Forbidden Fruit

by Annie Murphy

  I rejoiced in his new mildness until—oh God, oh, no—it hit me that this was his way of preparing for his death.

  I saw other signs. His favorite phrase, repeated over and over, became “I don’t give a damn about this or that,” as if he had left planet earth already. He also helped me find a job in a law firm, which sent me to a word-processing school. This gave me a valuable skill and meant a raise in salary.

  One memorable incident occurred at the end of September 1979, eight months or so after Coln and I parted. Eamonn appeared on television in company with the Pope, who was on a visit to Ireland. He was in a biretta and cassock with a purple-lined cape, which fluttered in the wind. I saw the same animated face, the same fluttering movements of the hands. He had filled out a little but seemed not to have aged at all.

  The item was so brief, I scarcely had time to grab Peter and fix his gaze on the screen. Afterward, with a lump in my throat, I said, “That man was your daddy.”

  “Which one?” he asked.

  A few days later, I was able to show him some pictures of Eamonn in an Irish-American newspaper. His five-year-old son was not too impressed.

  “What’s that funny hat he’s wearing?” he wanted to know.

  I bought several copies of the paper and cut out Eamonn’s pictures and the account of Pope John Paul II addressing a crowd of two hundred thousand people, mostly youngsters, at the Ballybrit Racetrack in Galway. The Pope descended by helicopter and celebrated Mass in green vestments. At the Mass, assisted by Eamonn, he had said: “Do not close your eyes to the moral sickness that stalks your society today…. How many young people have already warped their consciences through sex and drugs?”

  Hardly an uplifting message, but the crowd enjoyed it.

  I was reminded of my halcyon days in Ireland and the wonderful people I had met there. I was genuinely pleased for Eamonn, who was doing what he loved. Maybe he would make it to cardinal, after all.

  When Peter was in kindergarten, I was doing two jobs. I made $175 a week as a secretary in a lawyer’s office and another $90 working nights as a switchboard operator in a hotel. It was at this time that Daddy started to say frantically, “You’ve got to get Peter out of New York.”

  Peter certainly hated kindergarten. A few times he had been beaten up for his lunch money. Another reason Daddy wanted us to move was that he thought a change of air would improve his own health.

  Signs of cancerous growth in his right nostril had given him a premonition of his end. He kept insisting, “If anything happens to me, sweetheart, take your mother and Peter to one of those nice Connecticut towns like Westport or Ridgefield.”

  One April day in 1980, I visited him after work to find him pale, weak, and vomiting. Subsequent investigations showed he had cancer of the pancreas. It spread to his kidneys, lungs, stomach, bowels. Mommy couldn’t cope, so I had to lift and diaper him. As he got worse, I spent the nights with him and, in the end, I took to living permanently at his place to be near him.

  Once, he awoke and, seeing me beside him, said, “Didn’t you promise me once when I cursed you that when I neared the end you’d get back at me?” I nodded. “Shoot, sweetheart.”

  “You’re not dying yet.”

  He winced. “You’d better believe it.”

  In spite of all the damage we had done to each other over the years, the bitterness was long gone.

  “Okay, Daddy, ready? Well, you may not be able to take this because you are a dry old stick. But… I really love you. I only loved one man more and that was because he reminded me of you. Even when you called me a—you know what you called me—I knew you loved me and this was your way of expressing it.”

  He waited for a couple of minutes before saying, with a grateful smile, “Sweetheart, you really know how to turn the knife in the wound.”

  The time came for him to be hospitalized. Very quietly, he said to the nursing staff, “Let me die.” He turned to me for support. “Please, Annie.”

  It is hard to hear the man who gave you life say that.

  In the twenty-one days that followed, I saw his body blow up and change color. His brain became affected; his speech became difficult. When I put my ears to his lips, all I could hear was “Peter. Peter. Peter.”

  I whispered back, “It wouldn’t be fair to him.”

  “I want to see my grandson.”

  It struck me that my dying father understood what Eamonn did not: that Peter was our hope, our life after death.

