A Way of Life, Like Any Other

by Darcy O'Brien

  I believe in God the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth. And Christ don’t forget the Virgin Mary. And the Catholic Church. And how about the US Navy? And Admiral Jack Ford. And your brother who stole your money. And Marshall Marshall who trusts in you who trusted her whose death we celebrate today. Sam Caliban where are you when I need you write me a check I want to take a plane to the promised land, Palm Springs will do. Maybe she wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe she was looking for somebody who wasn’t such a trusting shining asshole that was ready to believe anything even from her. Holy Jesus I vowed then that I would not go through life trusting. She knew she was a liar and she knew he was a liar too. How could she believe in a liar who believed in her? I knew my father was praying for me right then and I did not want his prayers, they oppressed me, they drained the blood from me. She would not want them either, ghoul prayers, knife-prayers cutting. I was lying on the dissecting table with her being cut by the knives of his prayers. If I could take his knives and cut him back. I pray to God that all your members be blistered and covered with sores. May your foreskin grow an ulcer. Shit, he had taken enough shit. The mass was interminable. By the end of it I was nobody, nothing but a collection of losses, lies, hates, evasions, dying to escape, to steal an identity, become a Spaniard and go kill Donna Esmeralda and her duke and take my money to Argentina.

  At home my father discoursed on the value of religion and on the free doughnuts and coffee we had received after mass. It was things like that that made the church a friendly place and not something to be afraid of. I avoided religion and told him of my plans. I needed to go East well before the term began because I was behind in my reading and there would be stiff competition from the Eastern prep school boys who had been reading Aristotle from the cradle. It was like preparing for a big game. I had to be in tip-top mental condition. I needed to get cracking in the university library. I didn’t know who my opponents would be, but I couldn’t be caught off guard, they would be gunning for me from behind every bookshelf. I had to fight for my place. I almost convinced myself. Maybe I would convince myself. I might get somewhere, besides just out.

  “I get it,” he said. “Maybe this is the time. I’ve been saving something for you, and there are some things I want you to know about. You know, you might come back here some time and find the old man dead. It happens.”

  He showed me where he kept the extra keys to the house and car, just in case. I wouldn’t have to worry about burial expenses. He would get rid of the family plot somehow, there must be other people who could use the space.

  “It was a nice idea, wasn’t it?” he asked. “All of us together again some day?”

  “It was,” I said. Too bad, I thought, he had not had the Christian charity to include Anatol. And who knew how many holes I might require, by the time I was through fucking up?

  But some things weren’t meant to be, he went on, and he had always wanted to be buried at sea anyway. The Navy had a deal. They would ship him out of San Diego and drop him over the side.

  “You aren’t sick, are you!” I asked.

  “No, but these things can hit you, and you can’t be too prepared. I don’t want to be any expense to you. It won’t cost a thing. I do want the Catholic burial service. I do want that, if you could make sure I get that.”

  “Of course.”

  “Well that’s taken care of. Now follow me.”

  He led me out to the garage where the saddle was and a lot of boxes we had never gone through. I was afraid he was going to confront me with the rest of Linda’s letters and I readied a speech: at least I had known what it was to have a girl and it wouldn’t be the last and I did not intend to spend the rest of my life beating off over old photographs of my perfidious wife who was resting in a Spanish garbage can now anyway. But he ignored the saddle and pulled a big plastic bag out of a box. We went back into the house and he put the bag in the middle of the floor and stood over it. I sat down.

  “I’ve been keeping this for you,” he said. “My father did the same for me. He used to ask me for money when I was in the chips, and then when he died I discovered he had been putting it all away for me. There was fifty thousand dollars. Well, I’m afraid I can’t match that, though I know you’re counting on me for your tuition, and I wouldn’t deny my son that, because he didn’t get a scholarship.”

  “I explained that,” I said, a little testy. “I couldn’t get a scholarship because you have too much money.”

  “I’ll borrow it somewhere, Salty. What I have here is for you gratis. It’s a start for you, no strings attached, and I know you’ll do the right thing with it.”

  Out of the big plastic bag he pulled a brown paper bag, and another paper bag out of that, and another paper bag, and finally a canvas bag that went chink, when he set it down.

  “Your grandmother left this for you,” he said. “This is your inheritance from her. She didn’t leave anything to anyone else, not even to me, even though I took care of her when your mother wouldn’t, her own daughter, and I had her on the payroll in the old days, as a secretary. That got her the social security. But this is yours. She was very fond of you, Salty.”

  I must have misjudged her. A gift from beyond the grave. Hello. What a pleasant surprise. Do come in. You’re dropping charcoal on the carpet. I took the bag. It was heavy. I looked in. It was full of silver dollars, fifty or sixty of them. I stuck my hand in and fingered and jingled them. But why had he kept them from me? Could I take him to court? He owed me interest. I plunged down to the bottom of the bag and my fingers touched something soft.

  “What’s this?” I said. I pulled out a little leather change purse.

  “I don’t know,” my father said. “Let me see that.”

  I handed him the purse, automatically, and immediately I wanted to snatch it back. He looked at it and held it up without opening it. He must have looked into the bag and seen the silver dollars, but he had never noticed the purse. I could see he was a little anxious. He wanted to open the purse but he did not know whether he wanted me to see what was inside, whatever it was. I was not going to let that purse out of my sight. And I was going to keep whatever was inside it. I calculated how quickly I could reach the six-gun under his bed. If he wanted a showdown, I would give it to him.

  “Open it,” I said.

  “I am,” he said. He turned his back to me.

  I got up to look over his shoulder. He opened the purse and we looked in. There was a small wad of pink toilet paper in it. He picked out the wad and held it up. Through a hole in the paper I caught a glint of metal. So did he. He went over to the table and bent over the wad.

