Forbidden Fruit

by Annie Murphy

  In days of ever-rising property prices, it seemed a sound way to make a living. With money from the sale of the Simsbury house, augmented by extra savings from Daddy’s insurance, I bought an old wreck of a house with just under an acre of land and a small two-bedroom cottage. The cost was $95,000.

  Mommy liked the idea of living in Westport because she would be closer to Mary. Also, Johnny promised to take her out to dinner each month. I got a new job as secretary in a real estate office. It paid me $17,000 a year and we had extra income from renting out the cottage. When I was offered a three- or four-nights-a-week job in the local hospital from 11:00 P.M. to 7:00 in the morning, I took that, too. I used to come home from working in the real estate office, wash and feed Mommy, shower, and go straight on to my second job.

  For eighteen months, we fixed the house up and enjoyed the spaciousness of its rooms. Then Arthur decided it was so structurally unsound that it was useless to touch it up. If we wanted to sell, we would have to rebuild from the floor up. “I can do most of it myself,” he said, “but we’re in for a year and a half of hell.”

  Eamonn came into our life once more, unexpectedly through television. In the summer of 1984, President Reagan was visiting Ireland, to trace his roots. Eamonn, who detested U.S. interventionist policies in Central America, persuaded the other Irish bishops to boycott the visit. Reagan’s cavalcade was shown on TV rushing past Galway Cathedral on his way to the National University to receive an honorary doctorate of law.

  For the first time, Peter, nearly ten years old, grasped that his father was important enough to cause problems to the President of the United States. Unlike his friends’ fathers, his was real because he was on television.

  I saw the boy watching his father wide-eyed. He was thrilled to hear that Eamonn was on the side of the underdog. He battled oppression, from apartheid in South Africa to right-wing dictatorships in South America. This was a man Peter was keen to get to know. Why, then, was he always kept at arm’s length?

  As I put him to bed, he said, “He looked like a nice guy.”

  Elated myself at having seen Eamonn’s dear face again, I smiled. “You like him?”

  “I think so. Can I tell my friends my dad’s been on TV?” I shook my head. Peter, too, was now part of the conspiracy of silence.

  “It’s okay,” he said wistfully. “They wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

  Arthur had not underestimated the scope of the problems of the house. The misery would be worth it if at the end we made a good profit. Then I could get a caretaker for Mommy as well as buy our next house. Such were the costs of extra labor and materials, though, that I had to borrow a big sum at a high rate of interest to make our monthly repayment of $835.

  By this time, Mommy’s senility was so bad she had to be tied to the bed to keep her from wandering. She got thin and refused to eat anything but chocolate cake. In caring for her, Arthur proved to be something of a saint. Once, when I tried to sponge-bathe Mommy, she nearly tore my eyes out. Arthur came to the rescue. Every other day, he put on his swimming trunks and carried her screaming under the shower with him. For six months, when the house was a virtual shell, he made Peter and me sleep in the now-vacant cottage while he slept in the living room of the house so he could hear Mommy if she cried in the night.

  The strain eventually told on all of us. Arthur was temperamentally like a thistle, pretty to look at, sharp to touch. One minute he would be relaxed, the next he would strike like a cobra. Peter started to distrust him, then to rile him. He bargained with Arthur before he would help out. Part of the bargain was that Arthur had to be nice to him and curb his tongue. I had been overprotective of Peter, so I approved the idea of Arthur putting a bit of steel in him.

  One day in August 1986, my life brightened when my seventy-six-year-old mother had a sudden burst of lucidity. She had not spoken for almost a year and now, in a four-hour spell, she was able to talk with me about the past and the good times we had spent together. I pulled back the drapes to let in the light and stroked her silver hair. Peter joined us for a while and sat on her bed, and all three of us prayed for Grandpa.

  After Peter left, she said, “Do you know, I was never able to think badly of Eamonn. Whenever I was tempted, I looked at Peter and said to myself, ‘God brings so much good out of evil.’ “

  In those few precious hours, Mommy and I ranged over all the people we had known and loved, all the crazy things we had done; we asked pardon of each other for mutual hurts. This was the most unexpected boon of my life.

