'Tis a Memoir

by Frank McCourt

  I tell him what my mother used to say when we cried, Oh, your bladder must be near your eye, and he laughs. He doesn't seem to mind if we go back up Laight Street, and the men on the platform say nothing about him and my mother because it's hard to hurt people already laughing and beyond you.

  33

  Sometimes she's invited to cocktail parties. She takes me along and I'm confused with the way people stand nose to nose chatting and eating little things on bits of stale bread and crackers, no one singing or telling a story the way they did in Limerick, till they start looking at their watches and saying, Are you hungry? Wanna go eat something? and out they drift and that's what they call a party.

  That's the uptown New York and I don't like it one bit especially when a man in a suit talks to Mike, tells her he's a lawyer, nods toward me, asks her why in heaven's name she's going out with someone like me and invites her to go to dinner as if she should walk away and leave me with the empty glass, everything stale, and nobody singing. Of course she says, No, thanks, though you can see she's flattered and I often wonder if she'd like to go with Mr. Lawyer in the Suit rather than stay with me, a man from a slum who never went to high school and gawks at the world with two eyes like piss holes in the snow. Surely she'd like to marry someone with clear blue eyes and spotless white teeth who would take her to cocktail parties and move to Westchester where they'd join the country club, play golf and drink martinis, and frolic in the night in the grip of the gin.

  I know already what I prefer myself, the downtown New York where men with beards and women with long hair and beads are reading poetry in coffeehouses and bars. Their names are in the papers and magazines, Kerouac, Ginsberg, Brigid Murnaghan. When they're not living in lofts and tenements they roam the country. They drink wine from great jugs, they smoke marijuana, they lie on floors and dig the jazz. Dig. That's the way they talk and they click their fingers, cool, man, cool. They're like my Uncle Pa in Limerick, they don't give a fiddler's fart about anything. If they had to go to a cocktail party or wear a tie they'd die.

  A tie was the cause of our first disagreement and the first time I saw Mike Small's temper. We were to go to a cocktail party and when I met her outside her apartment building on Riverside Drive she said, Where's your tie?

  It's at home.

  But this is a cocktail party.

  I don't like wearing ties. They don't wear them down in the Village.

  I don't care what they wear in the Village. This is a cocktail party and all the men will be wearing ties. You're in America now. Let's go up to a men's store on Broadway and get you a tie.

  Why should I buy a tie when I have one at home?

  Because I'm not going to that party with you in that condition.

  She walked away from me, up 116th Street to Broadway, stuck her hand out, jumped into a taxi without giving me a second look to see if I was coming.

  I took the Seventh Avenue train to Washington Heights in a blind agony, cursing myself for my stubbornness and worrying she might give me up completely for a Mr. Lawyer in a Suit, that she might spend the rest of the summer going to cocktail parties with him till Bob the football player returned from ROTC. She might even give up Bob for the lawyer, finish college and move to Westchester or Long Island where all the men wear ties, where some have ties for every day of the week and social functions on top of it. She might be happy going to the country club all dressed up and remembering what her father said, A lady is not properly dressed till she has white gloves up to her elbows.

  Paddy Arthur was coming down the stairs, all dressed up, no tie, on his way to an Irish dance and why didn't I go with him, I might meet Dolores again, ha ha.

  I turned and went back downstairs telling him I didn't care if I never saw Dolores again in this life or the next after what she did luring me onto the E train and all the way to Queens Village letting me think there might be a bit of excitement at the end of the night. Before getting on the downtown train Paddy and I stopped for a beer at a Broadway bar and Paddy said, Jesus, what's up with you? Is it some kind of a bee you have up your arse?

  When I told him about Mike Small and the tie he wasn't a bit sympathetic. He said that's what I get for running around with them fookin' Protestants and what would my poor mother say back in Limerick.

  I don't care what my mother would say. I'm mad about Mike Small.

  He asked for a whiskey and told me I should have one, too, loosen me up, calm me down, clear my head, and once I had two whiskeys in my system I told him how I'd like to lie on a Greenwich Village floor smoking marijuana, sharing a jug of wine with a long-haired girl, Charlie Parker on the phonograph floating us to heaven and easing us down again on a long low sweet wail.

  Paddy gave me the fierce look. Arrah, for Jasus' sake, is it coddin' me you are? Do you know the trouble with you? Protestants and Negroes. Next thing it'll be Jews and then you're doomed altogether.

  There was an old man smoking a pipe on the stool beside Paddy and he said, That's right, son, that's right. Tell your friend there that you have to stick with your own. All me life I stuck with me own, dug holes for the phone company, all Irish, never a bit of trouble because, by Jesus, I stuck with me own and I seen young fellas comin' over marryin' all kinds an' losin' their faith an' the next thing they're goin' to baseball games an' that's the end of them.

  The old man said he knew a man from his own town who worked twenty-five years in a pub in Czechoslovakia and came home to settle down without a word of Czechoslovakian in his head and all because he stuck to his own kind, the few Irishmen he could find there, all sticking together, thank God an' His Blessed Mother. The old man said he'd like to buy us a drink to honor the men and women of Ireland who stick with their own so that when a child is born they know who the father is and that, by Christ, God forgive the language, is the most important thing of all, knowing who the father is.

