Forbidden Fruit

by Annie Murphy

Smiling crudely, he dangled in front of my snow-flaked eyes what in college we called a nickel bag. “The sweetest Colombian red this side of the Rio Grande.”

  His stiff sleety presence so startled me, I whimpered, “How much?”

  “For you, lovely la-dy,” he drawled, “how ’bout fifteen dollars.”

  I handed him a twenty, grabbed the bag and—“Thank you, lovely la-dy”—flew down what I now recognized as 77th Street and into the corner liquor store.

  Freddie, the owner, a thin pop-eyed man with a gleaming bald head, knew me. In his reedy voice: “You seen a ghost, Annie?”

  It took me a few minutes to get my breath back and tell him I had forgotten to bring my purse.

  “Choose,” Freddie said, gesturing; “pay me tomorrow.” I picked up a bottle of Beaujolais.

  Outside, in the darkness of West End Avenue, I opened the nickel bag and inhaled. Delicious. On a wintry night like that, I looked forward to a pleasant evening of pot and booze.

  At home, I threw off my cape.

  Coln immediately picked up on my mood. “What’s with you?”

  I touched the side of my nose. “Surprise, surprise.”

  “Come on.”

  Laughing, I dangled the nickel bag in front of him.

  He frowned. “Where’d you get it? You won’t say? Make sure you let me try it first.”

  “Okay, I’ll cook spaghetti, you roll the joints.” Running smoky-breathed into the fogged-up kitchen, I poured a glass of vodka and tonic out of the cupboard where I had hidden the supplies and swallowed swift and hard. Ah, velvet. Replacing the glass, I picked a paper from the drawer and rolled myself a fat joint in readiness.

  Coln ambled in and examined the bottle of Beaujolais. “My favorite. Thanks,” and he uncorked it.

  “Open the living room windows a bit,” I said. “It’ll help clear them.”

  “Sometimes I think fog suits you.”

  “What d’ya mean?” The giggles were already on me.

  “You’re a witch, that’s what.”

  I put my arms around his neck and looked for miles into his eyes. Not a tree, bush, blade of grass. Emptiness.

  “Okay, so I’m a witch.”

  He wrenched himself free. “Can’t you ever be serious?”

  “Hey,” I complained, “it was you who said I was a witch.”

  “So you damn well are.”

  “And I just risked my life getting you the best Colombian red.”

  “I’d be happier, Annie, if you told me the truth for a change, starting with why you’re starving yourself to death.”

  I gritted my teeth before saying, “So I can forget.”

  “Forget what?”

  Jesus, he wanted me to spell it out? Tell him I was still in love with someone in Ireland who filled my nights and days but who would as soon marry me as fly to the moon? Tell him we were through?

  He went to the living room and put on a disc by the Rolling Stones. I heard caterwauling about a girl with faraway eyes. To steady my nerves, I drained my secret glass of vodka before pouring myself a glass of wine. I could feel my cheeks turn red and the knots in my neck and stomach untying.

  Before I knew he was there, Coln was touching my face. “What caused that, Annie, winter’s wind or wine?”

  “Both.”

  I stretched up to plant a kiss on his lips, but his mouth was closed to love.

  He rummaged around in the cupboard till he found my glass, empty save for a few melting cubes of ice. “Getting a head start?”

  “Is that a crime?” I said, unable to stifle a laugh.

  “You tell me.”

  I suddenly exploded in wrath. “Sure it’s a crime, like everything I do. I killed your child, didn’t I?”

  “You did nothing of —”

  “You asked me a question so you listen.”

  I poked him in the chest, hard. “I ripped your kid out of my womb. I wouldn’t take a risk with my son’s life for yours and mine. Yeah, say it, Coln.”

  “Say what?”

  “That you’ll always take second place with me. I have other commitments. It’s that bishop bastard in Ireland, isn’t it?”

  “Bishop bastard,” he repeated vacantly.

  “Go on, say it, mean it.”

  He looked at me, through me.

  “Say something,” I yelled. “What am I good for? For making you lousy spaghetti dinners, for giving you a few puffs of pot? I’m just a few cubic feet of fog.”

