While we sat on a bench taking in the vista Mrs. Axe mentioned that Father Leo had temporarily returned to Ireland to instruct novices of his religious order in their calling and she would likely not be seeing him for at least the next six months. She joked that Father Leo had apparently converted everybody in Paterson New Jersey. The news that he was far away filled me with a tinge of satisfaction and I was glad that he would not, at least for now or in the near future, be asking me to confess. Without giving it much thought I mentioned that Father Leo had on more than one occasion requested to hear my confession and a few times he seemed to insist on it. When I told Mrs. Axe this she almost swallowed the entire apple she was biting into. The implications of me confessing my ‘sins’ to one of her best friends went from her being shocked to having a big smile on her face. It wasn’t difficult for me to imagine what thoughts went through her mind. After a moment or two of pensive contemplation she turned and looked at me directly. The look in her eyes was definitely a command for me to continue with my story. Confessing to the ‘sins’ of the flesh and naming the person in the confidential and holy ritual of the Catholic Church was something that Mrs. Axe probably never thought about. I reassured her that my obedience to the sacraments had long evaporated and there was no chance on earth that Father Leo would ever hear me confessing to anything. I reiterated that I had stopped going to Confession many months ago and under the pain of death Father Leo would be the last person I’d confess to. Mrs. Axe laughed and then went back to munching on the apple and staring out at the Hudson River in the distance. While her eyes appeared to be focused on the far side of the Hudson River she began to talk once more about her youthful ambition to be a violinist and what classical music meant to her when she was much younger.
“I really never lingered on that part of myself. I wasn’t really that possessed or obsessed or whatever it is that glues one to any or one way of thinking.” She stopped, turned in my direction, looked at me for a split second then went back to what she appeared to be focusing on in her mind. “Margaret Sheridan had it but I don’t.”
Whether it was the fall air or the taste of the apple she was eating that caused her to fall into a sentimental mood I didn’t know or question. She had in the past talked about her youthful artistic impulse even when she wasn’t eating an apple. She admitted to me, although I accepted the fact that she was really talking to herself, that one of the great attractions she had for Maggie Sheridan was the fact that Maggie was totally committed to her art and that she devoted her life to opera and sacrificed just about everything else that might have made her a happier person. Her admiration for Maggie was as palpable as the apple she held in her hand. Sharing reminiscences about Maggie was always a subject we both enjoyed. When we were unable to share a different subject we resorted to talking about our friend the opera diva. But Maggie had been gone from our lives for a considerable time and there was less and less a need or an opportunity to invoke her memory.
When we stopped talking about Maggie we fell into a silence. It was as if both of us were afraid or even unable to talk to each other about each other. The night before when I was intoxicated I was determined to tell her I wanted to go to Los Angeles and throw my fantasy impulses to the wind. I was secure in the fact that I had made a few contacts out there and I would likely not be adrift when I went in search of whatever it was that was pulling at me. I retreated into my mind in search of a statement that would prove I knew what I was talking about and what I was doing. I had trouble finding any.
Amazingly then, and as if I had told her to say it, Mrs. Axe turned to me and recited: “Too long a sacrifice can make a stone of the Heart.”
I practically fell backwards when she quoted the line from a William Butler Yeats poem. Never before had she resorted to poetry or metaphor in our conversations. She loved the theatre and the opera but her affinity for them was essentially passive. When she did debate and argue about the arts it was a sign that she was either intoxicated or happy with something she kept secret and didn’t talk about. Taking time out to discuss the merits of the creative impulse was not a subject she spent much time or energy on. This had always been the domain of Mr. Axe and I took it today that the puzzling person sitting next to me had wanted to talk to me about all kinds of things but couldn’t put it in her own words.
