My Mother Wore a Yellow Dress

by Christina McKenna

  John Henry ran from nowhere with arms outstretched. Even after all those years he’d no difficulty in recognising his sister. They embraced for what seemed a long time, shedding tears of joy in the full realisation of that landmark moment. It was a moment they never believed would come. I looked at this tableau of reunited siblings and knew I was witnessing the acme of my mother’s life. It was the happiest she had ever been – and would ever become. There was nothing left for me to do but aim my Pentax and shoot that amazing moment.

  John was 55 when we met and mother six years older. He was a jaunty, agile little man, fully alive to the moment, a coruscating presence who ‘dressed smart’ and ‘talked quick’. And boy, just like those Yankees, he could talk!

  With his thin moustache and glinting specs he could easily have passed as an understudy for Sir John Mills. He’d prepared for this occasion with care. He was dressed in a dapper, nautical outfit: navy-blue, brass-buttoned blazer, white slacks with matching shirt and loafers, the ensemble finished off with a red silk cravat, and a crimson handkerchief that spilled out of his breast pocket to add a rakish note.

  He drove us to his home in a gigantic Oldsmobile saloon, he and mother sitting way up front. I travelled in the rear, dwarfed by that vast interior, rolling from side to side like a pea in an empty suitcase. I thought of John Mallon’s bubblecar and mused idly that if Mr Mallon were put behind the Oldsmobile wheel he might well believe he was at the controls of a Boeing 747.

  John’s driving encouraged me to think that he had probably attended the Mrs Potter school of motoring. The car bounced and floated over the road as he regaled mother with rapid-fire commentary on the sights that unfolded, casually negligent of adherence to the Highway Code. He’d brake suddenly following yet another near miss, stick his head out of the window to holler ‘I pay my road tax too, you gaddamn bastard!’ while mother crossed herself and I curled up into an even tighter ball. I never fully appreciated the usefulness of seat belts until I travelled with John Henry.

  We finally arrived at the house, exhausted, distraught and extremely hungry – we hadn’t eaten for hours – and concealed our discomfort lest we cause offence.

  We were introduced to the ‘Maltese Broad’, John’s moniker for his wife Carol. She was waiting for us on the lawn together with the children. They had two sons and a daughter, who grinned and gushed the requisite words of welcome before scampering off to do more exciting things. I was not much older than them yet felt like a pale old dud beside all that tanned, handsome vigour. I wanted to join them but there was no invitation so I reluctantly retired with the adults to the air-conditioned coolness of the house.

  The Maltese Broad was a large, sweet lady who spent most of her time in the kitchen ‘fixing’ food. Unfortunately she bore the evidence of this obsession all too clearly, and mother was thrilled to discover that by comparison with Carol Henry she was a mere Twiggy. The irony was that both John and his wife were so excited with our arrival that they forgot to offer us food. This was an occasion for celebration and we felt obliged to accept the whiskey and Budweiser on offer; we ended up merry as well as famished. Eventually, about six hours later, with John getting more animated and voluble with the help of Jack Daniels, we repaired to a Chinese restaurant for that longed-for meal.

  The couple made up for it, however, in the course of the holiday. Each day was a re-run of that introductory day, but with more food than our bellies could handle. Our consumption was gross and unseemly; this was every Christmas and birthday multiplied by 21 and squared to the nth degree. During those three weeks we were never again allowed to feel the hunger pangs of that first day.

  Every morning we’d rise to find the Maltese Broad in the kitchen, flipping and tossing onto plates the raging contents of a skillet. We picked up the jargon pretty quickly because Carol talked of little else: eggs over-easy, hash browns, gammon rashers, crêpes suzettes with maple syrup, cornbread, potato cakes. I’m sure there was an endangered species or two in there as well. This was coronary thrombosis on a plate.

  And all the while we were shovelling and glugging, John Henry fizzled about – I was certain that carbonated blood coursed in those veins – making more noise than the frying pan. He was recalling the old days while cutting his coffee with copious sloshes of whiskey, halting sometimes with an empathic, ‘Jesus, Mary!’ or ‘Gaddammit, Mary!’ He’d lament the decline in morals in the USA: ‘Those gaddammed Beatles ruined this country, Mary!’ He’d get down on his knees and thump the floor to hammer home a point while mother and I sat looking on in wordless astonishment and Carol kept the food coming.

