by Annie Murphy
My call was taken by the night desk.
“Can I help you, ma’am?”
“No, but you might be able to help the people of Galway.”
“In what way, please?” He sounded young and earnest.
“I would like to wish Bishop Casey all the best for his Enthronement in Galway. His two-year-old son also sends his best wishes.”
“Thank you,” the reporter said, in a tired voice.
“And here is Peter himself.”
I put the mouthpiece to his lips. “Hi, hi,” Peter said.
For some reason, the child’s voice shocked the reporter into the realization that he might have chanced upon the story of a lifetime. Maybe the paper had heard rumors about Eamonn and me, or he simply thought that if there was one bishop in Ireland capable of fathering a child, it was Eamonn.
I heard what sounded like a chair being shoved backward and bouncing off the wall. “Wait there,” he said. “Please, ma’am.”
“Hi, hi,” Peter said again.
“Where are you? I’ll come. If need be, I’ll send a car.”
“I’m not in Ireland.”
“I’ll book you a seat on a plane. All you have to do is convince me you’re telling the truth.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“I need some sort of proof.”
“Oh, I can provide it.”
At this point, Mrs. Randall was laughing loudly on the bed and saying, “You can’t do that, Annie, it’s not right.”
Bridget ripped the phone out of my hand. The last thing I heard before she cut me off was the reporter pleading, “If you could just give me your number. Your —”
Bridget shrieked, “Murphy, you could get us all killed.” For her, the Catholic Church was like the Mafia. It would protect its own, especially its bosses, at any price, and she feared for her children’s safety. Not for the first time, Bridget saved Eamonn’s skin.
If Bridget had not cut me off, what would I have said? I do not know. But from then on I made a firm resolve to be silent. The height of compassion is to conceal another’s shame. I had made my decision to keep Peter; I would have to bear my own disgrace and was prepared to do so willingly. But that was no reason to shame Eamonn. It was time for me to leave London.
Three days later, after reading of the magnificent ceremony in Galway Cathedral, I returned to America.
With my dreams dead, I settled down to the life of a single mother. It was tougher than I had anticipated. As before, I relied on my parents to look after Peter at night and put him by day in a play group so he could have companions of his own age.
My job at this time was quite demanding. I was working as a receptionist in a New York hospital near where we lived, still for $150 a week. But I felt that my son had the right to a mother with a lively brain. That was one reason why I took writing courses and deepened my appreciation of literature by reading the classics, including Chaucer and Shakespeare.
My life at this time was so centered on my buoyant, beautiful son that my social life was practically nonexistent. But, to tell the truth, I was not interested in men. Whenever I was asked out to dinner or a show, I saw again Eamonn’s shining eyes and friendly face, felt the touch of his hand on my cheek. “No, thank you,” I would say, as graciously as I could.
Sometimes I was bitter and resentful. Hearing a friend speak of her husband or seeing a couple embracing in the subway, I wondered if Eamonn was initiating another young woman in the intricate discipline of loving a bishop. Was he healing another wounded soul? Was he knocking on another’s door in the early hours of the morning?
To ease my heart, I used to take Peter for walks under the big maples in the park, and listened to him chatting away. His chief interest at the time was in superheroes—Batman, Spiderman, the Incredible Hulk. In his games, he was always one of these. I thought it might be his way of compensating for the lack of a father.
He was having a routine checkup at New York Hospital when the doctor noticed the large coffee-stain birthmark on his knee and feared it might be cancerous tissue. He called Daddy, who confirmed Peter was born with it. He also told him that Peter’s father was an important man who had deserted me.
The doctor, a qualified psychologist, offered to counsel me. When I told him who the father was, he advised us never to contact Eamonn, only respond if the Bishop made the first move. He also suggested that if I wanted Peter to have a religion, it should not be Catholicism but one more compassionate and understanding.
“In my experience, Annie,” he said, “the boy won’t be much interested in his father until puberty. Then he’ll probably want to know everything.”
By the time Peter was three, he used to ride his little blue tricycle up to the park benches in Peter Cooper. He told the old people about his grandfather taking his leg off every night and how his grandma gave him candy in the store and forgot to pay for it so they were known as the candy thieves. The boy was so gregarious and so folksy that he was even known by some of the retired inhabitants as the Mayor of Peter Cooper.
One day, I overheard him tell a friend that his daddy had nearly killed me and put my blood all over the wall. That was why my leg turned black every night. Mommy must have been talking, and Peter had heard and misunderstood. I wondered how many other strange ideas he was picking up from her. It came, therefore, as something of a relief when my parents decided to move to another apartment. It enabled me to rent a place of my own.
One evening, a friend, Robert Vanstant, invited me to a party. He introduced me to Coln O’Neill, a witty, handsome man. I only had a couple of drinks, but so low was my resistance to alcohol, I got tipsy. Coln took charge of me. No question about it, I was his girl.
After three years of marriage, Coln had been divorced three years before. He admitted that he was still in love with his ex-wife, and I told him about Eamonn. He was fascinated by the different facets of Eamonn’s personality: Eamonn who was kind and cruel, loving and cold, outgoing and self-centered, incredibly careful and, as Peter’s existence proved, equally careless.
