'Tis

by Frank McCourt

  He takes a moment to ask me what I’m doing with my life.

  Teaching.

  I was afraid of that. I thought you wanted to be a writer.

  I do.

  So?

  I have to earn a living.

  You’re falling into the trap. I beg you, don’t fall into the trap. I nearly fell into it myself.

  I have to earn a living.

  You’ll never write while you’re teaching. Teaching is a bitch. Remember Voltaire? Cultivate your garden.

  I remember.

  And Carlyle? Make money and forget the universe.

  I’m earning a living.

  You’re dying.

  A week later he is gone from the diner and no one knows where.

  With the money from the Beneficial Finance Company and the wages from the warehouses I’m able to spend a few weeks in Limerick and it’s the same old feeling when the plane descends and follows the Shannon Estuary to the airport. The river gleams silver and the fields rolling away are somber shades of green except where the sun shines and emeralds the land. It’s a good time to be sitting near a window in case there are tears.

  She’s at the airport with Alphie and a hired car and the morning is fresh and dewy on the road to Limerick. She tells me about Malachy’s visit with his wife, Linda, and what a wild party they had with Malachy going out to a field and riding home on a horse which he wanted to bring into the house till everyone persuaded him a house was no place for a horse. There was plenty of drink that night and more than drink, poteen, which someone got from a man out in the country and ’twas the luck o’ God the guards never came near the house for the possession of poteen is a serious offense that could land you in the Limerick Jail. Malachy said she and Alphie might be able to come to New York for a visit at Christmas and wouldn’t that be grand, we’d all be together.

  They meet me on the streets and tell me I look grand, that I look more like a Yank all the time. Alice Egan argues, Frankie McCourt hasn’t changed one hour, not one hour. Isn’t that right, Frankie?

  I don’t know, Alice.

  You don’t have the slightest bit of an American accent.

  Whatever friends I had in Limerick are gone, dead or emigrated, and I don’t know what to do with myself. I could read all day in my mother’s house but why did I come all the way from New York to sit on my arse and read? I could sit in pubs all night and drink but I could have done that in New York, too.

  I walk from one end of the city to the other and out into the country where my father walked endlessly. People are polite but they’re working and they have families and I’m a visitor, a returned Yank.

  Is that yourself, Frankie McCourt?

  ’Tis.

  When did you come?

  Last week.

  And when are you going back?

  Next week.

  That’s grand. I’m sure your poor mother is glad to have you at home and I hope the weather keeps fine for you.

  They say, I suppose you notice all kinds of changes in Limerick?

  Oh, yes. More cars, fewer snotty noses and scabby knees. No barefoot children. No women in shawls.

  Jesus, Frankie McCourt, them’s peculiar things to be noticing.

  They’ll watch to see if I put on airs and they’ll cut me down but I have none to put on. When I tell them I’m a teacher they seem disappointed.

  Only a teacher. Lord above, Frankie McCourt, we thought you’d be a millionaire by now. Sure wasn’t your brother Malachy here with his glamorous model of a wife and isn’t he an actor and everything.

  The plane lifts into a western sun which touches the Shannon with gold and even though I’m happy to be returning to New York I hardly know where I belong anymore.

  43

  Malachy’s bar is so successful he provides passage for my mother and my brother Alphie, on the SS Sylvania which arrives in New York on December 21, 1959.

  When they emerge from the customs shed there’s a piece of broken leather flapping from Mam’s right shoe so that you can see the small toe of a foot that was always swollen. Does it ever end? Is this the family of the broken shoe? We embrace and Alphie smiles with broken blackened teeth.

  The family of broken shoes and teeth destroyed. Will this be our coat of arms?

  Mam looks past me to the street beyond. Where’s Malachy?

  I don’t know. He should be here in a minute.

  She tells me I look fine, that it didn’t do me any harm to put on a bit of weight though I should do something about my eyes they’re that red. That irritates me because I know that if I even think of my eyes or anyone mentions them I can feel them flush red and of course she notices.

  See, she says. You’re a bit old to be having bad eyes.

  I want to snap at her that I’m twenty-nine and I don’t know the proper age for not having bad eyes and is this what she wants to talk about the minute she arrives in New York? but Malachy arrives in a taxi with his wife, Linda. More smiles and embraces. Malachy keeps the taxi while we retrieve the suitcases.

  Alphie says, Will we put these in the boot?

  Linda smiles. Oh, no, we put them in the trunk.

  Trunk? We didn’t bring a trunk.

  No, no, she says, we put your bags in the trunk of the taxi.

  Isn’t there a boot in the taxi?

  No, that’s the trunk.

  Alphie scratches his head and smiles again, a young man understanding lesson number one in American English.