  The food! It seemed that no sooner had we finished eating, gone to the loo to freshen up than we’d come back to find another charge-laden table waiting. There was no such thing as humble elevenses of tea and a biscuit here, I’m afraid. The table would groan under the weight of bagels and cream cheese, Oreos, muffins, cookies and buckets of chocolate-chip ice cream with toffee sauce. In retrospect, mother’s speed-induced, sweat-suited diet was a fortuitous preparation.

  In the evenings we dined out. John would don his nautical outfit and Carol would waddle in his wake, wearing spandex leggings and a dayglo smock which only just concealed her burgeoning hips. She was not a rare sight; most of Sacramento seemed to be populated with enormous people who resembled bouncy castles, and wobbled and undulated under tent-like structures that passed for clothing. Mother and I kept staring in amazement, but no one else seemed to pay them a second glance.

  John drove us in that mighty saloon car of his, swearing and swerving over the highway, making eye contact with us instead of the road. Miraculously we arrived at each destination with our limbs intact.

  If I didn’t know better I’d swear that John had had assertiveness training at the School for the Insecure Irish-American Male Approaching a Mid-Life Crisis. No sooner were we in the door of a restaurant than he’d start to vandalise the silence and complain about the ‘gaddamn service’. These exchanges followed a pattern I began to recognise.

  Waiter: ‘Hello, how are you, sir … ladies.’

  John: ‘We’re pretty damned good, as a matter of fact, but this table ain’t.’

  Waiter: ‘Pardon me, sir. I’m real sorry, sir, I’ll see what I can do.’

  John: ‘You sure as hell better. This is my sister Mary and her daughter, who I ain’t seen in thirty-three years. You got that? Thirty-three gaddamn years! And they’ve just flown six thousand miles from Ireland to see me. And we ain’t gonna sit with our backs to the view in the middle of this restaurant like some gaddamn monkeys in a cage. We want that table by the window, you hear, and we want it now.’

  And he’d point to a table already occupied by a couple tucking into their steaks and fries.

  Mother and I would sit red-faced, curling our toes in the silence that followed. We were not ones for causing a fuss in public. The waiter would stand there glaring at us and we knew what he was thinking; it was all our fault. Sometimes mother would feel moved to intervene.

  Mother [whispering timidly]: ‘The table’s all right, John.’

  But John was having none of it.

  John: ‘Mary, we ain’t sittin’ at this second-rate table and if things don’t start to improve round here pretty gaddamn soon I’m callin’ the gaddamn manager.’

  A hint of urgency would enter the waiter’s voice.

  Waiter: ‘Yes sir, I understand, sir. We’ll see what we can do.’

  We’d be ushered into the lounge for complimentary cocktails and the waiter would approach the couple by the window. They’d invariably move to another table without question. We were to learn that the Americans are uncommonly obliging to their Irish cousins. I could not imagine the same scenario in an Ulster restaurant.

  Those meals out were generally served on ‘platters’ as opposed to plates. The steaks were so thick that it seemed only an acetylene torch could cut them. There were mountains of fries and vegetables. I may be exaggerating but I seem to remember washing everythi
ng down with gallon beakers of cola and litre glasses of wine. Dessert was considered compulsory rather than optional, so we helped ourselves from the trolley. Again the American idea of pudding was not what we were used to. We could choose from belly-heaving portions of pecan pie, chocolate flan, apple strudel, cheesecakes, trifles, gâteaux with melting heaps of ice cream in every conceivable consistency and combination. There was creamy thick, double creamy thick, double creamy, creamy thick, and the unimaginable, extra-double-creamy-thick, in blueberry, chocolate chip, toffee, strawberry, and on and on and on. It appeared that everyone in the restaurant – ourselves included – was engaged in some kind of eating marathon, heads down, elbows working like pistons.

