Two Walls and a Roof

by John Michael Cahill

  In spite of that, we grew closer and closer in mind and spirit, and just trusted in the love that was developing between us by then. With no other option, we began subconsciously believing that a miracle would somehow happen and allow us to marry, despite the obvious obstacles before us. Concluding that part of my life, I know that I am truly sorry for any hurt that I caused, as I’m sure JoAnn is as well.

  Then the first of the miracles happened. Ireland passed a Divorce Bill after two goes at it, and secondly, I found a book for ten euros that would show me how to do a DIY divorce for virtually no cost. This type of divorce, which was almost unheard of in Ireland then, was conditional on it not being contested, and to Etta’s great credit she agreed not to contest it. I began to study the book and drafted the legal papers all by myself. I studied the law via the internet, and finally when I was ready, I got a lawyer to check the paperwork. He charged me two hundred and fifty euros, and eventually Etta and I ended up in a divorce courtroom in Cork. We had no legal council, nor did we need one. The judge gave me a fair grilling because we had no lawyers, but I knew the law stated that we did not need them. I was ordered to the witness box, took the oath, and the grilling began. He questioned me on our settlement and the ages of our children, and pretty soon I got the impression from him that he felt I was either tricking Etta into this divorce, or I was coercing her into it. Neither was true of course, but it looked very bad for me for a while until Etta realized the same thing, and from the floor she spoke up. “Do you mind if I speak your honour?” The judge looked down at her and said, “Madame, I would be very delighted if you would”. Then in great detail she told him that it was a completely amicable arrangement, and both of us were happy with it. She explained the financial deal and answered his questions better than I did, and he believed her. He said, “I have to say that I am very surprised at all of this. If more people could agree like you two, then all our lives would be easier. Ye came in married, ye now leave divorced”. We all went off and had tea to celebrate the end of twenty seven years of marriage, and we parted with no bitterness whatsoever. The entire cost of the proceedings was two hundred and fifty euros, compared to our original legal quotation of eighteen thousand. It would be wrong of me not to mention the great help and kindness shown to us by the court staff. They could not have made it any easier than they did.

  Etta has since found happiness, and John Elms too is happily married. Our children have come to accept that we meant them no harm, and we did our best to hurt them the least of all.

  Two real miracles had actually happened. The first was divorce legislation had finally passed in Ireland (almost an impossibility I would say), and the second one was that I saw a book for ten euros in Waterstones book shop in Cork which called out to me to buy it, and which saved me eighteen thousand euros that I did not have.

  In two thousand and four JoAnn and I got married in Jamaica all alone, without family or friends, but that was our choice. It would have been far too expensive to be dragging people across the world, and besides that, I personally hate large weddings with loads of fuss and stress. The only sadness I felt that amazing day was for JoAnn, who had to make the little walk up the isle all alone. She gave herself away to me willingly, and a large black preacher married us in a civil ceremony on the edge of the Caribbean Sea.

  When I kissed my bride, to our great surprise, a lot of clapping went off from the many strangers who, unknown to us, had been onlookers at this unusual wedding of no guests. Looking back on it today, it’s quite likely that our wedding went into the record books as the smallest wedding ever celebrated on that romantic island. The only people at it were us and two strange witnesses. It’s no wonder we had onlookers.

  The night before our wedding I awoke from a deep sleep with a strange feeling. I felt that we should have a little ceremony that would release us both from our past, and that we should each write a private and personal letter to our previous spouses and then burn it. I don’t know where or why I was given this feeling, but it felt so important that we agreed to act on it.

  We did not read each other’s words, nor did we discuss our thoughts ever afterwards, but as the sun set we walked out hand in hand to the edge of the warm blue waters of the Caribbean Sea. There on the sand we set fire to our letters, and later the ocean consumed the ashes of our past. From the morrow on, JoAnn’s pet name for me, which was ‘Punkin’, could be honestly spoken. A new and wonderful life was about to begin for me, but getting there had been a very long tough road for JoAnn, and it had taken one real miracle after another to bring about the day we could truly be free.

  The long lonely years.

  It took every bit of willpower I had to prevent me from getting up and leaving the plane on that first parting in St Louis. I’ll never forget the longing in my heart. I came back home a changed man, feeling both distraught and elated at the same time. On one hand I knew for certain that I had found my vision, and on the other hand I had also lost her again.

  The real killer for me though was that I had no idea when I might see her next, and this was troubling me greatly. I did have one little link to her every day and it was my watch. I had secretly made the pact with myself that if I liked America and JoAnn, I would never again change my watch back from Missouri local time, nor did I. This watch became my lifeline, as I could guess in an instant what she was doing, or where she was at. At work it became a friendly joke and I would notice my colleagues taking sneak looks at my watch, just to see if I had gotten over my American infatuation, but because I never shut up about the place, they finally gave up looking.

