Thomas Murphy

by Roger Rosenblatt

  SINCE THERE WERE ONLY 160 people living on the island, I used to count them. Every month or so. I would walk from house to house, completing the job in a day, or sometimes in a morning, if no one had died or was born after I got past his house, or was missing at sea. I made my tally in a spiral notebook, recording the names of every islander as neatly as I could, and writing the first and last names of everyone, including those in the same family. I’m not sure why I undertook this project, but taking my little census gave me a feel for the whole island. I hated the place, but I didn’t want to lose anything about it either.

  Afterward I’d climb down the escarpment to the beach with my notebook, and read the list aloud to the sea. Mary Albright, Peter Andrews, Peter Brody, Michael Brophy, Irene Cassidy—in alphabetical order, for the sake of equality. I did not want the sea to think I played favorites. After a while, the sea shouted the names back to me, though not alphabetically. And sometimes it would jumble the letters, creating new words. Powers became Worpes. Law became Wall. Figgis, Figs. And so forth. Like me, the sea never omitted a name. It understood Inishmaan, yet I could not tell if love or hate came with its understanding. Or mere indifference, maybe, the worst of all attitudes. I put my money on indifference.

  NINETY-THREE. Eighty-six. Seventy-nine. Seventy-two. Dr. Spector is about to form an expression. Sixty-four, I say, to see if she will indicate alarm or mere clinical interest. Máire searches my eyes for mischief. She calls me Holden Caulfield without the maturity. The doctor says, Remember, Mr. Murphy, we are counting down from one hundred by sevens. Oh, I forgot, I say. In that case, sixty-five. Did you really forget, Mr. Murphy, she says, or are you just messing with me? It is the first thing to come out of her all morning that makes me like her. I forget, I say. She says, You think this is all a joke, Mr. Murphy? It depends what you mean by all, I say.

  Were it not for the eggs, none of us would have to go through this arithmetical dance. Have I told you about this? I’d like to say it could have happened to anyone, that it was a natural mistake. I simply forgot about the buggers. So the water boiled and boiled and then evaporated and the flames shot out from under the burning pot, onto a nearby roll of Bounty paper towels, thence to a wooden cutting board, thence to the backsplash. If the heat had not set off the fire thing, whatever it’s called, on the ceiling, the whole house might have gone up. The entire Belnord, once the largest apartment house in the world. Whoosh. Just like that. Not the flames I had in mind to go down in. Danny Perachik, the super, the super snitch, called Máire, and she called the doctor. Jesus. It mattered not to Máire that I responded quick as a cat, swept down the extinguisher, which I had always wanted to try out anyway, and ended the crisis with a flourish. It was the last straw, she said, referring to previous straws involving the house keys and the car keys, and that time at Hornby’s swimming pool. I wasn’t safe living alone, she said. Everyone lives alone, I said. She gave me that look.

  Nonetheless, so far so good. I am able to count down from one hundred by sevens. Look at me! I know what year it is. I can spell syntax. And recommend. If they asked me, I could even recommend a syntax. I can sing “Happy Birthday to You” flawlessly, like an angel. I sing it twice, once to Máire, once to Dr. Spector. I know the three branches of government, though I don’t much care for them. I prefer tree branches, except for the government branch where the judges perch. I’m gaga over those robes. I know where I live, at least most of the time. And don’t bring up that business with Mrs. Livingston last Friday, because all the apartment doors on my floor look alike, and after some initial frustration with the lock, and Mrs. Livingston’s expression of terror and surprise, everything was jake. And you can tell that whinging rat Perachik to stop running to my daughter every time I piss and miss the can.

  But Dad, says Máire, you still must come back for more testing. No bullshit, please? She touches my shoulder. I am uncertain as to whether my morning’s performance has won me anything but a temporary pardon. I’d call the governor if I could remember his name. I put my hand on hers in a gesture of reassurance. Who am I kidding?

  In the too-bright waiting room rises a rack of pamphlets on assisted living. Who does not need assisted living, may I ask. If no one required assistance in living, writers would be out of business. Máire and I prolong our conversation with Dr. Spector, each saying things we do not mean. The doctor is cute in her white coat, with a face full of character, a noble face, also inquisitive, like Joanne Woodward in They Might Be Giants. I give her a wink. She smirks in mock disgust, and hands me a manila folder. This is a take-home test, Mr. Murphy. I tell her take-home tests are my favorite kind, ’cause you can look up the answers. She says that if I look up the answers for this one, I’ll wind up behind the eight ball.

