Herself

by Leslie Carroll

  “Hello? Joe Williams, please. It’s Tessa Craig.” I wait until Joe picks up on his end. “Joe. Tessa. I’m your woman…. What?…You know exactly what I mean. Don’t throw your support anywhere else until we’ve talked…. I’ll meet you and your people tomorrow morning and we’ll discuss it…. Nine A.M…. I’ll bring the coffee. Hey Jamie!” I shout, covering the receiver with the palm of my hand. “I’m going to run for David’s congressional seat. Not only that, I’m going to crush the bastards who sent him back to the hospital!”

  I expect to see his face light up, but Jamie’s stricken look doesn’t alter. “What? What’s up?”

  He points accusingly at the intercom. “Me mother is on her way upstairs.”

  My stomach does a free fall. Stunned, I return to my phone call. “Joe? Lemme call you back in a few. Something’s just come up. Literally.”

  Twenty

  As my apartment comprises the top two floors of a narrow brownstone, it will take Maureen Doyle another minute or so to ascend the three flights to my landing. “Did you know she was coming to New York?” I ask Jamie, who, by his expression, clearly didn’t. No wonder he’d never bothered to mention it.

  She knocks emphatically, failing to locate the doorbell, I suppose. After taking a deep breath Jamie opens the door, and there’s his mother trying not to appear winded. Hanging back by the staircase is a striking young brunette, her prettiness obscured by her dowdy denim skirt and oversized Trinity sweatshirt. I realize it’s his kid sister Brigid. Each of them has a suitcase of powder blue molded plastic, circa 1973.

  “Well. Aren’t ya going to invite me in?”

  “Of course. I’m sorry,” I apologize, disoriented by her surprise appearance, particularly as my brain is still focused on my phone call to Joe Williams at the Democratic Club.

  Maureen motions to Brigid, who follows her like an obedient duckling into the apartment.

  “I got your e-mails,” Maureen tells her son. “Lemme look atcha. Brigid, does Jamie look happy to you?”

  Brigid regards her brother. “He does, Ma.”

  “That’s what I was worried about.”

  Brigid gives Jamie a hug, saying, “I told her we shouldn’t come.”

  “Why’d she spring you from the community house?”

  “The application of additional guilt. She’s had me saying novenas and Hail Marys ever since you left, but then she figured that bringing a nunlet along with her was as close as she would get to convincing you that God is on her side.” Brigid gives me a hug. “I’m so sorry about all this. It wasn’t my idea y’know.” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “Will you show me all the places from Sex and the City? I watched it like a fiend back when I was in college. Just once in my life I want to try on a pair of Manolos. Then, God forgive me, I can die happy.”

  “That doesn’t sound very spiritual to me.”

  “I told you that night at dinner, I’m on a journey. I’m not even so sure I want to arrive at the original destination. And I’m only twenty-three, so I don’t want to make a terrible mistake I’ll regret for the rest of me life. But don’t tell Ma or she’ll have a heart attack.”

  “Where are you staying then?” Jamie asks his mother and sister. They exchange glances. “Didn’t book a hotel, did yiz?” He shakes his head in disbelief and looks to me in consternation.

  “I have another bedroom, but I use it as an office. The living room sofa’s a convertible, though. You’re both welcome to share it. How long are you planning on staying?” I ask Maureen, an echo of her double-edged question to me back in Dublin.

  “Until they find a hotel room, right Ma?” Jamie says. “Forst thing tomorrow we’ll make some phone calls.”

  My experience thus far of Doyles who make sudden travel plans is that “until they find a place of their own” soon becomes relatively permanent. And the timing couldn’t be worse for a pair of unexpected (and somewhat unwelcome) house guests. Having my new lover’s disapproving mother and Sister-in-training sister under the same roof will quite obviously cramp our blossoming romance—plus I placed a phone call not five minutes ago that could change my life as of tomorrow morning.

  “I suppose you just assumed you could take advantage of Tessa’s good nature,” Jamie says to his mother, as Brigid volunteers to help me make a pot of coffee. Not that I need help, but she’s keen to disassociate herself from her mother’s venture. “It’s called freeloading, Ma.”

