by Annie Murphy
“Remember, Eamonn?”
He shook his head. “Anyway, Helena is bringing her four children and her sister, Maureen.”
“Is she okay now?”
Maureen, born premature, had weighed two and a half pounds and was given no chance to live.
“As far as she will ever be,” Eamonn said.
When I was a girl, my mother visited Helena’s mother. Kitty O’Hara, recently widowed, was living then in a rundown New York tenement. Kitty was so ill she couldn’t care for her five children. My mother had the guts and good sense to tear the newborn Maureen out of Kitty’s arms. The baby was starving and covered with lice. Also, mentally retarded.
My parents took the whole family to our home in Connecticut. Those kids were wild and they gave their lice to us. Everyone called us “dirty Irish.” Even Daddy got lice and was unable to make his hospital visits for three days.
Daddy gave the O’Haras vitamins and Mommy fed them good food. In one month, they were all back to health.
Eamonn was saying, “I keep two double beds in my room to house families like Helena’s.”
He had a special interest in Helena. When she came back from America in the fifties, he had helped her overcome her fears. He had even taken her to London where he introduced her to her husband, Patrick.
Eamonn seemed to look on Helena as the reincarnation of another Helena, his saintly and prolific mother who had, besides ten kids, several miscarriages to help her on the road to heaven.
“If Helena takes over your room, where will you sleep?”
“In the spare bedroom.”
This room was used for vesting when he said Mass at home.
I was not happy that his niece had rights over his room when mine were not yet firmly established. The forbidden deed was taking place in my territory. This, I think, helped Eamonn fool himself that sex was not sin but therapy.
“Remember Inafield, Eamonn?”
He smiled. “Didn’t I spend a day there with your family? I met your parents, Peter and Johnny, and your sister, Mary.”
“And me.”
“Did I, now?” he said, teasingly.
Inafield, our home “in a field” of fifty acres, was a big old Victorian hunting lodge five blocks from the center of Redding, Connecticut.
I stored in memory almost every moment of that day. I heard crazy stuttering laughter coming from our pine-paneled bar and I, who could never resist laughter, wondered what sort of person could possibly make a noise like that.
It was Eamonn. I went into the bar and jumped up on the radiator because I wanted to hear it again.
That was the first time he met my father. He was always thankful to Daddy for helping Kitty. His gratitude was finally expressed in his offer to help me find serenity in Ireland.
He and my father got on famously. He made Daddy play all his Dixieland jazz. Eamonn tapped his feet and swayed from the hips and moved his hands as though music was coursing through his body like blood.
Sixteen or so years later, I found myself lying naked next to the jazzman, asking, “Hey, remember how I cursed you?”
“Wait, ‘tis coming back into focus.”
“You told me to stop and I said I would for fifty cents and you said, why should I pay you to stop cursing me? So I took you into my bedroom where I kept a big Indian head I used as a piggy bank. ‘Put fifty cents in there,’ I said, ‘and no more curses from me.’ You said ‘Why pay you to stop being wicked?’ So I called you a son-of-a-bitch and you ran after me threatening to wash my mouth out with soap and water and I yelled, ‘Stop it, if Daddy hears about this he’ll kill you.’ And you said, ‘I’ll tell him you cursed,’ and I said, ‘I’ll tell him I didn’t,’ and you said, ‘Why would he believe you and not me?’ and I said, ‘Because I’m the best liar around.’ “
“You were a liar even then, Annie.”
“I’ve reformed,” I lied.
“I can tell,” he lied. “Didn’t I chase you somewhere?”
It occurred to me that his chasing of me, like his famous laugh, had stayed in my mind through the years without my knowing it.
“You chased me into the garden where there were raspberry bushes and I hid inside them and laughed and cursed at you all the louder because I was getting scratches on my legs and you were laughing too but red-faced because your groping hands couldn’t quite reach me and you said, ‘Just you wait, little Annie, one day I’ll catch up with you.’ “
He stroked my breast fondly. “Didn’t I keep my word?”
Sure, I thought. But my curses did work, after all. Eamonn, you should’ve paid up your fifty cents.
“When Helena comes,” he said, “I will be spending quite a bit of time with her.”
“Even nights?”
“Indeed. I settle down on the chaise longue and sometimes we talk into all hours. So don’t be surprised if in the first couple of nights you don’t see me at all.”
“What’ll I do?”
“Catch up on some sleep.”
“You can surely pop in for a minute or two.”
“God Almighty, Annie,” he said, “you won’t come to the door and whistle for me?”
I winked at him and purred like a kitten.
“If I’m hungry, I’m not sure what I’ll do.”
“I believe you,” he said. “But remember, she’s a woman with a woman’s instincts.”
“Then,” I said, “don’t use so much after-shave.”
“Why not?”
“I smelled it on you the moment you kissed me at Shannon and we don’t want Helena smelling it on both of us.”
“True, and you use less perfume, then.”
“And make sure you shave more closely.”
He was puzzled by this.
I said, “My chin is getting red and flaky.” I pointed. “How will Helena think I got this?”
“God Almighty, ‘tis as red as my socks. Even Mary’d notice it. And Pat would, certainly.”
