by Annie Murphy
“Are you crazy?” I said to him.
“Don’t do that, you hear?” he yelled, brushing me aside.
I had simply kissed him without his permission. Must men always be in charge? He had the Madonna-Whore complex. I was meant to be unlike all other females: the one clean woman in his life.
That was not my idea of love. He was wanting to punish me for my own sexuality.
Eamonn interrupted my thoughts. “How are you feeling?”
This kind, considerate companion was wondering why women bothered to go to bed with men if sexual ecstasy was this hard. It had never occurred to his clerical mind that a woman’s rhythms could be so different from a man’s.
“Never felt better,” I answered.
In the next hour, as I lay contentedly on my back and he stroked me all over, I felt safe to return to painful memories. I needed to bring them into consciousness to be healed of them.
I found out that Steven had run his father’s candy store in Brooklyn from age nine. The store was full of girlie magazines. It wasn’t Steven’s fault, but this did him no good at all. I had to be the one pure snowy thing in his life to make up for the guilt he felt for all that smut. That was why if I showed the least sign of sensuousness, he raged at me.
He spent hours in the bathroom with glossy magazines, cutting up the women in them like a doctor doing surgery. Out of the prize pieces he created his perfect woman—flawless eyes, nose, breasts, legs, thighs…
I was unworthy because my skin was not silky enough, my nose not perfectly shaped, I had freckles. When I examined myself in the mirror, a pimple seemed bigger than my chin. This was another reason why I like dim soft lights and why I have to shower in the dark.
Why didn’t I leave him? As well ask why a victim is transfixed by the rearing face of a cobra? The pious will never understand that evil is more fascinating than good, that some people sin in order to go to hell. And with the same single-minded fervor as the virtuous strive to get to heaven.
Often I thought murder was the holiest of deeds: my only defense against Steven would be to stab him in his sleep. But when he saw that I might leave him, he rekindled the old romance with passionate sex. Soon, of course, he was back to withdrawing, titillating while deliberately not fulfilling me. He was a torturer.
Eamonn, my dear kind Eamonn, was asking me whether I was any nearer to fulfillment, and to encourage him, I nodded yes. Was not this true fulfillment, to be loved and not tormented?
After Steven’s baby was stillborn and I was suffering from panic attacks—I was down to eighty-nine pounds—he was once more very sweet. He could afford to be because I was broken. I would not disgrace him or rebel against him.
Why did I not pour out my heart to Daddy? Because I was ashamed of my husband’s behavior. Because when you’re exposed to such behavior you yourself become a special kind of victim; the high you get nearly blows your head off. And then the guilt, real guilt, not the sort that Catholics mumble in confession, made me cringe in the dark of my shower to try to get clean.
Thus was sex associated with wickedness. I was well prepared for such a connection by my Catholic childhood. The sisters did their best to convince me that I was evil, and that everything, especially the sexual, was a sin. This only made me fall head-over-heels in love with the bad.
When Steven saw I was beginning to enjoy myself, he was even more horrific.
I had to move out. The only question was when and how? The answer: At a time and in a way that hurt him most.
I must have smiled involuntarily at the thought of hurting Steven, for Eamonn said, “Is it working, Annie?” and I said, lying, but without malice, “Yes,” and that made him happy, which, in turn, made me happy.
One day, Steven slapped my face five times. The shame of being beaten is more humiliating in some ways than anything. You feel more a thing, or, rather, a nothing. I knew that if I didn’t leave then, I would die.
That night, having made myself look pretty to deceive, I said, “What would you like for breakfast tomorrow, darling?” Sitting on the end of the bed, he said, “I promise you I’ll never hurt you again.” I said, “That’s good. Now about breakfast?” “I’ll change, darling.” I put my hand on his. “I know you’d like to, Steven.” “I can, Annie. Without you I’d die,” and I said, “I’m so pleased you feel like that. Breakfast will be a celebration of our reunion.” He happily gave his order. Never have I enjoyed deceiving anyone so much. As soon as he went to sleep, I packed. I spent half the night packing. In the early hours, I called him a motherfucker for luck, laughed silently, and crept out of the house.
