'Tis a Memoir

by Frank McCourt

  Of course he's an Irish-American Catholic, that's what Tom told me, and of course he'll respect her purity till the wedding night, this insurance man, but I know Irish-American Catholics have filthy minds. They have all the dirty dreams I have myself, especially insurance men. I know Emer's man is thinking of the things they'll be doing on their wedding night though he'll have to confess his dirty thoughts to the priest before he gets married. It's a good thing I'm not getting married myself because I'd have to confess to the things I did with women all over Bavaria and across the border to Austria itself and sometimes even Switzerland.

  There's an employment agency advertisement in the paper offering office jobs, steady, secure, well-paid, six-week paid training session, suit and tie required, preference given veterans.

  The application form wants to know where I graduated from high school and when and that forces me to lie, Christian Brothers Secondary School, Limerick, Ireland, June 1947.

  The agency man tells me the name of the company offering employment, Blue Cross.

  Sir, what kind of company is that?

  Insurance.

  But.

  But what?

  Oh, it's all right, sir.

  It's all right because I realize if I'm hired by this insurance company I might move up in the world and Emer will take me back. All she has to do is choose between two insurance men even if the other one has already given her a diamond ring.

  Before I can even talk to her again I have to finish my six-week training course at the Blue Cross. The offices are on Fourth Avenue in a building with an entrance like the door of a cathedral. There are seven men in the training session, all high school graduates, one so badly wounded from the Korean War his mouth has moved around to the side of his head and he dribbles on his shoulder. It takes days to understand what he's trying to say, that he wants to work for Blue Cross so that he can help veterans like himself who were wounded and have no one. Then a few days into the course he discovers he's in the wrong place, that it was the Red Cross he wanted all along and he curses the instructor for not telling him before. We're glad to see him go even after the way he suffered for America but it's hard to be sitting all day with a man whose mouth is on the side of his head.

  The instructor is Mr. Puglio and the first thing he tells us is that he's studying for his master's degree in business at NYU and, second, all the information we wrote on our application will be carefully checked, so if anyone claims he went to college, and didn't, correct it now or else. The one thing Blue Cross won't tolerate is a lie.

  The boarders at Logan's laugh every morning when I put on my suit, shirt, tie. They laugh even harder when they hear what my pay is, forty-seven dollars a week rising to fifty when I finish the training session.

  There are only eight boarders left. Ned Guinan went home to Kildare to look at horses and die and two others married waitresses from Schrafft's who are famous for saving up to go home and buy the old family farm. The towel marked Top and Bottom is still there but no one uses it after Peter McNamee caused a sensation by going out and buying a towel of his own. He says he was weary of looking at grown men dripping after their showers walking around and shaking themselves dry like old dogs, men who would squander half their wages on whiskey but couldn't see their way to buying a towel. He says it was the last straw one Saturday when five boarders sat around on their beds drinking duty-free Irish whiskey from Shannon Airport, talking and singing along with an Irish radio program, putting themselves in the mood for a dance in Manhattan that night. After they took showers the towel was useless and instead of walking around to shake themselves dry they began to dance jigs and reels to the music on the radio and they were having a grand time except that Nora from Kilkenny came to replace toilet paper and walked in without knocking and when she saw what she saw she screamed like a banshee and ran up the stairs hysterical to Mr. Logan who came down to find the dancers rolling around naked and laughing and not giving a fiddler's fart about Mr. Logan and his yelling that they were a disgrace to the Irish nation and Mother Church and he had a good mind to throw the lot of them into the street in their pelts and what kind of mothers did they have at all. He went back upstairs mumbling because he'd never evict five boarders paying eighteen dollars each a week.

  When Peter brought his own towel home everyone was astonished and tried to borrow it but he told them bugger off and hid it in various places though hiding it was a problem because a towel, to dry, needs to be hung up and will only grow damp and musty if folded and hidden under the mattress or the bathtub itself. It made Peter bitter that he couldn't hang his towel to dry till Nora from Kilkenny told him she'd take it upstairs and watch over it while it dried, she and Mr. Logan were that grateful for the meat he never failed to deliver every Friday night. That was a nice solution till Mr. Logan became agitated every time Peter went up for his dry towel and chatted a few minutes with Nora from Kilkenny. Mr. Logan would stare at his baby boy, Luke, then at Peter and back again at the baby and his frown would grow so severe his eyebrows met. He could stand it no longer and called up the stairs, Does it take all day, Peter, to get your dry towel? Nora has work to do in this house. Peter would come down the stairs. Ah, sorry, Mr. Logan, very sorry, but that doesn't satisfy Mr. Logan who is staring at little Luke again and back at Peter. I have something to tell you, Peter. We won't be needing your meat anymore and you'll have to find a way to keep your towel dry yourself. Nora has enough to do without standing guard over your towel while it dries.

  That night there is screaming and yelling in the Logan room and next morning Mr. Logan pins a note to Peter's towel telling him he'll have to leave, that he's caused too much damage to the Logan family the way he took advantage of their good nature in the matter of drying the towel.

