Frank McCourt - 'Tis

I eat my beans and when I tell him the book titles he shakes his head. Oh, no, oh, no. Hesse, maybe. Forget the rest. All Western ego. All Western crap. I wouldn’t wipe my ass with Hemingway. But I shouldn’t say that. Arrogant. Ego stuff. I take it back. No, wait. I said it. I’ll leave it out there. It’s gone. I read Hamlet. I read Finnegans Wake and here I am sitting on a floor in Greenwich Village with Plato, John and a man eating beans. What do you make of those ingredients?

I don’t know.

I despair sometimes and you know why?

Why?

I despair I might push too far with Plato and John and find them wanting. I might come to a nowhere. You know?

No.

You ever read Plato?

I did.

St. John?

They read the Gospels all the time at Mass.

Not the same. You have to sit down and read St. John, hold him in your hands. No other way. John is an encyclopedia. He changed my life. Promise me you’ll read John and not that goddam stuff you brought home in the bag. Sorry, there’s that ego popping up again.

He cackles into the mirror, pats himself where his belly should be, and rocks from book to book reading verses from John and paragraphs from Plato, squeaks with pleasure, Eek, eek, oh the Greek and the Jew, the Greek and the Jew.

He talks to me again. I take it back, he says. There’s no nowhere with these guys. No nowhere. The form, the cave, the shadow, the cross. Jesus, I need a banana. He takes half a banana from behind the mirror and after mumbling something over it eats it. He crosses his legs under him, rests the backs of his hands on his knees, lotus position. When I cross behind him to drop my bean can into the garbage I can see he’s staring at the tip of his nose. When I tell him good night he doesn’t respond and I know I’m not in his world anymore, that I might as well go to bed and read. I’ll read Hesse to keep the mood.

41

Alberta talks about marriage. She’d like to settle down, have a husband, go to antique shops on weekends, make dinner, get a decent apartment some day, be a mother.

But I’m not ready yet. I see Malachy and Michael having their grand times uptown. I see the Clancy Brothers singing in the back room of the White Horse Tavern, acting in plays at the Cherry Lane Theatre, recording their songs, being discovered and moving on to glamorous clubs where beautiful women invite them to parties. I see the Beats in cafés all over the Village reading their work with jazz musicians in the background. They’re all free and I’m not.

They drink. They smoke pot. The women are easy.

Alberta follows her grandmother’s Rhode Island routines. Every Saturday you make coffee, smoke a cigarette, put your hair up in pink curlers, go to the supermarket, get a big order, stock the refrigerator, take soiled things to the Laundromat and wait till they’re cleaned and ready to be folded, go to the dry cleaner with garments which look clean to me and when I object she simply says, What would you know about dry cleaning? clean the house whether it needs it or not, have a drink, make a big dinner, go to a movie.

Sunday morning you sleep late, have a big lunch, read the paper, look at antiques on Atlantic Avenue, come home, prepare lessons for the week, correct papers, make a big dinner, have a drink, correct more papers, have tea, smoke a cigarette, go to bed.

She works harder at teaching than I do, prepares her lessons carefully, corrects papers conscientiously. Her students are more academic than mine and she can encourage them to talk about literature. If I mention books, poetry, plays my students groan and whine for the lavatory pass.

The supermarket depresses me because I don’t want a big dinner every night. It exhausts me. I want to roam the city, drink coffee in cafés and beer in bars. I don’t want to face the Zoe routine every weekend the rest of my life.

Alberta tells me things have to be taken care of, that I have to grow up and settle down or I’ll be like my father, a mad wanderer drinking myself to death.

This leads to an argument where I tell her I know my father drank too much and abandoned us but he’s my father, not hers, and she’ll never understand how it was when he didn’t drink, mornings I had with him by the fire, listening to his talk about Ireland’s noble past and Ireland’s great sufferings. She never had mornings like that with her father who left her with Zoe when she was seven and I wonder how she could ever get over that. How could she ever forgive her mother and father for dumping her on the grandmother?

The argument is so bad I walk out and live in my Village flat, ready for the wild bohemian life. Then I hear she has found someone else and suddenly I want her, I’m desperate, I’m mad for her. I can think only of her virtues, her beauty and energy and the sweetness of her weekend routines. If she takes me back I’ll be the perfect husband. I’ll take coupons to the supermarket, wash the dishes, vacuum the whole apartment every day of the week, chop vegetables for the big dinners every night. I’ll wear a tie, polish my shoes, turn Protestant.

Anything.

I don’t care anymore about the wild life of Malachy and Michael uptown, the scruffy Beats in the Village with their useless lives. I want Alberta, crisp and bright and womanly, all warm and secure. We’ll be married, oh we will, and we’ll grow old together.

She agrees to meet me in Louis’ Bar near Sheridan Square and when she walks in the door she’s more beautiful than ever. The bartenders stop pouring to look at her. Necks are craned. She’s wearing the rich blue coat with a light gray fur collar her father bought her as a peace offering after he punched her in the mouth years ago. There’s a silken lavender scarf over the collar and I know I’ll never look at that color again without thinking of this moment, that scarf. I know she’s going to sit on the stool beside me and tell me it was all a mistake, that we were made for each other and I should come with her now to her apartment, she’ll make dinner and we’ll live happily ever after.

Yes, she’ll have a martini and no she won’t go with me to my apartment and no I won’t go with her to her apartment because it’s over. She’s had enough of me and my brothers, the uptown scene and the Village scene, and she wants to get on with her life. It’s hard enough teaching every day without the strain of putting up with me and my whining about how I want to do this that and the other thing, how I want to be everything but responsible. Too much complaining, she says. Time to grow up. She tells me I’m twenty-eight years old but I act like a kid and if I want to waste my life in bars like my brothers it’s my business but she’ll have no part of it.

The more she talks the angrier she grows. She won’t let me hold her hand or even kiss her on the cheek and, no, she won’t have another martini.

How can she talk to me like this with my heart breaking there on the bar stool? She doesn’t care that I was the first man in her life, the first ever in the bed, the one a woman never forgets. All that doesn’t matter because she’s found someone who is mature, who loves her, who will do anything for her.

I’ll do anything for you.

She says it’s too late. You had your chance.

My heart is banging away, and there’s a great pain in my chest and all the dark clouds in the world are gathered in my head. I want to cry into my beer there in Louis’ Bar but there would be talk, oh, yeah, another lovers’ quarrel and we’d be asked to leave or at least I would. I’m sure they’d like Alberta to stay to adorn the place. I don’t want to be out on the street with all those happy couples strolling to dinners and movies and a little snack later before they climb into the bed all naked and, Jesus, is this her plan for tonight when I’m alone in my cold-water flat and no one in the world to talk to but Bill Galetly?