  I was crying now. When I shook my head, I showered him with tears. But he was obsessed with the idea.

  On my next visit, I sat Peter down on a bench in the corridor and told him that Grandpa had changed. I showed him a picturebook with colors of purples and blues, and said that some kinds of illness made the body look like that. I felt really guilty. Peter was not yet six. To ease my father’s pain, I was risking putting my son through an experience that might haunt him for life. If only I could have asked Eamonn for his opinion and had his support.

  “Peter,” I said, “can you bear to see Grandpa?”

  “I’ll try, Mommy.”

  “Good boy. He’ll only be with us for a couple more days.”

  “A coupla days. Where’ll he live then?”

  “Just take him by the hand and you’ll make him happy forever. Just think of that. Making your lovely grandpa happy forever.”

  As we were about to go into the room, my brother Johnny joined us. It was he who suddenly lifted Peter up and put him on Daddy’s breast. Daddy was so pleased he hugged the boy tight with his long bony fingers.

  Peter screamed and I had to wrench him out of Daddy’s grasp. When I quieted him, Peter took Daddy’s hand, saying softly, “Sorry, Grandpa, you understand, don’t you, Grandpa?”

  I took him by the shoulder and led him out of the room. “You’re so brave,” I said. “Now Grandpa can go away happy.”

  We all went downstairs to the chapel, where Mommy was praying. I knelt in front of the statue of St. Jude, patron of hopeless causes. I prayed for Daddy’s early release. A light streamed through a stained-glass window behind the statue and I knew something had happened. Leaving Peter in charge of my brother, I ran upstairs and burst into Daddy’s room. He had just died.

  I went downstairs and took Peter out of the chapel.

  “Grandpa’s left already,” I said, feeling suddenly lonely.

  “I’ll miss him,” Peter said, “but I’m glad I saw him in all that pain.”

  I clasped him tight for comfort. “Why?”

  “Now I know death was good for him,” he said.

  Mommy was relieved that Daddy’s suffering was over. But then she kept me awake all night not by grieving but by compulsively counting her money. She feared that Daddy was going to steal it. I had been so absorbed in Daddy’s illness, I had not noticed that Mommy was showing signs of senility.

  We buried Daddy on a hot July day in Redding, Connecticut, where he was born. My two grandmothers were buried there, too, as was old Grandfather (Pop) Murphy. I remember little apart from the wealth of flowers, but word-fragments of the ceremony were to haunt me for days. “I am the Resurrection and the Life.” Feeling more desolate than I had felt in years, I was chiefly thinking: If only Eamonn were here conducting the funeral or at least present to lay his hands on our shoulders to comfort us.

  We should have shared everything, he and I, but I had missed the funeral of his father and now he was missing Daddy’s.

  Chapter

  Forty-Four

  OUT OF RESPECT FOR DADDY’S WISHES, three days after the funeral I left New York City. I found a job in an accounting firm in Westport, Connecticut, one of the most affluent towns on the East Coast. There, Mommy and I were able to rent a small Dutch colonial–type house on a tree-lined street. Life seemed good to us at this time.

  I earned $225 a week. We were close to an excellent school. Peter enjoyed the sea, and took an interest in flowers and birds. He was able to go on hikes, spend days on the beach with f
riends, and take school trips to Boston. At this time, he was easygoing, very friendly, and he also proved to be a good student, showing a talent for art and poetry.

  Mommy was on antidepressants, and in the calm atmosphere of Westport, her memory came back. She was especially sweet to Peter, who loved her dearly. He often sat next to her, talking with her, stroking her hands, and telling her how much he loved her.

  In March 1981, I chanced to see an item in the New York Times about Eamonn. He had become a celebrity. He had denounced U.S. military aid to the El Salvador junta, which he called “a regime of naked terror.” He spoke of the Reagan administration as being unprincipled. Most staggering of all, he called on the Irish government to break off diplomatic relations with the United States.

  Heavens, I thought, Peter’s father wants to create an international incident!

