily as though she might be going to move the whole city, Ma raised her head a little on the rumpled pillow and forced herself to smile, not knowing how like a skull her pretty face had become.

  “I have a nice pear for you, Ma.”

  She was trying to say something, Lily could tell from the way her mother’s lips were moving. Lily held the frail hand tighter, and blinked, because she could feel the tears building up, and Ma mustn’t see her crying, it would only upse
t her.

  Lily stood there, holding her mother’s hand, blinking.

  When Ma spoke, it was almost a shock to Lily, how clear her voice was, even with the fever, even with the trembling.

  Mary Malone spoke low, but distinctly.

  “Don’t cry for me, Lily,” she said. “Save your tears, child, for one day you may truly need them. Tears are not to be wasted on what we cannot help, Lily. If you must be brave, then be as brave as you can. After that…you can do no more, for ’tis in the hands of God and His angels and tears enough to fill Dublin Bay won’t change things a bit, girl.”

  Lily felt her mother’s hand trembling. And although she was very close, and touching, the girl suddenly felt as though she was all alone in the darkest night, a night filled with a thousand dangers, and no place to go, and no one to help her. She is saying good-bye.

  Something like a smile flickered across Ma’s lips.

  “Do you understand me, child?”

  Ma’s voice was faint now, and it seemed to Lily that she could feel the strength draining out of her mother like water through a sieve.

  “Sure I do.”

  “Will you make me a promise, Lily?”

  “Anything. Anything.”

  Anything, so long as the saint makes you well, Ma. Anything so long as you don’t leave me too, alone out here in the dark.

  “Then take care of Fergy, Lily dear, and love him for me and try to get the wildness out of him…”

  The voice trailed off, and if Lily hadn’t clutched her mother’s hand still tighter, it would have slipped away.

  “Of course, Ma. Sure and I’ll do that.”

  Mary Malone’s head sank back the few inches to the pillow. A trembling shook her thin body from head to toe.

  Then there was nothing, nothing at all, no sound, not even the harsh gasping of her breath, not a moan.

  She was gone.

  Lily held onto the dead hand because letting it go would be to admit the truth.

  Ma had left her too, then.