  In a frenzy I grabbed him by both hands. “Go on, Coln, take a big breath and blow me away.”

  He stood quite still, not breathing, refusing to look into my eyes for fear of what he might see there.

  Then, defeated, a murmur: “Oh, Annie.”

  “You tell me the truth, Coln: haven’t I just said what you wanted to hear?”

  His refusal to answer was answer enough.

  “Okay,” I said with forced gaiety, “let’s enjoy the night.”

  He waved his hand in front of me as though wanting to erase me like writing on a blackboard and went back to the living room. Wind rattled the kitchen window as I poured myself another vodka. There was no hope for me, so why not just get wasted? Vodka, wine, a few tokes of pot, and I’d be able to laugh in the face of Satan himself.

  Coln was pretending to read the New York Times when I approached him with a glass of wine in one hand and a joint in the other. “Wanna share?”

  He gazed fixedly at his paper. “Get away; you’re drunk.”

  “Oh, really, Coln? You never are? You wake up with the shakes, you dilute your breakfast orange juice with the remains of last night’s vodka, but Coln O’Neill, gentleman, is always perfectly sober.” I sloshed the remains of my wine in his face and ran into the bathroom, locking the door behind me.

  He came after me with unaccustomed haste.

  Banging on the door: “Listen, you goddamn bitch. I’ve had enough. That fucking bishop made you barren. Fly to him, I’ll pay. Vent your fury on him.”

  I waited a long moment before asking, with my face pressed to the inside of the door, “You feel he murdered our child?”

  As he walked away, I heard him say, “I guess I do.”

  I turned and sank to the floor. Minutes later, when I opened up, he was sitting distantly on the couch.

  I lit the joint, took one deep inhalation, and a cyclone hit my head. I took another puff and the whole room changed, concertinaed in and out. I panicked. I stumbled across to Coln and grabbed his arm.

  “Help me. For God’s —”

  He shrugged me off with “Shit, haven’t I had enough for one night?”

  “No, no, please, please.”

  His eyes and ears changed places before his head split apart. Blood gushed out of him and ran down the walls and I couldn’t remember if I was to blame. Jagged multicolored light flew at me like pieces of glass, stabbing my eyes and mind. I had just enough sense to know the pot was laced with a hallucinogen, God knows what.

  “Call the cops, fucking cops.”

  With pot on the premises, Coln wouldn’t hear of it.

  Had he not been so furious with me, he would have known this was an emergency. I staggered into the kitchen, fearing I would fall into some drug-induced coma. I fumbled in my purse for the Valium. Swigging from the vodka bottle, I swallowed tablet after tablet until all two dozen were gone. I clasped my hand over my mouth to make sure none popped out.

  I didn’t want to die, I just wanted to be knocked out.

  Then I remembered Peter was in my bed. Jesus, what would become of him if anything happened to me?

  My eyesight was failing. I went into the living room, knocking over a chair. It was dark everywhere. I opened the front door.

  “Annie, where’re you —?”

  Without any time or space intervening, I was in the hallway. Vernon, the doorman, called out to me, but I was already in the street. It had stopped snowing. The moon was a string of pearls.

  Thud! Could that be me who was hit? I w
as no longer running except in my mind. Someone, with Vernon’s voice, picked me up. “My God, Annie, you coulda got yourself killed.”

  Once on my feet, I sped back through the hallway into my apartment. The door was still open. A two-headed Coln was still reading a couple of papers.

  “I took the pills. All of them.”

  “So?” said a couple of mouths. “Sit down and you’ll be okay.”

  I was feeling not okay. Light was bursting my head. I made it to the bathroom through the airport landing lights, groped for the cabinet, and emptied half a bottle of aspirins into my hand and started chewing. Anything to drown out the painful light inside my head. Oblivion—I wanted it at any price.

  I reeled into the kitchen and drank from the only bottle I could find. It tasted vile. I spat most of it out. Before I lost my power of speech altogether, I got through to the operator.

  “Please help me.”

  “Sure, baby.”

  “Get me a number in Ireland. I want to speak to Eamonn Casey, Bishop of Kerry.”

