His left leg was stiff again, and Pat limped, drink in hand, over to the stereo. The record player was entombed in a large wooden Zenith console they had brought down from the Bronx.

“What do you want to hear?”

“I don’t know, the old songs are fine.”

“That they are.” Pat pulled out an album by the McNulty Family. Irish Showboat. Friday nights, his mother and father would listen on the radio. Pat plunged the needle, and then suddenly, a ship’s foghorn bellowed out, followed by an accordion plunging over notes.

The ship will sail in half an hour to cross the broad Atlantic,

My friends are standing on the quay with grief and sorrow frantic . . .

The ship captain broke in:

“All ashore that’s going ashore, all aboard that’s going aboard. We are about to take a short pleasure cruise piloted by the McNulty Family. And as the brilliant green and gold craft steams up the bay, we hear . . .”

And the accordion riled up again, and Ma McNulty warbled “Hills of Glenswilly.”

“That’s good now,” said Anne, sipping her Mist and patting the plush arm of the chair. Pat staggered into the kitchen to make himself another drink, which Anne ignored. Dan wandered into the den, hoping to watch TV before hitting the town with his crew, but instead found his mother cooing along to “Irish Soldier Boy.”

“You’ll win my boy don’t fear,”

And with loving arms around his waist,

She tied his bandolier . . .

“Come, Dan, sit, you know these songs. Pat, play ‘The Irish Rover,’ he knows that one.” His mother was smiling again—a facial contortion that made her son wary—and then added cheerfully: “That’s the one where the dog drowns, remember?”

Dan rolled his eyes and huddled onto the couch. Bracing himself against the wall, Pat moved back toward the stereo and pulled the Clancy Brothers album from its sleeve.

“Here’s this one, Danny boy, come on now . . .”

Dan blushed. Deep down, he knew and even liked the song, but he was no longer a child and an unabashed canary that would croon at Malone family drinking parties. But never mind—his father, face flush with wild life, burst forth:

In the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and six,

We set sail from the coal quay of Cork . . .

Anne started clapping in time, then stood, step-dancing as a goof and singing at her son.

There was Barney McGee from the banks of the Lee,

There was Hogan from County Tyrone,

There was Johnny McGurk, who was scared stiff of work,

And a chap from Westmeath named Malone.

“That’s you, Danny Malone!” His father took a big gulp of his drink and crashed it onto the coaster on the end table. “Sing the next verse with me.”