Forbidden Fruit

by Annie Murphy

  Oh, yes, my Eamonn risked losing their respect and even that of his outraged God because he loved me.

  Then I called to mind his laughter, the whole range of it from a shuddering bass snort to a high infectious giggle, and how he had made me laugh as I never laughed before, when we fell out of bed at Inch or struggled into our clothes in a gravel pit, even when I threatened to kill him. Locked in my seat, my baby, his baby, our baby who looked so like him, in my arms, I started to laugh and laugh, so that the stewardess came running.

  “Is there something wrong, ma’am?”

  And I couldn’t answer her because, through floods of tears, I was laughing too much.

  Chapter

  Thirty-Eight

  WHEN WE FLEW under a cloudless sky into New York, it was dusk. The lights, bustle, noise of the airport came as a shock after the peace and quiet of Ireland.

  Apart from feeling the absence of Eamonn like an open wound, being in a wheelchair confused me. I felt I no longer had control over my life. With Peter wrapped in a shawl in my arms, refusing to take sugared milk, screaming uncontrollably, I began to fear that Eamonn was right: I would not make a good single parent.

  My two brothers saved me. Johnny, six-foot-two, and Peter, blond and blue-eyed, were waiting for me, positive and smiling broadly.

  “You some sort of Orphan Annie?” Peter said. “Get out of that chair.” And he hauled me to my feet.

  Johnny, a father of three, took one look at my son and said, “He’s half starved. I’m getting him something to drink.”

  He grabbed the baby’s bottle and disappeared.

  Peter told me meanwhile that he had only just called our parents. Daddy had been surprised to hear I was coming home. “Oh, I miss her so,” he had said. And Peter had said, “She’s had a pretty rough time.” “Tell me more.” “Well, Dad… she’s had a baby.” “For Christ’s sake,” Daddy had said, before exploding with “Who’s the father?” When Peter told him, he had sighed. “Could have been worse. At least, the guy’s got drive and brains.”

  When Johnny returned with formula milk, Peter drank it greedily. That, too, gave me fresh hope.

  At about ten, I walked apprehensively into my parents’ spacious sixth-floor apartment overlooking the sea at Old Greenwich.

  Mommy threw her arms around me in warm greeting, but as I hobbled into the living room, there was Daddy.

  Blank-eyed, arms folded, his huge cane in one hand, he was seated on his favorite black chair. Dressed in an open-necked shirt and khaki shorts, he showed a pinkish artificial leg with its big hinge, his black shoe with a white sock on the end. With his huge smooth head, he looked like a sinister giant idol carved from stone. While the lips smiled, his eyes had a pained and angry look. I would have to tread very warily.

  He softened only when he looked at Peter and saw his inflamed cheeks, reddish hair, and Eamonn’s beautiful lips.

  “That,” he said, maybe remembering his own abused childhood, “is a cry of pain. Hannah, a cushion.”

  Mommy put one on the long table. Another imposing gesture from Daddy, and I placed the baby on the cushion. Peter’s hands immediately went up-up-up, in a nervy way.

  “Eamonn, all right,” Daddy said. “It’s in the genes.”

  He proceeded with an examination. “Number one, Annie, he’s too swaddled up.” After I had removed Peter’s clothes, with his long fingers he gently probed his limbs. “Number two, the kid’s undernourished. Feed him on demand.”

  I nodded.

  “Also, Annie, see that—a skin infection and thrush.”

  While Mommy dressed Peter, Daddy said, “You’ve been ill.”

  I lifted the bottom of my jeans so he could see my ankle. He shook his head. “Trouble ahead with that leg, Annie.” He beckoned me to him and kissed me. “Glad you’re home.”

  “Me, too.”

  I was not sure if I was or not. I was tired, emotionally drained, and suffering from a bad cold.

  “Did Eamonn give you any money?”

  I handed Daddy an envelope and he counted out eighteen hundred dollars. “I’ll bank it for you. You’ll have to economize for the rest of your life. From now on, you answer to me, young lady.”

  I didn’t disagree. I was his hostage.

