Chapter 46
WHEN SADIE, PATRICK, AND my father came home from work, Michael and I were sitting at the kitchen table having coffee. Mom was peeling potatoes and doing her best to ignore me. She had warned me not to go to New York, and I had defied her. All the changes that had happened as a result of the war had passed my mother by. While her daughters had gone to Washington and her son into the Navy, Mom had remained behind in a village that was little different from the one her mother had known in the nineteenth century, and she remained locked into a morality that was as exacting as that of the Victorians. Although she was polite to Michael, she had nothing to say to me.
My father is a man of few words. Instead of asking who Michael was, he sat down in his chair waiting for something to happen. Mom explained that Michael was visiting from England, making it sound as if he had been passing through Scranton and had decided to stop by. We were several minutes into dinner with very little being said, even by Patrick and Sadie, who usually dominated the dinner hour, when Michael finally broke the silence.
“Mr. and Mrs. Joyce, I met your daughter at my parents' home in Derbyshire. It was a brief introduction to a woman whom my parents had come to love as if she were their daughter. But because I was serving in the Royal Air Force, I had to leave to go to my station in Germany. In August, my parents hosted a party, and I was able to get leave. When I saw Maggie again, I realized that I had fallen in love with her. There were complications— another man—but I was not going to be put off for any reason. I was making some headway when she was called home to say good-bye to her Aunt Marie. For the past four weeks, I've been at home in England, pacing the floor, wondering if some unkind fate had intervened and had taken her away from me. I decided to come and find out because this is the woman I want to be my wife.” And turning to me, he said, “I have asked Maggie to marry me, and she has accepted.”
My mother's mouth dropped open, my father started to scratch his head, and Grandpa came out of his bedroom and said, “Who the hell are you?”
“You must be Mr. Joyce,” he said, rising from his chair as if he was addressing a senior officer. “Maggie has told me so much about you, especially your role as a freedom fighter in Ireland. As I'm sure you've guessed from my accent, I'm British, but I'm proud to say that I have a fair share of Irish in me.”
“Seafóid,” Grandpa said, not believing it for a minute.
“Allow me to translate,” my father said, “Garbage, rubbish, nonsense. Take your pick.”
“Honestly. It's true, Mr. Joyce. My grandmother's family was from County Meath.” After a few minutes of silence, Grandpa said, “County Meath. Bah! Never a callous on the hands of a County Meath man.” After saying that, he went back into his bedroom. Michael would settle for his relations being called sissies if it meant that Grandpa wouldn't throw him out of his house.
After Grandpa left, Dad offered his congratulations in a voice that said, “I hope you know what the hell you are doing.” My mother said absolutely nothing. I couldn't blame either for their reaction. They had been expecting an announcement that Rob and I were engaged, and instead, I had brought home a different man. Sadie and Patrick made up for my parents' lack of enthusiasm, and my sister, while crying, bear hugged her future brother-in-law. Throughout it all, Michael remained calm and unperturbed. He was probably meditating.
News travels fast in a small town, and by the following afternoon, everyone was talking about my engagement. “It's not the same guy who was at Judge's. It's some English guy nobody knew anything about.”
The same day the news was making its way around town, I received two phone calls. One was from Bobby's mother, who demanded that I come to her house and explain myself. There was some unwritten rule that Mamie Lenehan had a right to poke her nose into everybody's business, and for some reason, everyone went along with it. The second call was from Father Lynch, and he wanted to see me in the rectory office.
Sadie said she wished that she could be a fly on the wall in the pastor's office. “I'd love to hear how you're going to explain this.”
I decided not to explain it. I didn't go to see Father Lynch, nor did I rush down to Mamie's to make some sort of confession. I had been out of Minooka for four years, and I was not going to run a gauntlet when I hadn't done anything wrong. However, in order to be on the safe side, I called my uncle, Father Shea, whose parish was in a small coal town buried deep in the mountains, but who bought his scotch in Scranton.
Raised jointly by my grandmother and Aunt Marie, John Shea was the cigar-smoking, card-playing type of priest, who had worked among the poor of coal country's mining towns since he had been ordained thirty-five years earlier. In that time, he had shaved his theology down to the two great commandments: Love God and love your neighbor. “Everything else is commentary.” He didn't preach; he comforted.
I asked him if I was going to go to hell for defying Father Lynch, and he said, “Don't worry, lass. I'll give Father Lynch a call and get him to back off. As for Mamie Lenehan, she'll have enough to think about when she learns Bobby is dating the Mateo girl.”
Michael, who had studied Hinduism, seemed nonplussed by the complexities of the Catholic Church. He left me to sort out the details and went to Judge's for a beer with Patrick. Before leaving, he said, “It'll give you an opportunity to bring your father up to speed on why you are marrying me and not Rob, and while you're at it, see if you can discourage your grandfather from putting me on an IRA hit list.”
After Michael left, I knocked on Grandpa's bedroom door and asked if I could come in. He was sitting in the shadows smoking his pipe. When my grandmother had died three years earlier, he had started to spend more and more time in his room. In profile, I could see his expansive chest—one of the signs of emphysema—his reward for forty years of working underground.
