Starry-Eyed by Ted Michael

must have been a blessed relief for Mum, after all those years of listening to Niall talk about Niall.
    Needless to say, there’s not one drop of Irish blood in George’s brawny, swarthy, nonloquacious physique. He has thick, blunt fingers, strong and reliable. Too thick to dance along the neck of a fiddle like pale fluttering birds, the way Niall’s do. But his arms are strong enough to lift a tired woman’s life into an easier place. So I can’t blame her one bit, really.
    . . . . .
    The room is thick with smoke by now, and somebody’s rigging up a microphone to the amp. I catch a glimpse of myself in an open spot on the hazy mirror on the back wall, my reflection slivered in between a poster for the Irish Rugby Football Union and a list of the day’s specials. My father’sdaughter? Sure, I guess there’s a resemblance. He’s got curly dark hair shot with wires of gray, uncombable. A broad pale face, like mine, and milky blue eyes capped by high, dark eyebrows that give him a look of perpetual happy surprise. Maybe that’s why everyone likes him at first glance. He always looks glad to see you. Don’t be fooled. It’s just the eyebrows.
    People are always crazy about Niall when they meet him. Then they get to know him a bit, and they like him well enough. After a few years they grit their teeth. Full-on abandonment comes soon after, sure as a hangover follows a binge, but it doesn’t matter. He’s always collecting new followers. Niall looks soft, like a pushover, a sentimental sap even, the way he caresses his fiddle and cries like a baby at an old song, but he’s steely at the core. All right, he’s a proper bastard sometimes.
    He calls it being demanding. He’s “demanding” of me and Evelyn, and of his students, and his women, and himself too, I suppose. Says high expectations are the only true compliment. Says it’s the only way to achieve greatness. I used to think he was a hero, a grand whatever-it-is. Visionary. But you can’t fool me, not anymore. Mean is mean, there’s no need to tie a bow on it and call it something respectable.
    . . . . .
    â€œâ€˜Danny Boy’! ‘Danny Boy’!” They’re like vultures on a carcass, this crowd. Evelyn comes behind me and puts her hands on my shoulders. She smells minty, like she always does. It’s an occupational hazard.
    â€œLeave Fiona be,” Evelyn scolds the table. “She has school tomorrow. She needs to go home and to bed.”
    A roar of protest.
    â€œJust one song, love, before you go. It’s Niall’s birthday! Comes but once a year!”
    â€œShe’ll wreck her voice singing in all this din, trying to be heard over your craic.” Evelyn smiles her disturbingly white smile, but she’s dead serious. (The smile’s another occupational hazard; her boss gives her freebleachings so he won’t have to pay her fair wages.) Always bossing me around, that Evie, ever since our mum moved to Tampa with George. His Mediterranean blood craved the heat, he’d said. Poor, fair, freckled Mum. She must keep the sunscreen companies in business down there. “Leave her be, I say.”
    â€œSing one for Niall. Do, Fiona!”
    I look at the man, my father dear, who seems completely indifferent about whether I sing, go home, or do a striptease on the bar.
    Evelyn gives it her last, best shot. “Don’t be selfish, now. She’s to sing for a famous teacher tomorrow. She shouldn’t even be here, out so late. She’s supposed to be home resting her voice.”
    Supposed to be? Supposed to be? Well, sorry, Evie, but that’s all I need to hear. I get up and head for the makeshift stage, and the cheers start all over again.
    I take the microphone in my hand. And Niall grins so everyone can see his paternal pride, and he laughs too loud and drapes his arm around a girl not much older than Evelyn, Terry, I think her