The wives treated us coolly the rest of the way in the car, talking only to each other and making comments on the Irish and how you can’t trust them with a simple task like crossing a street with a wedding cake, how these Irish couldn’t have one or two drinks and be content till the reception, oh, no, they had to talk and treat each other to rounds till they’re in such a condition you couldn’t send them to the grocery for a quart of milk.
Look at him, Joyce said, and when I saw Brian dozing away with his chin on his chest I nodded off while the wives went on with their lamentation about the Irish in general and this day in particular, Alberta saying, Everyone warned me that the Irish are great to go out with but never marry them. I would have defended my race and told her how her Yankee ancestors had nothing to be proud of the way they treated the Irish with those signs everywhere that said, No Irish Need Apply, except that I was weary from the strain of being married by a man with a lisp while I carried Byron’s green umbrella and my heavy responsibility as groom and host at Diamond Dan O’Rourke’s. If I hadn’t slumped with the weariness I would have reminded her how her ancestors hanged women right and left for being witches, how they were a dirty-minded lot, rolling their eyes in shock and horror at the mention of sex, but having a grand time between their thighs listening in court to hysterical Puritan maidens claiming the devil appeared in various forms and frolicked with them in the woods and how they became so devoted to him all decency went out the window. I would have told Alberta how the Irish never carried on like that. In the whole history of Ireland only one witch was hanged and she was probably English and deserved it. And, just to clinch it, I would have told her the first witch to be hanged in New England was Irish and they did it to her because she said her prayers in Latin and wouldn’t stop.
Instead of saying all this I fell asleep till Alberta shook me and told me we were there. Joyce insisted on taking the cake from Brian. She didn’t want him to fall forward on the stairs and crush the cake entirely and she still had hopes of reconstructing it so that we’d have some semblance of a cake and people could sing, The bride cuts the cake.
People arrived and there was eating, drinking, dancing and misunderstandings between all the couples, married and unmarried. Frank Schwake wouldn’t talk to his wife, Jean. Jim Collins quarreled in a corner with his wife, Sheila. There was still a coolness between Alberta and me and between Brian and Joyce. Other couples were affected and there were islands of tension all over the apartment. The night would have been ruined except for the way we all united against an outside danger.
One of Alberta’s friends, a German named Dietrich, drove off in his Volkswagen to replenish the beer supply and when he returned there was trouble with the owner of a Buick he had backed into. Someone told me about the trouble outside and since I was the bridegroom it was my duty to make peace. The Buick man was a giant and poking his fist into the face of Alberta’s friend. When I stepped between them he let loose with his big punch. His arm swung around the back of my head, into Dietrich’s eye and we all fell to the ground. We wrestled a bit, one with another, no one a bit particular, till Schwake, Collins and McPhillips separated us with the Buick man threatening to tear Dietrich’s head from his shoulders. When we dragged the German inside I discovered my trouser knee was ripped, the kneecap bleeding. The knuckles of my right hand bled, too, from being scraped along the ground.
Upstairs Alberta started to cry, telling me I was ruining the whole night. My blood boiled a bit and I told her I was only trying to be a peacemaker and it wasn’t my fault if I was knocked down by that baboon next door. Besides, I was helping her German friend and she should be grateful.
The argument would have continued if Joyce hadn’t stepped in to call everyone to the table for the cutting of the cake. When she slipped off the covering cloth Brian laughed and kissed her for being such a genius of an artist you’d never know this cake was scooped off the street a short time ago. The little bride and groom were secure though his head wobbled and fell and I told Joyce, Uneasy lies the groom that wears a head. Everyone sang, The bride cuts the cake, the groom cuts the cake, and Alberta looked mollified even though we couldn’t cut proper slices and the cake had to be dished out in chunks.
Joyce said she was making coffee and Alberta said that would be nice but Brian said we should have one more drink to toast the newlyweds and I agreed and Alberta got so angry she ripped the wedding ring from her finger and threw it out the window though she remembered suddenly that was her grandmother’s wedding ring from early in the century and now it was out the window, God knows where in Queens and what was she going to do, it was all my fault, and her great mistake for marrying me. Brian said we’d have to find that ring. We didn’t have a flashlight but we were able to light up the night with matches and cigarette lighters as we crawled across the lawn below Brian’s window till Dietrich shouted he had the ring and everyone forgave him for stirring up trouble with the big Buick man. Alberta refused to replace the ring on her finger. She’d keep it in her purse till she was sure of this marriage. She and I took a taxi with Jim Collins and Sheila. They would drop us at our apartment in Brooklyn and continue into Manhattan. Sheila wasn’t talking to Jim and Alberta wasn’t talking to me but as we swung into State Street I grabbed her and told her, I’m going to consummate this marriage tonight.
