by Annie Murphy
Only once, when he was thirteen, did Peter see me in the middle of an attack. I had been given strong drugs after surgery on my nose. The phones were not working because of a storm. I woke at 2:30 with my diaphragm paralyzed; no air could get in or out of my lungs. I could hardly talk. While Arthur went to wake Peter, I summoned up all my strength and ran out and banged on a neighbor’s door, calling, “Help,” before I passed out.
The ambulance came. My blood pressure was 60 over 40. I was taken to St. Vincent’s Hospital in Bridgeport where the doctors struggled to get my blood pressure up before they could do something for my panic attack.
Arthur brought Peter to see me. The boy was in the lobby watching the miniature Doctor Ruth, the sex specialist, on TV. When he was allowed in to see me, he started imitating her. He sank on his knees to make himself tiny. “I am goin’ to talk to you, voman, about six. You see, you haf thees leetle spot, a button, oh, so sensiteev, I can’t tell you.”
He so cheered me up, my breath began to come back and one of the nurses said to me, “You don’t need medication, that kid of yours will make you better.”
With Eamonn’s contributions months in arrears and the house taking up all our funds, we gave up luxuries, then even a necessity, the car. In spite of our efforts, we were soon facing foreclosure.
We refused to give in. Arthur worked as a house painter. Without a car and holding down two jobs far from home, I often had to bed down where I could. We both went without to supply Peter’s needs. In spite of our best efforts, by the spring of 1900, our financial situation had worsened.
I had no option but to give Peter absolute priority. I was haunted by that scream of his when he realized that his father had denied him. Surely it was time for Eamonn to act as a father should when his son’s entire future is at stake. Peter was a teenager with talent, but if I were bankrupt, how could I provide him with a roof over his head and the education he needed?
After years of struggle, I felt it was right to ask Eamonn to contribute more. If he refused to pay for Peter directly, I would have to make a claim on my own behalf for damage done to my life.
On the recommendation of a friend, I went to see a New York attorney. Peter McKay was a burly, bushy-haired, handsome man in his early forties.
He sat me down and let me speak without interruption for an hour about my relationship with Eamonn. McKay, gazing out the window over Central Park, was, I could tell, skeptical of my claims at first. But after I finished my long monologue, he said in his gravelly voice: “Your story is absolutely incredible. It must be true.”
“You mean I would need to be a genius to invent it?”
“Right. But tell me, Annie, how in the post-Watergate era has this story been kept under wraps for so long?”
“It happened in Ireland.”
That fitted, he said. He visited his mother in Ireland most years. It was probably the one country in the western world where a scandal of this size could be covered up.
The lawyer in him demanded proofs. I gave him one: the biological. Father and son had exactly the same big birthmark in the same place. The odds against that, apparently, are one in many millions.
“Tell me, Annie, what do you want me to do?”
I said I wanted to avoid at all costs the accusation of blackmailing Eamonn. I wanted no behind-the-scenes settlement, no quick fix. “Go straight to the courts,” I said, “so we get a settlement that sticks.”
“Pardon me,” McKay said, “but if you go public right away, you will be immediately accused of trying to blackmail the Bishop.”
I really had not seen that. I thought that bringing the matter into the open would demonstrate my good faith.
“Has the Bishop a lawyer, Annie?”
I could answer that. When Mark Krieg left his law firm, the old system of payments broke down. Maybe Eamonn felt that, with the passage of the years, he was safe. Lately, I had been paid by drafts of the Allied Irish Bank. These were sent at Eamonn’s request by Robert Pierse, a Kerry lawyer from Listowel, who, doubtless, had no idea what the payment was for.
McKay advised, “Talk to Eamonn privately, Annie; tell him if he doesn’t help out, his son will end up in public housing, possibly on welfare, with all the problems that go with it.”
“I’ve talked with him privately for years.”
McKay pointed out that legal costs can be prohibitive, especially if you lose. He encouraged me to write a long deposition and give Eamonn a chance to answer it.
I agreed to do that.