  “I’ve read your poems,” she says.

  “So you’re the one”—old writer’s joke.

  “They’re difficult,” she says. “Like you.” I smile. She doesn’t.

  “But worth the effort?” I am coy as a girl.

  “We’ll see,” she says.

  Dr. Spector bids me, Be well, which I take as a command. I hug my fretful Máire good-bye, and head for home, where I go straight for the fridge and toss out the eggs.

  CRAZY, OONA, but after one full year I still shout your name when I enter the house. Crazier, I poke my head into every room, including the bathrooms, just in case. Then, failing to rouse you, I settle in the kitchen. I used to lament that we had so many rooms, especially after Máire grew up and out, and there were just the two of us to rattle around the joint. Now, I’m glad it’s as big as it is, so I can postpone my disappointment when I cannot find you. I don’t mind being alone, Oona. I mind being alone without you.

  So, here’s what I do—not always, but once in a while. I create a conversation with the furniture we acquired together, all of it, every piece. And the prints and paintings on the walls, too, including the Raphael Soyer sketch of the old man, who suddenly looks like me, and the eighteenth-century map of Ireland I spilled coffee on, and the English tavern table we got for a song at that auction in the Bowery. Every chair, lamp, stool. Every picture—that photo of wrinkled old Auden you bought me for my thirty-sixth birthday, half a life ago, predicting that I would have even more wrinkles than Auden when I reached his age. As I go through the lot, I ask you if you remember when exactly it was that we acquired this object and that.

  Naturally, you get everything right, each precise detail of time, day, and weather, and who was wearing what. And as you tell me about the pencil drawing of Synge that I found for us on Merrion Square in Dublin, that’s sitting on my writing desk now, or the fake Bokhara rug we were suckered into buying from that shyster on Mott Street, I too start to recall all the relevant information. I relive us. The entire process takes about two hours—Jesus, Oona, we have so much stuff. And when I’m finally done, having covered every item, I’m usually pretty tired, so I head for bed. Our bed, darlin’ girl, I save for last.

  ON THE OTHER SIDE of the wall, in his bed, Flynn lies with his death throes. That’s how it is on the island. You die in the house you were born in, and you live there in between. Flynn is eighty-eight, his weight down to ninety-six pounds. His eyes are tide pools, his feet like crabs flinching on the beach. There’s no voice left in him. Cait and I play checkers in the kitchen. We are ten. Through the wall, we hear Flynn thrashing about in his sheets, like rustling paper, but do not look up from the checkerboard between us. Flynn’s daughter, Cait’s ma, sweeps the floor. She does not look up either. She knows from birth how it is.

  We have forgotten how to be sad here. I think that may be the worst of it—to forget how to be sad, and how important was a life. Cait studies the checkers, then double jumps me, letting her arms fall at her side. She frowns in victory.

  THIS PLACE. This time. This time of life. If autumn is fall, winter is fallen. Stone harvest. This wine. This judgment, and the absence of judgment, meeting somewhere in the middle and the do-si-doing around this and that. This folk danc
e. This allemande left and allemande right. This graceless body. These rocks. Stone harvest. This desire to know and not to know, to be right and nothing close to right, to think with one’s senses, and not to think. This going back to Flynn’s death, to Cait. This going back to horses in the rain. This wish to ride and not to ride, but rather to watch others and wish them well. To move noiselessly in a curragh. Then in a kayak. Stone harvest. To observe and be part of, too. This state of equilibrium, tottering—o my Wallenda—this state of calm, of knowing how to do something, at long last. This discovery of form, of place. And bang! The hammer on the nail. The cracked jug. The flatiron. This water trembling in a glass, still and not still. This red door in a rock wall. This resignation. This endurance. This graceless body. These fields and beehives and dogs and donkeys. Dia dhuit, asal. This dolmen opening to light. This desolation. This chisel. This mortise. This remembering and forgetting, and remembering again, and knowing without remembering exactly. This faith. This gratitude. Say grace. This chair. This pen. Stone harvest. This black and white season that dies and lives for all eternity. This time of life. This time. This place.

