“Oh, hi, Tom,” Jill said. “If this is about the wedding, Chuck has already spoken with the bride and groom, and it’s all going fine. So tell Ellen that she can forget about that and just concentrate on getting her mom well.”
Her mom. Ellen would never refer to her formidable mother that way, but it was all the clue I needed. I thanked Jill, promised to pass on the word to my wife, and hung up.
I hesitated there in my office, my hand on the receiver. It could be that her mother’s was only a cover story, and Ellen had headed off to the Caribbean for some restorative reggae and ganja. But she wasn’t one to lie, even when it didn’t matter.
She’d gone back to Wakefield.
Funny. I’d never imagined Ellen running back to her mother after an argument. But apparently that’s what she’d done now.
I settled the receiver back in the cradle and got up from my desk. No need to call. It was Friday, and with Sarah away at camp, I had nothing much to do till my summer seminar started in ten days. I’d just track Ellen down and make her understand that I’d done what was best for the both of us.
That’s the problem with marriage. You end up so tightly bound that doing the selfish thing feels like doing the right thing, because anything that hurts you hurts the marriage.
And hurting the marriage—one way or another, I’d done enough of that already. So, with the best intentions in the world, I went to tell my wife more lies.
Ellen was from the best family in West Virginia. She used to say that with a laugh, adding that it meant their trailer was mounted on cement blocks, not old railway ties. But even the poorest state had its aristocracy, and the Wakefields were the West Virginia version— connected to the Randolphs of Virginia and the Beauchamps of North Carolina and all those other forefather slave-owners. (It was okay, Ellen assured me earnestly early in our relationship, because West Virginia, alone of all states, was born of abolition—it broke off from Virginia after secession.)
It wouldn’t do to be obviously rich in a state that mingled the worst of industrial pollution with the direst of rural poverty. So the Wakefields were modest compared to their counterparts in Virginia. They lived quietly for generations in the biggest house in the town named after old General Wakefield (one of those many Union generals who never won a battle), endowing the local college, setting up genteel associations, donating books to the library.
I don’t mean to make light of the family. It’s a worthy task for a century or so, to build a town and make it work. If the Wakefields had done it on a larger scale, for an entire country, perhaps, I’d have covered it admiringly in some front-page analysis. After a decade reporting on nations ruled by evil despots or incompetent socialists, I had a sneaking appreciation for an effectual benevolent dictator, and so, I suspected, did the town of Wakefield. Hence the ascendancy of Mrs. Wakefield, who ruled with the sort of noblesse oblige generally unknown in America.
I wasn’t really an American. My dad brought me over from Kerry—western Ireland—when I was twelve. My mother was supposed to follow with my younger brother, but in the end she just couldn’t leave her family and her home, and so she never came. She and Dad kept saying she’d be coming to Washington, but she never did. I think she was afraid even of visiting, that she’d get caught here somehow if she stepped on American soil. The Irish of that generation still lived in the 19th Century, when family members emigrated and were never seen again. You can show them all the ads for $399 round-trip six-hour flights between Shannon and Dulles, and it makes no difference. They know once America’s got hold of them, they’ll lose Ireland forever.
And I guess there’s some truth to it. Dad and I never went back either, except for short visits. It was too lucrative to be Irish in America to ever settle for being Irish in Ireland again. Dad cashed in on his fine tenor and his intimate knowledge of beer and ales to manage and finally buy a pub in the District, where he held court, pouring out the Guinness, telling Irish jokes, singing maudlin ballads, deepening his brogue till his own grandmother would have had to ask for a translation into English.
He did well enough to send me off to a good college, where I wandered among the careless children of minor Virginia aristocracy, too alien to be intimidated by them. I’d been raised in a tavern, and nothing impressed me—until I met Ellen. She was soft and shy until she decided to be sharp and imperious, and I appreciated her in both modes, maybe not as much as she deserved, but more than the other fools at that college.
