by Annie Murphy
When they returned, I stretched out my hand to take my pills. Everything was there except the vital blood thinners. They should have jumped out at me because they were in a special container. Maybe I had put them in my pocketbook for safety. I went through all my belongings. It took me a couple of hours and I kept saying to myself: Eamonn took them. Who else?
I went downstairs to tell Helena. She couldn’t help because her husband was away on business in the family car. “Call the Rotunda,” she said.
“The pharmacy’s closed at this hour of the day.”
“Tomorrow, then.”
“Helena, if I don’t take two more of those pills today I could suffer a relapse.”
I called the Rotunda and they told me I could have some more pills but they had no way of getting them to me.
After the meal, Helena went to visit a neighbor and I called Inch. No reply. I called Killarney and he answered. I began calmly with “Have a nice trip home?”
“I literally flew. Made it in two and a half hours.”
“And how are you?”
“Grand, and yourself?” I imagined him sitting comfortably at his desk, tossing my vial of pills in the air and catching them.
Changing the mood suddenly, I said, “Why’d you take my pills?”
“Your pills?” he spluttered. “Why would I do that?”
“Because it’s bad, that’s why.”
“You’re mad. Get off the line and look for them.”
“I’ve looked for hours. If I don’t get them soon I’ll get sick again. If that’s what you’re wanting —”
“I want no such thing.”
“I don’t care how you do it, Eamonn—through a courier, an ambulance, or a specially chartered archangel—but if you don’t, I swear I’m going to do something dreadful to you.”
“Will you stop it, Annie, stop it.”
“You lousy son-of-a-bitch,” I said, real Tenth Avenue, “you’re the worst liar on God’s earth. So help me Christ, I’m going to get a gun.”
“A gun?”
“And I’ll steal a car—I know how to wire cars—and I’m going to come to Killarney and shoot your yellow liver all over the Palace walls.”
“Great God Almighty.”
“I hate your guts.”
“The devil’s got you by the throat. You are possessed, you are.”
“I’m not hearing you too well,” I said. “Where are you?”
He managed to get out, “On the floor.”
“What, for Christ’s sake, are you doing there?”
“I think I am dying.”
“You have been dying for as long as I’ve known you.”
“ ‘Tis true, that is when it started.”
“Get up, you hear me, man, get to your feet.”
“I cannot. You are going to kill me, isn’t that so?”
“Too true.”
“That is why I am trying to cope with the devil who has crawled down your throat.”
“Speak up.”
“I have my head in my hands and the phone is on my heaving chest. Wait till I grab it.… There, I have it now.”
I stifled the laughter that was beginning to well up inside me. That man would be laughing after he was dead. They would have difficulty coffining him up because his corpse would be shaking with mirth.
“I never thought, Annie, you would murder me.”
“I never thought you would murder me. But you’ve made several attempts already.”
“Oh, Annie, is this some Wild West show? You’re going to get some hot rod and a gun and come and shoot the Bishop of Kerry in his own house and spread his yellow liver all over the walls. What would become of my reputation?”
I started to laugh and he joined in. It was some time before I could tell him how serious my situation was. “Are you going to get me my pills or not?”
“You crazy fool, if the alternative is to get shot up by you, I will.”
“I’ll await your call. In addition, I want to be out of here by tomorrow afternoon. Helena didn’t want to know when I said my pills were missing. She’s probably part of the plot.”
“Oh, dear. She takes you into her house and you speak of her like that.”
“If I don’t get out of here soon, I’ll bash her.”
“First,” he roared, laughing, “you want to kill me, now you threaten to beat up Helena.”
“Call me back about the pills and have them here by eight tonight. I want you here tomorrow with my two thousand dollars and I want a plane out of here.”
“Terms agreed. I’ll call you back on one condition.”
I half expected him to talk about adoption again but he said, “You must not beat Helena. As God is my judge, neither she nor I had anything to do with your pills.”
“I reckon she knows it’s your baby.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Peter’s face looks as if yours has been painted on his. He’s even got the same birthmark Helena’s seen on you when you’re in swimming togs.”
“God,” he screeched, “don’t let her change his nappy.”
“Another thing. I reckon you planned to have her adopt Peter.”
He put the phone down, and rightly. I had stepped over the mark. It was my anger speaking.
All the same, I let Helena bathe the baby. “Look at that birthmark,” I said. “So unusual.” I wanted someone to know who the father was, and who better than she?
Within the hour, Eamonn called me back. “I’ve paid a hospital courier. The pills should be there by about eight. Promise me one thing.”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t lose them this time.”
“What about the flight out?”
“Impossible tomorrow, but I can book you a seat the day after. But I warn you, it’s Friday the thirteenth.”
“How could my luck be worse than it is?”
“It leaves at eleven A.M. from Dublin. You’ll get your two thousand dollars and I’ll be driving you to the airport.”
With my heart in my mouth, I said, “Do me a favor, Eamonn, don’t bother. I don’t ever want to see you again.”
It was the biggest lie in my entire life.
“I know how you feel, Annie.”
I was about to yell, “Come, you bastard, don’t let me leave without good-bye,” when he said, “How else will I get you your money?”
