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Mary Catherine stared at me perplexed as she continued to listen. Then she nodded and hastily said good-bye and hung up.
“Oh, no, no, no, Mike. Seamus is fine. It was my sister, Claire, on the phone. It’s about my mother. She just had a brain aneurysm about three hours ago. She’s in the ICU at South Tipperary General Hospital in Clonmel. She’s in a coma, Mike. On a ventilator. I can’t believe it. I was just talking to her three days ago.”
“Oh, no, Mary Catherine. I’m so sorry,” I said, embracing her.
“I have to go back to Ireland, Mike. Perhaps for a week or two. But how can I? We’ve barely unpacked and gotten the kids settled here. How can I leave you guys in the lurch?”
?
?It’s not a concern, Mary Catherine. Your mother needs you. You’ll go. End of story,” I said, wiping a tear from her cheek with my thumb.
CHAPTER 72
“OK, MIKE. SO JULIANA and Fiona have dental appointments at eleven on Tuesday,” Mary Catherine explained as we sped along the Cross Bronx Expressway early the next morning.
“What else?” she said. “Right. Wednesday is the after-school parent-teacher meeting over that scuffle Trent had with that bratty bully, Julio, in his class. And don’t forget, the super is going to install the new dishwasher that’s coming on Friday, but you have to remind him. He’s got a brain like a sieve. I should probably write all this down.”
“Mary Catherine,” I said when she came up for air. “You did. You printed it out. I got it. I got it under control,” I said, patting her knee.
That was a complete lie, of course. I didn’t know what on God’s green earth I was going to do once she left. But the least I could do for Mary Catherine, after all she’d done for us, was to try to keep her as calm as possible as she went back home to the unenviable task of attending to her terminally ill mother.
“Don’t worry, Mary Catherine,” Juliana said as she leaned forward and gave Mary Catherine a huge hug from the seat behind her. We know what to do. We won’t forget what you taught us. All of us, even the boys, will make you so proud. You’ll see.”
I looked away, kept my face on the horrible potholed roadway. I, like everyone, had been on the verge of complete emotional devastation after hearing the news that Mary Catherine had to leave. There was definitely something weird about the whole situation that I couldn’t put my finger on.
Instead of her leaving for just a week or two, it really felt, for some strange reason, like we’d never see Mary Catherine again. Or was it just the possibility? It was almost scary how much we loved and needed her. Mary Catherine wasn’t the only one who was going to have to say good-bye to their mother.
“Holy cow, Dad! Look!” Ricky suddenly cried from the back of the van as there was a thunderous ripping sound and three South Bronx youths shot off an expressway entrance ramp. At first I thought they were on motorcycles, but then I looked again and realized they were on ATV four-wheelers. Huh?
“Check it out!” Eddie yelled as they roared around the van. “They’re not even wearing helmets!”
“And they’re wearing blue bandannas and LA Dodgers jerseys,” Ricky said. “I saw this on the Internet, Dad. They’re Crips! Actual Bronx gangbangers!”
“On actual ATVs,” Eddie cried excitedly. “Quick, Dad! Lend me your phone so I can video this! YouTube, here I come!”
Instead, I slowed down to let the Bronx Inner City Road Warriors get safely ahead before I shared a head shake and a smile with Mary Catherine.
“Mary Catherine, if we can handle getting you through this city to the airport alive, we can handle you being gone for a couple of weeks. Everything’s going to be fine,” I said.
We did manage to escape from the Bronx and get to JFK about thirty minutes later. I got us a little lost when I instinctively took us to the massive, busy airport’s Terminal 4, where I’d been many times before, sending off and receiving Irish relatives hopping the pond on Aer Lingus for weddings and visits and wakes. But Brian looked up on my phone that Aer Lingus had recently moved to JetBlue’s Terminal 5.
Everybody had been doing relatively well in the stiff-upper-lip department, but as we finally approached Terminal 5, it started. Everybody, seemingly at once, started weeping. When I stopped the van and turned to my right, I saw why.
There, on the other side of the fence, it was, standing on the tarmac, waiting. The big green-and-white Aer Lingus 747 with the shamrock on its tail that was about to take Mary Catherine away from us.
“Stop crying, please, now, would you? It’s not so sad,” Mary Catherine said, using both hands in a useless attempt to stop her own tears.
I quickly popped the doors and got out and grabbed the bags as Mary Catherine doled out hugs to the sobbing children. Shawna, who seemed to be taking it the hardest, clung to Mary Catherine so fiercely I didn’t think she’d ever let her go.
“It’s OK. I’ll be back before you know it,” Mary Catherine whispered to her between her own sobs.
But Shawna wasn’t having any of it. She just kept clinging and silently crying as she shook her head. Smart kid.
I finally got Juliana to take Shawna into the van and was just about to tell Brian to sit in the front seat until I got back from seeing Mary Catherine off inside, when Mary Catherine put her foot down.
“No, Mike. I got it from here,” she said, taking her bags from me.
Then she was kissing me, clutching me almost painfully, sobbing wetly against my neck.
