She had beautiful eyes - the green, misty kind they call Irish Eyes - and a lovely form to her body. Voluptuous, they'd call it. I called it sexy.
"I'll take it," I said. Impulse buying, and we could barely afford it, but hadn't I gotten money from that last commission, enough to get us food and this? "You're lovely," I told her.
Home is a small apartment on Forth Street near the Abercrombe where my grandfather used to be butler. Working for the rich has never been odd to us; it's the rules here, or so I was always taught. The only difference is women can work too now.
But, we're poor and I'd rather us be closer to the middle class - that's where they say the action is. I'd like to get my wife Flora silk stockings and more than one necklace, and I'd like a plasma television so we can watch football together instead of just the little scrunchy thing. And I'd like a bigger place. At least we pay the rent on time, not like poor people in the movies. I'd just rather be in a situation where my girl doesn't need to hang her laundry in the house on a rack or on a line between buildings.
"Hullo, Mr McCreedy," said Old Mrs Doniver as I came up the steps. She'd been out smoking again; I could smell it on her. "Flowers for your Flora? That's nice of you, but extravagant." She's pretty opinionated about everything. I just muttered something and went in. It was my night to make dinner.
I put my new little lady on the counter in the kitchen. "I'd put you in our biggest window, the living room one," I told her, "but I don't want you stolen. You're here for luck. Never met one with such eyes that didn't have it. And we need it. Please, St. Brigid, this is for you, for us."
After that things changed fast for us. I got a promotion at my job in the factory downtown where they made the jewelry I used to sell, and became a manager. So now I spent all day barking at people to fire stuff correctly and how to weld, were they sure they knew how, the idiots? That's how you have to talk if you're manager, I heard. And Flora got to be manager too, but in a different way: she got pregnant!
We moved to a new place, uptown, where we could have a bigger apartment, and then we had enough to get a house in Dublin. Flora made sure to put my little acquisition in the window, then, and get her dusted each day even if I did it too. "Thank you, you are wonderful," she'd say to her. "You have lovely eyes; they've looked into the soul of the world and seen we're worthy of better, I guess." Irish Eyes, I'd told her when I first showed her the pretty little maiden. "For luck." My grandmother would have been proud.
I started having nightmares the day I heard about Flora's pregnancy: they were pretty general. Something about her drowning, or us being back at the tiny apartment with a hall that smelled like the Guinness plant. I could always hear a baby crying in the background during them. When I told Flora finally, she said she'd had them too.
"Please, St Brigidh, don't let anything happen to my wife," I prayed to the little statue, and she seemed to smile at me with those lovely emerald eyes. Sure, they had to be cubic zirconium; emerald's way too expensive. She looked great when we met, and even more gorgeous now. There's something about a pregnant woman, like they have a glow. So I got her a lot of silky stuff that'd have cost us a fortune back two months before, and I kept tearing up whenever I saw her knitting booties as if we were still poor. She's so sweet! "Please, don't let her get sick and die. . . ."
The day that Flora's water broke, I rushed her to the hospital straight away. It was raining out, and I took that as a good sign because she loved water. We all brought her candles and flowers, though she kept telling me that she just wanted me there. The sweetheart! Mo chridhe, my dear love, as my granny would say.
I had nothing to worry about, as it turned out. We had a healthy baby boy that we named Kevin, after her father who'd played with mine in minor league hurley. "He was chasing the dream we have, mo chridhe," I said to my little lad as I held him. "Don't ever forget it."
He never did, that one. He set up a little business selling lemonade when he was six, and the others of the neighborhood thought him a darling for it - they could have got it store-bought, but they decided to get ours. Little Kevin didn't tell them that he'd gotten it from a store himself and was giving it to them out of paper cups. When he was a little older he started going to thrift stores with his mother, who was still in the mind of the poor, and they'd fix up the junk they found and would sell it off at higher prices than they'd bought the things for.
"Why do we need this?" I asked her. "You're teaching our son to live like a miser, like someone lowborn!"
"He IS lowborn, in case you'd forgotten, Darren McCreedy! From what I can see, you spend money left and right, and it's a good thing we have this little business!"
"That 'little business' doesn't get you silk stockings, I'd bet!" I cried. And so it went on.