  I bought a copy of an Irish-American paper for details. Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador had been supported by Tr6-caire, the Irish society that Eamonn chaired. It financed Romero’s newspaper and radio station; these had brought to light the Duarte government’s appalling record of torture.

  When Romero was murdered in March of 1980, Eamonn represented the Irish Church at his funeral. Grenades thrown by government supporters exploded among the crowd. In the stampede, sixty people, mostly women, were killed.

  Eamonn had described Romero as “the true, present-day martyr of the Church, a champion of the powerless, the poor, a courageous defender of human dignity.” Now, one year later, Eamonn was trying to raise two million pounds—a staggering amount for a small country like Ireland—for projects in developing countries. He had accused his own government of being “callous” and of making Ireland’s name “mud” in the eyes of the world by its minute contributions to Third World aid.

  In view of Eamonn’s tiny payments to us, I was amused by his stout defense of the poor. Yet, I admit it, I was proud, too, knowing he was fulfilling his ambition to be Pope of the Third World.

  To secure Peter’s future, in September 1981, with the help of Daddy’s insurance, I bought a place in Simsbury, Connecticut. In West-port, I had always paid rent on time, kept the house in good condition, and even done some landscaping. Still, when I was about to move out, my landlady wanted to hold on to two hundred dollars out of my seven-hundred-dollar security deposit; some of the paint-work, she claimed, was not to her satisfaction.

  When I mentioned this at a local AA meeting, I noticed a short, sturdy, mature man studying me. He resembled the playwright Arthur Miller. His name was Arthur, too, and he had Miller’s high brow and fine chiseled nose. Arthur Pennell took me aside after the meeting and in a melodious Scots accent said, “I’ll pop over and advise you.”

  The next day, he kept his promise. Seeing the paintwork in question, he told me that it did not justify a two-hundred-dollar penalty. He fixed it in ten minutes.

  To the landlady, he said, “Your banister needs mending.”

  “Please do it,” she said. “After that, I have two or three cupboards for you to fix.”

  In less than an hour, Arthur had completed all the jobs.

  Afterward, he said to me, “I’ll be back tomorrow at six.”

  He turned on his heel and left. I said to Peter, “That Scot is a formidable guy.”

  The next day, he proved he was not just physically strong. He was very courteous to the landlady but he showed he had studied every law relating to building and renting. Quietly and efficiently, he silenced all her objections. Without a word, she went to fetch my two hundred dollars.

  He gave me his number. “If you need me, call.”

  * * *

  Simsbury is a picturesque town. Even the banks are located in grand early-nineteenth-century dwellings. I chose it because it had every amenity for children, including pools, skating rinks, tennis courts, and slopes for tobogganing.

  Peter was proud of our new home. It had four bedrooms and a family room and he declared it to be the best house around. Within days of our arrival, half-a-dozen kids from the neighborhood made it noisy with their play.

  We had hardly settled in when Arthur Pennell casually walked through the door and surveyed the house from top to bottom. “Not much of a place,” he declared with what seemed to be his customary arrogance. “But knock down this wall and you’ll have a different floor plan. You’ll be able to breathe.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I said, having no money left for renovations.

  “What kind of paint are you using?”

  Of course, I had chosen the worst possible. He drove me to the store and bought me the best on the market for five dollars a can more. In his none-too-subtle way, Arthur took over my life. After three years of trying to cope on my own with my ever more ailing mother, I was ready for it.

  He said, “Give your mother repetitive jobs like folding things, or she’ll drive you mad. She likes to clean the sink? Then give her plenty of Ajax. Be sure she uses gloves or she’ll burn her hands off.” Arthur was already organizing everybody like a Scottish nanny. He stayed for the weekend, sleeping on the couch and fixing things and painting everything in sight. When I protested that I was broke, he said he didn’t need payment. He was in between jobs and about to move on to California. But once he was in with us, there was never a question of his moving out.

  He had been married to a German woman but divorced for ten years. Father of three grown boys, he had lived in the States for over two decades. In the two months it took for us to be intimate, I had a renovated house and, at age thirty-three, a new way of life.