My sister Mary got me a job in Greenwich, in a boathouse by the sea. I looked after a darling kid called Joshua. I could just jump off our dock to swim. I had the use of a boat and a bike, so I got really fit. Mary lived nearby with her little boy, Bobby. We became really close, since she, like me, was in a busted marriage. I also went into therapy. It helped me choose never to marry again or have a child but to develop myself as a human being.
After nine months, Steven tracked me down through a private eye. By then I was booked for Ireland. One reason I fell in love with Eamonn straightaway was I hoped he would protect me from Steven if he appeared. Another was that I knew I could never marry him.
Now I was in bed, naked with my defender, the man who saved me from utter worthlessness.
Eamonn was finally sensing success and I could not believe it myself. He stroked the nipples and they were hardening. He saw the glazed look come into my eyes and the pool of perspiration in my navel. He felt the initial ripple of my belly and the shudder and the final huge fleshquake; and he heard my strangled consummation-cry and was overwhelmed with wonder. He derived more satisfaction from my pleasure than from his own. I had finally found, I thought gratefully, an unselfish lover.
When we had both recovered our breath, we nestled up to one another.
“When you started to react, Annie, I was scared that if you didn’t climax, you would claw me to death.”
“You are too valuable,” I said.
“If I can do that with my hands,” he said, in admiration of his own performance, “what’ll it be like when I get my act together?”
We both looked forward to a fantastic future.
In his hours-long apprenticeship, he had grasped that a woman might be slower to have an orgasm than a man but when it came it was longer, of a greater intensity, and not so localized. A woman in love might prove to be a she-devil.
Exhausted, he dropped off to sleep in my arms about four while I was left with a puzzle. The men in my life who took sex lightly and thought it no sin had nearly destroyed me. Eamonn, who, in his heart, believed it to be a grievous sin, was, through his generosity, in the process of healing me.
In time, I, too, went to sleep and awoke through my inner alarm clock. If ever Mary found us together I would have to leave Inch. It was six o’clock.
I woke Eamonn and watched him search for his pajama pants in the bottom of the bed. Bleary-eyed and dazed, he left me.
“Hey,” I called after him, “you’ve forgotten something.”
I put on my nightdress before gathering up the rest of his belongings. His pajama top was on the coverlet, his robe and slippers were on the floor.
I opened his door and threw them in, taking aim so his slippers hit him on the head.
“Next time be more careful,” I said.
I was irritated that he was so irresponsible. He was, literally, leaving it to the woman to pick up the pieces. But for me, he would have stayed in my bed till eight o’clock before walking out of my room half naked to give Mary a heart attack. He would then have complained that she didn’t have his breakfast ready. He was a selfish sex-sodden brute.
“It’s fine for you,” he said. “You can sleep on, I have to go to work.”
“Good-bye,” I said, resisting the temptation to slam his door. One of us had to be sensible.
I went back to my room and there, on my bedside table,
was the brandy glass. My trophy.
I flung open the windows so I could breathe more easily and washed out the glass. After showering and putting on eau de cologne, I went back to bed.
What stage were we at?
The world was no more a stranger to me. I was kin to everything from pebble to star. I could die in an instant without one regret, without feeling anything unfulfilled in me. I was in love.
And he? Could what he felt for me be love when it was based so much on self-deception? Maybe not, but it was a beginning. Earlier, he had learned how good sex feels; tonight, he had tasted the inestimable joy of giving satisfaction to a woman. That, I told myself, is a form of power, bed-power, that his Lordship will not easily renounce.
In sum: was he mine now once and for all?
I had learned that my Eamonn of today was not the Eamonn of tomorrow. My jazzman seldom played the same tune twice.