Ellen was the perfect college girlfriend, dependable, helpful, fun in bed. I knew she wouldn’t pick a fight right before finals, or seduce my advisor or my roommate or my roommate’s sister. Sometimes I was amazed at her sweetness, her smile, her kindness. I wasn’t really used to that.
And of course there was that indefinable class aspect. Sleeping with the daughter of the best family in a state, even if the state is West Virginia, had its illicit pleasures for an Irish boy who grew up over the pub. Not that she was a snob of any sort—in fact, she was very much the opposite—but there was something unerring in her knowledge of The Correct Way that gave her an aura of confidence. She had her insecurities—a thousand of them, last count—but I doubt she ever worried that she wasn’t dressed right or might pick up the wrong fork or say the wrong thing in a social situation. If she dressed that way, picked up that fork, or said that sentence, it was, perforce, correct.
This was the 80’s, and that kind of confidence was out of fashion. None of the girls wore white gloves or even dresses, and as for the right fork, well, most were lucky to have one fork apiece in the minimal college kitchens. But without being the least bit arrogant, or “stuck up,” as the sorority girls would call it, Ellen had an ease about her that made everyone take her a bit more seriously than they might otherwise.
She was an intriguing mix of the poetic and the pragmatic. She could recite great swaths of verse, with a sincere melodrama that even my father would have appreciated. One spring day, she did the entire Ode to a Nightingale as we sprawled out on the quads beside the dogwood tree. I told her, “Sure, and you must have some Irish in you.”
She replied, seriously, “My mother was a MacDonald, but that’s Scots.”
“No, sweetheart, the Scots haven’t a drop of poetry in them. I’d say some young Dublin boy came over to the MacDonald clan to train the horses, and stayed to seduce the lady of the house, and generations later, there’s your poetry.”
But in an instant, her practical side emerged. “Nonsense. I don’t believe genetics plays that much of a role. My forebears are as solid as could be, from a long line of bankers, and I don’t think any of us girls are remotely like that. Cathy likes to climb mountains, and I write poetry, and Laura—well, Laura’s got at least three different distinct personalities, not one of them solid. And Theresa—well, she hasn’t any of our blood, as she’s adopted, but she’s probably the most like Mother—serious and responsible and with a strong sense of mission.”
“Perhaps your mother writes romantic poetry, and hides it,” I suggested, and Ellen looked horrified at the idea.
“God, I hope not. Then I’d have to stop doing it. It’s my only rebellion.”
“What about me?” And I drew her down beside me on the grass. “Aren’t I a rebellion? Surely Mother wouldn’t approve of me.”
She kissed me quick, light, three, four times, her eyes sparkling. “She better not. Or you’re history.”
I believed her. Oh, she was in love with me, of that I had no doubt, from the very first. But the question was why. I’d like to think it was my charm and innate goodness that did the trick, but likely the poor Irish shebeen-owner’s son designation had more to do with it. If I’d been a blond scion of an insurance executive, a Phi Delt or a Sigma Chi, would she have been so intrigued?
It wasn’t the first time a good girl had fallen from grace for me, but it was, perhaps, the first time any girl had ever been so analytical about it. I was Ellen’s education, as much as her History of Theater class and her rese
arch paper on images of lions in children’s literature. She’d come to college to broaden her horizons, to experiment, to learn new ways, and I was on the syllabus.
I know—this is America, not Ireland. Good girls date bad boys all the time. Upper class and working class co-mingle freely. It’s true. Certainly none of our friends thought we were a mismatch. We were a glamour couple there at Jefferson, in fact, Ellen with her gentle grace and her drive to collect books for the poor children in town, I with the glib editorials in the student newspaper. Unlike the typical Greek-house good time kids, we were quietly confident about being different and knowing that different was better.
Anyway, it’s hardly as if once we married, I was some poor adjunct to my wealthy wife (not that she was wealthy yet, or maybe ever, if her mother proved to be as manipulative with her last testament as she’d been with every other gift she made). This is America. I made a success of myself. I ended up relatively rich, at least by Irish standards, and famous in a minor way, though not for the right reason, and the glamour that comes from being on TV dusted me with glitter, and glitter counts for more than anything else in America.
