Thomas Murphy

by Roger Rosenblatt

  —George Eliot, in Thomas Murphy’s

  Book of Dandy Quotations

  YOU WOULD THINK that going from Inishmaan to Inisheer, a distance of no more than two miles across Foul Sound (can’t say we pull punches), would not make much of a voyage. But oh, that night in late October. Sleet sheathed the fields like a caul. The wind was full of rain. It did not let up, rising in wide black sails, and roaring. You oughtn’t to have brought the boy, said Will Hargrove to my uncle Jim. I was fourteen. Tommy’s strong, said Jim, and a good sailor. That was true. And I wasn’t afraid at all, at least not at the start. We lived with wind and rain on the island. And I’d been at sea in a curragh in more storms than I could count.

  The tide was supposed to turn at four in the afternoon, but by seven, things had worsened. The wind howled against the rocks. The sea was a battlefield. Pigs ran, and the cows sheltered themselves behind the walls of the houses. I saw a draft horse knocked flat on its side. That’s bad luck, said Peter Martins. Others nodded. We were down on the beach with a six-oared boat, surrounding it. Yet it resisted our tugging, as if it were a reluctant old dog and did not want to be dragged out on a night like that. What’s the purpose of all this? Peter asked my uncle. We told them we’d be there, said Jim. Can’t it wait till morning? said Rory Powers. We promised we’d be there tonight, said Jim.

  We tested the braces of the oars and the thole pins. We checked the curragh for leaks. It took the better part of half an hour to drag it from the beach and lift it into the water, the wind pushed so hard against us. One time, the boat reared up like a horse, and Peter Martins called that bad luck too. By the time the six of us had clambered aboard, we were exhausted, and we had not yet started for Inisheer. I rowed in the bow, and I could see nothing ahead of us but the black sea and moonless sky, which were one. Liam Rooney rowed beside me on the thwart. He was older, but slender, and white as a sheet. He said not a word. Not that speaking was easy for anyone. You would hear a shouting, and then the wind would devour it.

  I was never so cold, before or since. Soaked through my undershirt and my wool sweater and wool vest, I tried to concentrate on my rowing. If we rode the waves, we’d be all right. But if we were spun around or if we tried to outrun a wave that caught us broadside, we were goners. The curragh leapt and trembled as it went. We leaned into our oars. The bow pitched and wedged into the furrows. Uncle Jim was steering, and he was having a deuce of a time controlling the boat. Two hours out, and the rain had not diminished. If anything, it grew louder and angrier, and the wind carping at the sea.

  And then it happened. Starboard, out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a massive wave. It seemed to expand as it rushed upon us, high and wide as a house, knocking the curragh on its side, the way the draft horse was knocked. Uncle Jim! I cried. And we tried to right the boat. But the wave had caught us at a right angle, banging the bow so hard it shook like a choking outboard. I held to it for my life, my knuckles frozen on the gunwales. Then I fell on my shoulder, where Liam had been. But Liam was gone.

  Dropping my oar, I dived in the water, followed by Will Hargrove and my uncle, while the others remained to hold the boat from capsizing. We were no colder or wetter in the water than out. We called to Liam against the noise of the wind. Liam! Over and over. Liam! There was no human sound in reply. We were clinging to the sides of the curragh, and growing increasingly tired. Liam! Twice I did a surface dive, and saw nothing but the grainy sea, rushing past my eyes. At last we climbed back in, and plunged the boat into the storm again. No one spoke.

  Days later, when we returned, I saw Liam’s ma pacing on the beach, her head in a shawl. She searched our faces for her son. When my uncle Jim started to walk toward her, she turned away.

  BUT TODAY NEW YORK begins in moonlight, and I am glad of it. I smell a wind shift, lifting the grass blades somewhere, skipping over the steppes and surrounding my heart. Shall we blaze in anticipation of the lightning? We tire of the stare of the hypnotized, and begin to glow in several colors. Come with me to the edge of tears. Beautiful, is it not? The candle gutters but stays lit, casting a shield of light over the blue fields and the blue ice of the Chrysler Building, and the throbbing sea between them. Let the beasts stomp in their stalls. Let the ladies paint their toenails scarlet. Muster the troops. We have places to get to, now that the streets are cleared of snow. You never crash if you go full tilt. Brown penny. My head bursts with flowers.

