Maggie's Breakfast

by Gabriel Walsh

  “You want to leave home, son? Tell me now.”

  “Yes. I do.”

  “You’re sure of that, son?”

  “Yes, I am. I am.”

  My mother turned to Maggie and Mrs. Axe. “What will he do there, ma’am?”

  “He’ll work a bit and study also,” said Mrs. Axe. “He’s smart. I won’t let him be idle. I’ll make sure he’s happy. I’ll make him write to you as well. You’ll write to your mother, won’t you, Gabriel?”

  “I will,” I said.

  “I’ll make sure he does,” Miss Sheridan added supportively, obviously wanting to reassure my mother. “America is not the end of the world any more. I’m back and forth myself several times a year.”

  About that exact moment everybody stopped talking. The silence was awkward and I sensed that nobody wanted to ask the next important question without some kind of encouragement. I began to think they were all waiting for me to say something.

  “Will you sign the papers, Ma?” I asked.

  Mrs. Axe took the papers out of her briefcase and handed them to Molly. My mother looked them over but, because she wasn’t used to looking at any kind of documentation, she retreated somewhat nervously. She really didn’t know what she was looking at or what to read. After what seemed like a forever pause, she turned back to Mrs. Axe.

  “Where am I to sign, ma’am?” she asked.

  Mrs. Axe pointed to a line on the form. My mother made a wide scribble and in a second her name was signed. She repeated the effort in another few places pointed out by Mrs. Axe. Mrs. Axe now had the permission to be my legal guardian when I got to America.

  Mrs. Axe gave my mother a hug.

  Miss Sheridan leaned in and kissed my mother on the top of her head. She then sang out in an aria-like voice: “Shouldn’t we all go get a cup of tea or something?”

  “Good idea, Maggie. Let’s go to the Russell,” Mrs. Axe said and got up from the bench.

  The four of us then walked across Stephen’s Green in the direction of Harcourt Street.

  By the time we got to the front door of the Russell Hotel my mother had become more relaxed. When she sat down in the armchair in the tea lounge she was even smiling.

  She turned to me. “Remember, Gabriel, son. You only learned your religion. I earned mine.”

  For a moment or two there was a silence around the table. It was obvious that Maggie and Mrs. Axe heard what my mother had said to me. Yet somehow it appeared as if she was talking to them. Perhaps telling them something about herself – or me for that matter. In seconds Miss Sheridan had taken a bundle of photographs out of her handbag and was pointing to photos of herself in various operatic roles.

  “Here I am. Aida. La Scala. Look here – here I am at Covent Garden – Madama Butterfly. I won’t tell you the wonderful things Puccini said about me because you’ve probably never heard of him anyway.” She hummed a few bars of “Un Bel Di” and to humour my mother she showed her photo after photo of various parts she played in the many operas she’d appeared in at an earlier time in her life. Some of them looked funny to my mother and she laughed out loud. Maggie and my mother seemed to connect to each other. I got the feeling that Maggie knew my mother more and better than I did. She seemed to identify with her on some level. Maggie from Mayo and Molly from Carlow were not unlike sisters who had travelled different roads early in their lives. Maggie had no children and Molly might have had too many. Maggie had seen the world and Molly hadn’t. Maggie had lived a good part of her life in the fantasy world of opera and, at least in her recent past, her deepest reality was when she performed on the stage. Molly’s life seemed to be trapped in a never-ending opera in which she was the tragic heroine, with no end or intermissions. Today both Maggie and Molly were enjoying themselves like I had never seen before.

  My mother’s eyes lit up and she began to sing alongside Maggie. They were the oddest of duets. My mother was singing like a lark: “Ah, why did he part and break the heart of his girl from Donegal!”

  Mrs. Axe said, “Don’t forget Carmen, Maggie!”

  Maggie instantly broke into the famous aria from Carmen.

  My mother was beside herself. “Ah God help us all!” she said and rested.

  Maggie then took from her photo collection a more private and personal photograph. She showed it to my mother. It was a photograph of a very lonely and sad-looking teenage girl. Maggie looked no more than fifteen years of age in the photo.