Now that I knew he had made up his mind to come, I said, “What’s wrong with a courier?”
“I am coming in person and you and your devil combined will not stop me. I received you into this country and I’m sending you home.”
“That’s so touching.”
“Say what you like, Annie, but I aim to see Peter off and I want to bless him.”
“Bless our son? You? This is too hypocritical.”
He said with that insinuating softness that so often crept into his voice, “This was never against him, nor, come to that, against you, Annie.”
“You could have fooled me.”
“Know something else? You might make a damn good mother, after all. Any woman who fights that hard for her baby…”
“Are you telling me, Eamonn, you made a mistake?”
In my mind’s eye I saw him doing that famous sprinkling movement with his upheld fingers. “What gave you that idea?” he said.
Chapter
Thirty-Seven
ON FRIDAY MORNING, I dressed in Levi’s, white lace blouse, green sweater, and moccasins.
Eamonn appeared about nine. He had a wide-eyed look about him, like a puzzled schoolboy. He came up to my room, closed the door, and bent over Peter. He prayed over him, blessed him, and kissed him.
I knelt behind him while he did this, put my hands around him, and hugged him. “I’m so sorry,” I said, “that things went the way they did. But I wouldn’t have fought so hard for the baby if I didn’t love you.”
“You think I don’t know that, Annie?”
“I knew you knew.”
; “I guess we knew most things about each other.”
“That’s why we fought so hard and hurt each other so much. Neither of us had any defense against the other.”
“That’s what love does, Annie.”
Yes, I thought, you can only be really hurt by those who love you.
I got up from the floor.
“One thing, Annie, and be honest with me just this once.” The fingers of my friend-foe were jumping about in all directions. “Were you really going to shoot me?”
“I was so mad with you I might have done anything.” After a moment’s thought: “No.”
“I’m glad.”
“I probably would have stabbed you.”
“Stabbed me?” he screeched, falling back as if the knife had just got him right in the belly. “You say such terrible things and in front of that baby. You’ll ruin his thoughts.”
“Aren’t you the best father, thinking only of his good?”
He turned to me and I kissed him before he could speak. On his forehead and on each moist eye. Trying to remember the impress of him on me, of his being on my being. Trying to eternalize the fragile beauty of the passing moment like a fossilized leaf. “I really love you,” I said. “I almost feel like falling at your feet begging you to come with me or hoping you’ll tell me not to go.” I pressed my fingers to his lips. “It’s okay—I know it can’t happen.”
He had his hands on my head and he kept repeating, “Thank you, thank you.”
“Eamonn,” I said sharply.
With big round eyes: “What in God’s name is the matter?”
“I know what you’re doing. Don’t deny it.”
“What am I doing, know-all?”
“Blessing me.”
“So?”
“I don’t want now or ever a bishop’s blessing.”
“Not even to help you overcome your fear of flying?”
“The least of my fears.”
He pressed his sensitive hands even harder on my head as if he, too, was trying to do something that would outlast the ravages of time.
“Then accept the blessing of a foolish man who loved —”
“Loves.”
“Yes, Annie, loves you. Dear God”—he laughed—“the terrible things you make me say.”
“I didn’t make you do a damn thing, ever.”
“I know that. I sinned all on my own.”
“Your word.” For Eamonn—oh, sad—I was always an occasion of sin, whereas he made my head swim with the glory of love.
He said, “I knew better than Moses, didn’t I? Wrote myself an exclusion clause to a Thou Shalt Not.” He took his hands away, saying, in his gentlest tone: “This is an emotionally hard time for you. Your parents don’t know what to expect. Did you know Mary called me?”
I shook my head.
“When she said, ‘Eamonn, you son-of-a-bitch, I’ve been looking for you all over,’ I almost died.”
“Almost? Shame.”
“I hung up on her as if she had got the wrong number.”
“The local operator was listening in like God?”
He nodded. “She called me back and I said, ‘Mary, Mary, Mary,’ so she knew she had done something very wrong. She told me your parents won’t know about the baby —”
“About your son.”
“Until you return. What will you tell them?”
“That’s my problem. Daddy will probably be glad you’re the father.”
He stroked his chin. “I suppose he does admire me.”
“Did. Get your tenses right.”
“I repent of what I did with you —”
“Thanks.”
“But at least I’m bright.”
“Except when you’re a thick Mick.”
He took an envelope out of his pocket. “The two thousand dollars. I don’t have a penny more. It’ll take me at least six or seven months to get any more.”
“Try the truth just for a change.”
“So for God’s sake, use it sparingly. You’ll probably soon be getting a job.” I was grateful to have the money and I knew my brother Peter had sent Mary a check for five hundred dollars to give me.
We went down and joined Pat and Helena and had a bite to eat before we drove to the airport. Helena was very excited. She kept picking Peter up and hugging him. Just before I left, she said, with tears in her eyes, “You take care of that baby.”
She knew who the father was.
Eamonn looked very upset as we climbed into the car, whereas I was enthralled by Peter, who was looking up at me as if I were his whole world.
