I Dream Alone

by Gabriel Walsh

  Before I had time to introduce myself to the stranger he had with amazing indifference – at least from my perspective – sat down on the sofa and lit up a cigarette. The second thing I noticed about him was that he wasn’t wearing any shoes or socks. He did seem to be very much at home and he greeted me as if I was his brother. My shyness, which I considered to be an Irish disease, soon overwhelmed me and I felt as the seconds passed that I was going to melt and evaporate off the face of the earth. To stop myself from fading and vanishing into the wallpaper I managed to sit on one of the two armchairs Muriel had in her room. As I was about to address the barefooted stranger, Muriel emerged from I could only surmise to be the bathroom. She was wearing her nightgown and made no effort to apologise for it. My plan to embrace her with the element of surprise had vanished with my confidence. I sensed I had walked into a situation that was not sympathetic to my feelings. My mind was ringing the alarm bells of ‘ambush’. My new-found confidence since I finished summer school instantly evaporated and I wanted to run for cover. Before I could organise a thought on how to retreat, Muriel approached me and kissed me on both cheeks. This kind of formal greeting I didn’t want. It told me in no uncertain terms that Muriel’s lips were off limits and, for a moment at least, my mind detached itself from whatever rationale it was heretofore attached to. And for the briefest of time I felt bereft of the ability to act responsibly. In a moment of what I imagined to be total paralysis I stood pained and even frightened.

  I then heard the man, Mr. No Socks, calling to Muriel. “Who’s the dude?”

  Muriel turned to him and introduced him as her new house guest. Surprisingly she even began to tell him about our relationship in high school and Tarrytown. She told him we even acted in a high school play together and jokingly added that we were destined to become lights on Broadway. When she got into telling him about my journey from Ireland to the castle in Tarrytown I asked her to stop. Her barefooted house guest wasn’t showing any interest in my past and it was clear that he was becoming uncomfortable listening to Muriel wax on about me. Sensing my catatonic state, Muriel asked her house guest if she could have a bit of privacy with me. Her guest jumped over the sofa and made a hasty exit.

  The prolonged silence that followed told its own story. Both of us knew that the situation explained itself. I had never felt so helpless and thought for a moment that if I told Muriel about my encounter with Mrs. Axe she might see me differently. Would a confession from me change or alter the situation I found myself in? Would it mean anything to Muriel if I admitted to her what had happened the night the police sergeant took me home and placed me in the company of Mrs. Axe who was herself intoxicated that night? A gush of guilt came over me and I began to blame myself for what was happening now between Muriel and me. I had in my own way, sober or not, strayed from our private and youthful sense of idealism.

  Before I could come to terms with my inner confusion Muriel took a deep breath, thanked me for making the journey,and uttered the words “I’m in love!”

  I naïvely responded, “With him?”

  She replied instantly andcalmly. “Yes. David is an artist. His work is really innovative. A bit like . . .” She stopped for a moment.

  I wondered if she was going to compare him with Picasso or Monet or Cézanne but she didn’t.

  “Jackson Pollock is the closest I can describe . . . him as being like . . .” She hesitated again as if to retract her comparison. Finally with a sense of impatience, she added, “He lives off campus. Well, he used to in any case. I met him at one of his exhibits in town.”

  I felt I had been hit by a bolt of lightning. A starving artist was fodder for Muriel’s charitable and creative instincts and I knew that her proclivity for ambiguity was non-existent and when she went in any direction she didn’t look back to see if she’d made the wrong turn.

  I dropped back onto the sofa and practically cried my eyes out. After a bout of weeping I got up and began to punch the walls to rid myself of the anger and pain I was experiencing. As I pounded on the wall Mr.No Socksreturned to investigate. I looked at him for a moment and had all kinds of pugilistic thoughts but I was able to dismiss them by forcing myself to believe that Muriel had just gone off on a new artistic adventure and a part of me loved her even more for being direct, honest and even brave. As I fumbled with thoughts as to why she had changed course in so short a time, Muriel approached me, held my hand and said something to the effect that she was “obeying her heart and was sorry if she hurt me”.