  “I’m hungry, Annie. Could I bother you for a hamburger?”

  Never had I received a request with such joy. “With onions and relish?”

  “You bet. And a chocolate milk shake.”

  “You got it,” I said.

  I went down to prepare them. When I returned minutes later, she did not even know who I was. I looked helplessly at her, at the tray of food in my hands. I sadly closed the drapes, but in my heart I knew my God had been kind to both of us.

  Two weeks later, on a golden September day, Arthur called me at work. “Annie, I’m going to give your mother a cup of tea with a drop of whiskey in it to warm her up.”

  Give a glass of whiskey to an old alcoholic?

  Then I grasped what he was telling me. “She’s dying, isn’t she?”

  “I’m going to carry her out to the garden, Annie. I want her to sit in the sun.”

  “I’m coming home,” I said.

  When I got there, she was, with Arthur standing over her in mourning, like a part of the fall, a leafy lost-looking fragment of a lady sitting hunched in a garden chair, holding an empty cup. I went down next to her and cried. I felt overwhelmingly all the pain and the innocence of her damaged life. She had deserved better.

  But she was with Daddy now. Paradise, the renewal of all that is best at its best. We buried her next to him.

  Our house was nearly finished. It was beautiful. We even had a goldfish pond and an arbor with wisteria. I was sorry Mommy could not see it.

  To cut out the middlemen, I advertised the house myself and sold it to a young couple, both investment bankers, for $430,000. That was $40,000 more than a real estate agent had said was possible. After paying back our loans, we were left with $280,000. I grabbed Peter and hugged him fiercely. We had made a start in the world. We had choices.

  Chapter

  Forty-Five

  IN THE NEIGHBORING TOWN OF WESTON, I paid $260,000 for 5 Fanton Hill, a small ranch-style corner house with a small plot of land. Weston is a picture-postcard town in the heart of Fairfield County. It is full of oaks, poplars, silver birches, and Scotch pines. In those days, most houses, usually with several acres, were selling for half a million to two million dollars. We did not know it at the time, but we bought at the height of the real estate boom.

  I was fortunate to find a $400-a-week job in insurance but within a month, I got basal cell carcinoma on my right nostril. With Peter to care for, I was terrified. The doctor said the cancer had progressed inside and out. He was afraid that it would reach the nerve, causing the right side of my face to collapse.

  I kept the news from Peter. He was making great progress with his studies and I did not want to upset him. As to Arthur, he had endured a lot since he came into my life. He had proved to be good and generous yet, always honest, he admitted: “If your face sinks, Annie, I’ll probably say good-bye.”

  The time came for the doctor to operate on the side of my nose. After I came around, he started to remove the dressing. His message to me was: “However bad you may look in the future, it could have been much worse.” When he handed me a mirror, I took one look at myself and passed out.

  When, seconds later, I came to, he told me I would have to do my own dressings for a couple of weeks and swallow some awful-tasting medicines until he was able to do reconstructive surgery. Meanwhile, fearing to lose my job, I continued working in the insurance office.

  I was relieved to return to the hospital, where the d
octor took material from behind my left ear and rebuilt the nostril.

  When, a couple of weeks later, he handed me a mirror for a second time, I had to agree I didn’t look too bad. Even so, I lost confidence. Apprehension, the trauma of the operation, worries about what people thought of me brought on a deep depression. The music went out of my life. Often I stretched out my hand as though wanting someone whom I trusted to take it and sing to me and lead me on. But only one person was capable of doing that and he belonged to my past.

  Arthur wanted to build our house upward in a big way. He was already talking of selling this mythical monster for over a million dollars. His previous renovations were only an apprenticeship. This new project was a trial of strength from which he hoped to emerge triumphant as never before. The only trouble was, I was too tired to support him. For the first time in years, it was an effort for me to go to work.

