Frank McCourt - 'Tis

We raised the glasses and toasted all who stick with their own and know who the father is. Paddy leaned toward the old man and they talked about home, which is Ireland, though the old man hadn’t seen it for forty years and hoped to be buried in the lovely town of Gort beside his poor old Irish mother and his father who did his bit in the long struggle against the perfidious Saxon tyrant, and he raised his glass to sing,

God save Ireland, sez the heroes,

God save Ireland, sez ’em all,

Whether on the scaffold high

Or the battlefield we die,

Oh, what matter when for Erin’s sake we fall.

They sank deeper and deeper into their whiskey and I stared into the bar mirror wondering who’s kissing Mike Small now, wishing I could be parading the streets with her so that heads would turn and I’d be the envy of one and all. Paddy and the old man talked to me only to remind me that thousands of men and women died for Ireland who’d hardly be happy with my behavior the way I run around with Episcopalians betraying the cause. Paddy gave me his back again and I was left to gawk at what I could see of myself in the mirror and wonder at the world I found myself in. From time to time the old man leaned around Paddy to tell me, Stick to your own, stick to your own. I’m in New York, land of the free and home of the brave, but I’m supposed to behave as if I were still in Limerick, Irish at all times. I’m expected to go out only with Irish girls who frighten me with the way they’re always in a state of grace saying no to everything and everyone unless it’s a Paddy Muck who wants to settle on a farm of land in Roscommon and bring up seven children, three cows, five sheep and a pig. I don’t know why I returned to America if I have to listen to the sad stories of Ireland’s sufferings and dance with country girls, Mullingar heifers, beef to the heels.

There’s nothing in my head but Mike Small, blonde, blue-eyed, delicious, sailing through life in her easy Episcopalian way, the all-American girl, with sweet memories of Tiverton in her head, the small town in Rhode Island, the house where her grandmother reared her, the bedroom with little curtains moving gently at the windows that looked out on the Narragansett River, the bed dressed with sheets, blankets, pillows galore, blonde head on pillow filled with dreams of outings, hayrides, trips to Boston, boys boys boys, and Grandma in the morning setting out the nourishing all-American breakfast so that her little girl can move through the day charming the arse off every boy, girl, teacher and anyone she meets including me and mostly me as I sit stricken on the bar stool.

There was a darkness in my head from the whiskey and I was ready to tell Paddy and the old man, I’m weary of Ireland’s sufferings and I can’t live in two countries at the same time. Instead I left them, the two of them colloguin’ on their bar stools, and walked from 179th Street down Broadway to 116th Street hoping that if I waited long enough I’d have one glimpse of Mike Small being brought home by Mr. Lawyer in a Suit, a glimpse I want and don’t want, till a cop in a patrol car calls to me and tells me, Move on, buddy, all the Barnard girls are gone to bed.

Move on, says the cop, and I did because there was no use trying to tell him I know who’s kissing her now, that she’s surely at a movie with the lawyer’s arm around her, the tips of his fingers dangling at the border of her breast which is reserved for the honeymoon, that there might be a kiss or a squeeze between popcorn munches, and I’m here on Broadway looking at the gates of Columbia University across the street and I don’t know which way to turn, wishing I could find a girl from California or Oklahoma, all blonde and blue-eyed like Mike Small, all cheerful with teeth that never knew an ache or cavity, all cheerful because her life is laid out so that she’ll graduate from college and marry a nice boy, boy she calls him, and settle down in peace, ease and comfort, as my mother used to say.

The cop came at me again and told me keep moving, pal, and I tried to cross 116th Street with a bit of dignity so that he wouldn’t be able to point the finger and tell his partner, There goes another whiskey-head mick from the Old Country. They didn’t know and wouldn’t care that all this was happening because Mike Small wanted me to wear a tie and I refused.

The West End Bar was packed with Columbia students and I thought if I had a beer I might merge in and be mistaken for one of them, higher on the scale than NYU students. A blonde might take a fancy to me and get my mind off Mike Small though I didn’t think I could shrug her off even if Brigitte Bardot herself slipped between my sheets.

I might as well be in the NYU cafeteria the way these Columbia students argued at the top of their voices about the emptiness of life, how absurd everything is and how all that matters is grace under pressure, man. When that bull’s horn comes at you and grazes your hip you know that’s the moment of truth, man. Read your Hemingway, man, read your J. Paul Sartre, man. They know the score.

If I didn’t have to work in banks, docks, warehouses, I’d have time to be a proper college student and moan over the emptiness. I wish my father and mother had lived respectable lives and sent me to college so that I could spend my time in bars and cafeterias telling everyone how I admired Camus for his daily invitation to suicide and Hemingway for risking the bull’s horn in the side. I know if I had money and time I’d be superior to every student in New York in the despair department though I could never mention any of this to my mother because she’d say, Arrah, for God’s sake, don’t you have your health and shoes and a fine head o’ hair and what more do you want?

I drank my beer and wondered what kind of a country is this where cops keep telling you move on, where people put pigeonshit in your ham sandwich, where a girl who’s engaged to be engaged to a football player walks away from me because I’m not wearing a tie, where a nun will baptize Michael what’s left of him though he suffered in a concentration camp and deserves to be left in his Jewish condition bothering no one, where college students eat and drink to their hearts’ content and moan about existentialism and the emptiness of everything, and cops tell you once again, Move on.

I walked back up Broadway past Columbia into Washington Heights and over to the George Washington Bridge where I could look up and down the Hudson River. My head was filled with dark clouds and noises and a coming and going of Limerick and Dachau and Ed Klein where Michael what’s left of him, a piece of offal, was saved by GIs, and my mother moved in and out of my head with Emer from Mayo and Mike Small from Rhode Island, and Paddy Arthur laughed and said you’ll never dance with Irish girls with them two eyes like piss holes in the snow, and I looked up and down the river and felt sorry for myself till the sky brightened beyond and the sun coming up traveled from tower to tower turning Manhattan into pillars of gold.

34

A few days later she calls me in tears. She’s out on the street and would I come and get her at 116th and Broadway. There was trouble with her father, she has no money and doesn’t know what to do. She’s waiting on the corner and on the train she tells me how she got dressed with every intention of calling me and meeting me even though I had strong feelings about ties but her father said no, she wasn’t going out and she said yes, she was going out and he punched her on the mouth which, as I can see, is swelling. She ran from her father’s house and there’s no going back. Mary O’Brien says she’s in luck. One of the boarders is gone back to Ireland to marry the girl down the road and his room is available.