  I think the next time we met was when my son Kyrl and I went to see her. Kyrl was my chaperone to ensure no funny business or temptation, and we had a great time. He got his first chance to drive in America, and actually JoAnn helped him obtain a legal permit at sixteen so that he could drive there. We decided to drive to Hannibal and see the home of my hero, Mark Twain. Then later, in a beautiful town park on the banks of the Mississippi, we decided on a picnic. We tried to light a little fire because, even though the sky was deep blue, the temperature was minus fourteen and a strong wind blew across the river. Kyrl took his chance to drive around the empty car park and experience driving on ice patches, while I worried sick that he would soon sail into the nearby unprotected river. JoAnn would not hear of me stopping him, and she kept egging me on to get a fire going for us. It was so cold that the lighter would not work, and I almost gave up when I managed to set fire to a little cardboard box, which I dropped onto a pile of tinder dry leaves. As they caught fire there was a danger that I would once again prove Nannie right about fire following them Cahill’s but instead we just sat and picnicked on the banks of the Mississippi-Missouri in the town of my boyhood hero Huck Finn. It was a great great day and we would return again in the future.

  During that trip to America, one day we visited a shop selling Native American artifacts, and as I came in the door I saw this most amazing picture high up on a wall. It was a copy of a famous painting of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, and it clearly showed a white man in buckskin firing on Custer. I stared and stared at that picture knowing that I was seeing the Cahill from my Uncle Johnnie’s story, told to me in his attic years earlier. Then a most amazing thing happened. Kyrl insisted on using his very limited few dollars to convince the shop owner to sell the picture to him. It was not actually for sale, more a shop decoration, but somehow Kyrl convinced him to sell it, and then he gave it to me as proof of Uncle Johnnie’s amazing story. When I returned home from that trip, once again I developed a terrible ache in my heart, and I was really sad, both inside and out. I believe only Kyrl saw it though, as by then both Adrian and Lynda were living away from home, and rarely saw me.

  Since meeting JoAnn I had begun reading a different kind of book. I had begun my search for ‘who’ I am, and how to become rich, because I felt that large amounts of money might be the only way we could get together. My favourite book then became the Napoleon Hill classic Think
and Grow Rich, so on arriving home I redoubled my reading of that and a growing number of inspirational books in the hope that some kind of miracle would bring JoAnn and I together, and it did happen, even if only for a brief length of time.

  One day in July of 1999 I believe, I got a phone call from JoAnn at home. That in itself was very unusual, as she never called me, but the news she had for me that day was quite startling. She said that by a pure fluke some friends of hers had decided to come to Ireland in a week or so, and they had asked her to accompany them on the plane trip. JoAnn had never flown in her life and was always petrified of it, but now she had a chance to live her dream, which was to see Ireland, and seeing it with me would be a real bonus. She asked excitedly if she could come to stay with us for about two weeks. I nearly collapsed at that great news it was so welcome, but Etta was still living in our house at the time even though we were living separately, and it would be very difficult for both women to be together. I knew they would all be ok as long as it was just a visit to Ireland with, as usual, no ‘funny business’ going on, so I told her she would be more than welcome.

  We found out that, all going well, she would be landing in Dublin on a Saturday, so Kyrl and I went to pick her up. We stayed with my brother Kyrle in Dublin on the previous night, and then got totally lost going to the airport the next morning. I was in a huge panic trying to make sure that we were there before she got off the plane, and we barely made it. We were running into the arrivals hall as she walked out the door, looking both tired and beautiful. I was not as nervous as I had been that first time in St Louis, but still I was in a very excited state. After saying good bye to her friends, we set off for Dublin. My JoAnn from the Midwest of America was about to achieve one of her secret lifetime dreams; she was about to see her misty green Ireland, and feel our Irish mist too because it was raining as we drove into the suburbs of Dublin. She was in a trance looking for castles and faeries and green fields, but still in the Dublin suburbs she marvelled at how the Irish must love their plants so much, because they planted them in the chimneypots and on the roofs of their homes. Kyrl and I just looked at each other and almost burst out laughing. She was from the Midwest alright, and had never seen an ill kept flatland before, but I didn’t want to disillusion her so early in her trip, so I kept quiet and just smirked at Kyrl.

  The sun eventually came out and we parked and began our tour of the capital. I showed her the General Post Office made famous from our 1916 Rising, and the bullet holes associated with that few days of struggle against the British. Then later we shared an orange bought in Moore Street, completing a promise made a year earlier that some day I would buy her an orange in Ireland. When we entered the Garden of Remembrance and began to walk around it, all of a sudden Kyrl said to me, “Da isn’t that Jerry Adams over there?” To my astonishment it was indeed that famous Irishman, who was at that time walking a political tightrope. We stopped and looked while I explained who he was to JoAnn, and what was going on in our politics at that crucial time in the North of Ireland. With that news, she insisted on meeting him and wishing him well. He was almost alone that day, with maybe three people beside him, and even from a distance I felt that we would be intruding, as he looked quite downtrodden and not at all the television icon we were used to seeing. Still she insisted, so over we went.

  “Hi my name is JoAnn, I’m from America and I hear you’re a famous Irishman, so I want to shake hands with you,” and out went her hand. I think Jerry Adams was totally surprised and shocked, but with his distinctive northern accent, and a broad genuine smile, he said, “Well I’m Jerry Adams. I’m not sure about being famous, but you are very welcome to Ireland JoAnn, from America”.