But Ellen couldn’t have known at the time that I’d turn out acceptable— and she must have counted on my earning her mother’s automatic disapproval.
I was young enough then not to care too much why a woman wanted to come to my bed, as long as she came. And I had no illusions about the gulf between us. She liked to pretend this was nothing new, visiting with my da in the pub, helping pull a few drafts while he told stories of the potato famine and the Easter Rebellion and a dozen other atrocities he knew only from the history books. But I overheard her a couple times on the phone, telling one sister or another or even once her mother about “Mr. O’Connor, the pub owner” and his adorable brogue, and there was that proud challenge in her voice. She was, in her polite way, spoiling for a family fight about this.
Her mother was too smart to give her one, no doubt thinking that there was no percentage in making a fuss over a temporary college relationship.
She was right, as it happened. It didn’t last, our romance. I called it quits the week before graduation, to give us both time to get used to it. It wasn’t as if we’d made any plans to be together. I knew I was going to Washington to work for the Post, and she was looking for a teaching job. I could have just let the relationship fade into nothing, but that didn’t seem fair. I knew Ellen and her sense of ethics, and I knew as long as she thought we were still a couple, she’d never date another. So as nicely as I could, I cut us apart and headed off to my new life alone.
I used to be nostalgic about that first summer at the Post. For a long time, all I could remember was hanging out with the other new reporters, drinking and talking politics, chasing down leads and writing stories that occasionally even got into the morning edition. And the girls, of course, the ones who thought every young male reporter had to be the next Woodward, were ever a cherished memory.
But now I remember all the disorientation, the uncertainty, the constant recognition that I was in over my head and sinking fast. I drank more that summer than I ever did in college, and it wasn’t just for fun. I was scared. The Post in those years after the great Watergate triumph was a place of long hours and cutthroat competition. If I did well that first year, the world was open to me. If not, I’d live the rest of my life knowing that I’d blown my big chance.
It’s easier to accept that now that I’ve arrived somehow on the other side—grownup and recognized as an authority. Now I’m the kind of person who made the younger me feel inadequate and desperate to catch up. Back then, all I knew was that I was on a constant jag, hardly able to take a deep breath. It felt like excitement, but it was mostly fear.
Ironically, I’d gotten the job because of my father. His pub was just down the street from the Post building, and a favorite hangout for political reporters because of the Guinness and Irish music . . . and because of my dad, who could spin a better sob story than most of the Post’s high-paid feature writers. I helped him tend bar on my college breaks, and he introduced me to the right people, and in the end, that counted more than the degree and the editorship of the college newspaper and the clutch of writing awards.
So that summer sometimes I hung out there with my new colleagues after work, coming in after the last deadline, long after the happy-hour folks had gone home to the suburbs, drinking and talking about serious journalistic issues—noble ethics and ignoble editors and scoring the best assignments. One night, Dad waited till after they all left to tell me thought I was drinking too much, even for an O’Connor. He waved away my explanation that I was just stressed out from working hard. He’d never worked too hard, and he’d never stressed out from anything to do with a job, even when it wasn’t clear he could make payroll. The only reason he could accept for drinking this much was a woman. He attributed it to Ellen, or rather, my break-up with Ellen. “You’re missing her, aren’t you?”
I was in a martyred mood, because the unworthy colleague at the next desk had gotten promoted to the State Department beat, the one that came with invitations to embassy parties and a silver spoon for the caviar bowls. So as soon as Dad said her name, I thought maybe he was right. Ellen—Ellen would know how to soothe me. Ellen would tell me I was the best writer in the history of the Post, that the other young wolf should be writing obituaries at the Ottumwa Gazette . . . Ellen would make me feel better.