  AND TODAY IS Máire’s fortieth birthday, too, which she hates my mentioning, thinking that at forty she’s over the hill. And we’re together at Gunn’s, a half restaurant, half bar, all-Irish dive where the customers sing their hearts out at the drop of a hat. I don’t mean karaoke. That’s too modern and too easy for Gunn’s. The folks who come here are as old as I am, or young people with old souls, and they know the words to all the songs they want to sing. The piano player at the chipped and scarred and tinny upright is Rory, a guy my age, who, they say, was left in a basket at Gunn’s and decided never to leave. Rory plays everything in the key of C. It’s the only key he knows. Still, when anyone asks him to play this or that, he always asks, What key? The person says F-sharp. Rory nods, and plays it in C.

  Rory! I call from our table. Máire cringes, attempting to disappear beneath her hands clasped over her head. Do you know “Happy Birthday to You”? I ask him. I want to serenade my daughter. Why? he says. Don’t you like her? In B-flat major minor, I say to him. Maestro, if you please? Right! shouts Rory, And I belt out “Happy Birthday” in the key of C, quite beautifully, if I say so myself, and there’s not a damp eye in the house. Everyone joins in, and blushing Máire is obliged to stand and curtsy. What a beauty! shouts Rory from the piano bench. Am I not! I say. And the whole place boos.

  What’d you get me for my birthday, Murph? She puts on her little girl Christmas face. I got you this necklace, I say, reaching into my pocket and displaying a string of antique pearls set in a purple velvet case. Her eyes widen. They belonged to your mother, I say. They did? she says, then searches my expression. She always knows when I’m lying. No, they didn’t, she says. Well, I say, they belonged to somebody’s mother. Anyway, they’re beautiful, she says. Thank you, Murph.

  I also wrote a poem for you. Oh! Read it, Murph? Don’t mind if I do, I say, and take out my little notepad.

  Of all the fauna and the flora

  No one’s as lovely as my Máire.

  Oh, Jesus! she says.

  Lovely at twenty, lovely at thirty

  Lovely when she’s talking dirty.

  May I go home now? She pretends to reach for her coat.

  Lovely at thirty-five, lovely at thirty-nine,

  Lovely drinking beer, ale, whiskey, or wine.

  She sticks her thumb down her throat, as if trying to gag.

  Lovely if you call her Shorty . . .

  Oh no, you don’t, she says. Don’t you dare.

  Lovely still, at the ripe old age of . . .

  She drops her napkin in my drink.

  I don’t know what you’re complaining about, I tell her. You’re a spring chicken. It’s me who’s old. You’re telling me, she says. Old, wicked, drooling. I’m not drooling, I protest. And with all that, I say, you have to admit that I’m the cutest seventy-two-year-old you ever saw. True, she says. You’re cute the way otters are cute. Cute face, mean spirit. I wouldn’t mind being an otter, I say. Lie on your back all day, eating and dreaming. So different from your own life, says my ungrateful child.

  Otter dreams, I say. What do you suppose an otter dreams about? Besides herring? says Máire. Maybe learning to swim on its tummy. I brighten at her idea. Let’s write a children’s book, I suggest. The Otter Who Learns the Breaststroke. How would the book begin? she says. I lean over the table toward her. One day, I say in my best children’s book tone, the sweetest, prettiest, smartest lady otter in all the world, woke up, stretched at the sunlight, and exclaimed, It’s my birthday! Shit! I’m forty! Máire has her Irish up now. You are going to get it, she s
ays, rising from her chair. Time to tickle the world’s oldest, meanest otter.

  She knows I can’t stand to be tickled. I rise from my chair at once, and move away from her around the table, Máire in hot pursuit. Still circling, I call to Rory, “Happy Birthday” one more time, me boy? What key? he asks. Becky Sharp flat Asia minor, I tell him. You bet! says Rory, hitting a major chord in middle C. And once more the entire joint bursts out singing “Happy Birthday to You” to my beloved daughter, who stands in surrender with her arms at her sides, and helplessly laughs.

  DO YOU BELIEVE in unsaid things? She takes my arm as we walk together in the littered park across the street from her house. She phoned me on her own, because she wants to talk without Jack around. It’s been a while since my dinner at their house, and I am beginning to hope that I was out of a job, that Jack had mounted the courage to tell her his fatal news without my help. Unsaid things, Murph. Do you believe in them?