But a woman in love can still hope, can’t she?
Chapter Nine
WE ESTABLISHED A PATTERN for our nights.
After dinner, we chatted by the fire; he said the long prayers he was so fond of as a kind of aphrodisiac before coming to my room with his glass of brandy. We made love as part of my therapy. He had such a tender way of looking into my eyes, of embracing and fondling me, he made me feel valued as I had never felt before. He always left well before breakfast, never again forgetting his clothes.
One night, he said, “I’m not doing this just for carnal pleasure, Annie.” He thought deeply before adding, “You’re funny, you’re playful and tempt me to do bad things, yet you can be very loving.”
I proved it there and then until:
“Annie, a terrible thing is happening to me.”
“Not a heart attack?”
“In a way. I think I’m falling in love with you.”
By day, I often went to Killarney where I helped Pat Gilbride and spoke a lot with Father John O’Keeffe, whom I grew to admire more and more. Mostly, I stayed at Inch with Mary.
She loved cooking but hated domestic work. When I helped her clean the house, she was really grateful.
Mary, I learned, was a thorn in Eamonn’s side but so good at entertaining he could not bring himself to dismiss her.
Once, she told me, she had disgraced him badly.
She had been to Castleisland, north of Killarney, to visit Eamonn’s elderly cousin, Joan Browne, and got drunk. On leaving at 2:00 A.M., she crashed her Volkswagen through the gates of the police barracks, damaging the front door. The Guards rang the Bishop to ask him to fetch her home.
I told Mary she sounded as if she enjoyed the incident.
“Indeed I did. Himself had to pay for all the damages, including my new car, and it did his reputation no good.” She winked at me. “He hates scandal, let me tell you.”
“I know,” I said, not sure if Mary was hinting or not.
“Oh,” she laughed, “the expression on his face next morning when he brought me coffee! He said, ‘You ought not to drink and drive,’ and I said, ‘You neither.’ “
Dinner that night was something special. In view of Mary’s story (I learned later that she was also on Valium, prescribed by her physician for a back problem—the combination was inflammable), Eamonn’s rewarding her with a huge cocktail was surprising.
After his prayers, he came with a glass of hot milk fortified by brandy. To relax him, I ribbed him about Mary’s escapade at the Guards station.
“Drunk she was, fluthered out of her mind.”
“Drunk as a bishop,” I said, realizing that Eamonn, who could not stand boredom, needed to be entertained.
“I had drunk quite a bit, true, but I wasn’t legless.”
He had been in bed that night. He ate something before he picked her up in case the Guards smelled liquor on his breath.
Propped up on a pillow, with his body swaying and his hands going up-up-up, he said:
“When I reached Castleisland, there was Mary with a bloodied head, stretched out and vomiting all over herself. Joan Browne and all my dear relatives were there to cheer me on, but really to gloat at my predicament.”
He shook his head and ran nervy hands through his hair before swigging brandied milk to erase the memory.
“Anyway, Eamonn, it was good of you to bail her out.”
“Bail her out. I only wanted it kept out of the papers. Had I not been a bishop I would have left her to her fate.”
This worried me. He had an overriding need to safeguard his reputation even in this small matter. What lengths would he go to if he was really threatened?
That night, I began the lovemaking. But with a difference. To stop him wilting as soon as he was inside me, I smartly rolled him over on his back.
He looked really scared at this turn of events.
“God Almighty!” he screeched. “Am I a log that you do this to me?”
I kept silent. Talk would help him relax so he could perform better, but I had to fix my mind on the sensuous.
Something in his eyes registered, What am I doing upside down? At first, I thought it was because he held that any but the missionary position was a sin. Certainly his dignity was compromised. A man, above all a bishop, had to be seen to be top dog, especially in bed. But unless he were underneath he would not have sufficient control to satisfy me.
From his unaccustomed position of inferiority he explained that his major concern was that I might get pregnant, especially as he was staying in me longer.