  While I went to work in a real estate office, with extra typing of legal documents at night to make ends meet, he kept his eye on my mother. He and Peter seemed to hit it off, too.

  I felt relaxed with Arthur because, with kids of his own, he didn’t need me to make him a father.

  Maybe we would be a family at last.

  * * *

  Arthur never inquired about my past until I received news of money waiting for me at the offices of a New York law firm. As Arthur drove me there, he asked for an explanation.

  How Eamonn’s quarterly contribution was paid is a story in itself. It showed how tricky he could be when his interests were at stake.

  Mark Krieg was a young Jewish lawyer. For five years, someone who never identified himself came regularly to Krieg’s home and handed him cash in an envelope. A junior partner in a Catholic firm, he rode the subway to his office, where I collected the envelope.

  I had spent the last four months writing to Eamonn in code. With a huge rise in the cost of living over the last five years, it was vital to get him to contribute more to his son’s upbringing. When he had several times refused, I called Galway.

  “Listen carefully, Eamonn, because I am not repeating this. My lawyer is hungry. He’d love to take you to court over maintenance. So it’s either two hundred and seventy-five dollars a month or your neck.”

  He chose his neck.

  When on the way home from collecting my money in New York I told Arthur who Peter’s father was, he laughed so hard I had to drive. “Eamonn Casey, Bishop of Galway? You’re kidding. Sell your house, Annie, get a ghostwriter, and do a movie about this.”

  Arthur was relieved. Peter’s father, a Catholic bishop living three thousand miles away, was no rival to him. Nor was he a rival in the usual sense but something more. To Eamonn and to him alone had I given the best of me. Only to Eamonn had I ever been able to say, “I love you forever.” He had taken the more than willing gift of my young self and made with me a miracle, my son.

  Arthur judged correctly that Peter, now turned seven, was a persistent little fellow. If he wanted his many friends over and Arthur said no, Peter told them to wait outside while he argued the case. By sheer logic and persistence, he usually won. Maybe this was why Arthur said, “Someday, Annie, your kid’ll need to know who his old man is. Then things might get messy.” He grasped something that Eamonn had known from the time he wanted to have him adopted: the danger to Ea
monn’s position came not from me but from his son.

  Since I had shown Peter Eamonn’s picture in the paper, he had never once referred to him. At school, when he was asked about his father, he simply replied, “He lives a long way away and he works for the poor. He can’t stay with me but he sends me money.”

  Arthur wanted to know if Eamonn ever wrote to his son, sent him a birthday card, Christmas card, called him. When I said, “No, no, no,” he was astonished. His Presbyterian hackles rose. He could not account for the coldness of a man who preached God’s fatherly love.

  Neither, of course, could I. Eamonn had more love in him than any man I would ever meet. Why did it stop short at his own son?

  Mommy’s condition deteriorated so rapidly that one day she tried to burn the house down. Arthur offered to give up his job as a house painter and stay home on a permanent basis to look after her. Without him, I would have had to go back to the city and put her in a home. In the next year and a half, Arthur made the best use of his time at home by totally renovating the house.

  Our time at Simsbury was busy but happy, too. By now I was earning up to $250 a week with a month’s summer vacation so that I could be with Peter. He was getting high grades at school and his teachers told me he was bright and hardworking with a feel for language as his poems showed.

  One was called “Love’s Blur”:

  It tastes like chocolate

  It looks like a billowy cloud

  It feels like cotton

  It sounds like the waves

  It smells like roses on a summer’s day.

  Another was called “Hate”:

  It looks like the devil

  It smells like a foul stench

  It feels very rough

  It tastes like bile

  It sounds like an angry dragon

  It makes me feel mad.

  I only wished his father was on hand to praise his nine-year-old son for his many achievements.

  One day, Arthur said we ought to take advantage of the current property boom. Why not sell the Simsbury house for a profit and go where the money was, namely, back to Westport? If we bought a rundown house there, he could fix it up and we would sell it at an even higher profit.