After she quoted the line of the poem to me I knew then and there she knew what I was thinking and what I wanted to do. It was also the first moment that I felt we were the same person with the same wants and wishes at the same time. I sat dumbstruck and became more and more in awe of Mrs. Axe than I had ever been. Feeling more confident in her company than I had since I met her I managed to tell her I planned on leaving Tarrytown and the castle in about a week and that I was going to give living in Los Angelesa try – the implications being that I was going to pursue a career as an actor. Surprising me more than when she recited the poem, Mrs. Axe asked me with a tone of encouragement in her voice to make sure she knew where I could be reached when I settled in a new abode. She also advised me to make sure I had my car serviced as well as fitting it with four new tyres. And with a smile that was almost at the point of evolving into a laugh she advised me to make sure before I took to the road that I had enough money in my pocket as well.
For the next five minutes or so I found myself stretched out across her lap and holding on to her as tightly as I could. Then she gently pushed me aside, got up from the bench and reminded me that we had a date for the opera on Monday night.
* * *
When I pulled the old suitcase from under my bedit was like pulling the skin and skull from the front of my brain and seeing half if not all of my life fall from my head to the floor. The suitcase was old, frayed, tattered and consistent with just about the way my father who originally owned it lived and thought. For a moment I hesitated and wondered if I should even be bothered with it at all. Even though it made no practical sense I decided that for personal and maybe emotional reasons I would take possession of the thing again. When I first opened it the sight of a colourful pair of socks – which had been given to me by my sister Rita when I left Ireland – impacted on meas if I was kneeling in a confession box all over again. I had forgotten all about the socks but as I held them in my hand it occurred to me that I chose to keep them in the suitcase and not wear them in fear of wearing them out. I wanted to keep them as ‘new’ because everything in my past was ‘second-hand’.
The suitcase was lying open like a whale’s mouth and it looked like it wanted to swallow me. I wasn’t confident that what was in my head and my body were going in the same direction. One minute I felt like falling into the suitcase and closing it on top of me. The next moment I felt like pushing it as far away from me as I could. Regardless of whether I could get away from it or fall into it, it brought back images of Dublin and myfamily.
For the most partDublin was a combination of a seminary, a convent and a prison. The prison aspect of it might be attributed to the fact that, because of a close physical resemblance to my father, I innocently but painfullyreminded my mother of the man she married and as a consequence my face was slapped moretimes than it was washed. Being unable to express her anger at her husband my mother vicariously slapped the son who was, as she often blurted out, “The spittin’ image of him!” Yet paradoxically I was in some bizarre and unhealthy way responsible for keeping my parents together.My presence in the house afforded my mother a form of physical therapy. She took her anger out on me because of my resemblance to my father. I was an easy and convenient target for her whenever she felt disappointed in her husband and life in general. In a not-so-obscure way my mother and fatherwere a bit like Medeaand Jason in Euripides’ playMedea. My father displayed his contempt for my mother’s lower position on the social scale by constantly ignoring her presence. My mother in turn reacted by obsessing on the teachings of the Church and bestowing on all of her children a complex of fear and guilt that was grotto in size. Foryears I walked about Dublinand wandered
about my house, not sure if I was being welcomed in or being thrown out, because of my physical resemblance to my father. To say I suffered from an identity complex might well be an understatement. With little clarity that could illuminate my presentat the time orany grasp of a future, I lived in my home like a weed struggling for survival in a bed of concrete. Having been born into a family of ten children I sensed that my brothers and sisters and I were different vegetables growing up in a small and crowded garden.Who was a carrot, a head of cabbage, a turnip, a potato or a weed was anybody’s guess. Each of my siblings appeared to be caught in a traffic jam, all rushing to get out of each other’s way without really knowing where they were going. My home was a bit like a dog pound for stray dogs: five brothers and five sisters each barking and yelping as if they were a threat to each other’s existence, all panicked and anxious to escape the bewildered reality of having been born into a family that never got to know each other.
As I continued to slowly pack the suitcase I began to weaken and had second thoughts about what I was doing.Yet something kept impressing on my brain that I was doing the right thing. I felt secure in the fact that I believed I knew more about what I wanted than what I didn’t want.