  “Me. Maggie from Mayo. If it hadn’t been for a nun at the convent I’d still be in Castlebar. God, I think I was the loneliest person on earth in those days. Jesus, I shiver when I think about it. I don’t know what it is about life or about any of us that live here under God’s watchful eye but if you get cursed and painted with the stripe of loneliness you might as well jump off O’Connell’s Bridge.”

  “Don’t forget to mention Marconi, Maggie,” Mrs. Axe quickly interjected.

  “Marconi? Yes. Mr. Marconi. When he was married to that lovely Galway woman he sent me to Italy for voice training. He gave me the real push in life. God knows I couldn’t afford it. Nobody in Ireland had any money in those days.”

  My mother handed the photographs back to Miss Sheridan. “Lovely, ma’am, lovely pictures. To be truthful I have read a bit about you once or twice in the paper some years ago.”

  Miss Sheridan smiled. She was pleased. “You did?”

  “Yes, ma’am. You’re a friend of Dev’s? Is that true?”

  Maggie leaned back in her seat as if she was about to take centre stage and sing another aria. “Éamon de Valera? I know him well. Another lonely man, if you ask me. No father in his life and only his poor mother to take care of him. She brought him up well, if you ask me. All the things he did for Ireland! Talking back to Churchill when this poor country was hardly more than a stable for horses. Mr. Churchill wanted to drive us all into the sea because we broke the back of the Empire. He was a fine man in his own right but he didn’t really know the Irish character. In my estimation he underestimated de Valera.” Maggie then turned towards my mother. “If you ever need a bit of assistance from Dev, let me know.”

  “Yes, call up the President and tell him Maggie sent you,” Mrs. Axe said laughingly.

  “I’m very serious, Ruth,” Miss Sheridan said quickly and defensively. “I know the man well and I’ve been in his corner most of my life.”

  My mother then joined in. “If I’d known how nice you two ladies were I’d a worn a decent dress today.”

  “I asked you to wear a different dress, Ma,” I quickly put in.

  “Ah, I know you did. But if I’d a known sooner I’d a taken me dress out of the pawnshop and wore it.” Pleasure had taken hold of Molly and she was not shy in expressing her feelings. She’d even changed the way her hat was on her head. She’d moved it and made it look more open and funlike.

  “Gabriel will send you a dress from New York, won’t you, Gabriel?” Mrs. Axe said with a sense of instruction in her voice.

  “I hope he does, I hope he does.”

  “He’ll send you many things, Mrs. Walsh,” said Miss Sheridan. “I’ll make sure he keeps up with you and lets you know everything.”

  My mother looked at me again. This time she stared at me longer than I had ever remembered her looking at me. I had to turn away from her eyes.

  “Remember, Gabriel, you were always the first up for Mass. Not like the rest of the fellas on the street. He was so good at goin’ to Mass I used to call him the Little Archbishop. The spittin’ image of his father. His father will never be dead as long as Gabriel’s alive. The spittin’ image of Paddy, missus!”

  “Paddy?”

  “Me husband’s name, ma’am.”

  I was hoping my mother wouldn’t go on talking, but she did.

  “Paddy hasn’t worked in a month of Sunda’s. He’s a changed man since I first married him. I can tell you that, missus.”

  The two elegant women were then treated to a run-down on Paddy Walsh.


  A few minutes later, my mother stood up. “Well, ma’am, have I done all you want of me?”

  Mrs. Axe stood and, reaching over to my mother, hugged her tightly. “Yes. You have. You’ve been wonderful. I am delighted we met, be it late, short or whatever. And don’t worry about Gabriel. He’ll be fine, just fine. Won’t you, Gabriel?”

  I shook my head and held my mother’s hand. I knew she wasn’t feeling as strong as she was pretending. When I looked at her I could only see sadness in her eyes. Was her whole life meant to be such a struggle, I wondered to myself. Was there ever a time when she felt happy or content? She seemed unsure, even lost, and I felt sorry for both of us. I felt like I was choking on some mysterious feeling that had finally awakened between my mother and me. When I looked over at her I couldn’t talk. I was afraid I’d say something that would make me want to stay. Molly looked at me with the same kind of confusion in her eyes. I wanted to tell her I loved and cared for her.