  I deal in things unsaid, Sarah. It’s my meat.

  You do, yes. But you say them, if you see what I mean. You write them. And as soon as you do, they’re no longer unsaid. I’m talking about the things no one says, ever. Not poets. Not anyone.

  Then how would we know they exist? I ask her. By unsaid do you also mean unthought?

  Yes. Unthought. Or maybe unused. A realm of reality that lives between the nodes of reality.

  What do you have in mind, Sarah? You’re troubled by something. Yes?

  I’m troubled by lots of things, Murph. By sightlessness. By Jack. I know he wants to tell me he’s dying. Or he wants you to tell me, so that you or he will feel you did the right thing.

  The right thing?

  The kind thing, she says. Kindness is often one of the unsaid things.

  Sarah? I study her composure. She is wearing a light raincoat and a bright red-and-yellow scarf. I ask her, Should I apologize that Jack and I plotted to tell you his diagnosis?

  Never, she says, patting my arm. But it makes me feel more alone, more lonely. The worst part of being blind, Murph, is the loneliness, you know. She takes a few more steps deliberately, as if she were timing what she would say next. No, I don’t mind the plotting. What I mind is that it isn’t true.

  What isn’t true?

  Jack isn’t dying, Murph. He isn’t even sick. She turns her head to me. He has someone else. He’s had someone else for shy of a year. He wants to leave me and go live with her. But he knows he can’t walk out on a blind wife. He wants me to think he’s dying, so I’ll forgive him his trespasses. You’re just part of a larger story, a scam, in which he will say something like he needs to go and die alone, like an elephant. I’ll be in mourning and he’ll be off with Brunhilde, or whatever her name is. I really don’t know what he has in mind. He’s out of control, not used to dealing in a world of conflicted emotions, so he comes up with a wild plan involving you.

  She says all this without a single gulp or change of inflection, in a voice neither calm nor angry, more like someone announcing a bus schedule.

  Jack has found someone else, Murph. It happens. He doesn’t know how to express his feelings about it. Fact is, he doesn’t know how to express his feelings for her, or for me, which he thinks amounts to a betrayal of me. And, in a way, it does. But they are perfectly reasonable feelings for someone in love, even though he’s no longer in love with me. Yet he still loves me. Habit? He’s flailing. You were caught in the flail. He doesn’t know what to call what he’s feeling and neither do I. No one does. Right, Murph? Which is why I asked you if you believed in unsaid things.

  I WISH I COULD tell you that this was the first time I’d been snookered, but it happens all the time. It may be me, the way I was made. Máire detected it right off. Most daughters do, when it comes to dads. They say that every girl child, as soon as she is born, looks up through the film on her eyes, sees her father and thinks, Sucker. I overplay the part. Or it may have some connection with being a poet—the sort of willed innocence we boyos use to regard everything, no matter how often we have seen it, as a wonder, a bright miracle. Still, I’d never been snookered the way Jack did it to me. A cold-blooded piece of work in the first place, telling someone you’re dying when you’re not. And then making me his unwitting coconspirator in the hoodwinking of his blind wife, just so he could run off with some doxie. Jesus, Mary, and What’s-his-name.

  So I set out to find old Jack, to give him a piece of my mind, which in my state of mental health was a risky donation. But At Swim-Two-Birds is the only place I knew to look, and no one had seen him there. Jimmy doesn’t even remember him, which makes me wonder if Jack had been in the bar just that one day, specifically to find me. It hardly takes a Sherlock Holmes to figure out where Murph does his drinking. It occurs to me—too late, of course—that I do not know what Jack does for a living, or where he works. I consider asking Sarah, but there was something about the melancholy cool, the profound resignation with which she had told me what Jack was up to, that suggested I leave her be. She had wanted to be up front with me, so that I wouldn’t be implicated in Jack’s lie. It was a decent thing to do.

  With no choice but to cool my heels, I do just that. And the Jack and Sarah affair is supplanted by things in my control. William and I have our next Central Park adventure, that turns into a near-disaster, something I want to forget, and I don’t say that often. Dr. Spector schedules me for a brain scan. I try to put it off by claiming that my scurvy is acting up again, also my rickets, but Máire says she’s going to march me over to the scan herself. I work on the poem to Oona, but it is getting away from me. Sometimes that happens with a poem. You start out writing tight, and then you overthink the thing, and it gets bigger and bigger without getting better. I plan various ways of eliminating Perachik, such as planting a bomb in his Mets cap. But it might not kill him.

