PARTISAN REVIEW
287
snow in O'Connell Street to the sitdown supper for thirty invited
relatives and guests that Andy Prince's brother gave for them on
the family's farm in Limerick. And then to the wedding at the
church in Aungier Street. The honeymoon in the west in a cottage
on a stretch of the coast between Galway and Roundstone.
Then Dublin again and the house beside the Phoenix Park near
the barracks where Andy Prince was stationed. And the days then
merging one into another, and the weeks, the months, the years
together. To the fifth and leaves turning, and the trees and the
grass in the park where they sometimes walked, smoky and autumn
gray and gold. And the baby begun. Big with the future she bought
a dress. A proud red dress. The waiting then, and the knitting, the
sewing; and in between Ellen Simms taking good care of Andy
Prince - pressing his uniform and cleaning with Brasso the brass
buttons on it - and cleaning the boots with polish and the ox-blood
colored leggings that were best done with milk.
Through the darkness of the ember days to flowers, yellow,
wind-tossed under the sometimes drained sky, and the baby pink of
the flowering cherry. The new spring, and inside her the baby with
a life and rhythm all its own. Till for no reason, fear came. Not a
creeping Jesus kind, but a sudden growing anxiety that something
was on its way that would jelly the fibers of the growing child.
Afraid, and not knowing of what. Unable to tell even when asked,
because she didn't know. Only at odd unexpected moments would
it be a fear of
something.
Then one night, Andy Prince told her his
eyes were bad and he had a headache. With a sigh that broke
against her shoulder he told her. But caught in her own drama she
couMn't believe in headaches. She told him to get himself an aspirin;
and that, she remembered afterward, was the last thing she was ever
to tell him.
She didn't know it then, but Andy Prince had meningitis. And
after only ten days Andy Prince was dead. She had never believed
he would die. March's search for the sick, the weak, and the dying
would not find Andy Prince. She'd see to that. She'd pitch her
strength against the stone an unmerciful God was bent on rolling
against her mouth. The weather too was on her side. That year it
was soft, fresh, and dry.
The air was filled with talk of Christ and lilies. And in the
chapels, unlit virgin wax candles soared against the drapes of moum-
