Herself

by Leslie Carroll

  It’s the perfect place for Mr. Doyle and Ms. Craig to hold a wedding, hosting a hundred of their nearest and dearest. Who needs a choice between grilled sea bass or Cornish hen, when you’ve got steamed corned beef or fish and chips? Oh, sure, the champagne flowed, but so did the whiskey and the Guinness. Guests were encouraged to wear what ever they wanted to, so there was a mixture of styles, from black tie to corduroys and from beaded evening gowns to flirty cocktail dresses—as usual, the women were more turned out than the men. In keeping with his relaxed outlook on life, the groom, ever the genial host, wore a purple tee shirt under his black dinner jacket, while the bride wore an ivory satin bias-cut gown that would not have looked out of place on a screen siren of the 1930s.

  Arriving at the pub in a horse-drawn hack, Tessa Craig, who had been married previously, exchanged I do’s with Jamie Doyle as the snow gently fell outside the windows of the now-eponymous pub, muffling the intrusive sounds of a busy city. Inside, a heavily decorated Christmas tree sparkled with handmade ornaments and twinkled with colored lights, while an electric menorah blazed, despite the fact that Chanukah ended nearly two weeks earlier. But it was part and parcel of the bride and groom’s own religious cocktail. Ms. Craig, who has been using that surname professionally for several years, was raised as a Reform Jew; Mr. Doyle had a strict Roman Catholic upbringing.

  Rabbi Rhona Lehman from Stephen Wise Free Synagogue and Father Mulligan of the Church of the Holy Trinity married the couple, while the guests were encouraged to join the band in singing their favorite songs, a repertoire that ran the gamut from “Ave Maria” to Alanis Morissette. During the ceremony, the couple stood under a chuppah made of pine boughs and held aloft by four women: Ms. Craig’s cousin, Imogen Beckstein, her former college roommate, the still-exotic dancer Venus deMarley, and the groom’s mother, Maureen, and his youngest sister Brigid.

  Brigid Doyle herself has apparently been sprinkled with a handful of romantic stardust. Although she confessed to having been conflicted about her path for a while, she’s now considering a major lifestyle change, abandoning her plans of becoming a nun back in Dublin to put down roots in New York City, with the hope that someday she’ll be taking a very different set of vows. She told Sunday Styles she’d met a police officer here, adding, “I can’t tell you for sure because it’s never happened to me before, but I think I’m in love.” She’s also thinking of going back to school, with an eye toward a new career in social work. “I really want to help people. And there are so many ways to do it; I’ve done a boatload of reflectin’ and the long and the short of it is, I really don’t think I’m cut out for a convent.”

  With no young children in the family, Tessa and Jamie decided to conscript Maeve, the bride’s Irish setter puppy, into performing the duties of the ring bearer. But with so many treats on the buffet table, the pooch became distracted and it was a matter of several minutes before she could be persuaded to stick to business.

  Reminding the couple that an enduring marriage, like a good sauce for boiled tongue, incorporates both sweet and tart, Rabbi Lehman shared an anecdote containing the secret of a long marriage—a recipe of sorts where a wise wife made a great deal of lemonade out of the sourer moments in her marriage.

  “Tessa’s an avid knitter, and she’s pretty handy with a crochet hook as well, so she should particularly appreciate this story: There was once a man and woman who had been married for more than sixty years. They had shared everything. They had talked about everything. They had kept no secrets from each other, except that the old woman had a shoebox in the top of her closet that she had cautioned her husband never to open or to ask her about. For all the years of their marriage, he had never thought about the box, but one day, the old woman became very ill and the doctor said she would not recover. In trying to sort out their affairs before the end came for his wife, the old man took down the shoe box and brought it to his wife’s bedside. She agreed that it was time for him to learn what was in the box. When he opened it, he found two crocheted doilies and a stack of money totaling $25,000. The old man asked his wife about the contents. ‘When we were married,’ she began, ‘my grandmother told me that the secret of a happy marriage was to never argue. She told me that if I ever got angry with you I should just keep quiet and crochet a doily.’ The old man was so moved, he had to fight back tears. Only two fragile, lovingly handmade doilies were in the box. Imagine—his wife had been angry with him only two times in six decades of living and loving! He almost burst into tears. But he had to know something. ‘Where did all that money come from?’ he asked his wife. She gave him the most winning smile he’d seen in years. ‘Oh, that’s the money I made from selling the doilies.’”