  In the taxi Mam says, Lord above, look at all those motor cars. The roads are packed. I tell her it’s not so bad now. An hour earlier it was the height of the rush hour and traffic was even worse. She says she doesn’t see how it could ever be worse. I tell her it’s always worse earlier and she says, I don’t see how it could be worse than this the way the motor cars are crawling along this minute.

  I am trying to be patient and I speak slowly. I am telling you, Mam, this is how the traffic is in New York. I live here.

  Malachy says, Oh, it doesn’t matter. It’s a lovely morning, and she says, I lived here, too, in case you’ve forgotten.

  You did, I tell her. Twenty-five years ago and you lived in Brooklyn, not Manhattan.

  Well, it’s still New York.

  She won’t give up and I won’t though I’m looking at the pettiness of the two of us and wondering why I’m arguing instead of celebrating the arrival of my mother and my youngest brother in the city all of us dreamed of all our lives. Why does she pick on my eyes and why do I have to contradict her over the traffic?

  Linda tries to ease the moment. Well, as Malachy says, it is a beautiful day.

  Mam gives a little begrudging nod. ’Tis.

  And how was the weather when you left Ireland, Mam?

  A begrudging word, Raining.

  Oh, it’s always raining in Ireland, isn’t it, Mam?

  No, it’s not, and she folds her arms and stares straight ahead at the traffic that was much busier an hour earlier.

  At the apartment Linda makes breakfast while Mam dandles the new baby, Siobhan, and croons to her the way she crooned to seven of us. Linda says, Mam, would you like tea or coffee?

  Tea, please.

  When the breakfast is ready Mam puts the baby down, comes to the table and wants to know what is that thing floating around in her cup. Linda tells her it’s a tea bag and Mam puts her nose in the air. Oh, I wouldn’t drink that. Sure, that’s not proper tea at all.

  Malachy’s face tightens and he tells her through his teeth, That’s the tea we have. That’s the way we make it. We don’t have a pound of Lyons’ tea and a teapot for you.

  Well, then, I won’t have anything. I’ll just eat my egg. I don’t know what kind of country this is where you can’t get a decent cup of tea.

  Malachy is ready to say something but the baby cries and he goes to lift her from her crib while Linda flutters around Mam, smiling, trying to please. We could get a teapot, Mam, and we could get loose tea, couldn’t we, Malachy?

  B
ut he’s parading the living room with the baby whimpering on his shoulder and you can see that in the matter of tea bags he won’t yield, not this morning anyway. Like anyone who has ever had a decent cup of tea in Ireland he despises tea bags but he has an American wife who knows nothing but tea bags, he has a baby and things on his mind and little patience with this mother with her nose in the air over tea bags her first day in the United States of America and he doesn’t know why, after all his expense and trouble, he has to tolerate her picky ways for the next three weeks in this small apartment.

  Mam pushes away from the table. Lavatory? she asks Linda. Where’s the lavatory?

  What?

  Lavatory. WC.

  Linda looks at Malachy. The toilet, he says. The bathroom.

  Oh, says Linda. In there.

  While Mam is in the bathroom Alphie tells Linda the tea bag wasn’t that bad after all. If you didn’t see it floating in the cup you’d think it was all right, and Linda smiles again. She tells him that’s why the Chinese don’t serve great chunks of meat. They don’t like looking at the animal they’re eating. If they cook chicken they chop it into little pieces and mix it with other things so you barely know it’s chicken. That’s why you never see a chicken leg or breast in a Chinese restaurant.

  Is that right? Alphie says.

  The baby is still whimpering on Malachy’s shoulder but all is sweet at the table with Alphie and Linda discussing tea bags and the delicacy of Chinese cooking. Then Mam comes from the bathroom and tells Malachy, That child is full of wind, so she is. I’ll take her.

  Malachy hands over Siobhan and sits at the table with his tea. Mam walks the floor with the piece of leather flapping from her broken shoe and I know I’ll have to take her down Third Avenue to a shoe shop. She pats the baby and there’s a powerful burp that makes us all laugh. She puts the baby back in the crib and leans over her. There, there, leanv, there, there, and the baby gurgles. She returns to the table, rests her hands in her lap and tells us, I’d give me two eyes for a decent cup of tea, and Linda tells her she’ll go out today and get a teapot and loose tea, right, Malachy?

  He says, Right, because he knows in his heart there’s nothing like tea made in a pot which you rinse with water boiling madly, where there’s a heaping spoon for each cup, where you pour in the madly boiling water, keeping the pot warm with a tea cosy while the tea brews for six minutes exactly.

  Malachy knows that’s how Mam will make tea and he softens his stand on tea bags. He knows also that in the matter of baby burping she has finer instincts and superior ways and it’s a fair exchange, a decent cup of tea for her and comfort for the baby Siobhan.