  We raised the glasses and toasted all who stick with their own and know who the father is. Paddy leaned toward the old man and they talked about home, which is Ireland, though the old man hadn't seen it for forty years and hoped to be buried in the lovely town of Gort beside his poor old Irish mother and his father who did his bit in the long struggle against the perfidious Saxon tyrant, and he raised his glass to sing,

  God save Ireland, sez the heroes,

  God save Ireland, sez 'em all,

  Whether on the scaffold high

  Or the battlefield we die,

  Oh, what matter when for Erin's sake we fall.

  They sank deeper and deeper into their whiskey and I stared into the bar mirror wondering who's kissing Mike Small now, wishing I could be parading the streets with her so that heads would turn and I'd be the envy of one and all. Paddy and the old man talked to me only to remind me that thousands of men and women died for Ireland who'd hardly be happy with my behavior the way I run around with Episcopalians betraying the cause. Paddy gave me his back again and I was left to gawk at what I could see of myself in the mirror and wonder at the world I found myself in. From time to time the old man leaned around Paddy to tell me, Stick to your own, stick to your own. I'm in New York, land of the free and home of the brave, but I'm supposed to behave as if I were still in Limerick, Irish at all times. I'm expected to go out only with Irish girls who frighten me with the way they're always in a state of grace saying no to everything and everyone unless it's a Paddy Muck who wants to settle on a farm of land in Roscommon and bring up seven children, three cows, five sheep and a pig. I don't know why I returned to America if I have to listen to the sad stories of Ireland's sufferings and dance with country girls, Mullingar heifers, beef to the heels.

  There's nothing in my head but Mike Small, blonde, blue-eyed, delicious, sailing through life in her easy Episcopalian way, the all-American girl, with sweet memories of Tiverton in her head, the small town in Rhode Island, the house where her grandmother reared her, the bedroom with little curtains moving gently at the windows that looked out on the Narragansett River, the bed dressed
with sheets, blankets, pillows galore, blonde head on pillow filled with dreams of outings, hayrides, trips to Boston, boys boys boys, and Grandma in the morning setting out the nourishing all-American breakfast so that her little girl can move through the day charming the arse off every boy, girl, teacher and anyone she meets including me and mostly me as I sit stricken on the bar stool.

  There was a darkness in my head from the whiskey and I was ready to tell Paddy and the old man, I'm weary of Ireland's sufferings and I can't live in two countries at the same time. Instead I left them, the two of them colloguin' on their bar stools, and walked from 179th Street down Broadway to 116th Street hoping that if I waited long enough I'd have one glimpse of Mike Small being brought home by Mr. Lawyer in a Suit, a glimpse I want and don't want, till a cop in a patrol car calls to me and tells me, Move on, buddy, all the Barnard girls are gone to bed.

  Move on, says the cop, and I did because there was no use trying to tell him I know who's kissing her now, that she's surely at a movie with the lawyer's arm around her, the tips of his fingers dangling at the border of her breast which is reserved for the honeymoon, that there might be a kiss or a squeeze between popcorn munches, and I'm here on Broadway looking at the gates of Columbia University across the street and I don't know which way to turn, wishing I could find a girl from California or Oklahoma, all blonde and blue-eyed like Mike Small, all cheerful with teeth that never knew an ache or cavity, all cheerful because her life is laid out so that she'll graduate from college and marry a nice boy, boy she calls him, and settle down in peace, ease and comfort, as my mother used to say.

  The cop came at me again and told me keep moving, pal, and I tried to cross 116th Street with a bit of dignity so that he wouldn't be able to point the finger and tell his partner, There goes another whiskey-head mick from the Old Country. They didn't know and wouldn't care that all this was happening because Mike Small wanted me to wear a tie and I refused.

  The West End Bar was packed with Columbia students and I thought if I had a beer I might merge in and be mistaken for one of them, higher on the scale than NYU students. A blonde might take a fancy to me and get my mind off Mike Small though I didn't think I could shrug her off even if Brigitte Bardot herself slipped between my sheets.

  I might as well be in the NYU cafeteria the way these Columbia students argued at the top of their voices about the emptiness of life, how absurd everything is and how all that matters is grace under pressure, man. When that bull's horn comes at you and grazes your hip you know that's the moment of truth, man. Read your Hemingway, man, read your J. Paul Sartre, man. They know the score.

  If I didn't have to work in banks, docks, warehouses, I'd have time to be a proper college student and moan over the emptiness. I wish my father and mother had lived respectable lives and sent me to college so that I could spend my time in bars and cafeterias telling everyone how I admired Camus for his daily invitation to suicide and Hemingway for risking the bull's horn in the side. I know if I had money and time I'd be superior to every student in New York in the despair department though I could never mention any of this to my mother because she'd say, Arrah, for God's sake, don't you have your health and shoes and a fine head o' hair and what more do you want?