  Apparently, the bride and groom have more in common culturally than a predilection for corned beef. As the guests shared a knowing laugh, the groom’s father Eamon jumped to his feet and exclaimed, “Rabbi, you stole my wedding toast!”

  The elder of the groom’s two sisters, Mary Margaret O’Connell, the mother of twin girls, offered a toast of her own. “Now Tess, this is all in fun of course, but as a longtime married woman—to an Irishman—I wanted to share with yiz this little prayer. Trust me, it’ll help ya through some of the tough days when they come.

  “Dear Lord: I pray for Wisdom to understand my man; Love to forgive him; and Patience for his moods; because Lord if I pray for Strength, I’ll beat him to death. Amen.”

  The bride roared with laughter. But so did the groom. “Oh aye, you’re a troublemaker Mary Mags,” he told his sister.

  Midway through the reception, the door to Jamie Doyle’s burst open and a blast of icy wind preceded the appearance of jolly St. Nick (“I’m on the groom’s side”)—in the person of NYPD Capt. Anthony O’Reilly, with the prosthetic aid of a pillow. Opening his enormous sack of goodies, he proceeded to dispense a plethora of wrapped gifts addressed to each of the wedding guests. According to those who opened their presents on the spot, each one of them seemed to have been personally selected with its recipient in mind. No generic bubble makers or bags of Jordan almonds for this group.

  “I love giving presents even more than I enjoy receiving them,” Ms. Craig told us. “And I’ve been on the receiving end of such wonderful things over the past few months. I’ve already gotten plenty!”

  During that time, Tessa told us, she found herself embarking on a journey of self-discovery and self-actualization. “I kind of imagined myself as a passenger on a train with all my personal and professional baggage around me—everything that had been familiar and comfortable for years was on the rack above my head, nestled beneath my feet—you get the picture. And then suddenly, when I thought everything had been chugging along just fine, even though there’d been some delays at a station here and there,” she chuckled, “the train suddenly switched to a different track. And it hit me that this serendipitous change in travel plans meant that maybe there was another destination I should consider.”

  The groom approached his forty-year-old bride and gave her a quick snog. It’s clear that despite the surface differences between the two of them—the new pub owner and the future public servant—they are totally smitten with each other. “She’s just beginning to hit her stride, don’tcha think?” Mr. Doyle asked this reporter. “Tess was born to be a leader…as well as the love of me life,” he grinned. “It’s just taken her a wee bit of time to find herself.”

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks again to Sharon O’Connell, who, when she was juggling so many of her own plates, generously dispensed copious advice and information on the Irish lifestyle. Former New York City Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz and her helpful staff provided a clearer road map through the mire that is the NYC Dept. of Education, giving me a starting point from which I reimagined a better system. Nicole and David Gruenstein steered me between Scylla and Charybdis on issues of Jewish arcana. den farrier’s suggestions early on were both provocative and golden. Sr. Pat Boucher explained the process of becoming a nun; Ross A. Klein provided
information regarding cruise ship dumping (any errors are my own). Gail Matos’s e-mails offered daily moral support and Star Trek trivia. M.Z. Ribalow asked the hard questions, and answered a bunch of mine. And of course, thanks always to my agent Irene Goodman and my editor Lucia Macro, who continue to inspire and encourage me to push the envelope.

  About the Author

  Native New Yorker LESLIE CARROLL is also a professional actress, dramatist, and journalist. In addition to her contemporary fiction, she writes historical fiction under the pen name Amanda Elyot. Visit Leslie on the web at www.tlt.com/authors/lesliecarroll.htm.

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  By Leslie Carroll

  HERSELF

  SPIN DOCTOR

  PLAY DATES

  TEMPORARY INSANITY

  Credits

  Cover design by MarySchuck

  Cover photograph by Jan Cobb

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  HERSELF Copyright © 2007 by Leslie Carroll. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  EPub © Edition JANUARY 2007 ISBN: 9780061737183

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