  “What is it,” I said, “cufflinks?”

  “That’s right,” he said. “Cufflinks. It’s my cufflinks.”

  “What cufflinks? What are they doing in there?”

  He said nothing. I had him cornered. I got around to where I could see. He had to unwrap the thing now. It was a diamond ring.

  “That’s mine,” I said, and I took it from him. He had no adlib and let it go without a struggle.

  “I’m very touched,” I said. “She promised it to me. It’s her engagement ring. I asked her to marry me when I was about ten and she promised me this ring. I’m really touched.” I pocketed it.

  In my mind I was already making a raid on Brooks Brothers. I had seen pictures of the undergraduates at my university and I didn’t dress anything like them. Now I would not have to arrive looking like some California cowboy. I would go to New York, stay at the Plaza, open a charge at Brooks and arrive on campus a vision in tweed. It would be my first step toward being more like everybody else. I was bibulous with hope. Good-bye now, good-bye. I’ll be seeing you. I’m jumping ship. You’ll hear from me airmail. I’ll clue you in on what I’m learning, keep you posted on my career, let you know if I get elected President, and one day we’ll sit around and reminisce about the great old times gone by, the golden days, the never to be forgotten glamour of it all. So long, Marshall Marshall, ma
y you live to sell MacArthur for a million. A tip of the hat to you, dear mother of mine, there’s a flower blooming from your offal somewhere in old Madrid, may a sailor pick it for his sweetheart. And a thousand thanks to you, Granny, fan I never knew, I’ve got a piece of you here in my pocket, the only piece that didn’t burn. By authority vested in me by nobody, I posthumously promote you, whatever rank you wish, just name it, I’ll never mistrust a Methodist again. And as for you, Linda, you’ll never go shoeless, but don’t count me out yet, baby, I haven’t begun to fight. The time will come you’ll wish you’d given your big ignorant jock the old heave-ho.

  “A ring like that might be worth a couple of thousand,” my father said. “She promised it to you, is that it?”

  I took it out and held it to the light. It was a good-sized rock all right.

  “I wouldn’t want to sell it,” I said, making it snug again, my fist guarding the flap. “Not unless I had to. A gift like that. It’s a family link.”

  “What you ought to do,” my father said, “is let me put it in the safety deposit box for you. You might want to give it to the mother of your children. You might not. It’d be there when you need it.”

  “No,” I said.

  “A safety deposit box is the place for a thing like that.”

  “No it isn’t,” I said. He was down, and as we looked at each other there were thousands of miles between us, but in a second I realized he was not out, not yet. If he suspected that I was going to sell the ring, if he found out that I had sold it, I could expect to find the bill for my tuition right in my lap.

  “I tell you what,” I said. “The safety deposit box is probably a good idea. You have more experience with things like this than I do. The first thing I’ll do when I get East is find a bank and put the ring in a safety deposit box. That way it’ll be safe.”

  “Now you’re talking,” he said.

  I did not know whether he knew that he had been outmaneuvered. I did not know whether he knew, whether he could face the fact, that had he discovered the ring by himself, I would never have seen it; that had Granny not had his number, so she knew enough not to tell him about it and to hide it from him, I would never have seen it; that he would have told himself, was telling himself right then, that he needed it, deserved it more than I did because he had paid Granny’s social security and had taken care of her until she died when her own daughter wouldn’t; that the silver dollars he had hidden from me for over two years would alone have been enough to present to me as a grand self-sacrificing generous gesture of paternal love and regard for this boy who was going off needing to remember that his old Dad was one hell of a guy who wished him well in whatever he did. I did guess that he knew very little about me, and for once, at last, I was glad of that. Just stick with me, son. Stick with me and someday you might get part of your inheritance from your grandmother. He was trusting, all right. He trusted me not to know his treachery.

  “Look at the way things turn out,” my father said. “This morning we were remembering your mother and praying for her, and now you have this good luck. I’m happy for you, I really am.”

  He opened his arms and I went into them, and he gave me a big bear hug. Trust. Faith. He had tried everything to hang onto me. If he had known what he was hugging he would not have held so tight. Cut! The scene was overplayed. Dissolve, dissolve, bring the music up. We’re busting hell out of the budget, boys. He released me. I saw his eyes watering and I let my eyes go out of focus. He said:

  “I offered up a prayer for you this morning. I always do. And I thought of something my father often said to me. He told me it one time when I was in some hot water and I thought the whole world was against me. He said to me, ‘Son,’ he said, ‘son, just remember this. Right or wrong, I’m behind you. Right or wrong, I’m your father and pal.’ Your father and pal. I think that’s pretty good, don’t you? And Salty, I say it to you tonight. Right or wrong, I’m your father and pal. And I wish you all the luck in the world, believe me. How’s that? How’s that from a father to a son?”

  I went into the world well-armed.

  —DUBLIN, S.S. EURYBATES, CLAREMO NT, 1973-1976

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1977 by Darcy O’Brien

  Introduction copyright © 2001 by Seamus Heaney

  ISBN 978-1-4976-5871-4

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

  345 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com

  Open Road Integrated Media is a digital publisher and multimedia content company. Open Road creates connections between authors and their audiences by marketing its ebooks through a new proprietary online platform, which uses premium video content and social media.

  Videos, Archival Documents, and New Releases

  Sign up for the Open Road Media newsletter and get news delivered straight to your inbox.

  Sign up now at

  www.openroadmedia.com/newsletters

  FIND OUT MORE AT

  WWW.OPENROADMEDIA.COM

  FOLLOW US:

  @openroadmedia and

  Facebook.com/OpenRoadMedia