“So which one will ye be marrying?” he asked.
“Michael, the one with the black hair,” I answered.
Grandpa pointed his pipe at his chest of drawers.
“Go and open Mam's sewing box.”
I did what he said, but I didn't know what I was looking for.
“Them silver coins. They washed up on Omey from a Spanish ship. Your Mam's father give 'em to her before we come to America, saying to sell them if need be. Say what ye will, I be putting food on the table even in the worst of times.” I picked up five silver coins with irregular edges worn down by time and the sea. “Take them. I'll not be seeing you again.”
Before dismissing me, he spoke at length in Irish, but listening to this ancient tongue spoken by a wheezing man with no teeth, I wasn't quite getting what he was saying. But my father, who was sitting near the door, later boiled the speech down to one sentence: “Your mother is not always right.”
When I left Grandpa's room, my mother said her brother had called back. “Father Lynch has agreed to let your uncle handle this situation. But Father Shea wants to talk to you tomorrow afternoon here at the house.” All of this was said in the dispassionate tone she had been using since my return from New York.
“Mom, do you like Michael?” I asked. I believed if she would only give him a chance, she would see what a kind and decent man I was in love with.
“It doesn't matter what I think. You made that clear when you went to New York. But since you've asked, I'll tell you what I think happened. When you were in England, Rob called it quits on you, so you set your sights on Michael because he's the one who can make sure you get to stay over there.”
I have never back talked my mother. She didn't deserve it, and even though what she had said was incredibly hurtful, I was not going to get into an argument with someone who already had too much pain in her life. I took a dish towel out of the drawer and started to dry the dishes. “What if Michael and I had a lengthy engagement? Would that help put your mind at ease?”
Wiping her hands on her apron, she said, “Remember when Suzie Luzowski wanted to marry that Jewish boy? She told her mother that she would stay a Catholic and h
e would stay Jewish. But the Jewish priest didn't go for it, saying one was a fish and the other a fowl.” She went back to washing the dishes.
Logic was never my mother's strong suit. It was part of the reason why she and Dad had such a strained relationship. He had a university education while my mother had left school in the tenth grade to go to work. His was the world of reasoned debate; hers was all emotion based on an innate sense of what was right. But even for my mother, this argument didn't make sense. Suzie and Seth had gotten married and moved to Philadelphia where he was going to medical school. They had successfully overcome all obstacles, and to the best of my knowledge, were doing well. I decided to leave it alone. Michael was a Protestant, and for someone whose daily life was tied to the Church calendar, it wouldn't have made a bit of difference anyway.
After telling Michael about my conversation with my mother, he agreed we needed to hold off on a wedding. “I understand why your mother is upset, but I think if she has an opportunity to see the two of us together, she'll realize how well-suited we are for each other. I'll just have to stay in Minooka for a few weeks.”
My first reaction was, “Hell no!” But after calming down, I didn't see any other way to reassure Mom that Michael and I belonged together.
When Father Shea arrived at the house the next morning, I thought he was going to talk to us about laying the foundation for a good Catholic marriage and the importance of bringing the children up in the Church. Instead, he asked Michael about India and the new country of Pakistan. Did Michael think a bloodbath could be avoided between the two countries? As a young priest, my uncle had wanted to be a missionary, and he closely followed international affairs. When Michael took a bathroom break, I hurried after him and told him we needed to get the conversation back on track. Solving Pakistan and India's problems could wait.
“Father, would you like to go for a walk?” I asked in a pleading voice. Although he was my uncle, we were never allowed to call him anything other than Father Shea.
As soon as we got clear of the house, my uncle asked, “Will you be needing to speak to your Uncle John or Father Shea?”
“Both, I think.”
We were walking up Birney Avenue to the city line when my uncle asked Michael if he attended church regularly. I thought, “Holy crap!”
“Regularly? No, I don't. When I was in Malta, I occasionally attended chapel. However, there was little opportunity to do so in Germany. Since I've been discharged from the service, I haven't been to church at all.” There was nothing defensive about this statement, and I was wondering how my uncle would react to someone who didn't apologize for “not keeping holy the Sabbath day.”
“I see,” Father said, clearly not pleased with the answer.
“But what I think you are asking me, Father, is if I honor the Creator and his creation, and I most certainly do and plan to continue doing so through medicine.”
I looked at my uncle to see if that answer satisfied him. He said nothing, and we kept walking. We were nearly to the city line when he finally said, “Michael, I've worked among miners for most of my adult life. Their occupation of clawing ore out of a mountain is dehumanizing, so they either turn to the Church or they turn to drink. My goal has been to keep them within the arms of the Holy Mother Church because, without it, they descend into a life of alcoholism and abuse. The Church helped my sister to get through the poverty of her childhood and an abusive stepfather. It has comforted her in the loss of a child. It has given her the strength to live in a household with a mean-spirited old man, an alcoholic husband, and a son with the remarkable ability to find trouble where there was none. You, young man, pose a threat to the very thing that has kept her whole.