“Do you have a figure in mind, Annie?”
I told him that a friendly attorney, Anthony Piazza, had said the claim was worth $100,000.
“Maybe too modest,” McKay said.
I stood by my calculation. It was against all my instincts as an independent person to ask for more than I needed to provide for Peter.
In the end, I let McKay approach Eamonn privately. “But,” I concluded, “if Eamonn offers less than one hundred thousand dollars, I’ll go public. He won’t leave me any choice.”
McKay wrote to Listowel on April 12, asking Robert Pierse for a response from his client, Dr. Casey, about “a sensitive matter” between Ms. Anne Murphy and the Bishop. If Pierse had ceased representing the Bishop, he might like to forward his request to Dr. Casey’s new counsel. He requested a reply by April 26.
Robert Pierse’s fax came on April 23: “I have been unable to contact the named person so far. I will endeavor to do so. He appears to be away.”
Was Eamonn in hiding? McKay extended his deadline to Pierse to May 10. “I trust that we will be able to resolve this among ourselves.”
Though Eamonn refused to communicate with McKay, he kept calling me. Astonishingly, when I heard his voice, the old feelings returned. I had to steel myself against him. Our son’s future was at stake.
“You’re talking to the wrong person,” I said. “From now on you’ll be dealing with a lawyer named McKay.”
I advised him to act fast before disaster struck. “You have choices, Eamonn, I don’t. Please don’t call me again.”
Trembling, I hung up.
Time was running out for all of us, because in late April I had lost my best-paid job in a word-processing department. A lawyer from Legal Aid managed to get our light and oil bills paid. This was the only time in my life I have had to suffer this humiliation. With foreclosure looming, it looked as if we would have to go into public housing in South Norwalk. It had a reputation for barred windows, handguns, and frequent murders. If that happened, I would have no compunction in publicly shaming Eamonn for not helping his son. I prayed it would never come to that.
Sheriff’s notices were nailed to the doors of our home; court orders, injunctions, and demands for repayment of loans were piled on our dining room table. The framing of the house, the french doors, over a hundred windows, the flooring, insulation, and wiring were completed but funds had run out. Ten more days and we would lose everything.
On April 28, a firefighter who was building his own home came by. We had $22,000 worth of lumber stacked on the lawn amid the fallen petals of apple, cherry, and dogwood blossom. It was meant for the large decks and the three-car garage with a studio above it. He offered us $6,000 for the lot, which, since it was not nailed down, we were entitled to sell. It was the best price we could get in the time available. Next day, he came with three trucks and, within hours, the lumber was gone.
Peter came home from Weston High School where he was so happy. He was astonished to learn that we were moving. How was he to tell his friends Sean and Charlie? “Hey, Mom,” he said angrily, pushing his favorite Yankee cap to the back of his head, “I’ve only a couple of months of this school year left. Didn’t Eamonn offer to help?”
I explained that if we did not leave soon, whatever money we might get from Eamonn would go to pay our outstanding debts. Peter McKay had advised us to move out for another reason. Eamonn would not know our whereabouts, so he would be forced to deal with my lawyer.
&
nbsp; “Where will you be, Annie,” McKay asked, “when I want to contact you?”
I told him we were headed west. We hoped to find a less expensive place where Arthur and I could both get jobs and provide Peter with good schooling. I promised to call him when we were settled.
We arranged to store our furniture for $100 a month and hired a truck from Ryder Rental for one day to help us move it. With only twenty-four hours to wrap up our lives, Mary and her friend, Stan, came to help us pile everything into boxes and suitcases. We crated the TV and radios, Peter’s toys, memorabilia from Star Wars, baseball cards, his boom box. Early on May 3, my forty-second birthday, we left the house that we had hoped would make us a fortune. With only $6,000, Arthur and I had one final ambition: to give Peter a sense of the wider world outside our narrow circle. We wanted him to see with his own eyes that the round earth is beautiful and to inspire him with new ambitions. He had to learn to believe that things do change. My hope was that though we were powerless now, Peter might still acquire a sense of the magic and challenge of life.
