That explained how he wound up at Regis, the parochial school that offered free education to students who had scored well on the entrance exams.
“And your father never tried to make a sandhog out of Brendan?” Mike asked.
“Sure he did. Took him down every chance he could, but the kid couldn’t take it.” Trish turned her empty glass upside down on the table. “I remember them coming home one time-Brendan must have been eighteen, so I guess I was almost eleven. Dad got him a summer job with the union, thinking he could keep a hold on his son before he went off to college, made a life for himself. Quit and came home the second day. My father got there an hour later and tore him apart in front of all of us. Called him a sissy-told him he wasn’t good enough to work in the hole. Would have hit him, I think, if Duke hadn’t been there to step in the way.”
“Sounds like Duke took good care of him,” Mike said softly.
“He thought like Mama. He knew Brendan had other possibilities.”
“Did you know what had happened on the job that day?”
“Sure, all us kids wanted to find out. First, it was no secret that Brendan had always hated it down there because it was so dark, so hard for him to see. Things were going on all around, creating a racket in every direction, and it frightened him not to know what was coming at him. But it was the blasts that got to him most when he showed up to work that week. The guys would rig the dynamite and set off the explosion, and whenever Brendan heard that dreadful sound, he’d be reliving the noise of the firecrackers that took his eye.”
“So he never went back in the tunnel?”
“Not once. Duke and Richie and Marshall, they live and breathe like sandhogs. Brendan, well, he’s something else.”
“And he had a scholarship to Georgetown?” Mike asked.
“I cried so hard I thought I was gonna die, the day he left,” Trish said. “My father wouldn’t even come out of his room to say good-bye. He knew he had a son who was just rejecting everything his own life had been built on.”
“But Brendan lived at home after that, didn’t he?”
“First year he did. Holidays and like that. Then he’d be getting with his fancy roommates and all, staying in their homes on Fifth Avenue or traveling with them for summer jobs over in Europe. And Amanda-his entire life revolved around Amanda by the time he was finishing high school. It was as though her family adopted him, even before they got engaged.”
“What was Amanda like?” I asked.
Trish looked at me quizzically. “You’re asking me?”
“You must have gotten to know her a bit,” Mike said.
“One time. I only ever met the girl once.”
“Why was that?” Mike asked. “I thought your family was so tight-knit.”
“All’s I can figure is that Brendan was ashamed of us.” Trish took a deep breath. “There he was, mixing with all these fine, rich people-wanting to become one of them. Not that I ever had the feeling the Keatings wanted anything to do with the likes of us, either. There was never any talk of inviting them over to the house or taking any of our holidays together. They must have figured they could have Brendan without bothering with his low-life relations. And it seemed to have suited him fine, too.”
“Was it at the wedding when you met Amanda?” I asked.
Trish cleared her throat and drank some water. “It was like a year before the wedding, when Brendan and Amanda became engaged. He called my mother and asked her to come to lunch-to bring me, too-to meet Amanda and Mrs. Keating. I was fifteen years old-so excited I was. I actually thought it was gonna be a chance to get the two families together, to make things better. We were to meet at the Boathouse in Central Park, real pretty in the springtime, right on the water. I was sure it meant we’d be getting Brendan back.
“Two days before we were supposed to go, Brendan mailed a package to the house. I’ll never forget how it looked when Mama removed the brown wrapping paper. Two bright red boxes tied with white satin ribbon, from a department store in the city I’d never dreamed of setting foot in. One was an expensive knit suit for my mother-with gold buttons and grosgrain trimmings-and the other was a lovely yellow dress for me, all lacy and soft.”
“To wear to the lunch?”
“That’s what Brendan wanted. My father exploded when he saw them. Told my mother that if her own clothes weren’t good enough for Mrs. Keating, she could go to the park naked or she couldn’t go at all.”
“So there was no lunch,” Mike said.
“Mama didn’t go. My father wouldn’t let her.” Trish bit into her lip and stared at the whiskey glass. She shook off the image and smiled at the memory that took her back to that long-ago day. “Me, I put on my yellow dress the minute he left for work that morning. Sneaked out of the house to meet my best friend, ’cause she wanted to see what this Amanda looked like, too. We played hookey from school, took the train into Manhattan so I could be at the lunch, and I gave Bex-my friend Rebecca-gave her a couple of dollars to go for a boat ride so she could watch me getting to meet Brendan’s new family. Like it wasn’t going to be real if someone didn’t see me there.”
“What did you think?” Mike asked.
“Brendan was so nervous-about me, I guess-I thought he’d have a seizure. I watched my manners and was careful about my language.” Trish was smirking as she twisted the glass around and around. “Mrs. Keating was very kind to me. Warm, actually. Amanda didn’t care about anything but Brendan-and once he saw Bex in the rowboat, ten feet away from the table, I think he was petrified we kids were going to do something to mortify him. Make a scene or something. But it was fine. I was only sad that my mother was too insecure to come herself. Really sad.”
“And the wedding?” I asked.
“Brendan was twenty-three, a year later, after Amanda’s graduation. My father died a month before the wedding.”
“How?” Mike asked.
“Painfully, Mr. Chapman. The way sandhogs do,” Trish said, looking up at him. “Silicosis it was. Too many years of breathing in the black dust. Silicosis killed him slowly-ate away at his lungs.”
“Sorry,” Mike said, pausing briefly. “But the wedding went on?”
“For the Keatings it did. And for Brendan. But my mother refused to go out of respect for my father. Kept all the boys home, too. Bex and me, we slipped into town and sat on a bench across from the church, just so we could see them when they stood out in front, all dressed up and such, posing to have their pictures taken before they went off to the reception at some club the Keatings belonged to.
“Brendan had called my mother one last time to urge her to come, but she told him to get on with his new life, to just act like we all had died when Dad did, if we embarrassed him so much.”
“And that’s what he did?” I asked. It seemed unthinkable to someone like Mike or me, to whom family was paramount.
“I never saw him again until yesterday, at the wake,” Trish said. “Can’t blame him too much, can I? He really made it, my big brother. Really crossed the tracks and created a fine life for himself without all our baggage. Until somebody set him up for Amanda’s death.”
“So now we know something about the Quillians,” Mike said. “I still don’t follow why you think the Hassetts killed your brother Duke. You never mentioned-”
“Did I give you a flavor of my father, Mr. Chapman? Could you get the sense he might have crossed a few folk along the way?”
“Sounds very proud, very tough,” Mike said, struggling for words.
“Feared and despised. I heard them words pretty often growing up. About six months or so before all this happened with Brendan, when the digging began in the Bronx for Water Tunnel Number Three, there was a dreadful accident in the hole.”
“A blast?” I asked.
“Not like that,” Trish said. “Old man Hassett-the boys’ father-he was somehow pinned against the side of the wall and crushed to death by a piece of machinery.”