  “Listen, kid, you don’t want no bishop across the ocean, you need nine-one-one. When I hang up, I’ll plug you into emergency. Speak to them. Okay?”

  Hearing me mention the Bishop, Coln gave up on me. He was convinced I was playing games at his expense.

  “That you, Eamonn? Why don’t you answer?”

  As I put the receiver down, my vocal cords started seizing up. Unable to talk, I mounted a chair and screamed. It was an Alpine scream that went bouncing off mountains, echoing in every valley.

  Coln came near me, his eyes big red angry suns. I was screaming for life, for time to repair myself, to have the strength to look after my and Eamonn’s son.

  My vision turned from swirling brown to giddying red-black and, after that, all I remember was falling into a void.

  I came to lying on my side. I was dead and had made it to hell in the shape of a cockroach. One of my new family was munching on my left eyebrow. Beside me was a pool of green discharge afloat with the undigested remains of Valium and aspirin tablets. I swished away a dozen fat Upper West Side cockroaches, rolled over onto my stomach, and squinted at the light. The windows were no longer steamed up.

  I laughed, pained but happy. I had survived my death.

  The green vomit was the remains of the Janitor-in-a-Drum cleaning fluid I had swallowed. It had saved my life, though it had scorched my throat and, by the feel of it, burned holes in my stomach.

  I got up with difficulty. My head throbbed and my ribs hurt. I checked that Peter and Coln were sound alseep. “Thanks, God.”

  I called the cops and, holding my throat and stammering, gave my address. “Just tried, I think, to kill myself. Overdose.”

  Minutes later, a police car drew up with flashing lights. I opened the door myself.

  One of the cops, young, with blond hair and sharp features, looked over my shoulder. “Where is she?”

  I pointed to myself.

  He shoved me back inside, sniffing the air as he followed me in. “Sit,” he ordered, like a dog trainer.

  I dropped onto the couch.

  His partner, middle-aged, relaxed, said, “Easy, Mike.”

  He took no notice. “What’s this all about, lady?”

  I explained, in between coughs, about the pills and the liquor.

  “I was reared by alcoholics,” Mike sneeringly said, for his own benefit. “You alone?”

  I pointed to the bedroom.

  “My son… my friend Coln.”

  Mike exploded with self-righteous wrath. “You try an’ kill yourself with your kid in the next room? We’re gonna to have to take him away. Go get him, Charlie.”

  Mike dragged me to my feet and handcuffed me. “Suicide’s a crime, don’t ya know that?”

  Coln appeared with Peter asleep in his arms. He did not like the look of this roughneck cop.

  “What the hell,” he asked coldly, “is going on?”

  “So,” Mike said, “you and the bitch have a fight, she tries to kill herself because of you and —”

  “Now, wait a minute,” Charlie butted in, “take it easy, let’s just start over.”

  “At the station,” said Mike, prodding me toward the door with his stick.

  “Mike, will you take that fucking stick out of her back?”

  “He’d better,” Coln said. “She calls for help and they send a moron like that.”

  “Shut it,” Mike said. “She’s just admitted to attempting suicide.”

  “Whatever happens,” Coln insisted, “I’m taking her boy to his grandparents.”

  I went across to him. “Thanks,” I said, and stretched my cuffed hands so they went around Peter’s warm red cheeks and kissed him. “Good-bye, my darling.”

  Mike pointed me toward the door. By the time I reached the sidewalk, an ambulance drew up. I was about to get in when Coln came out with Peter, fully awake, on his shoulders.

  “It’s cold,” I said to Coln. “Take him back in.”

  “Mommy, Mommy,” Peter cried. “I want to come.”

  I held up to him my cuffed hands in prayer, silently pleading forgiveness. I felt ashamed. In my head now, Eamonn was saying, “Did I not tell you, Annie, you would never make a good mother?”

  How could I have done this? I had fought hard to keep Peter from being adopted, and now, in one night of madness, I had risked giving him into the hands of strangers.

  As Charlie uncuffed me and two paramedics took me by the arms, I whispered to Mike, “You’re right, I deserve all I get.”