  While she was explaining the genesis of her emotional U-turn I retrieved the book of poetry from my back pocket and placed it on the coffee table. Muriel impulsively picked it up and randomly leafed through the pages. I hoped she’d come across a poem, perhaps even one of her favourites, and recite it but she didn’t. While she stared at page after page I took her withdrawal and silence to be her way of saying goodbye. This brought on another wave of insecurity and anxiety that almost obliterated me completely. When I tried to identify in my mind where the unbearable pain was coming from I couldn’t. It had converged on me like a massive rainstorm with each raindrop a spike piercing my heart. The anguish that flooded my mind had in many respects rendered me helpless but somehow I mustered the will to leave the room as quietly as I could. I knew Muriel wanted it that way.

  In less than a minute I was back on the highway, heading back to Tarrytown and the castle.

  * * *

  When I began again the morning duty of bringing Mrs. Axe her breakfast she seemed genuinely concerned about my break-up with Muriel. I hadn’t told her till she inquired about my visit to Vermont. Communicating aspects of my personal life to her always helped me regain a bit of self-confidence.

  Mrs. Axe began to encourage me again to write home but I told her that most of my family had relocated to England. And my mother and father had separated and separately moved in with different siblings in England. I had only found out about it via a neighbour who lived on the same street in Dublin. With the exception of my sister Rita, as far as I was concerned, all my brothers and sisters behaved as if they were in a prison camp and separately and secretly making plans to escape from it.

  After the debacle with Muriel, my morning talks with Mrs. Axe became a more and more important event for me. I looked forward to getting her breakfast. I was even impatient to see her and observe how she readied herself for the breakfast tray when I placed it in front of her every morning. She always had a smile on her face and would invite me to sit next to her for a minute or two while she looked over the contents of the tray.

  Every morning while I sat in front of her I hoped she would mention and remind me of the night she leaned over me while I lay half drunk in my bed. She didn’t. She acted as if it had never occurred and I was simply too afraid to even remotely touch upon it. Mrs. Axe seemed not to want to revisit the night she brought coffee to my bedroom but every day it silently played a role when the conversation turned to my personal and social life. Our bedside conversations were sometimes interrupted by early-morning phone calls coming from who knows where.

  In a very short period of time and after spending so many mornings sitting by her bed, I found myself wanting to be in her presence more and more. So much so she was not only omnipresent in my everyday reality, she was also beginning to inhabit my dreams.

  * * *

  The external membrane of my existence was smooth and polished and impervious to the claws of poverty but inwardly and perhaps too secretly I was often feeling close to turmoil. One reason for this was that almost all my high school classmates had gone off to college and left Tarrytown. I did meet up with some of them occasionally when they came home for a visit but the contact was minimal. My visits to the pub and the ritual of drinking two beers with Frank Dillon usually ended with me swearing never to drink again. It didn’t take long for me to realise and accept that two beers for me was one too many. The coincidental ritual of occasions when I’d have two beers always seemed to be punctuated by the appe
arance of Sergeant Gilroy. It only occurred to me later that the bartender and the policeman were in cahoots. What I should have known and paid attention to but didn’t, was that Mrs. Axe had a pact with Sergeant Gilroy to keep me under surveillance whenever I entered the bar. The bartender’s phone call to Sergeant Gilroy, made in the back room, completed this caring and innocent conspiracy.

  * * *

  To keep my mind occupied Mrs. Axe suggested I spend more time during the day at the office, where she had arranged for me to have a desk next to a few senior executives. She still clung to the belief that if I was close to one or two of the vice presidents I was likely to pick up on some of the details of what went on in the running of the company. She also arranged for me to be paid a weekly salary of sixty dollars from the company payroll – a raise of twenty on my former salary – which was essentially used for pocket money. If I needed extra money she told me to just ask her. With almost no expenses, other than filling my car up with petrol, I rarely had a situation where I needed more cash.