Being in the womanly position, he was thinking like a woman. It was almost as if he was asking himself, What if I get pregnant?
For the first time, he said, “This is a worry, Annie.”
“Not for me.”
“But if you conceive ‘twould ruin your holiday.”
“True,” I said. “But I wouldn’t mind having your child.”
“Not right now, when we have only just begun.”
I liked the promise in that remark.
“If you got pregnant, Annie, I’d die. I really don’t want to make you sick and all that.”
With me astride him, I wondered if what he really meant was, I don’t want to spoil my fun too soon.
“You’re a strange man,” I said.
He looked up shortsightedly. “In what way?”
“Up to now, you’ve been upset because you couldn’t enter me and now you’re terrified because you can.”
The expression on his face as he pondered this was so funny, I fell right off him and out of bed in convulsions and pulled the covers on top of me.
Eamonn was left lying naked on his back on a bare bed.
Moments later, two big swimming eyes peered over the edge.
“What in God’s name,” he yelped, “are you up to?”
I put my fingers to my lips and mouthed, “Mary.”
“Why’d you think I gave her a special cocktail?”
With that, he tried to grab the bedclothes for fig leaves but I hung on to them so that he, too, fell out of bed on top of me. In doing so he banged his head on the wall.
I kissed his instantly bumpy cranium and we enfolded each other. Our whole bodies rocked with uncontrollable laughter. It made us more naked to one another than being without clothes. This was as one-making and sacred as sex. Twin selves were bonded by the greatest of all gifts: laughter.
“Oh, God,” he gulped, his eyes disappearing in his mirth, “this is terrible. Sex is crazy.” He clutched his chest. “I think I’m going to die.”
“Don’t try to kid me.”
“Seriously, I’ve already had a slight heart attack.”
“Sex is good for you,” I said. “Without it, you might have a big heart attack.”
“No, no, no,” he said.
“It’s not sex but the mad way you drive that’ll make you ill.”
He put the end of a sheet in his mouth to stifle his great guffaws. “Tomorrow… I… might… drive… faster.”
“Why?”
“Thinking of all those fish
es that just went into you.”
“You’ve saved them up for forty-six years, can you imagine how potent they are?”
“Don’t say that or I’ll —”
“Wash my mouth out with soap and water?”
“How,” he said, “did you know I was going to say that?”
“These fishes are more like bullfrogs.”
“To kill ‘em you’d need harpoons.”
“At least.”
“And there are millions of them,” he gurgled.
“Maybe one of them will make a hit.”
“Be serious, Annie,” he said, with an owl-like hoot. “I’ve studied this a great deal. Stand up quick.”
“Why?”
“Stand up, I say, and”—he demonstrated—“walk around.”
“I’m not going to prance around naked.”
“Sure I don’t care what you’re wearing or not wearing. I promise I won’t look, just get those bullfrogs out of you.”
Clutching the sheet more tightly round me, I asked, “What do you want me to do, gouge myself?”
“No, just walk around. These things swim. And they like warmth. Your egg is probably boiling after what we just did.”
I couldn’t get up because I was laughing too much. When he tugged on my sheet, I spun on the floor like a top.
“Please, Annie, you are in the worst possible position down there with your legs waving in the air. Keep them still.”
“But you just told me to walk around.”
“Waving your legs upside down is the worst thing. All the blood goes to your lower parts and these fishes love warm blood. Get the blood out of there.”
We waited a couple of minutes for our gales of laughter to blow out before we got back into bed and pulled the covers around us. He felt more mine than ever.
As we nestled up to one another, he told me that his favorite niece, Helena, was coming to stay.
“You remember her from the old days?”
I reminded him that I had first seen his sad eyes when he came on a week’s visit to the States in 1954 to see his sister Kitty, who was Helena’s mother. I had wanted then to take him by the hand and tell him it was going to be all right.