To evade prying eyes, we left Fanton Hill at the ungodly hour of one in the morning. Arthur and Stan were in the truck, Mary was driving Stan’s car, while Peter and I headed the convoy in ours. I had the cash in my shoes. Driving on money helped me feel secure. Also, hearing the river run over the rocks after spring rains gave me the first hint of hope.
As I made the turn out of Weston into Westport and onto the throughway, I handed Peter a book of maps. “How’d you like to see the whales in Seattle, Washington?”
“Great, Mom.”
“I’d like to live in Seattle. On the way there we’ll see some wonderful sights.” We took Exit 14 through South Norwalk, past the housing projects. Slanting buildings with bars on every window, men in rags asleep on park benches with newspapers for bedding, litter scuttling like mice in the night breeze—poverty is the cruelest of all prisons. I would fight to the death to keep my son from that sort of jail.
Saying good-bye to Mary and Stan, we drove through the night. Beyond Philadelphia, we started our quest for stability but never found it. We chose cheap motels, which depressed us. We passed ghettos, like the one on the south side of Chicago, that made their counterpart in Norwalk seem like paradise. And in between the dirt and devastation, we saw scenes of awesome beauty.
Arthur wanted us to settle in Vancouver. Unfortunately, such was the price of property, even to rent was beyond our slender means and job opportunities for people with our skills did not exist.
I called McKay and he brought me up to date. Hearing nothing from Listowel by his deadline, on May 11 he had faxed Pierse again, saying, “I shall assume that your client, Bishop Casey, has no interest in resolving this matter in a private forum and shall so instruct my client. I am sorry that Bishop Casey saw fit not to take advantage of this opportunity.”
Pierse had replied that Eamonn was dealing with the matter himself. “Wait for the good news,” McKay told me cheerily. “The Bishop finally phoned to say he’s coming to New York on June fifteenth or twenty-first. He wants to see you.”
To see me? After all those years? I was so flustered I did not know how to respond.
I disliked the delay in settling but since we had come so far and had time to spare until that meeting, we drove down the West Coast to California and then eastward through the blazing South. Arthur even took Peter to Disneyland as a diversion.
The worst moment of all was near the end at Newark, New Jersey. We pulled into a truck stop with a McDonald’s on site. The parking area was full of ancient cars crammed with adults and children sleeping. They were transients, one step away from the sidewalks of some street without a name. Filled with terror at a fate that could so easily be ours, I jumped back into the car, causing Peter to wake up.
Yawning, he got out and walked along the line of cars. Moments later: “Mom, people live in those things. They’ve got pillows, blankets, paper plates. They homeless, Mom?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Are we?”
I made a big display of showing him the money we had left. “Homeless? Us? Never. Look”—I pointed—“the New York skyline.”
“Forget that,” Peter said, with the sudden leap of a near-sixteen-year-old into manhood. “I’ll make Eamonn pay up.”
“Sure,” I said, “but let’s do it peacefully, eh?”
“I don’t know about that,” he said, with a fierce look in his eyes.
Chapter
Forty-Seven
AFTER EAMONN DELAYED HIS TRIP to the United States, James J. Kelly, a friend of Eamonn’s from his hometown of Adare in Ireland, finally fixed a meeting with Eamonn for July 15. Kelly, a Brooklyn priest, was also an attorney at law.
Peter insisted on coming with me to McKay’s office. “I want to sit across the room from him, Mom. He doesn’t have to talk to me, but I tell you he’s gonna have to look me straight in the eye.”
“Are you sure you —?”
“I need to know who this guy is and who I am. He denied me to Arthur, if he denies me to my face, well —”
I admired him. He was fearless, like his father. But since he had not been brought up a Catholic, I tried to explain to him the problems from Eamonn’s point of view. As a priest, he was not supposed to have relationships with women or father children. It was hard for him to admit that he had been untrue to his vows.
