Frank McCourt - 'Tis

The man at the Beneficial Finance Company says, Do I detect a brogue? He tells me where his mother and father came from in Ireland and how he plans to visit himself though that’d be hard with six kids, ha ha. His mother comes from a family of nineteen. Can you believe that? he says. Nineteen kids. Of course seven died but what the hell. That’s how it was in the old days in the Old Country. They had kids like rabbits.

So, back to the application. You want to borrow three hundred and fifty dollars to visit the Old Country, eh? You haven’t seen your mother in what, six years? The man congratulates me on wanting to see my mother. Too many people nowadays forget their mothers. But not the Irish. No, not us. We never forget our mothers. The Irishman that forgets his mother is no Irishman and should be drummed out, goddammit, excuse the language, Mr. McCourt. I see you’re a teacher and I admire you for that. It must be rough, big classes, low pay. Yeah, all I have to do is look at your application to see the low pay. Don’t know how you can live on it and that, I’m sorry to tell you, is the problem. That’s what causes the hitch in this application, the low pay and absence of any collateral if you know what I mean. They’re gonna shake their heads at the head office over this application but I’m gonna push it because you got two things in your favor, you’re an Irishman that wants to see his mother in the Old Country and you’re a teacher killing himself in a vocational high school and, as I say, I’m going to bat for you.

I tell him I’ll be shaping up at the warehouses in July to replace men going on vacation but that means nothing to the Beneficial Finance Company unless there’s proof of steady employment. The man advises me to say nothing about sending money to my mother. They’d shake their heads at the main office if there was anything that might threaten my monthly payments on the loan.

The man wishes me good luck. He says, It’s such a pleasure to do business with one of my own.

The platform boss at Baker and Williams looks surprised. Jesus, you back again. I thought you became a teacher or some goddam thing.

I did.

So what the hell you doin’ here?

I need the money. The teacher’s pay is not princely.

You shoulda stood in the warehouses or drove a truck or somethin’ an’ you’d be makin’ money an’ not strugglin’ with them goddam kids that don’t care.

Then he asks, Didn’t you used to hang around with that guy, Paddy McGovern?

Paddy Arthur?

Yeah. Paddy Arthur. So many Paddy McGoverns they have to get another name. You know what happened to him?

I don’t.

Dumb bastard is on the A train platform at 125th Street. Harlem, you know. What the hell was he doin’ in Harlem? Lookin’ for a little of that black stuff. So he gets bored standing on the platform like everybody else and decides to wait for the train down on the tracks. On the goddam tracks, avoiding the third rail. You could get killed with the third rail. Lights a cigarette and stands there with that stupid smile on his face till the A train comes in and ends his troubles. That’s what I heard. What was it with that dumb bastard?

He must have been drinking.

Course he was drinking. Goddam Irish are always drinking but I never heard of no Irishman waiting for the train on the tracks before. But your friend there, Paddy, always said he was going back. He’d save enough money and live in the Old Country. What happened? Know what I think? You wanna know what I think?

What do you think?

Some people should stay where they are. This country could drive you crazy. It drives people crazy that was born here. How come you’re not crazy? Or maybe you are, eh?

I don’t know.

Lissena me, kid. I’m Italian an’ Greek an’ we have our problems but my advice to a young Irishman is this, Stay away from the booze an’ you won’t have to wait for the train on the tracks. You got me?

I do.

At lunch I see a figure from the past washing dishes in the diner kitchen, Andy Peters. He sees me and tells me hold on, try the meat loaf and the mashed potatoes and he’ll be out in a minute. He sits beside me on a counter stool and asks how I like the gravy.

Fine.

Yeah, well I made it. It’s my practice gravy. I’m really the dishwasher here but the cook is a drunk and he lets me do gravy and salads though there isn’t much call for salads around here. Guys from docks and warehouses think salads are for cows. I came here to wash dishes so I can think, finished with that fucking NYU. I need to clear my head. What I’d really like to do is get a job vacuuming. I’ve gone from hotel to hotel offering to vacuum but there’s always the form, always the shitass investigation into my past which reveals my dishonorable discharge for not having congress with a sheep and that puts the kibosh on vacuuming. You take a shit in a French ditch and your life is ruined till you hit on the brilliant solution of reentering American life on the lowest level, dishwashing, and watch my speed, man. I’ll be the dishwasher supremo. They’ll blink in amazement and before you know it I’ll be salad man. How? Learning, watching in an uptown kitchen, promoted to salad man, assistant assistant chef and before you know it I’ll be on sauces. Sauces, for Christ’s sakes, because the sauce is the great bullshit ingredient in French cooking and Americans are suckers for it. So watch my style, Frankie boy, watch for my name in the papers, Andre Pierre, pronounced in the proper French way with your eyebrows up to your hairline, sauce man supreme, wizard with pot, pan and wire whisk, yacking away on all the talk shows on TV with no one giving a damn if I diddled every sheep in France and adjoining monarchies. People in fancy restaurants will ooh and ah, compliments to the chef, me, and I’ll be invited to visit their tables so they can patronize me in my white hat and apron and of course I’ll let the word slip out I was this close to a Ph.D. at NYU and the Park Avenue wives will have me up for sauce consultations and the meaning of it all while the husbands are in Saudi Arabia buying oil and I’m with their wives drilling for gold.

He takes a moment to ask me what I’m doing with my life.

Teaching.

I was afraid of that. I thought you wanted to be a writer.

I do.

So?

I have to earn a living.

You’re falling into the trap. I beg you, don’t fall into the trap. I nearly fell into it myself.

I have to earn a living.

You’ll never write while you’re teaching. Teaching is a bitch. Remember Voltaire? Cultivate your garden.

I remember.

And Carlyle? Make money and forget the universe.

I’m earning a living.

You’re dying.

A week later he is gone from the diner and no one knows where.

With the money from the Beneficial Finance Company and the wages from the warehouses I’m able to spend a few weeks in Limerick and it’s the same old feeling when the plane descends and follows the Shannon Estuary to the airport. The river gleams silver and the fields rolling away are somber shades of green except where the sun shines and emeralds the land. It’s a good time to be sitting near a window in case there are tears.

She’s at the airport with Alphie and a hired car and the morning is fresh and dewy on the road to Limerick. She tells me about Malachy’s visit with his wife, Linda, and what a wild party they had with Malachy going out to a field and riding home on a horse which he wanted to bring into the house till everyone persuaded him a house was no place for a horse. There was plenty of drink that night and more than drink, poteen, which someone got from a man out in the country and ’twas the luck o’ God the guards never came near the house for the possession of poteen is a serious offense that could land you in the Limerick Jail. Malachy said she and Alphie might be able to come to New York for a visit at Christmas and wouldn’t that be grand, we’d all be together.