“Here's what I'm going to do. I'll tell Delia that we spoke at length, and I am convinced your beliefs run deep. I will reassure her that Maggie will continue to attend church.” Father looked at me to see if that would be the case, and I nodded eagerly. “I ask that you delay marrying for at least a year because you come from very different backgrounds. If you agree to a year's engagement, I think that it will go a long way to putting my sister's mind at ease. And, Michael, you must understand there is absolutely no divorce in the Catholic Church. Maggie will be your wife in the eyes of the Church until her death.”
After crossing into Scranton, my uncle pointed to Mateo's Bar and said, “Now, there is a matter of much greater concern—a possible alliance between Bobby Lenehan and Teresa Mateo. Your difficulties pale in comparison.”
Winking at me, my uncle let me know that things would turn out all right. I only hoped that he was right.
Chapter 47
MY UNCLE HAD BARELY reached the safety of his mountain parish before a storm came barreling out of the Midwest hitting the Lackawanna Valley with a foot and a half of snow. After digging out our house, Michael took his shovel and went down to Mamie's where he was bunking out during the Minooka part of our courtship. Bobby had practically begged Michael to stay at his house as a buffer between his mother and him. News of his courtship with Teresa had finally reached his mother, and her reaction had been as expected. A loud, “Hell no!” But Bobby was holding his ground, and Michael's presence was preventing Mamie from killing him.
Michael attended Mass with my family on Sunday. Before beginning his sermon, Father Lynch reminded his congregation that the Catholic Church has closed communion, and that you must be a congregant who is free of the stain of mortal sin in order to receive the sacrament. The part about being a non-Catholic was for Michael; the part about being free of mortal sin was for me.
Since we were the talk of the town, everyone wanted to meet Michael. Because of his British accent, he was something of a curiosity, and he answered even the most embarrassing questions graciously. Mamie proved helpful. In an effort to throw an elbow at Bobby, she was telling all her friends that Michael was everything a mother could possibly want in a son.
Although we had agreed we would not set a wedding date, Michael thought he could garner a lot of goodwill with my cousins and friends if we had an engagement party with an open bar. So we made plans for the big event at the Hotel Casey in downtown Scranton.
The day after the party, Michael and I planned to visit his Aunt Laura before going back to London. I was hoping we could have some private time before returning to England. It seemed to be bothering me more than Michael, and he suggested yoga and meditation.
“I meditated quite a bit when I was in hospital in Burma, and yoga has many benefits. It maximizes flexibility,” he said with a big grin. And they say girls are teases.
When we called Beth and Jack to tell them we were going to have an engagement party, they said they wanted to come. Although I warned them about winter weather in the Poconos, they said they would take their chances. When Michael and I arrived at the station to meet the train from New York, sitting on one of the waiting room's wooden benches was Geoff Alcott.
“What are you doing here?” we both asked at the same time.
“I could lie and tell you that I flew in just for the celebration of your engagement, but the truth is that I have been in Washington for the past week. It appears that a North Atlantic alliance between the United States and Western Europe is a reality. The major players have departed, including my father, and have left the subalterns to dot i's and cross t's.” Geoff was clearly pleased with the results of months of negotiations. “It is gratifying to see that, on occasion, one's labors bear fruit.”
After checking Beth, Jack, and Geoff into the Hotel Casey, we headed to Smith's Diner in South Scranton for lunch. Beth asked how things were going. She was eager to hear how her son had been received.
“Everyone really likes Michael,” I said, which surprised neither of his parents.
“Even Grandpa Joyce likes me—somewhat,” Michael added. “He told me stories about growing up on Omey Island where two or three men would go out in a curragh and collect seaweed. They'd throw hundreds of pounds of the stuff onto what he called 'rafts' and float the
m in to shore. The seaweed was used for iodine and potash for pottery. Curraghs are little more than big canoes, so it was quite dangerous.”
“My grandfather told you that?” I had never heard that story, but then I realized my grandfather didn't tell stories to anyone other than his card buddies down at the church hall, or when a few old friends stopped in for a cup of tea. I couldn't even eavesdrop because they swapped stories in Irish.
“I'm surprised he's even talking to you,” Jack said. “From what I've heard from Maggie, he can't stand the sight or the sound of an Englishman.”
I decided not to tell Michael that my grandfather, his newfound friend, had said that listening to his British accent was like having needles stuck in his ears.
“He enjoys telling stories about how the Irish kicked British ass after the first war.”
Before anyone got the mistaken impression that my grandfather had opened up a new chapter in British/Irish relations, I told them we would be having a get-together for the two families at Mamie Lenehan's house. I wasn't going to court trouble by having three citizens of his former enemy in his house.
“Michael has been staying at Mamie's,” I explained. “She has a larger house than we do, and since Grandpa never leaves the house now, you won't have a chance to meet him.”
Jack smiled at me. I was sure that he knew why they would not be meeting my grandfather. “It seems you've had a warmer welcome than you might have expected,” Jack said to his son.
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