  To take care of Peter, I was going to need my parents’ help. Mommy, delighted to have a purpose in life, came off the booze, and Daddy, too, was marvelous.

  I applied to go back to school to train as a nurse, but I was told that my bad leg made nursing impossible. Instead, I got a job as a receptionist in the hospital across the street. To my father, that was another sign of my failure. It proved to him he had to dominate my life; and God help me if I crossed him or did anything wayward.

  As the weeks went by, he interrogated me with Teutonic thoroughness. I was only permitted to answer his precise question. Slowly, meticulously, he dragged out of me the whole story, including our lovemaking in a gravel pit and how Eamonn had left me to rot in St. Patrick’s. He angrily accused Eamonn of gross negligence.

  For months, I refused every invitation from men to dine out or go to a movie. Daddy had hurt me too much and made me feel too guilty. Besides, the memory of Eamonn was too vivid in spite of the ocean between us. I used to calculate the five-hour time difference between Kerry and New York. What was he doing now? Was he happy? Did he ever think of me?

  Love of this intensity, I sometimes felt, should not be allowed. Why this sharp pain and this equally sharp ecstasy? The pain was not in any part of me. It was everywhere and nowhere, so it seemed to be even in the things and people around me. To ease it, I tried desperately not to think of him. I walked, as it were, miles around any idea that might bring back the memory of him. I always failed.

  When I was young, I dreamed of falling in love forever; now I despaired of ceasing to love. If only I could stop loving him, I told myself, my troubles would cease. But then I would cease to be me.

  Eamonn was different from every other person I had ever known, but I could not explain the differences except to say that his original tenderness and thoughtfulness touched the core of my being.

  What did I miss most about him? His laughter, his fantastic sense of humor. A memory of his mischievousness came back to me. I was living in Dublin before I was pregnant. It was when we had nowhere to meet except the gravel pit. Pat Gilbride’s sister, Girlie, who was studying in Dublin, invited me to her apartment for a meal with Pat and Eamonn. I hadn’t seen him for a couple of weeks and he kept rubbing my leg sensuously under the table. After we had eaten, he said to the Gilbrides he had to speak to me privately.

  “Use my bedroom,” Girlie said.

  To my surprise, he lay down on her bed and, inviting me alongside him, started to fondle me. He became so enthusiastic the bed collapsed under us. One of the small wooden legs had snapped. “Put it in your handbag,” he said, “and take it with you.”

  I started laughing and he silenced me with a pillow. Feeling suffocated, I kicked out until he let me up for air. “What’re you going to do?” I gasped.

  “Trust me,” and, like a magician, he got up and stuck a pile of Girlie’s books where the leg should have been.

  I said, “Girlie will wonder all night where her study books have gone.”

  “She’ll find them when she makes the bed.”

  “But how will she think they got there?”

  “Girlie’s not like you, pet, she hasn’t a dirty mind.”

  With that, he climbed back on the bed. He got as much as he could from five cuddly minutes.

  What would I not have given now for another five such minutes?

  His presence inside my head was like a melody whose beauty never fades. In fact, though he was so far away, Eamonn was more real to me than anything around me. He had a different kind of being, a more solid density.

  Even my sleep at this time was full of him. My alarm clock would wake me out of a romantic dream of Inch in which he was planting a kiss on my cheek. It would take me several sec
onds to realize where I was, not in Ireland but in America, and still more seconds to accept it. I would make an effort to go back to sleep, to slip back into the dream before it vanished. I would press my hand to my cheek, trying to prolong the familiar but now fading feel of his warm lips.

  Then, as in many of the years to come, I had nothing to console me but my tiny bundle of joy. I took Peter with me on my visits to churches, hoping maybe to chance upon his father on an unheralded trip to New York. Every priest, young or old, in a black suit and white collar, reminded me of him. I lit candles—I always liked candles. I prayed through the light, to my dead grandparents to help me, especially Pop Murphy.

  Back home, I would wrap Peter and myself in warm clothes and sit on our bedroom balcony within sight of the sea. I talked to him, as I had talked to him in the womb. I told him how happy I was that I had kept him. I pressed my face into his honey-blond hair, smelled the sweetness of his skin, and promised him we would face the world together, unafraid.