  I consumed so much I could even feel my head getting fat. There was no end to these bacchanals. When we finally got home and struggled into the house the Maltese Broad would stagger off to the kitchen and re-emerge bearing platters of bedtime snacks: pretzels, peanuts, corn chips, potato chips and a host of dips and relishes. I’d collapse into bed and remain comatose until morning – when my senses were assaulted by the aromas and sounds of Carol doing what she loved best: fixing breakfast.

  Halfway through our vacation John took us to his place of work: the offices of the Sacramento Bee newspaper, where he was employed as a printer. The Bee, I learned, had quite a colourful, proud and impressive history. Perhaps no one exemplified that more than its founder, James McClatchy, an Irishman and great-grandfather of the present publisher.

  After emigrating from Ireland in 1840, McClatchy became a writer for the New York Tribune. But the lure of the California gold rush drew him west in 1849. He boarded a ship to a Rio Grande port, crossed Mexico on foot (that’s right, on foot), was ferried up the coast, walked 300 miles to San Diego, then made his way overland to Sacramento.

  After disappointing results in his quest for gold, he returned to journalism. McClatchy was clearly a man of great resource and enterprise; the McKenna brothers could have learned a thing or two from him.

  He died in 1883, leaving behind a newspaper that today serves an area of approximately 12,000 square miles, covering most of Northern California.

  All these facts and more besides were related to us by a public relations officer for the company, Errol T Johnson, an impressive Denzel Washington look-alike whose duties included guiding visitors around the Bee’s offices. John felt we needed to be fully briefed before we met his co-workers. He was also very proud – and rightly so – of his employer’s history and achievements.

  Mother and I, hung over and bloated from the night before, followed Denzel around like a pair of sheep, nodding and feigning interest.

  Denzel: ‘The Bee’s combined average circulation totals one point four million daily and one point nine million Sunday editions.’

  Mother: ‘God save us!’

  Denzel [looking puzzled]: ‘Yes, ma’am. We’re a newspaper that has a rich history of standing up for human rights and engaging with environmental issues. In the eighteen-sixties we took a strong stand against slavery and voiced adamant opposition to the Ku Klux Klan.’

  John: ‘Remember those gaddamn bastards, Mary? Wore those pointy pixies with the eyes cut out. As bad as those sons-a-Protestant-bitches back home. Them Protestants ruined dear old Ireland and those goddamned Beatles ruined this country.’

  Mother: ‘God, that’s terrible, John.’

  John: ‘Tell you something for nothin’, Mary: there’ll never be peace in good old Ireland till the Provos whip those gaddamn British asses the hell outta there.’

  And he was off like the clappers of hell. Denzel patiently checked his gold watch and adjusted his tie while he waited for John to finish his rant on ‘gaddamn British imperialism’.

  Denzel: ‘The courageous voice of the Bee was heard again in nineteen twenty-two when it published the names of Sacramento’s Klan members – including prominent citizens – in a front-page exposé. Such fearless reporting has earned the Bee twelve Pulitzer prizes, three of which were coveted gold medals for public service.’

  John: ‘You hear that, Mary? Twelve Pulitzer prizes and three gold medals.’

  Mother: ‘Heaven’s above, John, that’s a terrible lotta prizes. He was a great man that McCracken. Where’d you say he was from?’

  Denzel: ‘McClatchy, ma’am. From Lisburn, County Antrim, ma’am.’

  We were then shown the rusted typewriter which James McClatchy carried all the way from County Antrim in pursuit of the American dream.

  So that was John’s impressive place of work: a vast skyscraper full of 1,800 busy bees, all living up to the title of their product. And he was determined to introduce mother and me to each and every one of them.

  We started in the basement with the raw grease and inked-up rollers of those gigantic printing presses, and ended 50 floors later at the advertising department, marvelling at the suavity of the designers and copywriters.

  Virtually every employee knew John and addressed him by his full name, John Henry. When I come to think about it, it seemed more fitting than plain, dull, monosyllabic ‘John’. He was so full of life that only his full name would do. I can’t remember the many people he introduced us to but the routine went something like this:

  ‘Hi, John Henry, how are you? You’re lookin’ pretty sharp/neat/swell/good today.’