  I drank my beer and wondered what kind of a country is this where cops keep telling you move on, where people put pigeonshit in your ham sandwich, where a girl who's engaged to be engaged to a football player walks away from me because I'm not wearing a tie, where a nun will baptize Michael what's left of him though he suffered in a concentration camp and deserves to be left in his Jewish condition bothering no one, where college students eat and drink to their hearts' content and moan about existentialism and the emptiness of everything, and cops tell you once again, Move on.

  I walked back up Broadway past Columbia into Washington Heights and over to the George Washington Bridge where I could look up and down the Hudson River. My head was filled with dark clouds and noises and a coming and going of Limerick and Dachau and Ed Klein where Michael what's left of him, a piece of offal, was saved by GIs, and my mother moved in and out of my head with Emer from Mayo and Mike Small from Rhode Island, and Paddy Arthur laughed and said you'll never dance with Irish girls with them two eyes like piss holes in the snow, and I looked up and down the river and felt sorry for myself till the sky brightened beyond and the sun coming up traveled from tower to tower turning Manhattan into pillars of gold.

  34

  A few days later she calls me in tears. She's out on the street and would I come and get her at 116th and Broadway. There was trouble with her father, she has no money and doesn't know what to do. She's waiting on the corner and on the train she tells me how she got dressed with every intention of calling me and meeting me even though I had strong feelings about ties but her father said no, she wasn't going out and she said yes, she was going out and he punched her on the mouth which, as I can see, is swelling. She ran from her father's house and there's no going back. Mary O'Brien says she's in luck. One of the boarders is gone back to Ireland to marry the girl down the road and his room is available.

  In a way I'm glad her father punched her because she came to me instead of Bob and that surely means she prefers me. Of course Bob is unhappy and in a few days there he is at the door calling me a sneaky little bogtrotter and telling me he's going to break my head but I move my head to one side and his fist crashes into the wall and he has to go to the hospital for a cast. On the way out he threatens he'll see me again and I'd better make my peace with my Maker though when I run into him a few days later at NYU he offers his good hand in friendship and I never see him again. He may be calling Mike Small behind my back but it's too late and she shouldn't even be talking to him since she already allowed me into her room and into her bed forgetting how she was reserving the body for the wedding night and the honeymoon. The night of our first excitement she tells me I've taken her virginity and if I should feel guilty or sad I can't especially when I know I'm the first, the one that stays forever in any girl's memory, as they used to say in the army.

  We can't stay at Mary O'Brien's because we can't resist the temptation to be in the same bed and there are knowing looks. Paddy Arthur stops talking to me altogether and I'm not sure if he's being pious or patriotic, angry that I'm with someone neither Catholic nor Irish.

  The Captain sends word he's ready to give Mike a certain amount of money every month and that means she can rent a small apartment in Brooklyn. I'd like to live with her but the Captain and the grandmother would think that disgraceful, so I rent my own cold-water flat at 46 Downing Street in Greenwich Village. They call it a cold-water flat and I don't know why. It has hot water but no heat except for a large kerosene heater which turns so red I'm afraid it might blow up. The only thing I can do to keep warm is to buy an electric blanket at Macy's and plug it into a long cord that lets me wander around. There's a bathtub in the kitchen, and a lavatory in the hallway I must share with an old Italian couple across the hall. The old Italian man knocks on my door to tell me I'm to put my own toilet paper on the holder in the lavatory and I'm to keep my hands off his. He and his wife mark their toilet paper and they'll know if I try to use it so watch out. His English is poor and when he starts to tell me of the troubles he had with the previous tenants in my flat he becomes so frustrated he shakes his fist in my face and warns me I could be in big trouble if I touch his toilet paper, big trouble, yet gives me a roll to start me off, to make sure I don't touch his. He says his wife is a nice woman and giving me the roll is her idea, that she's a sick woman who wants a quiet life and no trouble. Capice?

  Mike finds a small apartment on Henry Street in Brooklyn Heights. She has her own bathroom and no one torments her over toilet paper. She says my apartment is a disgrace and she doesn't know how I can live like that, no heat, no place to cook, Italians yelling over toilet paper. She feels sorry for me and lets me stay over. She makes delicious dinners even though she didn't even know how to make coffee when her father punc
hed her out of the house.

  When classes end she goes back to Rhode Island to have her dentist examine the abscess caused by her father's fist. I'm taking summer session courses at NYU, reading, studying, writing term papers. I'm working at the bank, the midnight to eight shift, and operating the forklift at the Baker and Williams Warehouse two days a week, dreaming of Mike Small nice and cozy with her grandmother in Rhode Island.

  She calls to tell me her grandmother isn't that angry with me anymore over what I said about her easy life. Grandma even said something nice about me.

  What was that?

  She said you have a nice head of black curly hair and she feels so sorry about the thing with my father she doesn't mind if you come here for a day or two.

  After what happened to me in the bank I could go to Rhode Island for a week. A man sat next to me in a coffee shop on Broad Street near where I worked, told me he had heard me talk the night before and figured I was Irish, right?

  I am.

  Yeah, well, I'm Irish, too, Irish as Paddy's pig, father from Carlow, mom from Sligo. I hope you don't mind but I got your name from someone and found you're a member of the Teamsters and the ILA.