In the summer of 1978, I started to leave Peter in the care of my parents on weekends so I could stay at Coln’s place. I was experimenting with the idea of a permanent union. Coln took to Peter instantly and included him in all our midweek dates. It is not true to say I liked Coln just because he was fatherly toward my son, but it was no small consideration.
After our third weekend together, Coln said, “I’d like to spend the rest of my days with you.”
He was my first boyfriend since Eamonn. A new phase of my life opened up. Having loved Eamonn, still loving him in spite of the pain we had caused each other, I wondered if I, with what I called my hundred-year-old leg, would be able to sustain a relationship with any other man.
How would Coln compare with Eamonn? Would he be my soul-mate? Would he be able to erase the vivid imprint Eamonn had made on me so I could love him for himself and not as a substitute for the real thing?
After hesitating for a long time, in the fall of 1978 Coln and I began living together.
Chapter
Forty-One
THOUGH COLN WAS QUIET, funny, and generous, it did not take me long to realize that the strongest link between us was our past loves. We were both living on what might have been.
Nonetheless, to begin with, we had a lot of fun together. He had a big circle of friends, many of them brilliant if a trifle crazy. We went to plays and galleries, dined out at the best restaurants, danced, and, on weekends, when Peter was with my parents, drank a lot.
Daddy was suspicious of Coln’s drinking, but he thought it better for me to work things out for myself. In fact, Coln could hold his drink very well, while I had no capacity for it. Coln even said I must be allergic to it. A couple of drinks sent my heart racing. I would jump up on a bar, kick off my shoes, and dance.
Coln wanted to settle down, but every time he asked me to marry him, I was haunted by the thought that I could never give him children. He kept up the
pressure by taking me to doctors, hoping they would say, “Go ahead, have another child,” but all of them advised against it. I insisted we take precautions. I used a diaphragm and sponges or I asked him to use a condom.
In Needle Park where the junkies hung out, Coln used to buy different drugs and mix them. The dealers had guns and knives but, like Eamonn, Coln was fearless. I had never taken drugs myself, but knowing the perils he faced when he went to the Park, I wanted to share the excitement.
Once, I followed him, taking swigs out of a vodka bottle. A drunk tore the bottle out of my hand. I slapped him; he slapped me back. Fortunately, Coln was on hand to rescue me. But drink made me careless in another way.
One weekend, I forgot to put in my diaphragm. I knew within a couple of weeks I was pregnant because I threw up violently, couldn’t get up in the morning, couldn’t walk or breathe, and my panic attacks returned. When I missed a period, Coln took me to see Dr. Reynolds, a middle-aged man with a nervous tic.
“Annie, you are —”
“Don’t say it,” I said.
“If you like, I’ll perform the abortion.”
Coln became hysterical. “Are you sure she can’t have this baby?”
“Absolutely not,” the doctor said. “There is no way she could bring it to full term.”
“For God’s sake,” Coln said, “she’s young and healthy.”
Dr. Reynolds said solemnly: “They both would die in the fifth or sixth month.”
That night, Coln and I had a long talk. We both sensed that an abortion would wrench us apart. He had grown to love me and was keen for us to stay together.
I feared to lose a dear companion. More than that, Peter, now in his fourth year, would be deprived of a father figure. Coln adored him, and strangers assumed that Peter was his son. Coln carried him to preschool every day on his shoulders. He spoiled him with expensive gifts. He insisted on taking him with us to Chinese restaurants and parties. Peter even came with us to galleries, where he played quietly in the background or painted pictures in his big artist’s book.
Coln loved children, and I knew that the destruction of his first child would be too hard for him to bear. “Come on, Coln,” I said, holding his hand. “Tell me what to do.”
He nodded slowly. We had no choice. What was the point of two people dying?
By this time, I did not set a great value on myself, but I had Peter to think of.
“That bishop,” Coln said, sadly, “lives in our life.”
Honesty compelled me to say, “Yes.”
He went on. “You talk to him sometimes when you drink.”
This really shook me. “I do?”
“I’ve often found you staring out the window, saying, ‘Eamonn, Eamonn,’ and you sing to him. Sometimes you speak his name in your sleep.”
Tears sprang to my eyes. In spite of my best efforts to forget, how deep inside me was the man I left behind in Ireland. We were still connected. He was as real to me as the walls of the room, as the couch I was sitting on. “I am so sorry, Coln.”
He brushed my apology aside as if to say that no one can help things like that. Though we had been together less than six months, I knew this was the end for us as surely as I knew my marriage was over when I miscarried. Strange that Peter should be surrounded before and after by the loss of another child. It made him so much more precious.
Later that same night, while Coln was out on business, by an unhappy chance I switched on the TV, only to see an abortion. I watched with horror as a thirteen-week-old fetus was vacuumed out of the womb. It must have been a partisan program because the commentator spoke of the silent scream of the fetus.
Sitting bolt upright in my chair, I could hear a scream of pain rise out of my own womb and echo in my head. I rushed into Peter’s room and went on my knees beside him. Thank God, he was still safe and sound. With his closed eyes and quiet breathing, he was the one oasis of peace in my life. To protect him, I had to sacrifice everything.