To further motivate myself to leave the castle I thought back to the morning when I was working on the breakfast shift in the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin. That part of my life was my compass and I leaned on it whenever I felt apprehensive. What caused the change in direction was when I made the decision to take Maggie Sheridan’s breakfast tray to her room after others shunned and rejected the chore. A reason as to why I took no notice of the warnings about Maggie’s wrath might have had to do with the struggles I had often encountered in my own home with my own family. The lack of fear or even intimidation might easily have been born out of my own family struggles. The task of facing and confronting a disgruntled customer was, as far as I was concerned, bereft of fear. Maggie was a lonely person who had reached the heights in her chosen career but had almost just as quickly descended from the pinnacle of her success and for many years after she exuded loneliness that was embedded in her eyes. She appeared to be looking for something that had been lost since the beginning of time: certainly since the beginning of her time. Having portrayed so many tragic characters in her life she might have felt she had been totally disconnected from any and every human emotion. Seeing her that morning half stretched out on the bedroom floor in the hotel and wrongfully assuming she wanted her breakfast served there presumably triggered a moment of innocence she might not have encountered since she left the operatic world.I had come to know and learn more about her after she died than when she was alive. Had she picked me out to spite other members of the hotel staff or did she want to do something for herself at this stage of her life? Her life on the operatic stage had ceased and her voice was confined to recordings she had made when she was younger and in her prime. Cio-Cio San, the character she sang in Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, was now a faded poster that lined the inside of her large travelling suitcase when she travelled from place to place. Her opera posters and her old travelling trunk that was really the centre of her life didn’t accompany her to the grave. A sad part of Maggie’s life was that her career never afforded her financial independence. Had it not been for the benevolence of the Axes she might well have had to retreat to a convent in Ireland and spend the rest of her days under the care of a charitable clergy.
I was never really sure what my relationship with Maggie truly was. Maybe the beauty and the definition of a relationship is not knowing what it truly is. Unlike many workers at the hotel, I felt comfortable in Maggie’s presence and always believed she was deep down an affectionate person. Her life, as she may have envisioned it, might have in some way, shape or form been reaching back for a connection to her beginnings when she was consigned to a convent in Dublin after both her parents passed away when she was very young. Was I that connection, I wondered to myself as I considered packing the old suitcase. The shadow of the orphan in Maggie might also have reflected in me even though both of us had parents and siblings. Maggie’s parents had died when she was young. Maggie had spent her early years in a convent in Dublin after both her parents passed away. It was there she got picked out by a nun who heard her singing in the convent choir. The nun coached and encouraged Maggie’s singing voice and in many ways gave her the confidence to be a singer when she was left without parents. The nun at the convent was a reassuring presence for Maggie and in no small way did that translate into her being successful later in life. Maggie Sheridan went from singing in Dublin as a young girl, to London when she got a bit older and her voice matured, to Italy and fame at La Scala. In spite of her fame in Italy Maggie always carried around with her the aura that she was essentially alone. No matter what large-brimmed hat she wore or dresses that looked as if they had come out of a recent opera performance, Maggie had that sad and questioning look in her eyes that reflected dissatisfaction with life. It was as if she was still waiting for some part of it to come and claim her. The friendship I had with Maggie, as far as I was concerned, had more to do with lonely souls spontaneously colliding and reaching out to each other.
I then made a hasty decision to return the suitcase to its dark grave under my bed but I changed my mind because the suitcase in its shaggy neglected presence reminded me of my father and his youthful ambitions that were never realised. Memories of my father didn’t and couldn’t exist independent of shades and shadows of my mother in the illusions I suddenly found myself wrapped up in. Paddy couldn’t compliment Molly and she wouldn’t trust him if he did. Molly and Paddy would not be able to handle such a change. Anything that reflected on either of them in a positive way would bring on nightmares to both of them while sleeping in the same old bed at night. Thinking back and half wishing they were in the room with me, I was reminded again of the amount of time and energy my parents devoted to self-deprivation in their lives. It was remarkable in the extreme.