From Connecticut where we were staying with Mary, we drove into the city early on a sunny afternoon. At the Paramount Building, I left Peter in charge of McKay’s young assistant, Richard. In the lobby was a white-haired priest, probably Eamonn’s chaperon. I had guessed, correctly, that Eamonn had arrived early. I told Richard I refused to see Eamonn. This was strictly business. Besides, with Eamonn unwilling to acknowledge his son and accusing me before Arthur of sleeping with any number of men, I might say something I would regret.
The truth was I was scared of what I might see or not see if I looked into his eyes.
Before long, Peter came down to the lobby, pale and dazed.
“To think I waited sixteen years for that.”
I was sad for Eamonn that he found it impossible to speak with his own son, a boy who should have evoked pride in him. I was sadder still for Peter. He had pinned his hopes on this long-delayed encounter. As we went out for a bite to eat, he babbled on.
“I really wanted to get to know him, Mom, but he wouldn’t let me in. It was like talking with a stranger. A butcher or a mailman meeting me for the first time would have been friendlier.”
“How long did he give you?”
“Four minutes.”
It was the length of an average confession.
“I was a mistake, Mom, wasn’t I?”
McKay, he said, had hidden him in his library until he had finished his business with Eamonn, then he introduced him as “Peter Murphy.” Eamonn was too surprised to decline to meet him. As McKay prepared to leave, Eamonn shook Peter’s hand. There was no embrace, though he had not seen his son since he was a baby.
I said to Peter, “Didn’t he say anything?”
“He asked me what I wanted to do with my life. He told me he prayed for me twice a day. Then good-bye.”
“That was it?”
Peter nodded. His hurt was slowly turning to hostility. “What did you ever see in him, Mom? He lacks the basic decencies.” He screwed his face up. “I intend to nail that bastard to the wall.”
It was with redoubled fury that I went back to McKay’s office after lunch.
McKay came from a theatrical family. His meeting with Eamonn, he told me, was the most intriguing in his career since he represented George Wallace, the governor of Alabama, in a libel suit.
Eamonn came alone into his office, dressed in full clericals. Maybe he thought that a “McKay”—good Irish name—would be intimidated by the trappings of power. After all, Richard, a practicing Catholic, had stooped to kiss his ring.
“Eamonn really does have an aura about him,” McKay said. “In
seeing him, you sense the power of the Church he represents.”
McKay had thanked him for coming. Then: “Bishop, we have a problem, sir.”
“Yes, Peter, we do. What will it cost?”
When McKay told him $125,000 in total, he seemed to sigh inwardly with relief and they shook hands on it.
“It was all over in one minute, Annie. I could have got you up to half a million!”
I said, “I only wanted enough to provide for my son.”
He sympathized with me for the curt way Peter had been treated. “When Peter left the room,” McKay said, “I went back in. The Bishop seemed quite indifferent to the boy. All he wanted was for Peter to sign a paper to the effect that now all his paternal responsibilities ceased.”
“Never!” I gasped.
McKay nodded. “I pointed out that this was your settlement, Annie. For damages caused over the years to you, your health, your life. I told him why you felt you could never marry again. If you sign, I promised Eamonn, you will no longer be able to sue.”
“And Peter?”
“I said, he can’t sign because he’s under age. There’s no question of him giving up his rights to paternal maintenance. For that we’d need a guardian in the court system. We’d have to disclose the reason for the guardian to the court.”
“What did he say to that?”
“Keep it private.”
“As always,” I said.
“For me,” McKay mused, “the most perplexing thing is the Bishop’s blind spot. He still doesn’t see that his only danger comes from Peter.”
On July 25, 1900, the promised money was paid to me by McKay after receipt of a check from Father Kelly. I signed a paper releasing Eamonn from all responsibility toward me.
But, as McKay had seen so clearly, some stubborn streak in Eamonn prevented him from taking the boy seriously.
Keen to try and make a new life in the old world, on July 29, 1990, just before the Gulf War, we flew on a Kuwaiti 747 to London, England. From there, we took the train to Arthur’s old city of Edinburgh. I had only one month to try to settle Peter in a school for the next academic year.