That night, after Toby finished playing on Royal Street, Liona came down to meet him and they talked for hours once more, and crept again into her parents' darkened guesthouse.
But Toby felt increasing shame that he had confided his deepest secrets to anyone. And he felt in his heart of hearts that he wasn't worthy of Liona. Her tenderness and warmth confused him. Also he believed it was a sin to make love to her when there was no chance that they could ever be married. He had so many worries that normal courtship through their college years seemed an utter impossibility. He was deeply afraid that Liona pitied him.
As the period of final exams came on, neither of them had time to see each other.
The night of his high school graduation, Toby's mother began to drink at four o'clock, and finally he ordered her to stay home. He couldn't bear the thought of her coming downtown, with her slip showing beneath her hem, and her lipstick smeared and her cheeks too rouged, and her hair a mass of tangles. He tried for a time to brush her hair, but she slapped him repeatedly until, gritting his teeth, he grabbed her wrists and yelled, "Stop it, Mama." He burst into sobs like a child. Emily and Jacob were terrified.
His mother wept on her folded arms at the kitchen table as he took off his good clothes. He wasn't going downtown to his graduation either. The Jesuits could mail him the diploma.
But he was angry, angrier than he'd ever been in his life, and for the first time in his life, he called her a drunk and a slut. He shivered and cried.
Emily and Jacob sobbed in the other room.
His mother began to bawl. She said she wanted to kill herself. They struggled together over a kitchen knife. "Stop it, stop it," he said between his clenched teeth. "All right, I'll get the damn booze," he said, and he went out for a six-pack and a bottle of wine, and a flask of bourbon. Now she had the seemingly endless supply that she wanted.
After she drank a beer, she begged him to lie down on the bed beside her. She drank the wine in gulps. She cried and asked him to say the rosary with her. "It's a craving in the blood," she said. He didn't answer. He'd taken her to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous many a time. She'd never stay even for fifteen minutes.
Finally he settled next to her. And they said the rosary together. In a low voice, devoid of drama or complaint, she told him how her father had died of the drink, a man he never knew, and his father before him. She told him about all those uncles who had gone before who'd been drunkards. "It's a craving in the blood," she said again. "A positive craving in the blood. You have to stay with me, Toby. You have to say the rosary with me again. Dear God, help me, help me, help me."
"Listen, Ma," he said to her. "I'm going to make more and more money playing music. This summer I have a full-time job playing at the restaurant. All summer I'll be making money every night seven nights a week. Don't you see what that means? I'll be making more than ever."
He went on as her eyes glazed over and the wine made her stuporous.
"Ma, I'm going to get a degree from the Conservatory. I'll be able to teach music. Maybe I'll even be able to make a record sometime, you know. But I'll get my degree in music, Ma. I'll be able to teach. You have to hang on. You have to believe in me." She stared at him with eyes like marbles.
"Look, after this coming week, I'll have enough to get a woman to come in, to do the laundry and all and help Emily and Jacob with their homework. I'll work all the time. I'll play outside before the restaurant opens." He put his hands on her shoulders and her mouth worked itself into a skewed smile. "I'm a man now, Ma. I'm going to do it!"
She slowly slipped into sleep. It was past nine o'clock.
Do angels really lack knowledge of the heart? I wept as I listened to him and watched him.
He went on and on talking to her as she slept, about how they'd move out of this crummy little apartment. Emily and Jacob would still go to Holy Name School, he'd drive them in the car he was going to buy. He already had his eye on it. "Ma, when I perform at the Conservatory for the first time, I want you to be there. I want you and Emily and Jacob to be in the balcony. That won't be long at all. My teacher's helping me now. I'll get the tickets for us all to come. Ma, I'm going to make things all right, you understand? Ma, I'll get you a doctor, a doctor who knows what to do."
In her drunken sleep, she murmured. "Yes dear, yes dear, yes dear."
Around eleven o'clock, he gave her another beer and she went dead asleep. He left the wine beside her. He saw to it Emily and Jacob were in their pajamas and tucked in, and then he put on the fine black tuxedo and boiled shirt he'd bought for graduation. They were, of course, the finest of the garments he had. And he'd bought them outright because he knew that he could use them on the street to good effect, and maybe even in the better restaurants.
He went downtown to play for money.
There were parties all over the city that night for the Jesuit graduates. They were not for Toby.
He parked himself very near to the most famous bars on Bourbon Street, and there he opened his case, and began to play. He sank his heart and soul into the saddest litanies of woe ever penned by Roy Orbison. And soon the twenty-dollar bills came flying at him.
What a spectacle he was, already at his full height, and so finely dressed compared to the ragged street musicians seated here or there, or the mumblers simply begging for coins, or the ragged but brilliant little tap dancers.
He played "Danny Boy" at least six times that night for one couple alone, and they gave him a hundred-dollar bill that he slipped into his wallet. He played all the ripping crowd-pleasers he knew, and if they clapped for the bluegrass then off he went, the country fiddler with the lute, and they jigged around him. He put everything out of his mind, except his music.
When early morning came, he went into the St. Louis Cathedral. He prayed the psalm he had so loved from his grandmother's Catholic Bible:
Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I am stuck fast in the mire of the deep, and there is nowhere to set my foot. I am come into deep waters, and the waves overwhelm me. I have grown weary from crying, my throat has become hoarse; my eyes have failed while I await my God.
Finally, he whispered, "Dear God, will you not end this pain!"
He had over six hundred dollars now to pay the bills. He was way ahead. But what did it matter if he couldn't save her?
"Dear God," he prayed. "I don't want for her to die. I'm sorry I prayed for her to die. Dear Lord, save her."
A beggar came up to him as he left the cathedral. She was poorly dressed and murmured under her breath of her need for medicine to save a dying child. He knew she was lying. He'd seen her many a time, and heard her tell the same story. He stared at her for a long time, then silenced her with a wave of his hand and a smile, and he gave her twenty dollars.