Kevin and his mother kept on with their "antique shop," and I couldn't tell them otherwise, so it seemed. When he was thirteen, they bought a small room and started an actual shop from there. At least it wasn't in our yard anymore, so the neighbors could talk, but I still got railed at parties. "Plain," they called her, because she rarely wore any dress I bought her, and the men went on and on about how I couldn't reign in my wife.
One day I went into the living room and found my girl with the Irish Eyes missing. No swirl of ceramic fabric to dust, no eyes sparkling at me under gorgeous dark locks. I stormed into the antique shop. "Where is she?" I demanded of my son.
He frowned. "The statue? Got a good deal for her; eight hundred pounds, Da. The eyes are real emeralds, y'know."
When his mother found out, she went crazy as well. Flora grew up with as much superstition - mixed in with good Christian learning, of course - as I did. Comes with the territory of a sports-player family. "That statue's a family heirloom!" she cried, slapping him. "To whom did you sell it?"
"A gentleman I haven't seen before," he said, shrugging. "Luke-something." After that, our luck changed. I became partner with the owner of the factory where I used to work with dirt under my nails, and I had to wear a shirt and tie to work every day. Flora and Kevin got an offer to expand their business; amazingly enough it had become fashionable to get antiques. She began teaching classes about how to do it yourself. Kevin started playing hurley, like his grandfathers.
I had terrible nightmares, though, now. Somebody was dead, somebody was dead - I didn't know who.
We went to all his matches. I was so proud! We'd cheer him like any family of any class, because it's allowable there.
One day, he got a nasty whack right in the nose. Those Edinburough thugs! He was unconscious for two hours, and the doctor was worried. "Internal injuries," he said grimly. I wished like no tomorrow that we had our little lady with the Irish Eyes. As it was, all we could do was go to the chapel on Main Street and pray. "Please, God," I said, lighting candles for St Brigid too; "I'll do anything, I don't care, just have our son healthy again."
Two days later I got the news. "You've been out of work that much," said my boss/partner. "I know about your son, but we've got to be realistic. You missed an important meeting! Maybe you aren't cut for this position of power. Don't worry; some people aren't cut for it." I was put back on the floor of the factory, where I got a lot of jiving from the men. "How's slumming?" and all that. "Hey, good to see you back where you belong," said some though, and got me a pint at the pub where I got more jiving. My beautiful girl, though, she wouldn't leave the hospital. Boy was awake, but she wanted to be sure he was all right. She left her own job for it. We were running out of money with hospital bills.
Kevin died three days later. His funeral was full of kids, but only a few adults. Old Mrs Doniver from Forth Street came with flowers, and so did Andy Ricker from the pub. "I'm so sorry; he was a wonderful boy," the sweet old lady said as she gave him flowers. Andy set out a little Guinness in a shot glass - for the drinks Kevin would never have. "Can't kill him now, can it?" he asked. It's true, it couldn't kill our boy.
He was dead, and with him died our mansion; paying for the funeral, we just couldn't afford it. So we moved back to Forth Street and the little room, and I changed jobs to work at the Abercrombe like my great grand; my wife sold the antique shop, because she said it was too painful.
With my new position as concierge at the hotel up the way, we could afford to go back to a manse after a while. Flora wouldn't have to work. But we discussed it one day, and she showed me the letters of a Swiss bank account. "These are Kevin's earnings, since he was six," she told me tearfully. "Dear, I don't want to do like the rich people and set up a foundation for him; but I think he'd like it if we moved to a nice apartment. Something within our means, that'll never tap us out."
So that was just what we did. Now we have a little flat with a porch garden where my sweet Flora and I grow food, and when we have more than enough we give to our neighbors. And she wears a string of pearls or a triskele made of mother-of-pearl, because she loves water. But the only parties we go to now are the street parties in the summer, and we ice skate in winter, because that's the way Kevin would have wanted it.
I dream of that little statue with the Irish Eyes sometimes, that he sold for eight hundred pounds. Cubic zirconium sold as emerald, I think weeping every time I visit his grave. Our boy sinned and paid the price, but so did the rest of us. But at least I have my sweet Flora still, for whom I can provide better now. That matters more than silk, I've come to realize.