  ‘Why, thank you, Vern/Bubba/Marylou/Clarisse. I’m pretty good, as a matter of fact. May I introduce my sister Mary from Ireland, who I ain’t seen for thirty-three years?’

  ‘Gee, John Henry, that’s awesome.’

  ‘And this is her daughter, the poet and artist Christina McKenna.’ (I was really chuffed to be described in such terms.)

  ‘Well, I’m mighty pleased ta meet ya all. You have a nice day, y’hear.’

  We grinned and gripped more hands in one day than the Queen of England. I now know how she feels at the close of yet another state occasion. All evening the echo of that introductory mantra went round and round in my head. John Henry made sure we missed no one.

  He was so proud, tugging those cufflinks into view, smoothing down the silk cravat and hankie, the two high notes of that nautical ensemble. He was reminding himself that he was no longer the humble employee but a jazzy showman and we his guest soloists.

  Appearances and impressions were important to John Henry. He paraded us as exotic extensions of himself, one Derry lady on each arm; we danced to his tune, being reasonably pretty and decorous, and he made sure everyone in that building saw us.

  We went to Reno, Nevada, to try our luck at the tables, and visited casinos that were thumping insults to modesty and good taste. Waitresses paraded in the skimpiest costumes and most of the men looked like small, medium and large versions of Sly Stallone, replete with the chest rug and medallion.

  There were ladies of all ages and sizes, and others who looked suspiciously like the Sunday variant of Norrie of Ballinascreen. There were good-time gals with improbable bosoms who’d been stitched and tucked in all the right places. They lusted for the attention that had once been effortless, clinging on to the last vestiges of sex appeal by their fiberglass fingertips. But it was the elderly dames who intrigued me most: vigorous old bats with wind-tunnel face-lifts, their withered throats and wrists shackled with jewellery; juicing the last drops out of life before the inevitable fall. They attacked slot machines with a cold anger, thumping them when they failed to cooperate and cursing like navvies. John swore they could hog a machine for the entire day, feeding it dimes and dollars in the mad hope of scoring that elusive million; those face-lifts had to be maintained.

  Such places gave insanity a whole new meaning. This was Dante’s fourth circle of hell with tassels and beads – the antechamber to hell’s last bawdy-house. I could sense mother’s lips move in sibilant prayer and knew the sign of the cross was certain to follow. Sure enough, I caught her in that very act more than once.

  There was a message here for all Irish pensioners. Don’t spend your final years clocking in old people’s hom
es, gaddamn it! Get out of there and buy a one-way ticket to Reno or Vegas and live dangerously at the tawdry gaming machines, in crackpot paradise. I could picture John Henry doing just that a few years down the line.

  Our visit to the States was intoxicating. Indeed, it was more intoxicating than we’d imagined. Halfway through our stay we wondered why we were still suffering from jet lag. The explanation was bizarre. Mother and I had made initial forays to the supermarket, when we managed to escape from John. On one such expedition we discovered a wonderful, sweet-tasting milk with which we liberally doused our cereal and coffee each morning. We’d even finish off with a generous glass or two of the stuff, just to keep us going. We thought there must be something in the air because often after breakfast we’d stagger to the bedroom with barely the energy to get ready, never mind go out for the day’s excursion.

  I cleared up the mystery on the tenth day of our stay. Idly scanning the label of the ‘milk’ carton one morning, I discovered we’d been drinking piña colada at 37º proof! It came as an almighty shock to realise that we’d met John Henry’s colleagues and his many friends, and experienced everything through a drunken haze. We’d blamed the plane journey, the weather – we’d even suspected Carol’s cooking – before learning the ‘staggering’ truth.

  Thereafter we reverted to sober old milk and the days didn’t seem to be half as much fun. At the same time those days in California were the best of my mother’s life. The fleeting joy she had experienced on those shopping trips to Belfast had been stretched across three luxurious weeks. She walked taller, her laughter was louder and her smiles wider. With her brother John around, the sun never set and the darkness didn’t have the nerve to fall.