  A WEEK PASSES before I hear from Jack of the bar again, this time by a note. He must have secured my address from barkeep Jimmy, who, unlike most of his profession, is as discreet as a parrot. But what the hell. I had not forgotten about Jack and his blind Sarah—I remember what I want to. I don’t mean to sound unfeeling about Jack’s story, but there was something darkly appealing about the idea of talking to a blind woman about her husband’s impending doom. Whatever Jack imagined about the power of poetry, this certainly would be a test. Feeling neither way, should I do it or not, I simply wondered if I could pull it off.

  Jack’s note was one line: “Still thinking?” And a phone number beneath it. But the envelope also included a snapshot of Sarah, taken, it appeared, at Christmastime. She was standing with a Christmas tree behind her, the glow of the lights competing unsuccessfully with the glow of the girl. Naturally, I looked first at her eyes, which were gray and did not seem blind but full of wit and knowing. Her hair was like straw in the rain. Her face, neck, and arms were pink and tan. Her body was on the small side, and classic, a Vespa. Male that I barely still am, of course I studied her breasts. The cleavage showed in the arc of the collar of her dress, which was the color of jade, a foggy green. Something ironic or scolding about the mouth, I thought, and the way she was standing. It was a “Don’t take a picture of me” pose, at once pleased and annoyed. I could hear her say, “Jack! Cut it out,” just before she turned away.

  It was her smile that kept me staring. Poets have a hard time conveying the quality of smiles. Cleopatra? Helen? I don’t know. That caption of the Charles Addams cartoon showing Leonardo instructing the girl, “All right now, a little smile.” What came to mind in Sarah’s smile was breakfast. She had a smile like breakfast, like the beginning of a day of bright thoughts. She was unable to see the brightness she projected, yet she was that brightness. Promise, I thought. And kindness. A repertoire of encouraging remarks.

  And yet, lurking within all that, like a shadow on the moon, was a spot, a grove of disappointment, as though the breakfast she had prepared with so much hope in it, had gone cold. Or perhaps the one for whom she had prepared it had arrived late and caused it to go cold. Beauty. I used to think it consisted of flowers and the arts. No longer. The idea of beauty that grows in the mind as one ages, and finally presents itself as a fact, has discarded all former impressions and standards. Its eyes are tired now. It wears a shawl. Its sun subdued. It is sadder than phlox and angrier than Lear. The beauty of the lurid lights in the hallway of an apartment building. Of a smudged forehead on Ash Wednesday. The beauty of rocks in a field. You are aware only of its denials. The other night I caught the face of a bitter man on TV. I did not know the source, but it was beautiful, his bitterness.

  I placed Sarah’s photo on my writing desk, beside the drawing of Synge. I don’t know why. Now she did not seem so alone.

  ALONE. THE OTHER DAY the TV had a news story about an outbreak of the Ebola virus in Nigeria and Sierra Leone. The TV doctor made earnest reassurances that the pandemic will not come here. This isn’t Africa, he said. But where it is Africa, another doctor working with those who have contracted the virus reported on what it’s like to die of the Ebola. The TV showed a man in an isolation ward, disappeared into a head-to-toe white Hazmat suit, with a chicken’s-head cap and his eyes like dark stones in a whiteout. When you have the Ebola, said the doctor, you die alone. No family member can touch you. No one can touch you or be near you. Jeez. Living alone is one thing. But dying alone?

  IF WE’RE TALKING DYING, you should have seen the way we did a funeral on Inishmaan. When anyone checked out, the family placed the coffin in front of the cottage door, and women from all over the island would come and keen and beat the boards of the coffin with their fists. After that, the men would tie ropes around the coffin, and take it by cart to the graveyard that sloped to the sea. Then the family grave was opened—there was one grave per family—and the blackened boards and the bones of the previous tenant were removed to make room for the new one. Sometimes the skull of an old family member would be propped up on a gravestone. I saw Mrs. Fallon take her mother’s skull, toss it in the air, laugh like a hyena, and carry it back to her house. The men would measure the length and breadth of the new coffin with switches cut from brambles near the road. When the coffin was ready to be lowered into the grave, the women came to it again, like hungry birds, and keened and beat it with their fists, more fiercely than before. The grave was filled with dirt, and the islanders returned to their lives.