As I forced myself to dwell on past remembrances I wished I could tell my mother that I was leaving home again even though we’d had almost no contact since the day she saw me off at the train station in Dublin four years earlier. By now everything that happened to me in America seemed to pale in comparison to the rush of blood and nerves that was assaulting my brain. I was tempted again to kick the old suitcase back under the bed but I resisted the urge. The cold hungry days in Dublin, the sadistic Christian Brothers and priests who liked to slap my face, seemed unimportant but still close.
This day, feeling somewhat insecure about my decision to leave the castle, I found myself adrift between the conflicting thoughts there were flooding into my brain. Almost like a monstrous ghost rising up from the depths of my imagination, I decided I wanted to test the power of pain and suffering that so hypnotised my mother, my father and brothers and sisters in Ireland. I attempted to visualise the event at Calvary hiding at the bottom of the suitcase and considered if I should keep it open or not. The crucifix, the ever-present image of pain and suffering, assaulted my mind, and I felt as if a heavy cross had fallen from the ceiling and cracked open my skull, allowing the hundreds of youthful memories to escape from the captivity of my mind. The echoes of my cries, confessions and prayers resonated in my head like a flock of frightened birds ascending from a still lake. In my temporary diffused state of mind I involuntarily begged for forgiveness for sins I hadn’t committed. Like a drunk who had made his first pledge never to drink again I threw the last of my personal belongings into the suitcase and attempted to close it, but was quickly reminded that one of the clasps was missing from the thing and, if I didn’t put a strap or a strong string of twine around it, it could never be completely closed. I managed in the end to tie it securely. The sight of the closed suitcase was another reminder of the morning I first packed and tied it shut.
Feeling drained, fatigued and even fearful as to what I was about to do with my life I then lay down on the bed and tried to re-imagine the journey all over again, just
to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. The expressions of wishing and wanting and the voices of the other passengers on board the ship I sailed on four years earlier flooded into my mind. They had bags, rags and suitcases and many of their faces were as prominent and as real as the tattered leather suitcase that was now ready for yet another journey. I tried to remember some passengers I had met on the ship coming over. Faces and expressions of all kinds and the stories behind them came flooding into my head. I wondered how they were greeted and what they might be doing now four years later. Like myself, many had spent their lives wishing, waiting and saving up for the day they could leave Ireland and come to America. Down to a person, all had relatives in America and were greeted and welcomed at the boat when it came into the dock in New York City.
Where were they now? And what happened to them? After the hurry and fuss of disembarking and the dockside greetings, those I had travelled across the ocean with had vanished into the American landscape. Where were the men from Cork and Donegal gone to? What happened to the man who was carried off the ship on a stretcher? I hoped he had survived. He was a great companion to me.
In a very short period of time my mind came back to the present and I was reminded again by the presence of the suitcase that I had more miles to go in life.Half frozen in time I continued to fall deeply into my life in Dublin years earlier. My family and neighbourhood had forged my fears, pain and ambitions a long time ago. The consistency of my family’s estrangement was something no member of my family ignored or disregarded and I realised now as I planned another journey that I was no exception to that sad reality. Since my arrival in America I had spent very little time looking back or recollecting any aspect of my childhood. The days were rare indeed when I looked back in warm sentiment.I spent much of my early childhood sneaking into the cinemas of Dublin to escape from a reality that darkened every moon I looked up to. I don’t know if it’s a record or not but as a child I spent more time talking to myself than I did to anybody else. Why did I talk to myself so much? I think it was because in my childhood no one talked to me in a manner that made much sense.My past in Ireland had made sure that adulthood came to me prematurely and as I looked back I didn’t find the image positive or welcoming. I’d been officially working and earning a living since the age of thirteen.
I Dream Alone Page 23