“It’s okay, Eamonn, I’ve got some cucumber for it.”
“Mary told me you are partial to cucumbers.”
“Not for eating. I spit bits out into my table napkin. A slice of cucumber soaked in tea draws out the redness. Pancake makeup does the rest.”
“Amazing,” he said. “Maybe next time I should shave before I come to bed.”
“Provided,” I said, laughing, “you don’t use an electric razor. Helena would stay awake all night wondering.”
“And please, Annie, be sure not to scratch me above my collar, especially on my sensitive ears.”
I giggled again. “Aren’t I always careful to only scratch you where it doesn’t show?”
“I don’t mind love bites on my belly but not on my nose.”
“What about your head?”
“That, too, is off limits.”
When I roared at him like a tiger and showed my claws, he nearly fell backward out of bed.
“Life is very complicated sometimes,” he mused. “But we have to be ultra-careful with Helena. She knows me well.”
“Eamonn,” I said, “I don’t imagine anyone in the whole world knows you well.”
Chapter Ten
IN MID-MAY, Mary took off for a few days to her farmhouse across Dingle Bay.
When Helena came from Dublin by train, we embraced warmly. How different she was from the jumpy, blotchy-faced girl I remembered. Her dark shiny hair was pulled back in a bun. She was smartly dressed and serene, though she looked tired from having four children in quick succession. The last, John, was only a few months old.
For the next week, the character of the house changed. It was noisy and full of fun.
I enjoyed Helena’s company. She appreciated my help and that of my family for her sister. Now aged seventeen, Maureen’s body sagged, especially her tremendous breasts. She had bright red hair. Her eyes were slightly vacant under long lashes. Being innocent, she said whatever came into her head.
The bishop in Eamonn found this hard to take.
> Maureen’s job was to take care of the children. She proved her common sense one afternoon when Helena was resting on her bed and I walked with her up the mountain track.
I was pushing John in a red baby carriage when, high on the hill, we came across a bull lying in an open field.
I was terrified. If anything happened to a child of Helena’s, Eamonn was old-fashioned enough to take it as a sign from God that we should part.
The bull slowly heaved himself to his feet.
I laughed so hard, out of nerves, I fell on the ground while Maureen grabbed the handle of the carriage and tore downhill.
Alone, on the ground, with a bull moving inquisitively toward me, I cried out to no one in particular, “Save me.”
When I dared to look, the bull had turned away.
I scrambled to my feet and walked slowly after Maureen. Once I turned a corner, I ran till I caught up to her.
When we reached the house, there was Eamonn.
“What happened to you?”
When I told him about the bull: “Sure ‘twould have done you no harm.”
My God, he was even an expert on bulls!
Eamonn had sent Maureen to a school to learn about hotel cooking and housekeeping. At dinner, she said:
“I like the dances.”
“Oh, really,” he said, suspiciously.
“I love it when they hold me tight.”
“Who,” he snapped, “holds you tight?”
“Boys. I love it when they kiss me.”
The eyes of Eamonn, guardian of morals, were like saucers.
“Kiss you?”
He went very red, showing his long-standing horror of sex. Unless, as with Helena, it was inside marriage and fertile.
Later, at bedtime, we all hugged each other. It hurt me to see how Eamonn pulled away from Maureen. I gave her a long hug to try to compensate.
That night, he was able to come to me, after all, at around 1:30. We spoke and moved quietly in the bed. It was of horsehair and solid, but Helena was in the next room. The whispers, the proximity of danger made the sexuality all the more intense.
At first, we giggled over Maureen but he thought her wanting kisses was wrong while I felt he was interfering with nature, like belling a blackbird or painting a pheasant.
“But she mustn’t,” he said, hoarsely.
“We do.”
“We are not handicapped.”
“Anyway, if she gets pregnant you will be responsible.”
“Me?” he shrieked. Then, more quietly: “Me?”
“You don’t teach her about birth control.”
“God Almighty, Annie, you say such terrible things.”
“More terrible than you suggesting she is not entitled to sex like us?”
“Nature,” he sighed, “can be very cruel.”
“If you pity her, why didn’t you give her a proper hug?”
“Her big bosoms, Annie, are suffocating.”
“Unlike mine.”
“Yours are just right.”
I flattened them against his chest as our fingers and toes interlaced.
“You have a lean, flat stomach, Annie. You’re long legged and you have beautiful eyes.”
He kissed and bit me and tickled me with his sensitive hands and probed my mouth with his tongue, then going below, he licked me along ribs and hips as a mare licks a newborn foal.
Next, I felt his body go into spasm and I thought, He has climaxed already, then, No, he’s laughing, but why?
In fact, he was sneezing. Or, what is worse, trying desperately not to.
He came up heaving for air and gasping, “What have you dowsed yourself with down there? ‘Tis worse than pepper.”
I admitted to having poisoned his nosegay with perfume.
“God,” he coughed, “something really bad’s been done to you. Sex is beautiful. There is so much to heal in you.”
I said, “You are like the bull in the pasture.”
“Oh, so now ‘tis like an unlicensed bull you make me out.”
“You saved up pollywogs for years, millions of them. Keep having sex with me and you’ll get rid of some of them.”