She said, Oh, consummate my ass, and I said, That’ll do.
The taxi stopped and I climbed from the backseat I had shared with Sheila and Alberta. Jim got out of the seat by the driver and came to where I stood on the sidewalk. He intended to say good night and get back in with Sheila but Alberta pulled the door shut and the taxi drove away.
Christ Almighty, said Collins, this is your goddam wedding night, McCourt. Where is your bride? Where is mine?
We climbed the stairs to my apartment, found a six-pack of Schlitz in the refrigerator, sat on the couch, the two of us, and watched television Indians drop from the bullets of John Wayne.
46
In the summer of 1963 Mam called to say she had a letter from my father. He claimed he was a new man, that he hadn’t had a drink in three years and worked now as a chef in a monastery.
I told her if my father was a monastery chef the monks must have been on a permanent fast.
She didn’t laugh and that said she was troubled. She read from the letter where he said he was coming with a three-week return ticket on the Queen Mary and how he looked forward to the day when we could all be together again, he and she sharing a bed and a grave for he knew and she knew that whatever God hath joined let no man put asunder.
She sounded uncertain. What should she do? Malachy had already told her, Why not? She wanted to know what I thought. I put it back to her. What do you think? After all, this was the man who put her through hell in New York and Limerick and now he wants to sail to her side, a safe harbor in Brooklyn.
I don’t know what to do, she said.
She didn’t know what to do because she was lonely in that dingy place on Flatbush Avenue and she was now illustrating that Irish saying, Contention is better than loneliness. She could take back this man or, at fifty-five, face the years alone. I told her I’d meet her for coffee at Junior’s Restaurant.
She was there before me, puffing and gasping on a strong American cigarette. No, she wouldn’t have tea. The Americans can send a man into space but they can’t make a decent cup of tea, so she’d have coffee and some of that nice cheesecake. She drew on the cigarette, sipped the coffee and told me she didn’t know under God what to do. She said the whole family was falling apart with Malachy separated from his wife, Linda, and the two small children, Michael off to California with his wife, Donna, and their child, Alphie disappeared into the Bronx. She said she could have a nice life for herself in Brooklyn with the bingo and the odd meeting of the Limerick Ladies’ Association in Manhattan and why should she let the man from Belfast upset that life.
I drank my coffee and ate my strudel knowing she’d never admit she was lonely th
ough she might have been thinking, Ah, sure if it wasn’t for the drink he wouldn’t be bad to live with at all, at all.
I told her what I was thinking. Well, she said, he’d be company for me if he’s not drinking, if he’s a new man. We could take walks in Prospect Park and he could meet me after the bingo.
All right. Tell him to come for the three weeks and we’ll see if he’s a new man.
On the way back to her apartment she stopped often to press her hand against her chest. ’Tis my heart, she said, going a mile a minute so ’tis.
It must be the cigarettes.
Oh, I don’t know.
Then it must be nervousness over that letter.
Oh, I don’t know. I just don’t know.
At her door I kissed her cold cheek and watched her gasping her way upstairs. My father had put years on her.
When Mam and Malachy went to meet the new man at the pier he arrived so drunk he had to be helped off the ship. The purser told them he had gone wild with the drink and had to be kept in restraint.
I was away that day and when I returned I took the subway to see him at Mam’s apartment but he had gone with Malachy to a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. We drank tea and waited. She said again she didn’t know under God what to do. He was the same lunatic with the drink and all that talk about being a new man was a lie and she was glad he had a three-week return ticket. Still, there was a darkness in her eyes that told me she must have had hopes of a normal family, her man by her side with sons and grandchildren coming to her from all over New York.
They returned from the meeting, Malachy big, red-bearded and sober because of his troubles, my father older and smaller. Malachy had tea. My father said, Och, no, and lay on the couch with his hands joined under his head. Malachy left his tea to stand over him and lecture him. You have to admit you’re an alcoholic. That’s the first step.
Dad shook his head.
Why are you shaking your head? You are an alcoholic and you have to admit it.
Och, no. I’m not an alcoholic like those poor people at the meeting. I don’t drink kerosene.