  Peter doesn't mind. He's moving out to Long Island to his cousin's house. We'll all miss him, the way he opened up the world of towels to us, and now we all have them, they're hanging everywhere and everyone is honorable about not using other men's towels because they never dry anyway in the dampness of the basement bedroom.

  22

  It's easier traveling on the train every morning in my suit and tie and the New York Times held up so that the world will see I'm not the kind of yob that reads comics in the Daily News or the Mirror. People will see that this is a man in a suit that can handle big words on his way to an important job in an insurance office.

  I might be wearing a suit and reading the Times and getting admiring looks but I still can't help committing my daily deadly sin, Envy. I see the college students with the covers on their books, Columbia, Fordham, NYU, CCNY, and I feel empty thinking I'll never be one of them. I'd like to go to one of the bookshops and buy college book covers I could flaunt on the train except I know I'd be found out and laughed at.

  Mr. Puglio teaches us the different health insurance policies offered by Blue Cross, family, individual, company, widows, orphans, veterans, cripples. When he teaches he becomes excited and tells us it's a wonderful thing to sleep at night knowing people have nothing to worry about if they get sick as long as they have Blue Cross. We sit in a small room where the air is thick with cigarette smoke for lack of a window and it's hard to stay awake on a summer's afternoon with Mr. Puglio getting worked up over premiums. Every Friday he gives us a test and it's a misery on Monday when he praises the higher scorers and frowns at the low scorers like me. My scores are low because I don't care about insurance and I wonder if Emer is in her right mind getting engaged to an insurance man when she could be with a man who went from training German shepherds to typing the fastest morning reports in the European Command. I feel like calling her up and telling her now that I'm inside the insurance business it's driving me mad and is she happy she did this to me. I could still be working at Port Warehouses enjoying my liverwurst and beer if she hadn't broken my heart entirely. I'd like to call her but I'm afraid she'll be cold and that will drive me to the Breffni Bar for relief.

  Tom is at the Breffni and he says the best t
hing is to let the wound heal, have a drink and where did you get that awful suit. It's bad enough to be suffering over the Blue Cross and Emer without having your suit sneered at and when I tell Tom fuck off he laughs and tells me I'll live. He's moving out of the boarding house himself to a small apartment in Woodside, Queens, and if I'd like to share the cost is ten dollars a week, cook our own food.

  Once again I feel like calling Emer and telling her about my big job at Blue Cross and the apartment I'm getting in Queens but her face is fading in my memory and there's another place in my mind that tells me I'm glad to be single in New York.

  If Emer doesn't want me what's the use of being in the insurance business where I'm suffocated every day in an airless room with Mr. Puglio becoming hostile whenever I doze off? It's hard to sit there when he tells us that the first duty of a married man is to train his wife to be a widow and I daydream about Mrs. Puglio getting the widow lecture. Does Mr. Puglio give her the lecture at the dinner table or sitting up in the bed?

  On top of everything my appetite is gone from sitting all day in my suit and if I buy a liverwurst sandwich I throw most of it to the pigeons in Madison Park.

  I sit in that park and listen to men in white shirts and ties talking about their jobs, the stock market, the insurance business, and I wonder if they're content knowing this is what they'll be doing till their hair turns gray. They tell each other how they told off the boss, how he didn't have a word to say, his mouth going like this, you know, him stuck to his chair. They'll be bosses themselves some day with people telling them off and how will they like that. There are days I'd give anything to be strolling along the banks of the Shannon or out the Mulcaire River or even climbing the mountains behind Lenggries.

  One of the Blue Cross trainees passes me on his way back to the office.

  Yo, McCourt, it's two o'clock. You coming?

  He says yo because he drove a tank in a cavalry outfit in Korea and that's how they talked when the cavalry had horses. He says yo because that tells the world he wasn't an ordinary infantry soldier.

  We walk to the insurance building and I know I can't go through that cathedral entrance. I know I'm not cut out for the world of insurance.

  Yo, McCourt, come on, it's late. Puglio will have a shit fit.

  I'm not going in.

  What?

  Not going in.

  I walk away down Fourth Avenue.

  Yo, McCourt, you crazy, man? You gonna be fired. Shit, man, I gotta go.

  I keep going in the bright July sun till I reach Union Square where I sit and wonder what have I done. They say if you quit a job in any big firm or get fired all the other firms are informed and doors are closed to you forever. Blue Cross is a big firm and I might as well give up hope of ever having a big job in any big firm. But it's a good thing I quit now rather than wait to have the lies on my application form discovered. Mr. Puglio told us that was such a serious offense you'd not only be fired but Blue Cross would demand repayment of the wages paid for the training session and on top of that your name is sent to all the other big firms with a little red flag waving at the top of the page to warn them. That little red flag, said Mr. Puglio, means you're forever barred from the American corporate system and you might as well move to Russia.

  Mr. Puglio loved talking like that and I'm glad I'm away from him, leaving Union Square to stroll down Broadway with all the other New Yorkers who don't seem to have anything to do. It's easy to see that some have that little red flag on their names, men with beards and jewelry and women with long hair and sandals who would never be allowed inside the door of the American corporate system.