  At Christmas, Daddy gave me the best of all gifts: forgiveness. He came to my bedroom. “Annie, it’s time to make a new start, right?”

  He hugged me and we kissed.

  “Right.” I was enthusiastic. The worst was behind us. He wanted to move us back to New York City, where we would all have more to do. It would help me put Eamonn behind me, which was vital if I was to get on with my life.

  I made Daddy a meal of all the things he loved. While we were eating, he said: “As a diversion, Annie, I’m planning to take you and your mother with me on a trip.”

  I was excited. “For how long?”

  “Four or five months.”

  “Daddy!” and I ran and kissed him. “Where to?”

  “Back to Ireland. You’ve paid for your sin and you’ll go on paying,” Daddy explained. “But Eamonn’s a priest and he, too, should be made to face up to what he did.”

  Eamonn had called Daddy, asking after me and the baby. Daddy was determined to find out his future intentions. Eamonn had to learn that from now on he was dealing not with a foolish girl but with an experienced professional man.

  I still loved Eamonn; I always would. But I could not bear the thought of his rejecting Peter and me a second time. I felt sick at the thought.

  When Mary came around to invite us to her place for Christmas dinner and I told her Daddy’s plans, she exploded. “Go see a psychiatrist, you’re all crazy.”

  But Daddy insisted that the trip was important. He had been hoodwinked before, but this time he would be in charge. “It’s like a tune, Annie. We’ll just let it play out.”

  Daddy called Eamonn at Inch. He spoke calmly, telling him how gorgeous little Peter was. Then, out of the blue: “We’re coming over so you can get to know your little boy, Eamonn.”

  I heard Eamonn say, “Good, good, very good,” while he must have been ready to slit Daddy’s throat.

  As a result of that call, Eamonn sent me nine hundred dollars to help with my expenses, and, within three days, through Harry Burke, Daddy had rented an apartment in Ballsbridge, the fashionable part of Dublin.

  Chapter

  Thirty-Nine

  ON THE TRIP TO IRELAND in February, I kept wondering how Eamonn felt about me and how he would react when we met. One thing was certain: with Daddy as chaperon, our affair was at an end.

  No sooner were we in our apartment than Daddy said: “Sorry, Annie, but I just don’t trust you and him.”

  “What are you talking about? You think I’m crazy?”

  “Are you fitted with a diaphragm?”

  I shook my head. Part of my strategy to avoid pain was never to think of Eamonn loving me in a sexual way. That was why I had refused to prepare for it.

  “If you get pregnant, Annie, I’ll beat you.” He wagged his cane at me. “As God is my judge, I’ll take you to England for an abortion and make that Bishop Casey watch.”

  Mommy was rubbing her hands and laughing. “You do that, Jack. Tell the press all about that clerical goat.”

  “When I meet him,” Daddy said, “I’ll shake his hand and leave a dozen condoms in it.”

  He called Eamonn to tell him we had arrived and invited him out to dinner so they could chat. However much I reasoned with myself that you cannot recapture the wonder of the past, I couldn’t wait to see Eamonn again.

  Daddy had prepared for this meeting by putting on his best white shirt and striped suit. How would he deal with this? Would he, I wondered, be chilly toward Eamonn or sarcastic or angry?

  When the bell rang that evening, sending an electric shock through my body, Daddy sat down with six-month-old Peter between his legs facing outward, with Peter’s big birthmark showing. He kept him quiet by rubbing the top of his head. I tidied my hair for the tenth time and, even before I opened the front door, I smelled the fragrance of Old Spice. I was home again.

  Eamonn’s dear happy face crinkled with delight. Oh God, no, impossible, I once more saw myself in his eyes.

  He grabbed my hand and whispered, “So pleased to see you.” My heart was in my throat. Our love had survived betrayal, disgust, even a kind of hatred. Would it never end?

  His glance warned me not to be too expressive. Blinking and shaking my head to clear my vision and break the spell, I noticed a priest in the background. It was his thin and nervous secretary, Father Dermot Clifford.