Malachy threw up his hands and returned to his tea at the table. We didn’t know what to say to each other in the presence of this man on the couch, husband, father. I had my memories of him, mornings by the fire in Limerick, his stories and songs, his cleanliness, neatness and sense of order, the way he helped us with our schoolwork, his insistence on obedience and attention to our religious duties, all destroyed by his payday madness when he threw his money around the pubs buying pints for every hanger-on while my mother despaired by the fire knowing the next day she’d have to stick her hand out for charity.
I knew in the days that followed that if blood called to blood I’d drift to my father’s side of the family. My mother’s people had often said in Limerick I had the odd manner of my father and a strong streak of the North in my character. They may have been right because whenever I went to Belfast I felt at home.
The night before he left he asked if we’d like to go for a walk. Mam and Malachy said no, they were tired. They had spent more time with him than I and must have been weary of his shenanigans. I said yes because this was my father and I was a nine-year-old thirty-three-year-old.
He put on his cap and we walked down Flatbush Avenue. Och, he said, it’s a very warm kind of a night.
’Tis.
Very warm, he said. You’d be in danger of drying up on a night like this.
Ahead of us was the Long Island Railroad Station ringed with bars for the thirsty commuters. I asked if he remembered the bars.
Och, he said, why should I remember such places?
Because you drank in them and we searched for you.
Och, well, I might have worked in one or two when times were hard for the bread and meat they gave me to take home to you childer.
He remarked again on the heat of the night and surely it wouldn’t do us any harm to cool ourselves in one of these places.
I thought you didn’t drink.
That’s right. Gave it up.
Well, what about the ship? You had to be carried off.
Och, that was the seasickness. We’ll have something here for the coolness.
While we drank our beer he told me my mother was a fine woman and I should be good to her, that Malachy was a fine big lad though you’d hardly know him with that red beard and where did it come from, that he was sorry to hear I had married a Protestant though it wasn’t too late for her to convert nice girl that she was and he was happy to hear I was a teacher like all his sisters in the North and would there be any harm in having another beer?
No, there wouldn’t be any harm and there wasn’t any harm in the beers we had up and down Flatbush Avenue and when we arrived back at my mother’s apartment I left him at the door because I didn’t want to see the looks on the faces of Mam and Malachy that would accuse me of leading my father astray or vice versa. He wanted to continue the drinking up toward Grand Army Plaza but my guilt told me to say no. He was supposed to leave next day on the Queen Mary though he hoped my mother would say, Ah, stay. Sure we’ll find some way of getting along.
I said that would be lovely and he said we’d all be together again and things would be better because he was a new man. We shook hands and I left.
Next morning Mam called and said, He went pure mad, so he did.
What did he do?
You brought him home drunk as a lord.
He wasn’t drunk. He had a few beers.
He had more than that and I was here by myself with Malachy gone into Manhattan. A bottle of whiskey he had, your father, that he brought from the ship and I had to call the cops and he’s gone now, bag and baggage, and sailed away today on the Queen Mary because I called Cunard and they told me, oh, yes, they had him on board and they’d be watching closely for any signs of the lunacy he came with.
What did he do?
She wouldn’t tell me and she didn’t have to because it was easy to guess. He probably tried to get into bed with her and that was not part of her dream. She hinted and suggested that if I hadn’t spent hours with him in saloons he would have behaved himself and wouldn’t be on the Queen Mary now heading out into the Atlantic. I told her his drinking wasn’t my fault but she was sharp with me. Last night was the last straw, she said, and you were part of it.
47
For teachers Fridays are bright. You leave the school with a bag filled with papers to read and correct, books to read. This weekend you will surely catch up with all those uncorrected, unmarked papers. You don’t want to let them pile up in the closets like Miss Mudd so that decades hence a young teacher will pounce on them to keep his classes busy. You will take the papers home, pour a glass of wine, stack Duke Ellington, Sonny Rollins and Hector Berlioz on the phonograph and try to read a hundred and fifty student compositions. You know that some don’t care what you do with their work as long as you give them a decent grade so that they can pass and get on with real life in their shops. Others fancy themselves as writers and want their papers back corrected and graded high. The class Romeos would like you to comment on their papers and read them aloud so that they can bask in the admiring glances of the girls. The ones who don’t care are sometimes interested in the same girls and verbal threats are passed from desk to desk because the ones who don’t care are weak in written expression. If a boy is a good writer you have to be careful about praising him too much because of the danger of accidents on the stairs. The ones who don’t care hate goody-goodies.
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