  There are New York places I'm seeing today for the first time, City Hall, the Brooklyn Bridge in the distance, a Protestant church, St. Paul's, which has the grave of Thomas Addis Emmet, brother of Robert who was hanged for Ireland, and farther down Broadway, Trinity Church, looking the length of Wall Street.

  Down where the Staten Island Ferries come and go there's a bar, the Bean Pot, where I have the appetite for a whole liverwurst sandwich and a stein of beer because my tie is off and my jacket is over the back of a chair and I feel relieved I escaped with the little red flag on my name. There's something about finishing the liverwurst sandwich that tells me I've lost Emer forever. If she ever hears of my troubles with the American corporate system she might shed a tear of pity for me though she'll be grateful in the long run she settled for the insurance man from the Bronx. She'll be secure knowing she's insured for everything, that she can't take a step that's not covered by insurance.

  It's a nickel for the Staten Island Ferry and the sight of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island reminds me of the morning in October 1949 I sailed into New York on the Irish Oak, past the city and up the river to anchor that night in Poughkeepsie and on the next day to Albany where I took the train back down to New York.

  That was nearly four years ago and here I am on the Staten Island Ferry with my tie stuffed in the pocket of the jacket hanging from my shoulder. Here I am without a job in the world, my girlfriend gone, and the little red flag waving on my name. I could go back to the Biltmore Hotel and take up where I left off, cleaning the lobby, scouring toilet bowls, laying carpet, but no, a man who was a corporal can never sink that low again.

  Looking at Ellis Island and an old wooden ferry rotting between two buildings makes me think of all the people who passed here before me, before my father and mother, all the people escaping the Famine in Ireland, all the people from all over Europe landing here with their hearts in their mouths for fear they might be caught with diseases and sent back and when you think of that a great moaning moves across the water from Ellis Island and you wonder if the people sent back had to return with their babies to places like Czechoslovakia and Hungary. People who were sent back like that were the saddest people in all of history, worse than people like me who might have bad eyes and the little red flag but are still secure with the American passport.

  They won't let you stay on the ferry when it docks. You have to go inside, pay your nickel and wait for the next ferry and while I'm there I might as well have a beer at the terminal bar. I keep thinking about my mother and father sailing into this harbor over twenty-five years ago and as I sail back and forth on the ferry, six times, having a beer at each end, I keep thinking of the people with diseases who were sent back and that makes me so sad I leave the ferry altogether to call Tom Clifford at Port Warehouses and ask him to meet me at the Bean Pot so that I'll know how to get home to the small apartment in Queens.

  He meets me at the Bean Pot and when I tell him the liverwurst sandwiches here are delicious he says he's finished with liverwurst, he's moving on. Then he laughs and tells me I must have had a few, that I'm having trouble getting my tongue around the word liverwurst and I tell him, no, it's the day I've had with Puglio and the Blue Cross and the airless room and the little red flag and the ones who were sent back, the saddest of all.

  He doesn't know what I'm talking about. He tells me my eyes are crossing in my head, put on my jacket, home to Queens and into the bed.

  Mr. Campbell Groel takes me back at Port Warehouses and I'm glad to be getting decent wages again, seventy-five dollars a week going up to seventy-seven for operating the forklift truck two days a week. Regular platform work means you're on your feet in the truck loading pallets with boxes, crates, sacks of fruits and peppers. Working the forklift is easier. You hoist up the loaded pallets, store them inside and wait for the next load. No one minds if you read the paper while you wait but if you read the New York Times they laugh and say, Look at the big intellectual on the forklift.

  One of my jobs is to store bags of hot peppers off United Fruit ships in the fumigation room. On a slow day it's a good place to bring in a beer, read the paper, take a nap and no one seems to mind. Even Mr. Campbell Groel on his way out of the office might look in and smile, Take it easy, men. It's a hot day.

  Horace, the black man, sits on a bag of peppers and reads a paper from Jamaica or
he reads a letter over and over from his son who is in university in Canada. When he reads that letter he slaps his thigh and laughs, Oh, mon, oh, mon. The first time I ever heard him talk his accent sounded so Irish I asked him if he was from County Cork and he couldn't stop laughing. He said, All people from the islands have Irish blood, mon.

  Horace and I nearly died together in that fumigation room. The beer and the heat made us so drowsy we fell asleep on the floor till we heard the door slam shut and the gas hissing into the room. We tried to push the door back but it was jammed and the gas was making us sick till Horace climbed up on a mound of pepper sacks, broke a window and called for help. Eddie Lynch was closing up outside and heard us and slid the door back.

  You're two lucky bastards, he said, and he wanted to take us up the street for a few beers to clear our lungs and to celebrate. Horace says, No, mon, I can't go to that bar.

  What the hell you talking about? says Eddie.

  Black man not welcome in that bar.

  Fuck that for a story, says Eddie.

  No, mon, no trouble. There's another place we have a beer, mon.

  I don't know why Horace has to give in like that. He has a son in university in Canada and he can't have a beer himself in a New York bar. He tells me I don't understand, that I'm young and I can't fight the black man's fight.