  For the first time in ten years we’re all together, Mam and her four sons. Malachy has his wife, Linda, and his baby, Siobhan, the first of a new generation. Michael has a girlfriend, Jan, and Alphie will soon find one, too. I’m reconciled with Alberta and living with her in Brooklyn.

  Malachy is the life of the party in New York and no party can start without him. If he doesn’t appear there’s restlessness and whimpering, Where’s Malachy? Where’s your brother? and when he roars in they’re happy. He sings and drinks and passes his glass for more drink and sings again till he rushes off to the next party.

  Mam loves the life, the excitement of it. She loves having a highball at Malachy’s bar and being introduced as Malachy’s mother. Her eyes twinkle and her cheeks glow and she dazzles the world with a flash of false teeth. She follows Malachy to the parties, the oul’ hooleys, she calls them, basks in the mother spotlight and tries to join in Malachy’s songs till she runs out of breath with the first signs of emphysema. After all the years sitting by the fire in Limerick wondering where the next loaf of bread was coming from she’s having a lovely time and isn’t this a grand country altogether? Ah, maybe she’ll stay a little longer. Sure, what’s the use of going back to Limerick in the middle of the winter with nothing to do but sit there by the fire warming her poor shins? She’ll go back when the weather warms up, Easter maybe, and Alphie can get a job here to keep them going.

  Malachy has to tell her if she wants to stay in New York even for a short time she can’t stay with him in his small apartment with Linda and the baby, four months old.

  She calls me at Alberta’s and tells me, I’m hurted, so I am. Four sons in New York and no place for me to lay my head.

  But we all have small apartments, Mam. No room.

  Well, one would wonder what ye’re all doing with the money ye’re making. Ye should have told me this before ye dragged me from my own comfortable fireplace.

  No one dragged you. Didn’t you say over and over you wanted to come for Christmas and didn’t Malachy pay your fare?

  I came because I wanted to see my first grandchild and, don’t worry, I’ll pay Malachy back if I have to get down on my two knees and scrub floors. If I knew the way I was going to be treated here I would have stayed in Limerick and had a nice goose for myself and a roof over my head.

  Alberta whispers I should invite Mam and Alphie for dinner on Saturday night. There’s a silence at the other end and then a sniffle.

  Well, I don’t know what I’ll be doing on Saturday night. Malachy said there might be a party.

  All right. We invited you to dinner but if you want to go to another party with Malachy, go.

  You don’t have to sound so huffy. It’s an awful long distance to Brooklyn. I know because I used to live there.

  It’s less than half an hour.

  She whispers something to Alphie and he takes the phone. Francis? We’ll come.

  When I open the door she brings her own chill along with the January chill. She acknowledges Alberta’s existence with a nod and asks if I have a match for her cigarette. Alberta offers her a cigarette but she says, no, she has her own and these American cigarettes barely have any taste anyway. Alberta offers her a drink and she’ll have a highball. Alphie says he’ll have a beer and Mam says, Oh, you’re starting, are you?

  I tell her it’s only a beer.

  Well, that’s how it starts. One beer and the next thing ye’re roaring and singing and waking the child.

  There’s no child here.

  There is in Malachy’s house and the roaring and singing, too.

  Alberta calls us into dinner, tuna casserole with green salad. Mam takes her time coming to the table. She has to finish her cigarette and what’s the hurry anyway.

  Alberta says it’s nice to eat casserole when it’s good and hot.

  Mam says she hates hot food that burns the roof of your mouth.

  I tell her, For Christ’s sake, finish your cigarette and come to the table.

  She comes with her offended look. She pulls her chair in and pushes the salad away. She doesn’t like the lettuce in this country. I try to control myself. I ask her what the hell is the difference between the lettuce in this country and the lettuce in Ireland. She says there’s a big difference, that the lettuce in this country is tasteless.

  Alberta says, Oh, never mind. Not everyone likes lettuce anyway.

  Mam stares at her casserole and forks noodles and tuna aside while she hunts for peas. She says she loves peas though these are not as good as the ones in Limerick. Alberta asks if she’d like more peas.

  No, thank you.

  After which she probes the noodles for bits of tuna.

  I ask her, Don’t you like the noodles?

  What?

  The noodles. Don’t you like them?

  I don’t know what they are but I’m not fond of ’em.

  I want to lean into her face and tell her she’s acting like a savage, that Alberta went to great lengths thinking of something that might please her and all she can do now is to sit with her nose in the air as if someone had done something to her and if she doesn’t like it she can put on her damn coat and go back to Manhattan to the party she’s missing and I’ll never bother her again with an invitation to dinner.