After a stifled sneeze: “Going to exhaust me, are you?”
When his sneezing had eased, he entered his nest with, “Oh, how… I… like —”
He liked the feel of flesh on flesh but, best of all, he was caring of me. That was why I was able to respond to him and I came myself after not too long a struggle.
We were mellowing into love.
To add spice to the evening, I said, “Are you sure you don’t want me to lock the door?”
“Not at all. Whoever tried it would know something was going on in here.”
“Between Annie and Uncle Eamonn.”
“With her brute strength, Maureen’d knock the door down.”
I blinked and jerked my head back on purpose.
Out of bed in a flash, he scampered low and naked into the bathroom, closed the door, and whispered, “Turn the bathroom light out.”
“Why? Who would dream you’re in there naked?”
“Maureen might come in for a chat. You shouldn’t have been so nice to her.”
So that was why he had not given her a big hug earlier.
“If she comes,” he hissed, “she’ll probably want to use the bathroom. Sometimes she goes all night.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before, Eamonn? Instead of kissing her, I might have hit her on the head.”
“This is serious, Annie.”
“Then what’ll I do with your clothes?”
The bathroom door opened to let his head through.
“My pajamas, under the pillow, bathrobe, in the bed. No, Maureen might see the lumps. Bring ‘em here.”
“They’re safer under my pillow.”
“Do as you’re told. Quick, it’s cold in here.”
“Shut the window.”
“It won’t budge.”
“Only one solution. We’ll shower together.”
“Are you mad? It’s so rickety, the hot pipes would fall off the wall, burn our private parts, and scald us both to death. Then the locals would take us both as we are, naked and copulating, to the funeral parlor.”
“In an ambulance, I hope.”
“Seated in the back of a jaunting car. Don’t laugh, Annie, I know these people. That woman who owns the bull would put me naked in a car just to spite me.”
If he were ever found out, I felt, he would run from the country out of fear of compatriots like that.
“But,” he went on, “I’d crawl out of here if I were dead and dress myself in pontificals before the lying-in-state.”
I sounded a note of caution. “If you turned stiff you wouldn’t be able to dress yourself.”
“My guardian angel’d help me. I’ve prayed to him enough.”
I couldn’t stop laughing or loving this man with his childlike imagination.
“Stop it, Annie. I’m never again sleeping with you without wearing at least my pajama bottoms.”
“Why?”
“Because it’d be terrible for the Church if a bishop were to be caught dead with his pants down.”
“What do you mean?”
“If I have a heart attack, my backside will be too heavy for you to put them on me.”
“I’m not going to like you always wearing pants.”
“I’ll be naked at the appropriate moments.”
“Thanks for that.”
“Now, bring me my clothes.”
A hand appeared round the bathroom door. As he scrambled into his pajamas, he gave me orders.
“Switch the light off. Wait three minutes and if no one comes, tap on this door.”
I waited for at least ten minutes, giggling all the time, hearing him trying to stifle his own snorting laugh and muttering, “I never did like this fecking bathroom. One of these days I’m going to tear it apart.”
Finally, there was a weak-voiced “Surely to God three minutes
is up now.”
“How would I know what time it is with the light out?”
“Then turn it on and have a see.”
I switched on the light for a moment.
“Well?” he demanded.
“I don’t know what time it was when I switched it off.”
My bathroom door opened; footsteps approached the bed.
“Peep into the corridor, Annie, and check it’s safe.”
I prolonged the agony as long as I could but I eventually gave him the all-clear at about four. He went back to the spare room after noisily using the corridor bathroom.
Heavens, I thought, he even tries to deceive people when he pees.
Chapter Eleven
IN BETWEEN DOMESTIC CHORES, Helena and I chatted for hours at the breakfast table and over the fire in the living room.
She kept getting flashbacks to her years in America and these made her anxious. That was why Eamonn spent hours of the night assuring her that everything would be well for her and her children.
On the third morning, Eamonn said he intended joining our beach party that day. At about eleven, he appeared in slacks and an open-necked shirt. Surrounded by people who loved him, he was in his element.
Maureen was in a thin cotton dress. Helena was in a black one-piece swimsuit. I had not brought a bathing suit to Ireland but the night before I had fished out a bikini top and a pair of jeans, the legs of which I had scissored off to the thighs. My husband had made such fun of my legs I was scared to show them in public.
Eamonn whispered, “Why are you wearing those?” but I did not want to talk about it.
As soon as we reached the near-deserted beach, he stripped to his swimming trunks, white with blue stripes. ‘Tearing at his hair, he said, “I just have to get in there.” He ran and barreled his way into the sea as if he wanted to swallow it up. After a dip and a few strokes, he stood with water streaming off him and calling to us, in a thrilled voice:
“Come on in, ‘tis won-der-ful.”
I was toe-tickling the rills of spent waves on the sea’s edge and telling Helena, “We can’t go in, it’s cold as melted snow,” while Eamonn was all the while hello-ing us and yelling, “The only way is to run right in.”
He stood there, his hair plastered to his head, his eyes wide open. When a big wave hit him, he merely laughed that loud velvety laugh of his.