  “All right,” Arthur conceded grumpily, “we can’t afford to live in this area. We’ll fix this place up, sell it, and buy cheaper somewhere else.”

  We put it on the market but there were no offers. This was 1987, when the stock market crashed.

  There was one reminder of Eamonn at this time. A friend from Ireland sent me a newspaper clipping, a couple of months after the event to which it referred. Eamonn was found guilty of having excess alcohol in his blood while driving in the heart of London. He was fined two hundred pounds. The police had no idea that they had hooked a bishop. In Ireland, of course, he would most likely have got off with a caution, but this was in Protestant England where he was not well known.

  This warning had come none too soon. When the news leaked to the media, he claimed that his friends were to blame for forcing drink on him. His instinct was always to deny. Later, he wrote a public letter of apology to the faithful, which was read out at all Masses in Galway.

  One small incident dictated the future course of our life.

  Peter, a thirteen-year-old six-footer with a burly frame, was playing with Arthur in the garden when he threw a ball that knocked Arthur’s glasses off, smashing them. “Glass in my eyes,” Arthur yelled. “What’re you trying to do, kid, kill me?”

  Peter stood his ground. “It was an accident. I only wanted someone to play catch with. That’s why I miss my dad.”

  Quite out of character, he ran to me, threw his arms around me, and burst into tears.

  I don’t know which of the three of us was most shaken.

  Peter, who was doing well at his studies and seemed so content with his many friends, was revealing for the first time how profoundly lonely he was. He had no father to speak to; no point of reference for his life.

  Arthur was sobbing, “Oh my God, Peter, I’m sorry. I don’t care if I go blind, anything to make you happy.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Peter said. “You’re not my father.”

  The boy’s cry of dereliction, my operation and lack of energy, the strain of rebuilding the house and not being able to sell it, precipitated a crisis.

  In early May 1988, Arthur simply took off. I looked for him, made several phone calls, but he had vanished.

  It was a whole week before I got a call from Arthur, and from the unlikeliest place.

  “This is —”

  “I know who you are. Where are you?”

  “Shannon Airport.” Sounding like a whipped dog, he said, “I’m just back from seeing Eamonn in Galway.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He called you a whore and your son a bastard.”

  “He did what?” I said.

  Within twenty-four hours, he was back home, repentant, frightened, trying hard to explain. He had figured that I could sell the house, pay back the mortgage, and still come out with $120,000. It would be better for both of us if he went home alone to Scotland. Once in Edinburgh, he had the brilliant idea of doing Peter a last favor. He would go to Galway to confront his father.

  I could not have chosen a more unsuitable envoy.

  In Galway, he feared that if he drove unannounced to the Bishop’s Palace, he might not be allowed in. He went to the bus depot. There, he told a cabdriver that he was a close friend of the Bishop’s cousin and he had come on her behalf to discuss with him a family matter. For twenty pounds, the cabdriver agreed to drive ahead of him up Taylor’s Hill to the Bishop’s door. He made a call to check that Eamonn was at home and to say that he was bringing a foreigner on a family matter.

  Eamonn himself came to the door of the Palace and the cabdriver made a quick introduction. “This is Arthur Pennell from Connecticut.”

  “Come in, come in, come in,” Eamonn said, anxious not to make a scene in front of a witness.

  In the Bishop’s study, the conversation did not last long.

  Arthur said, “I’m with Annie, Bishop. I have been taking care of your son for nearly seven years.”

  “My son?”

  “Peter’s a teenager now and getting rebellious. He needs the attention that only a father can give.”

  “He is not my son.” Eamonn insisted the child could be anyone’s. Annie was a wild young woman without religion, living in Dublin at the time.

  “I’ve lived with her for years, she’s just not like that.”

  To which Eamonn responded, “People change.”

  “But,” Arthur said, “you made payments over the years.”

  “Prove it,” Eamonn said.

  Arthur knew the routine. He could prove nothing. In despair at the brilliance of the Bishop’s defenses, he said, “A court could order a blood test.”