  “You’re one to know about taking advantage,” she argues. “I’ll tell you all the upheaval your little holiday has caused this family. Niall’s taken up your fishing, Liam’s behind the bar, and your father—a man who worked all his life to put food on the table and clothes on his children’s backs, and who had finally begun to enjoy the fruits of retirement, is driving Liam’s carriage. He don’t even like horses, but at least he knows the hack business like the back of his hand, and ya can’t expect a teetotaler to tend bar, standing on his feet for hours on end as though he’s a man of forty-two. To answer your question, Tessa, we’re not planning to stay long; we’re here to fetch my second son and bring him back home before his family business goes to ruin. Jamie, your father and I agreed that we’d buy your return ticket. I hate to put something on credit, but—”

  “Desperate times call for desperate measures?” Jamie retorts.

  Jamie’s an adult; I’m going to stay out of it and let him fight his own battles. Somewhere along the line I learned the life lesson that a woman should never come between a man and his mother, because if she interferes it’ll come back to bite her in the butt one day. If you want to keep him, keep your own counsel when it comes to the woman who labored to bring him into the world, no matter how much he may disparage her on any given day.

  I serve the coffee with a tray of store-bought cookies, about which Maureen works hard not to express her negative opinion. “If I knew you were coming, I’d have baked a cake,” I tell her, my words coated with placid sweetness. She may be a formidable opponent, having guilt and DNA on her side, but she’s not a terribly clever adversary, having shown her hand immediately. However, my mother used to say, “You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar,” and it doesn’t serve anyone for me to be nasty. Funny how a few weeks ago I was sure that I didn’t want Jamie to enter my life and intrude upon my space; and now, minute by minute in fact, I’m becoming surer that I don’t want him to leave.

  “The last meal you two probably ate was airline food I’ll bet. Why don’t we all go out and get something more substantive to eat?”

  Maureen checks her watch. “Ten-thirty is getting late for me. Especially as my body clock is on Irish time. Thank you for asking, but I think I’d like to get unpacked and get some sleep.”

  “I’ll go!” volunteers Brigid. “I’m starved.” This has the immediate effect of changing her mother’s mind, as Maureen is not about to permit a “nunlet” to spend any time alone with her wayward son and his faith-less (in her view) lady friend.

  Naturally, we bring Brigid and Maureen to the Pot o’Gold, where everybody knows our names and Jamie’s greeted as if he were a rock star. As if to prove his point that a pub, and not a fishing trawler, is his natural habitat, he takes a turn behind the bar after we finish our meal and the tips come pouring in amid the spirited banter. I’m incredibly grateful that this evening the bar is devoid of overly flirtatious women bellying up to the bar in their belly tees.

  I notice that Brigid, nursing a whiskey, is clearly impressed with her big brother’s popularity. With her short, tousled jet black hair and porcelain complexion, she could easily be taken for any one of the secular twenty-somethings here to night. Watching Maureen take it all in I wonder if she’s thinking back to her own New York City youth. The Pot o’Gold could just as well be any Irish bar in Inwood during the 1950s and ’60s.

  After I meet with Joe Williams at the Midtown Manhattan Democratic Club first thing in the morning, my life may suddenly become incredibly busy, but I think it’s the better part of
valor to extend every possible courtesy to Jamie’s mother, not from any raging desire to get on her good side (understanding this may never be possible), but because I very much want to be a good hostess. “Is there anything you’d like to see while you’re in New York City? Any place you’re keen on visiting? I’ll be happy to show you what we’ve done with the place in your absence.”

  “Oh, God, yes!” exclaims Brigid. “First I want to see St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Then I want to go to Au Bar and Jeffrey’s. I’ll love yiz forever if you show me where Sarah Jessica Parker drinks and shops in real life.”

  Maureen shoots her daughter a dirty look. “You shouldn’t be caring about such things.”

  “Ohh, Ma. I take my discernment very seriously, but it’s not like I’m a Francisan. How can I know what it is I’ll be givin’ up if I don’t know what it is I’ll be givin’ up?!”