  Then one afternoon Sarah calls, her voice uncharacteristically shaky. Jack’s disappeared. She has not seen him since the day she and I had our walk in the park. I ask all the predictable questions about who might know where he is. His family? His boss? There is no family, far as she knows. And, strange to report, she knows next to nothing about Jack’s employment, except that he’s a bouncer in some club in New Jersey. She doesn’t even know what city. Now that she thinks about it, the club could be in Pennsylvania, or Delaware, or upstate, some town near the Hudson. I realize how odd this sounds, she says. But Jack always was evasive about his work, because he thought I’d look down on it, whereas you know, Murph, I don’t look down or up at anything. Her attempt to leaven the matter.

  Have you called the cops? I ask her. They told her that Jack could not be considered a missing person officially unless she came to the stationhouse and made a formal report. When told of her condition, a lieutenant offered to come to her place but advised her to wait a few more days. In his experience with these matters, he said, husbands and wives come and go. That was a few days ago. Now I’m scared, Sarah says. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have bothered you, Murph. Fact is, we don’t have many friends, Jack and I. And the few we have I wouldn’t turn to. My folks are useless snobs. They’ll be glad that Jack’s gone. When I ask her, why turn to me, she says she thinks I’m someone she can trust. And she’s right, I guess. Only, I see that instead of being a casual visitor to Sarah’s isolated world, I’m becoming a key player. I’m not sure I like this role. Would you? Connections with strangers means connections with strangers.

  THEN AGAIN, what do I know of Jack? Sarah says he doesn’t know himself. Does anyone? Yeats congratulated Synge for writing of Aran, and expressing “a life that never found expression.” What life anywhere has found expression? The true life, I mean, if there is such a thing. The island I was born on is no more hidden than the island I live on now. What do we know? What do we ever know?

  In my thirties, I knew a writer named Harkness who was so hail-fellow, so welcoming and exuberant that you were made glad just to see his smiling face. The kind of guy you want to catch sight of when you walk into a crowded bar, and his han
d shoots up when he sees you—Hey, Murph!—and he beckons you to join a gang of strangers to whom he introduces you all ’round, and makes you feel as if you belong. That sort of guy.

  So one day out of the blue, Harkness disappears from the scene. Poof. Without a by-your-leave he packs a few clothes and takes off from his apartment on St. Marks Place for the island of St. Martin, where he gets a job washing dishes in a dive near the docks. He leaves his writing behind, and his books, not to mention a wife of longstanding and two kids under ten. Now, this is the kindest guy in the world, I’ll remind you. He once gave his whole book advance to the daughter of someone he hardly knew, so that she could go to Juilliard. And it wasn’t as if he had money to burn, either. ’Twas just the way he was. Anyway, off he goes to wash dishes in St. Martin, and live in a ramshackle room above a tobacco store. No words of explanation to anyone. His wife follows him down there, and he greets her warmly and calmly and says he’s never coming back. Friends visit him from time to time, and he gives them the same treatment. No number of pleas can make a dent. He’s where he wants to be, he says.

  Then one day, he wants to be somewhere else. His fellow workers in the dive report that just after sunup one morning, Harkness takes out a skiff and points it toward the deep Caribbean, never to return. Assumed drowned. I am telling you, there was no one on Earth better with people than Harkness. Yet on one vague tropical morning, he does without anyone. The outgoing Harkness goes out forever. What do we know? What do we ever know? People with dementia: Do they know who they were?

  OR ARE YOU WONDERING if I’m dreaming all this up? The way I dream up? Think about it, you say to yourself. We’re getting the whole story from Murph. No one else remembers seeing Jack but Murph, not even the bartender Jimmy. Just like old Murph. The cockamamie tale of Jack and Sarah? Wise Sarah and unfaithful Jack? Oh, and Sarah’s blind. That’s a nice touch. The old crock is talking through his hat. Or worse, he really is bonkers, just as Máire fears, and he doesn’t know when something is happening or when he’s shooting the breeze. The estimable Dr. Spector said as much. He is as capable of forgetting what did not occur as he is of forgetting the eggs.