  I introduced myself and Kyrl, and told him that we were very surprised to see him in Dublin. He said that he had come to ‘The Garden’ for inspiration because he was at a crucial point in the talks and facing a very important meeting in the coming days.

  It seemed wrong then to take up any more of his time, so we wished him well and left. I believe we saw him on television in the White House the very next evening, meeting with President Bill Clinton. He had met one American in Dublin, and was meeting a much more famous one in America the next day. Having met such a famous Irishman that day, JoAnn became even more interested in Irish history, Michael Collins, and the bullet holes in our GPO in Dublin.

  As we got nearer to Mallow I could feel the anxiety coming off my American, and we tried to assure her that she would be made welcome by my estranged wife, which she was. From that meeting onwards her days in Ireland went by in a flash. We showed her what we could in the time allotted, and in early August I took her back to Dublin and parted with her once again, both of us hiding our tears. I drove home in a daze, reliving the two magic weeks we had just spent together.

  Then began a time of great partings interspersed with joyful happy meetings, when I and one of my children, either Lynda or Kyrl, would go to America on vacation. At other times JoAnn would come to Ireland with one of her young children, and as the years passed by we just made the best of our lot together.

  In order to complete a promise made earlier that somehow I would see in the new Millennium with her, and despite the idiotic warnings of planes falling from the sky, Kyrl and I travelled to America on the day that no one wanted to fly. It worked in my favour as the tickets were very cheap, and we did get to see the Millennium arrive together, even if it was with her husband and his friends. I didn’t like it, but there was nothing we could do about it, and we made the best of it. A new era had arrived in human history, but our personal situation seemed to have gotten worse. Later I left for Ireland feeling even more depressed and almost didn’t make it back. In Lambert Airport our plane sat on the runway while the captain and his senior engineer got into a dispute over the refuelling documentation. According to the paperwork the plane was full of fuel, yet the gauges said it was almost empty. In typical engineering form, the engineer blamed the gauges saying they were faulty, but fortunately the captain insisted the tanks were dipped, and after the long delay he announced, “Well it’s lucky for you lot that I am the captain and not my engineer. If we took his advice I would just have got you up before we all fell back to the ground. We are late now, but we will get to New York in one piece not pieces”. Then he chuckled as if this was an everyday occurrence. We took off, but that was not the end of that journey. As the plane gained altitude, I began to think on what might have been; a quick and dramatic death. I was so low I didn’t care about me, but thanked God that my son had been spared.

  We were just flying into Newark in low cloud when suddenly our plane went into a really steep nosedive and veered off to the side before correcting itself. Once again the captain is on the blower telling us, “Apologies for the sudden manoeuvre ladies and gentlemen, but a small plane almost collided with us. It should not have been in this airspace. We will land in five minutes”. A large round of applause went up from us all for our brilliant pilot. We crossed the Atlantic and this time landed in London’s Heathrow. Tired and still feeling sorry for myself, we boarded the plane bound for Cork Airport and then more consternation broke out. We could see people on the tarmac running around our plane in a kind of organised panic. I was too miserable to care, but the guy in front of me rang his wife in Cork and told her the plane was delayed because they had spilled aircraft fuel all over the baggage section inside the plane and they thought it might go on fire. Then he calmly hung up.

  We were all being told of the delay, but not the reason. Obviously he had overheard the cabin staff talking, and it turned out to be the truth because when I finally got my bag delivered to me as it had ‘vanished’ in the transfer, it smelled of fuel and all my stuff inside of it was destroyed. Somehow I feel that I was not supposed to leave America after the dawn of the new era, but I had to, and with Kyrl’s help and encouragement I convinced myself that a day would come when this would all be a memory, or more likely a nightmare.

  After 2000 it became more and more
difficult to afford to go to see JoAnn. I did manage to go with Lynda, and we returned to Hannibal on that trip. I know that we surely had a great time, but it’s a blur to me now. I am sure that the next time we met was on my brother Kyrle’s fiftieth birthday in June of 2001. We decided as a family to give him a great party, which was to be held in Glasgow, Scotland. Here, for the first time, JoAnn would finally meet all of the mad Cahills in one place, including my mother. She managed to bring her eight year old daughter Johnnie Rae to Ireland, and subsequently we flew on to Glasgow for the party. Hugh had flown in from Australia with his wife Celestine, and Eunice and Lill had arrived from the Isle of Man with their two husbands Seamus and Philip. My sister Tishie and John her husband arrived last, even though they only lived down the road in Dalkeith. The birthday boy and his wife Emer were already holed up in the hotel we were all using as a focal point, and around five o’clock in the evening we all finally met. JoAnn was scared to death that my family might not like her, but she need not have worried. She was a big hit, as was her daughter. It became a great weekend. We ate and drank, and chatted and argued, and mother just loved everything about this beautiful American from the Midwest. Hugh tried to get her into an argument about some ecological issue, but she gave as good as she got, and out of fear, or sheer politeness, he pulled back from making her really mad. Later I was codding her about taking on the smartest Cahill in a heated argument, and she confided that, while she did not doubt that he was the smartest, she also felt that he was the softest; a point well proven to me often over the years.