  Eamonn laughed at so preposterous a suggestion. “Let’s face it,” he said. “You have her word against mine and I’m an Irish bishop. If you make a public fuss, I will deny all connection between me and her. Moreover, tell her I would resign rather than have anything to do with that boy of hers. Now, would you like a cup of tea and a sandwich?”

  Fearing he might hit him or hold him hostage and call the press, Arthur left and drove straight back to Shannon where he reported to me.

  I have only Arthur’s account of this meeting. I believe it is basically correct. But it sounded to me like a confrontation between two jealous men. The mere fact that I was living with Arthur must have persuaded Eamonn that I really was a whore. Had I been decent, would I not have remained faithful to him till death?

  Peter, of course, wanted to know where Arthur had been. How excited he was when he heard. “Did Eamonn admit he was my father or did he say I was the son of a milkman? Tell me.”

  I said, “He admitted nothing.”

  “I can just see him.” Peter was deeply hurt. “He’s a real rat.”

  “Please don’t say that,” I pleaded, though he expressed my sentiments precisely.

  To my utter surprise, Peter said, “He is totally corrupt.”

  I lifted my hand to slap his face but he did not flinch. “Didn’t you ever hear, Mom, that all power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely? Well, that’s him.”

  He went outside, mumbling, “He won’t even talk to me.” Seconds later, through the open window, I saw him raise his hands to the sky like Eamonn and let out a long unearthly scream. It was animal, primeval, and it scraped my heart.

  When I went to kiss him good night, he enfolded me in his strong arms and said, ominously: “I’m warning you, Mom, that guy is not safe from me, not anymore. I’ve a score to settle with him.”

  Peter’s bitterness, his sense of being abandoned, affected me. I had seldom called Eamonn and never asked for much. I had never betrayed him because I loved him. Yet he had told Arthur that he would have no hesitation in betraying me—and, worse, Peter, too—if he had to.

  I was madder than I had ever been in my life.

  As far as I was concerned, Eamonn was no longer protected. It was open season.

  Chapter

  Forty-Six

  HAD I REPRIMANDED ARTHUR, he would have gone straight back to Edinburgh. I was lonely and Peter, too, needed him.

  Arthur de
cided that if we were to sell the house we would have to rebuild it. The new planning permission was for one of 7,000 square feet, which, in my view, would cost us an extra $100,000. Pointing to the garden, I said to Arthur, “That hole out there, we might just as well jump into it,” and Peter suggested we turn it into a swimming pool.

  I had made the mistake of buying into Arthur’s dream. The debts started to rise; our resources dwindled. My panic attacks returned. It is probably impossible to convey to people who do not suffer from them just how distressing they are. Fear has specific causes and distinct objects. You might be afraid of mice or fast cars or being trapped in a blazing house. But panic has no object, and its causes are difficult to fathom. I have checked medical encyclopedias in which panic attacks are not even mentioned. Those that do mention it tend to refer to it as a mystery illness with no one cause and no one remedy.

  Nights terrified me most. I woke up regularly at 2:00 A.M. and instantly took flight. My soul wanted to escape from whatever treacherous thing was troubling it. Once I jumped out of bed and ran out of the house into the road, where I narrowly missed being hit by a truck. Sometimes, I ran into the woods, where it took Arthur and the cops hours to find me. At times like these, only Eamonn could possibly have calmed me.

  When Arthur woke in the night and found me missing, he called 911 and told the friendly neighborhood cops, “She’s gone again.” They knew who he was and what he meant. The cops picked me up and either let me stay at the station to calm down or took me to the hospital. One Irish patrolman named Collins was really scared to see me shaking as if I had DTs with my pulse up to 160–180.

  “If you were a dog, lady,” he said, “I’d shoot you.”

  “Why,” I responded, “should dogs get all the breaks?”

  Sometimes I called Collins on his own line and he would help me just by talking to me for ten minutes. Most attacks went on for up to three hours. Each time the ambulance brought me back, Arthur turned the TV up so Peter would not know what was happening.