  She eventually put her hand on my face. “I’m goin’ to say a few prayers, Gabriel.”

  Miss Sheridan stood up and gave my mother a big hug. “God bless you,” she said.

  Molly turned from the table and walked out of the hotel. I stood pained, confused and even frightened. All of a sudden I felt I had now abandoned my mother and I wanted to grab hold of her and hug her and not let her go. For a few moments I wanted to confess to her that I was only teasing and testing her. I even wanted to admit that I was only playing a game and it was not a real situation I was in. Part of me wished the whole thing would go away. I wanted to erase the idea of leaving home from my mind. For as long as I could remember I’d wanted to leave home but as the impending reality became apparent my nerves began to shake my whole body. Whatever confidence I thought I had was leaking from all parts of me and, as my mother walked further away from me, I wanted to scream and tell her to come back and hold my hand and not to leave me standing alone with Miss Sheridan and Mrs. Axe.

  As my mother walked further and further away from me, I felt deprived of breath and even had thoughts that I had finally hurt her in the worse way that I could, for what I thought she had done to me. I had felt abandoned and ignored by her since childhood and now I was exercising the opportunity to get some kind of revenge.

  For years and years my mother used to humiliate me and everyone else in the family with her clothes and talk. We all wanted to run away from her when we met her on the street. She was always an embarrassment. But the struggle of surviving with so many children and with so little money was monumental. Her only means of remaining halfway sane was her religion. It encouraged her to accept the life of a martyr of some description. The deeper she fell into the struggle the more sacred she felt she was. Yet today she had found it in herself to put her love for me above everything else. Probably the hardest thing she had ever done in her life.

  On the day that made it official that I was to be gone from her, I accepted the fact that she loved me. It was an unfamiliar feeling and I wasn’t sure or confident enough to know that I could remain standing on my own two feet as Molly walked further and further away from me. I felt as if I was going to break down into little pieces of myself. For most of my years on earth I had wished and wanted to escape from where I lived and who I lived with. Since I lost my brother Nicholas I felt I had lost all connection to every other member of my family. There was a void and a division between us and it seemed to grow wider as we all grew older. What was now inside my head was a new uncertainty. A part of me was beginning to resist what I wished and dreamed for and somewhere in my mind I was trying to hold back from travelling into a future that was unknown and vague. The past was now reaching out to me as if to keep me from drowning altogether. A feeling ran through my blood and veins and it seemed out of control.

  All of a sudden I wanted everybody I ever knew to pray for me. I was even wishing I could go to Mass and receive Communion and attend the Boys’ Sodality and have the priest hear my Confession. I would promise not to sin again and I knew I would be pure and honest if I could still be a part of what I was planning on leaving behind. As I shivered with insecurity I began to wish that I could be with my old schoolmaster and the priest who slapped me when I was very young. The memory and familiarity of Confession and Communion would embrace and protect me from the uncertainty of my future.

  I had not felt or sensed the bond that I was always seeking with my mother until the moment she agreed to part with me. As she walked into the distance she stopped, turned and looked back at me. I then began to cry and cry and thought of running away from the confused thoughts that were streaming through my head. The familiarity of loneliness was dominant. It was the strongest power I knew. Because of it I would embrace the pain that was always present in my family and in my home, as if it too was a close family member. Agony was not far away or out of my reach and at this hour it was becoming my closest companion. I was beginning to think that I didn’t know what I really wanted and felt entangled in a web of guilt. Today my past was rendering me more isolated than ever before.

  Mrs. Axe departed for America and Maggie remained alone at the hotel. I went there to say goodbye to a few friends I had worked with and was told by a workmate that Maggie was having dinner in the restaurant. I knew she was scheduled to depart for New York very soon, so I went to the dining room to let her know of my progress regarding my own eventual departure and to say goodbye to her.