But that only made me feel worse. I drained the last drop of Guinness and held my glass out for more. Dad ignored it. “You should have stuck with her,” he said, polishing the bar with a pristine cloth. “She might not have been exciting, but she was reliable. She’d stick with you.”
I supposed this was an implied rebuke to my mother, neither exciting nor particularly reliable. She just never could get herself quite stuck to Dad, and still lived with my little brother Pat in Kerry. And that made it all the more sad. Only twenty-two, and I was like my old man, bereft of the love of my woman.
But then I remembered all the good points I’d made when I set her free. “Ellen deserves better than that. She deserves a man who thinks she’s better than just reliable, who thinks she’s the center of the universe and all that.” I meant it then, but thinking of her all alone made me feel even worse. She did deserve better than me, but the poor girl loved me, and so probably she would never open her heart to another man.
It was hard, I told myself, being irresistible.
“You need a woman.” That was Dad’s second-favorite prescription. “Not one of those silly tarts you keep bringing here, more hair than wit. You need someone who can make you forget the girl you left behind. A real woman.”
He packed me off down the street to my apartment, and I was as sad as only an Irish boy drunk on ale and fiddle music can be. If it hadn’t been three a.m. and my address book lost somewhere in the depths of my closet, I would have made a miserable penitential drunken call to Ellen, and very likely none of what transpired would have transpired.
But it was more dignified to fall into bed fully clothed and sleep off the drink and the despair.
And the next evening, Dad brought over the woman who was going to erase my sad memories and infuse me with new life, or whatever it was he thought a night of meaningful sex with a woman who knew what she was doing would do for me.
Every man should have a father like mine.
He’d come up with the perfect antidote—a dark-gold-haired beauty queen in hiking boots. It was June, and all the other women at the bar wore strappy sandals, at least the ones who weren’t wearing power pumps. But Dad’s choice was wearing a khaki shirt, khaki shorts, and hiking boots. I couldn’t help but look down that long expanse of tanned bare leg and focus on the little rim of red sock above the ankle of the boot, the only spot of color in all that tawny tan and brown. Delicious. I fell in love.
“She’s going to hike the Appalachian Trail,” he told me. And he told her, “My lad Tom here went to Jefferson University. That’s
right off the trail.” He was holding her hand, all paternal benevolence, and she glanced at him with a wry little smile, showing that she saw right through him but appreciated his performance.
That impressed me more than the Appalachian Trail information, that she recognized my father for what he was, a professional Irishman. Now that he’s gone—he died while I was in Tehran—I look back and wonder why I thought that so discerning of her, for sure it took little enough good sense to recognize the blowhard in Trevor O’Connor. It took a bit more to sense the truth that lay underneath.
But she turned that wry smile on me, and removed her hand from him and extended it towards me, and as I took it I felt that strength, that easy force of the born athlete. I couldn’t help it; I slid my hand up over her wrist to her bare golden forearm. I’d never felt muscle like that on a woman—no bulk, not like a man’s muscle, but instead the lean flow of power under the smooth feminine skin.
She drew in her breath, and drew back, and then, quite deliberately, she took back my hand and leaned close, her lips against my ear, and said, too soft (I hoped) for my father to hear, “I feel like that all over. Take me home and I’ll show you.”
I defy any man, any single straight man at least, to resist that. Every man should have the chance, at any rate, once in his life, to face such a temptation.
I faced the temptation. I surrendered to it. I was twenty-two, and she was a few years older and a dozen years more experienced, as sleek and ruthless as a cheetah, and in a week she had me trapped in a world of sensuality and power and pleading. And in another week, she was gone.
There are women put on earth to ruin men’s lives. You know the sort I mean, and yes, I realize how self-serving and self-pitying that is, but it’s true. There are women who are just like men, only female, and when we come face to face with these assertive, physical, commitment-phobic types with firm breasts and full lips, we’re goners. It’s like making love to ourselves, only female, and it interrupts the time-space continuum and rips the fabric of order in the universe.
The year She Fell Page 22