  In the ambulance, time stopped. Nothing of importance happened. All I wanted to do was kiss my son, stroke his soft hair. On the journey, a paramedic took my blood pressure. “It’s low. Pulse slow, too. Warn them we may need a pump.” To me: “What kind of pills did you take?”

  I told him.

  “These bruises, some guy beat you up?” I explained about running into the street and being hit.

  In minutes, I was wheeled into the emergency room of St. Luke’s Hospital. Hands, voices. “Strip her. She’s pretty beat up. Fingernail missing. Looks like a break in small finger on left hand, book her for X ray. Contusions on face, arms, ribs” — I was turned over—“My God, on her back, too, like she’s been dragged over stones. Blood pressure low, but rising. Prepare alkaline solution for her stomach. She’ll be drinking that for weeks.”

  After my wounds were dressed, I was sent upstairs to see a psychiatrist. Minds don’t get fixed as easily as ribs.

  He was young, relaxed, with big blue eyes. I told him everything. It took a couple of hours, with the cops waiting impatiently outside and him taking notes. After which:

  “Ever done anything like this before?”

  I shook my head. “Never. And never again.”

  He pondered for a few moments, went out of the room, came back in again, yawning. “I want you to go to AA. Heard of Alcoholics Anonymous? Good. If I let you go, promise you’ll come back and see me in forty-eight hours?”

  “Let me go? Sure, you can count on me.”

  He scribbled on a pad. “Bring me a note from AA that you’ve been to see them.”

  I nodded, speechless.

  “You say you have a son. Will you do this for him?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  He looked at his notes. “Coln, yes? Your companion, he drinks, too. Break it off with him, in five days at most? Fine. Otherwise, I’ll be obliged to pass your citation on to the family court.”

  I went home and called my father. He told me not to worry, that he would look after Peter for as long as I needed. However bad I looked, I went to work at the hospital. I would need the money.

  I realized finally that my affair with Coln would never work, not after I had discovered the real meaning of love on the dunes of Inch beach. Never would I be able to say to any man, “I love you,” with the same truth and intensity as I had said it to Eamonn. In a moment of unbearable honesty, I admitted to myself that I would rather have died than abort Eamonn’s child
.

  That night, when I met with Coln, no words, no explanations, no kisses. Just: “Good-bye, Annie.”

  One more time in my life: “Good-bye.”

  That hurt, but I was overjoyed to have been given one more chance.

  Chapter

  Forty-Three

  WHEN I WENT to a downtown AA group on 23rd and Seventh, I was introduced by Ethel. She reminded me of Sister Ignatius—anyone could tell she was a saint, in her case a reformed one. Five years before, she had lost custody of her child. Under the influence of drink, she had blacked out and beat him, breaking both his arms and legs.

  I attended AA weekly for three years. The meetings usually lasted an hour. Sometimes I went in the middle of the night when I had a break at work, sometimes I rose at 7:00 A.M. I never touched liquor during that time.

  I took a small apartment at Stuyvesant Town and my parents rented a place a couple of blocks from me. Daddy asked if he could come with me to the open AA meetings and I often picked him up by cab. “For my benefit, sweetheart,” he said, but it was really so he could stay close to me.

  We went through the various steps together, making amends for the hurts we had caused. We made coffee and helped clean the place up. Never had we been so close. It was one of the great blessings resulting from my fall.

  My new AA friends reminded me of the girls at St. Patrick’s. Only when you hit bottom do you appreciate the greatness of other people.

  At one meeting, I admitted to having had an abortion. Afterward, Daddy drew a diagram and explained to me how the embryo develops. “At this stage, sweetheart,” he said, gripping my arm fondly, “it’s not a life. Abortion is wrong as a form of contraception, sure. It’s bad for the body and the psyche. But you were saving a life, your own.” He tapped my arm. “In future, be more careful.”

  Another time, he said, “Apart from one six-week spell, you’ve been a damn good mother. Everybody’s entitled to one mistake, eh?”

  “If you say so.”

  “I do say so. However awful you feel, you never miss a day’s work, you always put your son first.” He smiled on me kindly. “You certainly proved Eamonn wrong, didn’t you?”

  I said yes, but without conviction.

  “To be a successful pagan like you,” he added, “you need to be a good Christian and then some.”