  For two weeks, after serving her breakfast, I went to the office and did my best to be an intern in the world of finance. A read of the Wall Street Journal wasn’t mandatory but it was required when it came to the coffee break. The paper didn’t appeal to me but at the morning coffee break I did listen to those who read it. The financial news of the day was debated back and forth for about fifteen minutes in the staff lounge and there was very little agreement on what upstart company or product was worth investing in. After the morning coffee interval I delivered financial statistics and morning newspapers from one desk to another. In the afternoons I collected office mail and dropped it off at the Tarrytown post office. When the mail wasn’t available to be posted I operated a machine that addressed envelopes.

  On the rare evening when I stayed home or when Mr. and Mrs. Axe sat down to eat at the same time, I ate with them. Sometimes this took place in the kitchen when Pat had the night off and Mrs. Axe went about cooking dinner herself.

  * * *

  At least once a week and usually just before noon, I now drove Mrs. Axe into Manhattan where she conducted business from an office at 730 Fifth Avenue. I got a visceral pleasure from driving her big new Cadillac. The car was almost as big as my bedroom in the castle. Mrs. Axe used her time in the car to read reports, sift through papers and write notes and reminders to her staff both in Tarrytown and New York City. On the drive into Manhattan most of the chat was brief and perfunctory. We hardly talked or said much to each other. In the city I would drop her off outside the office entrance on 56th Street and park the car in a designated garage a few blocks away. After parking the car I had the option of going to the office and chatting with the staff there, as well as doing whatever chore Mrs. Axe had prearranged to keep me occupied. When I wasn’t expected at the office I wandered about Midtown. The odd time I would take in a movie or if it was a Wednesday I’d go to a theatre matinee. If there was an important exhibit at any of the major museums in Manhattan Mrs. Axe usually supplied me with a ticket. A few times when her workday ended early I’d accompany her to the Museum of Modern Art, which was only a few blocks away from her office. Jokingly, while viewing an exhibit she’d remark that her physical stature would be ideal for an artist who shunned lines in favour of circles. Body-wise and perhaps from an artist’s point of view, Mrs. Axe’s shape and body was more bouncy than bendable.

  At approximately six and sometimes seven in the evening I’d pick up Mrs. Axe and drive back to Tarrytown. Infrequently her calendar required her to stay in the city longer than the already usual late evening hour. Sometimes she’d meet with business executives for dinner at the Metropolitan Club on Fifth Avenue. Such events required that I be available to pick her up at the club after the meetings and drive her home. Whether it was because of fatigue, or over-imbibing at the club or just a sense of letting go of her professional responsibilities Mrs. Axe, after sitting in next to me, would change from the tireless driven businesswoman to being more like a girl going on her first date. On the journey back home our conversations were varied but for the most part they had to do with what was happening in the arts. We talked and sometimes argued about plays, painting, music and opera. She was pleased and impressed that I had been paying attention to what Mr. Axe had been dishing out to me in our walking chats.

  I routinely checked the clock on the car dashboard when I pulled into the driveway. One evening, after a long day in the city, the clock indicated the time was some minutes past ten. When I was halfway up the long twisting driveway Mrs. Axe asked me to stop the car which I did. She then asked me to turn off the headlights which I also did. She then reached towards me and turned off the ignition. For a second or two we both sat in total darkness, parked halfway up the driveway. In the darkness and isolation I could hear myself and Mrs. Axe breathing. Then, and as it had happened before, Mrs. Axe moved her body to give herself room, bent downwards to my lap and ceremoniously unzipped my trousers. Once again she held me gently in her hands and with the warmest of breath caressing my genitals she placed her mouth over me. My excitement was instant and in an even briefer period of time I was sexually exploding. I kept my eyes open and stared into the abyss of darkness and wondered again if either one of us could be a witness to what was happening. As on the previous occasion, because of the position we were both in, I couldn’t see or look directly into Mrs. Axe’s eyes. As I disintegrated with erotic pleasure and excitement Mrs. Axe sat back up in the car and, without looking at me asked, almost in a whisper, if I’d mind walking to the castle on my own. She said she would drive the car the rest of the way and park it outside the front door. Normally and routinely I used the back entrance because it was a more convenient pathway to my place of residence. After absorbing the implication of Mrs. Axe’s request, I stepped out of the car and began walking up the long driveway in the dark towards the castle. In the darkness the castle’s silhouette stood majestically and seductively under the late night sky. As I approached the back entrance and turned the heavy black doorknob I heard Mr. Axe calling and complaining to Mrs. Axe about her tardiness. As quietly as I could I made my way up the marble steps, entered my room and wanting to stay in the darkness I fell onto my bed without turning on the lights.