When I retired and finally managed to get to sleep, it was that silent scream that woke me in the night.
One afternoon in December 1978, I left Peter with Mommy and took a bus to Cornell Hospital, New York. The Swedish doctor asked, “You want to be awake or asleep?”
“Awake? Are you kidding?”
How could I watch the destruction of Coln’s child?
A nurse gave me an initial jab and, soon after, I was wheeled into an operating theater. I felt a blast of hot air and blinked at the harsh lights. On the table, my legs were put in stirrups. I felt like an animal. Once again, Catholic guilt swept over me. Would I ever be free of it? If I died on this operating table I’d go straight to hell.
After another injection, I started counting backward from a hundred. After ninety-five, I remembered nothing until I woke up in a curtained cubicle.
The doctor hovered over me in the half-light.
“You all right?”
“Yep,” I said, though I felt sore inside and utterly exhausted.
Immediately, I clambered out of bed.
“Someone coming to meet you?” the doctor asked.
“No need.” I wanted to punish myself even then.
He gave me some big pads to wear and a supply of pills. “Any cramping or excess bleeding, Annie, and you get back to me at once, right?”
I took a cab home.
Coln, really upset, came in half an hour later with a big bunch of flowers. He had arrived at the hospital to find I had left. “Are you trying to prove something, Annie?”
“What?”
He tossed the flowers aside, seeing I did not want them. “That you’re so goddamn tough you can do without me? That we don’t belong together anymore?”
I walked into the kitchen and he followed me, saying, “What do you think you’re doing?”
Without a word I started to prepare dinner, though I could not have kept down a mouthful of broth.
“Are you telling me you’re on your own from now on?”
“What do you want with your steak?” I said.
He grabbed me by the shoulders and looked into my eyes. “Was it my fault? Why punish me?”
I removed his hands and went on preparing a meal.
“If that’s the way you want it,” he said, “that’s fine. But at least let me go to your mom’s and pick Peter up.”
“He’s my son,” I said pointedly. “I’m going.”
As soon as Daddy set eyes on my white face, he knew.
I became anorexic. It was another way of punishing myself. In the public library, I read medical books on blood clots. I got it into my head that I could somehow dissolve my clot and thin out my blood. That way I could have another child. With this in mind, I swallowed pints of vinegar. Though I still held down my job in the New York University Medical Center, I wasn’t eating or sleeping and was hyperactive. Weekends, when I left Peter with my parents, I was drinking so that Coln had to stay dry and drug-free to watch me full-time as once I had watched my mother.
In desperation, he went to Daddy and told him that I was a different person. Maybe I had a death wish.
Daddy gave me a prescription for twenty-five Valium.
One night, I went alone to a bar and came back with a bad bruise on my head. I had been mugged, but I remembered nothing. A transit cop had picked me up on the subway with coffee grounds all over me. I was far away in Brooklyn, with no idea how I had made it to there.
Christmas approached. I was walking hand-in-hand with Peter down Fifth Avenue. We passed a Santa Claus ringing a bell; we looked in the windows of Lord & Taylor with displays depicting Christmases of long ago. It made me feel sad and lonely. Eamonn and I had never spent a Christmas together and I began to fantasize about what it would be like. Eamonn planning with me for the Christmas festivity, deciding what to buy for our son, insisting on a Yule log fire in the hearth, playing carols on his mother’s piano with Peter and me singing the words.
Living with Coln had made me even more aware of Eamonn’s
absence. It was unfair of me to compare Coln’s coolness now with the intense warmth and concern of Eamonn. I tried desperately to forget him, but he was too deeply anchored in my heart.
Feeling my tensions rising and fearing the effects of drink, I took instead to smoking pot, which Coln kept in the apartment. I felt I could control it. I kidded myself that a few puffs had a calming effect on me whereas liquor made me black out. Soon, with my guilt increasing and my soul eroded by a sense of desolation, I was taking both.
It was only a matter of time before disaster struck.
Chapter
Forty-Two
JANUARY 3. The windows were blanked out with snow driven northwest through the canyons of New York.
I had read Peter a story when, thinking his room was too cold for him, I moved him into Coln’s and mine. The hollow wind filled the hollows in my body and my heart.
I had got my haircut for the new year and bought myself an expensive outfit of velvet pants and a white silk top. But I still could not hide from myself that I was a barren woman.
Coln was preparing supper. I popped my head into the kitchen, saying, “We need a bottle of wine.”
“We do or you do?”
Without answering, I put on my mauve Irish cape and slipped out of the apartment. Snow fell white-black like newsprint, silencing the sound of traffic and making all the streets alike. Somehow—was this deliberate?—I lost my way. I had been drinking, something I normally did only on weekends when Peter was staying with my parents. Drink brought on panic and I ran and ran. What was I running away from?
Everything. Past, present, and future.
I slid to a dead halt inches away from a giant snowman. Looking up at it breathlessly, I found myself inches away from an ebony face with jutting cheekbones and big shiny teeth.