  Now, this kid would make a great politician!

  “And I’ll never have another chance like this again!” Brigid insists.

  “To tell ya the truth, I wouldn’t mind hopping the subway to the old neighborhood,” Maureen says. “But then again, I hear it’s changed a lot. I’d probably be disappointed. All my old haunts have probably become bodegas or Starbucks. ‘You can never go home again,’ they say.”

  What a downer.

  “I brought you a present, Tessa,” Maureen tells me, unsnapping her suitcase and removing a parcel carefully swathed in tissue paper and bubble wrap. She unspools the layers herself, revealing one of her born-again dolls, a sandy-haired little boy with sleepy eyes, his tiny thumb shoved into his rosebud of a mouth. Placing the doll in my arms she tells me, “His name’s Sean, but-cha can change it if you want.”

  “Thank you, Maureen. This is very…generous.”

  “Hold him for a while,” she suggests. “Makes you realize what’s really important in life.”

  No doubt about it, her craftsmanship is astonishing, but I’m not entirely sure what message she’s trying to deliver. A shot of adrenaline to my maternal instincts? A tacit offer to trade one boy for another?

  “There’s something I don’t get,” I murmur, as Jamie and I snuggle that night. “Here we are, two forty-year-olds who are too freaked out to have sex while his mother is on the premises, even if she’s sleeping one floor below us and we’re behind a closed door. This is a situation we have both determined cannot be permitted to last indefinitely. Of course there’s also a virgin under the roof—at least as far as I surmise—and not only that, she’s a nun-in-training. Between the two of them, Maureen and Brigid, we’ve got built-in birth control.

  “What don’t you get?” whispers Jamie.

  “Your mother’s obvious disapproval of me despite her own personal romantic history. Here she is, an American who married an Irishman herself. Is it because I’m Jewish? Or because I’m nonpracticing, so not attending religious ser vices regularly is even worse than being another religion entirely?”

  “Ya know, you Americans have a way of torning everything around so that it’s always all about you. It’s one of your national corses which has become individual habit. The reason my mother disapproves of our relationship has everything to do with me. Not you.”

  “Care to elaborate?”

  “No, I don’t care to,” he replies, hugging me tighter. “Because you won’t believe me. So I want you to ask her yourself. You’ll see I’m right. Bet you a milkshake.”

  “Why a milkshake?” I giggle. “Oh, please don’t tickle me, Jamie; I’m one of those people who can’t stand it.”

  “Why a milkshake? Because you’ve had a craving for a chocolate milkshake for a week now, but like all you American women you’re always watching your weight so you don’t dare splurge, even if it’s for a little nothing that will make yiz happy. So I’m buyin’ you that chocolate shake. By winning our bet. And ya know something else? I’ll think you’re just as sexy even when you’ve ingested another five hundred calories. I might even be tempted to fancy you just as much with another thousand in your belly.”

  “What might persuade you to arrive at that conclusion?” I tease, allowing my fingers to play across the planes of his chest.

  He places his hand on mine and slides it in a southerly direction. “Touch me there,” he murmurs. “A lot.”

  Twenty-one

  “Obviously, we’re racing against time here. We need to collect enough petition signatures to get someone on the ballot in November. So are you in or out? Are you ready to support my candidacy?”

  Feeling a bit like Joan of Arc, this is what I tell Joe and a handful of the other local kingmakers over cups of diner coffee and a plate of Stella d’Oro cookies in the back room of a theatre district storefront.