  * * *

  Mrs. Axe informed me that Father Leo Clifford was back in New Jersey and, according to her, he was in need of a respite and had called and asked if he could visit. She gladly invited him and a few business associates to dinner later that week. She informed me that Father Clifford had become a very popular pastor in the community of Paterson. So much so he was assigned the parish as his permanent parish. The day before the small dinner party she asked me if I would take her car and drive to Paterson New Jersey and bring Father Leo to the castle. I happily accepted the assignment. It had been some time since I had seen Father Leo and I looked forward to being in his company again. Unlike many of the priests I had met when I was growing up in Dublin, Father Leo didn’t overtly act as if he had Godon his side. He was confident enough to rely on his own humanity and that distinguished him from many of his fellow travellers. Remembering our previous wrangling about my religious observances, I was confident I could now handle the whole subject better should he choose to probe about it again.

  * * *

  That afternoon I got behind the wheel of the Cadillac, headed south, made my way across the George Washington Bridge and headed further south to Paterson, New Jersey.

  As prearranged, Father Clifford was standing, small black bag in hand, outside the entrance of the priory that was adjacent to a church. I pulled up alongside of him and he jumped in a spritely fashion into the car and sat next to me. He proceeded to bless himself as I started the car up again but I reassured him I was a safe driver. He laughed and said it was his final prayer of the day. By the time I exited the George Washington Bridge and got on the Saw Mill River Parkway heading north towards Tarrytown, my favourite priest had relayed about as much news from Ireland as I could possibly handle. He see
med disappointed that my enthusiasm for the “land of my birth”as he put it, had waned considerably. It wasn’t that I had lost interest in Dublin or anything associated with Ireland. It had more to do with the fact that in Tarrytown I wasn’t living in an Irish enclave and, apart from the Irish parading up Fifth Avenue on Saint Patrick’s Day, I had few opportunities to celebrate Irish culture. Without being asked, I told my priestly friend that my family back in Dublin were now mostly in England. And my mother and father had finally separated and were living indifferent accommodations. When I was asked if the break-up of my parents bothered me I admitted it didn’t. I had never really accepted that they were ever together in a living way.

  Seemingly disappointed with my innocent and unintentional disconnect when I talked about my immediate family, Father Leo predictably turned the conversation to religion. He might well have assumed that a dilution of national chauvinism on my part was concurrent with a disinterest in the religion I was born into. He reminded me as usual of Margaret Burke Sheridan and how she would react if she knew that I was negligent in my sacred duties. He also reminded me that Margaret Sheridan (he didn’t refer to her as Maggie as most people who knew her did) was responsible for me being in America in the first place and it was through her good graces that Mrs. Axe was persuaded to bring me to New York at such an early age. When I didn’t disagree with him on that subject he smiled and I told him about my high school graduation and my break-up with my high school sweetheart. He congratulated me on the graduation and suggested I say a few prayers for Maggie the next time I found myself in a church. He also said she was in his prayers every day of his life and when he was in Dublin he made the pilgrimage to her gravesite. He informed me that Mrs. Axe had paid for a gravestone over Maggie’s burial place with the inscription: “The praises of the Lord I will sing forever.” I told him I looked forward to the day when I could stop by her grave in Dublin and relate to her how my life had turned out since she arranged for me to go to New York.