We arrived at the airport around 10:00 A.M. I checked in and was pleased to see how reluctant Eamonn was to see us go. I was provided with a wheelchair, and this gave him the opportunity to pull rank and take me alone to the departure lounge. Maybe he had planned even that. As we traveled the long green-carpeted corridor, bypassing the duty-free store, I was aware of his gaze drilling the back of my head but I was busy with Peter, my lips brushing his oats-soft cheek and fontanel, so I was unable to pay him much attention. Until, suddenly: “Eamonn.”
He stopped wheeling me and stood in front of me, expecting some final message. The ice had melted in his eyes.
“Yes, Annie?”
“You didn’t steal my pills again?”
He balled both fists—just like Peter!—and held them up shudderingly to heaven where all vengeance was. “Dear God, she is not changed one bit, not one tiny bit.” He lowered his eyes. “D’you think I want you telling the other passengers that you are going to shoot the yellow liver of the Bishop of Kerry all over his Palace walls?”
Now he kept going over everything I needed for the journey. Had I my pills, boarding card, passport, money?
When the flight was called, I handed him a present, which I had kept hidden. It was the only book I had brought with me to Ireland, Thomas Wolfe’s novel You Can’t Go Home Again.
He broke out in a smile, which instantly left him when a stewardess took charge of my wheelchair. Our eyes locked in a final deathless glance, an unending good-bye.
The stewardess pulled me back onto a moving ramp. It was strange and somehow symbolic, moving backward and downward as I took my leave of Eamonn, as though time itself were going slowly, pitilessly into reverse. Such a sunset moment.
Over my son’s downy head I saw only him, as I had seen only him when I flew in to Shannon. What a difference of mood between an arrival and departure lounge, what a difference of tears!
He did not dance now nor did he sing. His white-knuckled hands clutched the metal rail. So sad were his eyes it hit me that this was how I first saw him in Manhattan when I was seven years old. That long-ago meeting was a premonition of a heartbreak. This time I could not say, “It’s going to be all right, Eamonn. It’s going to be all right.”
I heard him calling out after me, ten times at least, “Good-bye, Annie. Good-bye, Annie.”
Each time it got fainter, farther away, until it was no more than a whimper: “Good-bye, Annie.”
That parting forsaking cry, I knew, would follow me all the days and the nights. There was so much pain everywhere, no God could have designed a world like this. “I don’t believe in You,” I said to Him, to get my small revenge, “but take care of Eamonn for me, please.”
We were three, we would always be three; why was one of us being left behind? It was because I had asked too much of him. He had this loyalty, call it patriotism, toward his Church and I could not breach it for all his talk and deeds of sin. I might as well for my sake have asked a painter never to touch another canvas, an author or poet never to write another line, a musician never to finger another tune. For I had wanted Eamonn, for my sake, to give up not just the adulation due him as a bishop. I was asking this more-than-painter-poet-composer to stop doing the daily miracle of the Mass, stop changing bread into Christ’s Body and putting God into people’s mouths, stop forgiving unforgivable sins, stop smoothing the paths of the dying to paradise, stop turning
the dead into seeds that would spring up into eternal life.
I had naïvely thought that love was limitless whereas now I knew to my cost there are some things that love, real love, should never ask.
But this was almost like childbirth, when a baby comes out of you and there’s a brutal tearing. There was in this moment a brutal tearing from Eamonn, made so much worse because I felt I would never see him again. Such a tremendous stillbirth feeling of uncreative loss.
I looked down at Peter. I was taking something precious from Ireland, immortality, and Eamonn had the vocation that he cherished so much. By thinking of these things, I managed to pull myself together.
But not for long. Even before I boarded the plane I started to shake, and tears fell. Tears should be red, the reddest red there is. I resent the transparent blood of tears. It’s incredible, but only in that desolate moment was I fully aware of all that Eamonn had given me: his courage, his strength, his vitality. And I was afraid I might not, without him, survive the long husbandless years ahead.
Summoning up all my courage, I took a final look at this gorgeous land. It was less green and leafy than when I saw it first, but indelibly green in memory and no less dear. Was it really only eighteen months since I flew in on my magic carpet and fell in love with Eamonn almost as soon as I set eyes on him and teased him about his red socks?
I was crying now because Ireland was for me a special place, my little bit of heaven. I didn’t want to leave, I wanted to stay for a lifetime, I wanted my body eventually to dissolve—dust to dust—in its soil.
But none of this was possible.
I thumbed through all the memories I had stored. Inch and Killarney, Castleisland and Dublin; all the people I had met and befriended and who had befriended me; and over everything—the hypnotic presence of Eamonn, my only love.
I remembered his dancing feet and his hands that moved up-up-up in bed when his feet were still. I remembered my jazzman bringing the world—rocks, hills, distant islands, birdsong—to life on the top of a mountain and, most miraculously of all, bringing to life in me a love that other men had extinguished, I had once thought, forever.
He had healed me, after all, and risked hell itself to do it; and I knew that in time to come, if ever this story should be told, people, including those who love him, would not understand anything of that and they would say, because their rules and his rules obliged them to say it, that he did wrong.