  SAYS HERE, in this article on biology and aging (whoever thought I’d be reading this stuff?), that nature doesn’t give a shit about the parts of our makeup that deal with thinking and reading and feeling and love. Or, it gives a shit, but only for a time. The repository for those functions is our somatic cells, which serve as mere protectors, bodyguards, to the germline DNA. The somatic cells of each generation become irrelevant genetically once the germline DNA goes about its re-creating business. Somatic cells are destroyed at the end of every generation and have to be regenerated, or created whole cloth with every baby born. In other words, if I understand this aright, those activities we prize for making us most human do not count in the species’ pursuit of itself.

  No surprise, when you think about it. Flynn dies. Oona dies. Greenberg dies, though not because of his DNA. Maybe because of the DNA of the man who killed him. I, in stark contrast, live. So do Máire and Dr. Spector. So do Jack and Sarah and Jimmy, the bartender. And the creep, Perachik. He lives. Can’t say selection isn’t random.

  And I’m not sure about this anyway. I mean, if love and feeling need to be re-created with each generation, with no DNA to carry their somatic cells forward, why do children seem to love their parents right off, soon as they pop out? Suckling? Not all kids suckle, but they seem to be born cooing and gooing toward ma and da. My grandson William loves me and I love him, and that’s the way it’s been with us since our eyes first locked. Can’t tell me that we learned to love each other, that we calculated the academic subject of each other and then arrived at an informed decision. We just loved. Like that. Like his mother with Oona and me, and us with her. We just did it. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the pure biology of need. But it seems more intuitive, uh, natural than that to me. As I said, what do I know?

  On the other hand, what’s so bad about each generation having to drum up its own inclinations for thinking and reading and feeling and love? Its own love songs. Every generation has its own love songs. You can say that nature’s relegation of such features to mere guardian status shows how little it cares for those features. But, in a poetic sense, the only sense I have, the fact that our humanness has to be born again and again, may test the worth of the race far more severely than seeing whether or not we can grow to fight off some germs. Maybe nature is showing exactly how much it values us by requiring our artis
tic and spiritual regeneration. Tests how durable we are in terms of creativity. Oh, nature. You sly devil. The Romantics went all jelly-kneed thinking that babies were originally born in heaven, and they may have dreamed up this notion because they could not abide the idea that people have to start life anew, every human for himself. I, for one, love that idea. It makes each of us a god of our own creation. Including Danny Perachik. Did I say that?

  TO THINK OF IT! A pip-squeak like Perachik, with the brain of a dead mole, in charge of a gem like the Belnord! The Belnord! The Beautiful North. Belle of the North. An old beauty, like meself. Windows wide as a man’s wingspan. Italianate arches. Limestone walls. I grew up with limestone, and now I live in it. The vast front hall of our apartment. Four enormous bedrooms. Four bathrooms with little octagonal white tiles on the floors. A bathroom for the two maids’ rooms (not that we had a single maid, or even a part-time cleaning lady, since you can guess what Oona said about the necessity of that). Parquet floors everywhere. Black and white squares for the kitchen linoleum. The floor space of the kitchen itself, larger than my childhood cottage. Closets you could not just walk in. You could ride your trike in ’em, like Máire. Twelve-foot ceilings, with wavy plaster designs near the top. And all this magnificence for a rent that’s stabilized, unlike meself.

  Up goes the building in 1909, a full square block reaching from Amsterdam to Broadway, and from Eighty-sixth to Eighty-seventh. Twelve stories of apartments as big as my own in a blockade surrounding a courtyard, with landscaped gardens and pathways leading to the entries and a fountain in the center like an open rhododendron. There I am. See? On a stone bench, and Máire on her trike, taking the pathways in her giggly zoom. And beneath that courtyard, at the basement level, yet another courtyard the same size, where horse-drawn wagons deliver milk and ice, and where the superrich residents, lured by architectural elegance from downtown to the northwest prairie, keep their own horses. Soon Isaac Bashevis Singer will be in residence here. And Zero Mostel. And Marilyn Monroe, would you believe it. Not to mention, the incomparable, unflappable, unforgettable, unstoppable poet of the age, Sir Thomas James Murphy, Esq. himself. OBE, QED, LBJ, TNT.