  “I’ve always believed passionately in making the world a better, safer place, and standing up and fighting for genuine educational and economic opportunities. Come to think of it, who would say they didn’t feel the same way? But I’ve always helped achieve those visions from behind the scenes. I’ll level with you guys. Until David had his second heart attack, I’ve never actually pictured myself doing it front and center. But now I feel I can’t not pick up the banner.” Pointing to myself, I say, “You’re looking at his legacy in terms of his ideology, but without the baggage. Look,” I add, reaching for a cookie, “Dobson is already trying to hone in on David’s key constituency. Have you seen his POOP commercial? He’s standing down at Pier 90 talking about how when he gets elected he’ll sponsor a bill he calls the Port Operations Oversight Procedure. I’m certain he intends for the voters to confuse it with David’s CACA—Cruise Ship Accountability and Culpability Act—legislation and think it’s the same thing. It’s a typical Republican ploy to name bills after exactly what they’re not—like their Clear Skies bill actually allows for continued pollution. His Port Operations Oversight Procedure calls for no oversight whatsoever! It’s a continued free pass for the cruise line industry. But voters will never learn that, unless they phone his headquarters or log on to his web site to request a copy of the white paper. POOP stinks!”

  Wilfredo Figueroa scrutinizes me with a gimlet eye. “Tessa, there are two factors involved in our decision-making process. One: we need somebody who’s keyed up about running for Congress. We need someone with ambition. With a fire in their belly. Obviously, you fill those criteria.”

  “All of which is fine, but which brings us to factor number two,” adds Tamika Roberts. “We need someone who can win.”

  They cover all the bases in my résumé—Ivy League degree, former mayoral staffer, blue ribbon panelist on the city’s Committee on Diversity, speechwriter; and they thoroughly grill me about my positions on everything from abortion to zero-tolerance policies. We word-test several scenarios, to see how a Tessa Craig candidacy might be perceived by the voters:

  I’ve never run for office, which makes me an outsider (then again so is Bob Dobson, and that’s the main plank of his political platform); yet I’ve been a political insider for decades, which could lead to the charge of being a hack.

  I’ve been one of the policy architects of David Weyburn’s platform and he’s beloved in this district—or was, before the voters were deliberately distracted. Will my ties to David help or hurt a Tessa Craig campaign and how do we counter-punch if it’s the latter?

  The interview process gets my political juices revved up even more. “By the way, I’ll disclose that you came highly recommended,” Joe Williams tells me, plundering the two remaining cookies as our meeting winds down. “About a half hour after our conversation last night, I received a phone call from your former boss. He was calling from his hospital bed. Congressman Weyburn said yours was the first name that sprang to mind when it came to tapping a replacement to run for his seat. And I have to say that he didn’t sound surprised when I told him we’d already spoken. I’m probably not talking out of school to say that he spoke very highly of you, not just as someone who really knows the drill on Capitol Hill, but as a person. He had a lot of good things to
say about your commitment to public ser vice, your compassion for others, your intelligence and diligence, and what he mentioned as most important to him, your integrity. Of course you don’t see enough of that nowadays. Especially among politicians.”

  I feel a lump rise in my throat when I tell them that for me these qualities feel as natural as breathing. “It’s not hard to stand up for what’s right when you’ve been inspired by the best hope for a better day that this country has seen in years. And, now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go to church.”

  Joe gives me a very strange look. “Isn’t today Rosh Hashanah?”

  Whoops.

  Well, if there is a Judeo-Christian God who is allegedly omnipresent, He/She/It is just as likely to be in St. Pat’s as anywhere else.

  I meet Maureen and Brigid on the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral. At this time of day, there aren’t too many people visiting this vast neo-Gothic monument to Catholicism. In the low light the handfuls of tourists move in pairs and clusters amid the faint aroma of frankincense, speaking in hushed tones in a half dozen languages. The Germans, Japanese, French, and Russians, and the occasional midtown office worker on her lunch hour stop to light a candle or simply to slide into one of the long wooden pews and gaze upon the majesty of the apse as they meditate, cogitate, even pray in its most recognizable form: knees bent, head bowed, hands clasped.

  Maureen and Brigid had dipped their fingers in the font and blessed themselves as soon as they set foot inside the cathedral. Facing the altar, they genuflect and cross themselves again before the three of us take a pew about two-thirds of the way up the nave, where the light is more golden, the enormity of the edifice a bit more manageable to a suppliant so dwarfed by the height of the sanctuary. As they begin to pray, I sit quietly, respectfully, but taking silent bets on what Maureen Doyle just asked for from her Lord.