  It was early evening and the dining room was practically empty. Two waiters, in their formal serving outfits of black-tailed suits and white bow ties, stood at each end of the room like two lost penguins on a floating iceberg. As soon as I stepped into the room, Maggie, apparently at the end of her meal, saw me and beckoned to me with a curled finger. Because she was alone, the booth she was sitting in seemed to wrap around her like a big pair of brown leather wings. She was wearing one of her wide-brimmed hats that resembled an upside-down bird’s nest. Part of her long blonde hair was hanging above one of her ears and she looked like she had got dressed up without inspecting herself in a mirror. This might have been because she had no place to go and nobody to meet. I had never, whenever I entered her room and served her breakfast, observed her inspecting her reflection in a mirror. She might not have wanted to see herself as she was in the present. In the past she was hailed as a prima donna and adored by thousands of people, particularly in Italy and Ireland. The Pope at one time even wanted to bestow her with the title of ‘Countess’ which she refused because of her affection for Irish history and all things Irish. Aristocracy of any kind didn’t fit into Maggie’s way of thinking. She always seemed to be attached to some kind of rebellion, be it her determination to carry on with her career since childhood or resistance against her vocal teachers in the past who advised her to slow down and relearn the intricacies of how to use her voice. County Mayo and Ireland in general were a constant in her life. Her years in Italy had formed her into a woman of the world with international and famous acquaintances. She was however known to be always carrying Ireland around with her as if it was part of her physical body or the definition of what she considered to be her soul. When Maggie spoke English it was with an Italian flair but an emotional sentiment that was uniquely Irish. If she felt she wasn’t being listened to or understood she’d wave her hands in a demanding manner as though she was acting and singing in a Puccini or Verdi opera. Her speech and words were essentially half arias. With the exception of walking about Stephen’s Green with her past and photo album under her arm, she rarely ventured outside the hotel. Several times since I’d known her she would be visited by a priest or an elderly nun she had known earlier in life. The few visitors she had more often than not came to praise her past and honour her for her achievements.

  This early evening, sitting alone in the restaurant booth, she looked like a single passenger in a waiting room about to be transported to an unknown destination. Where she wanted to go, she might not have known herself. Maggie looked surprised when she saw me and smiled as I
approached her.

  With a tinge of self-consciousness I sat at the edge of the booth. I didn’t know whether to say hello or goodbye and feared somewhat that she might chastise me for remaining silent. The two waiters noticed me as I sat down and wagged their heads with a sense that they approved of me being there but, knowing Maggie as they did, they did not dare approach the table. By now just about everybody I had worked with had heard I was soon to leave for America. In a precise and almost perfect gesture Maggie lifted the white linen napkin to her mouth and dabbed her lips with it. For a moment I thought she was showing me or telling me how to use a napkin. Always upon meeting her she was inclined to correct my speech or instruct me on how to behave, but never for a moment did I believe she meant to do anything other than be positive and helpful.

  “You’re here to say goodbye to everybody?” she said without looking directly at me.

  “I am, but I didn’t know you were having dinner,” I responded, hoping I’d said the right thing.

  She began to laugh. “Life’s not always about having breakfast,” she said.

  I laughed as well. I knew what she was saying and I definitely related to it.

  “I’m away from here on Thursday. It took me two days to pack that trunk of mine. Everything I own on this earth is packed into it.”

  I didn’t know what to say. I knew what she meant about the huge trunk that occupied the centre of her room. The thing was so big one could easily have slept it in. The labels pasted on it reflected Maggie’s travelling lifestyle. The name of every country in Europe as well as the United States was a map of her uprooted and nomadic life. When the image of the large trunk left my mind it dawned on me to tell her how much my mother had enjoyed meeting her and Mrs. Axe. I had only got out about five words when she waved her hand at me.

  “Don’t! Don’t! Your poor unfortunate mother! God bless her! She’s had a tough life. She’s the backbone of Ireland if you ask me.”

  I didn’t know how to express agreement with her so I kept quiet.