  Eamonn must have felt that a stranger would defuse the situation. More, he would not be expected to act like a father to his son. However pleased I was at this reunion, this struck me as one more act of denial.

  “Come along, Dermot, come along,” Eamonn said, talking to Father Clifford as if he were a pet dog.

  I signaled to the living room, where Daddy was waiting. Taking a deep breath, Eamonn moved to greet the man whom he had betrayed. He bent down, almost genuflecting in front of him, casting a shadow over his own son. Grabbing Daddy’s right hand in both of his, he pumped it, saying, “Thank you, Jack, thank you. God bless you, Jack.”

  Daddy’s patriarchal eyes were guarded but, seeing the stranger, he restrained his wrath.

  “It’s okay, Eamonn,” he said quietly. “It’s okay.”

  Mommy went to get Father Clifford a drink. He seemed from his attitude to her to be a kind man, though I think he was trying to work out what was going on.

  Daddy pointed. “Eamonn, meet my little feller here.” Picking Peter up, he placed him on his good right knee.

  I watched with fascination this first encounter of three generations. Eamonn came around the side to examine his infant son. Peter was shy, and though Eamonn was awkward, I could tell he could scarcely believe he had produced so beautiful a child.

  I was proud of Peter’s happy blue eyes, rosy cheeks, a cowlick in which I put a brown bow, and his plump thighs. Gurgling, he buried his head in his grandfather’s chest, so Daddy kept rubbing his head and saying, “C’mon, Peter, Eamonn’s here to see you. Shake his hand.”

  This was for me a sad moment. Eamonn had engineered a false beginning because if Father Clifford had not been there, Daddy could have said, “C’mon, Peter, your daddy’s here. Give him a kiss.”

  My father stretched out Peter’s hand and Eamonn took it, giving it a gentle shake, but Peter immediately withdrew it and leaned into his grandfather once more. As if wanting to put on a show for Daddy’s benefit, Eamonn grabbed Peter and, with dancing feet, held him at arm’s length in the air over his head. “Hey, Petey-boy, how are you?”

  When Peter started to whimper, he shook him, which only made the boy burst out crying. Eamonn said to me, “Are you letting him grow up to be a sissy?” To Peter: “Cut that out, now,” and he threw him in the air and caught him, making Peter scream.

  “Please don’t do that,” I said; but, of course, Eamonn did, making Peter catch his breath before spitting up.

  Daddy pointedly said, “That’s funny, Eamonn, he never screams at anybody else.”

  Peter was so upset he scratched my neck. To clean him up, I took him to the bathroom, where D
addy followed.

  “Would you believe it?” he guffawed. “The yellow-belly had to bring a bumbling wreck as a bodyguard. That priest’s so nervous he can hardly talk. Get your mother to slip a Valium in his drink.”

  When I returned with Peter to the living room, Eamonn said, “God Almighty, are you treating him like the infant Jesus?”

  The same old Eamonn. An absentee father, he knew all about parenting. Daddy explained that he should have held Peter close to start with so he could get used to him.

  My parents then took Eamonn and Father Clifford out to dinner.

  At about ten, Eamonn escorted Mommy and Daddy home, leaving his secretary in the car. Father Clifford had served his purpose. While my parents were getting out of their coats, Eamonn came to the kitchen where I was preparing the baby’s bottle. Without a word, he grabbed and kissed me.

  I wanted to pinch myself. Was this really happening? He could no longer pretend he was “healing” me, so how did he square this behavior with his conscience?

  I backed off, but as soon as he touched me again and looked directly at me, all resistance melted. It was as if I had never left his side. For what I saw in his eyes was not mere desire but an undying love.

  “Thanks for coming back, pet,” he whispered breathlessly. “You never looked more beautiful.”

  We all put on different faces for different people and different occasions. The face Eamonn showed to me then, as always, was shorn of any mask or disguise or the best-intentioned lie. This was his real face.

  “But we can’t start all over again,” I said, tingling under his touch.

  He winked broadly as if to say he was still in charge. “I will be up to see you next week.”

  I told him what Daddy had said about an abortion if I got pregnant again. “An abortion,” he said, laughing softly.

  “But you know I can’t have another child.”