Frank McCourt - 'Tis

A hand went up. Why didn’t Ophelia run away to America?

Another hand. Because there was no America in the old days. It had to be discovered.

Whadda you talkin’ about? There was always an America. Where do you think the Indians lived?

I told them they’d have to look it up and the opposing hands agreed to go to the library and report next day.

One hand, There was an America in Shakespeare’s time and she coulda went.

The other hand, There was an America in Shakespeare’s time but no America in Ophelia’s time and she cuddena went. If she went in Shakespeare’s time there was nothing but Indians and Ophelia woulda been uncomfortable in a tepee which is what they called their houses.

We moved on to Henry IV, Part One, and all the boys wanted to be Hal, Hotspur, Falstaff. The girls complained again there was nothing for them except for Juliet, Ophelia, Lady Macbeth and Queen Gertrude and look what happened to them. Didn’t Shakespeare like women? Did he have to kill everyone who wore a skirt?

The boys said that’s the way it is and the girls snapped back they were sorry we didn’t read The Scarlet Letter because one of them had read it and told the rest how Hester Prynne had her beautiful baby, Pearl, and the father was a jerk who died miserable and Hester got her revenge on the whole town of Boston and wasn’t that much better than poor Ophelia floating down a stream, out of her mind, talking to herself and throwin’ flowers around, wasn’t it?

Mr. Sorola came to observe me with the new head of the Academic Department, Mrs. Popp. They smiled and didn’t complain about this Shakespeare book not being on the syllabus though the next term Mrs. Popp took this class away from me. I lodged a grievance and had a hearing before the superintendent. I said that was my class, I had started them reading Shakespeare and I wanted to continue in the next term. The superintendent ruled against me on the grounds that my attendance record was spotty and erratic.

My Shakespeare students were probably lucky in having the head of the department as their teacher. She was surely more organized than I and more likely to discover deeper meanings.

48

Paddy Clancy lived around the corner from me in Brooklyn Heights. He called to see if I’d like to go to the opening of a new bar in the Village, the Lion’s Head.

Of course I’d like to go and I stayed till the bar closed at 4 A.M. and missed work the next day. The bartender, Al Koblin, thought for a while I was one of the singing Clancy Brothers and charged me nothing for the drinks till he discovered I was only Frank McCourt, a teacher. Now even though I had to pay for my drinks I didn’t mind because the Lion’s Head became my home away from home, a place where I could feel comfortable the way I never did in uptown bars.

Reporters from the offices of the Village Voice drifted in from next door and they attracted journalists from everywhere. The wall opposite the bar was soon adorned with the framed book jackets of writers who were regular customers.

That was the wall I coveted, the wall that haunted me and had me dreaming that some day I’d look up at a framed book jacket of my own. Up and down the bar writers, poets, journalists, playwrights talked about their work, their lives, their assignments, their travels. Men and women would have a drink while waiting for cars to planes that would take them to Vietnam, Belfast, Nicaragua. New books came out, Pete Hamill, Joe Flaherty, Joel Oppenheimer, Dennis Smith, and went up on the wall, while I hung on the periphery of the accomplished, the ones who knew the magic of print. At the Lion’s Head you had to prove yourself in ink or be quiet. There was no place here for teachers and I went on looking at the wall, envious.

Mam moved into a small apartment across the street from Malachy on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Now she could see Malachy, his new wife, Diana, their sons, Conor and Cormac, my brother Alphie, his wife, Lynn, and their daughter, Allison.

She could have visited all of us as often as she liked and when I asked her why she didn’t she barked at me, I don’t want to be beholden to anyone. It irritated me always when I called and asked her what she was doing and she said, Nothing. If I suggested that she get out of the house and visit a community center or a senior citizens’ center she’d say, Arrah, for the love o’ Jesus, will you leave me alone. Whenever Alberta invited her to dinner she always made a point of being late, complaining of the long journey from her Manhattan apartment to our house in Brooklyn. I wanted to tell her she didn’t have to come at all if it was such a bother to her and the last thing she needed anyway was a dinner she was getting that fat, but I curbed my tongue so that there wouldn’t be tension at the table. Unlike the first time she came to dinner and pushed the noodles aside she now devoured everything before her though if you offered her a second helping she’d look prim and say no thanks as if she had the appetite of a butterfly and then pick at the crumbs on the table. If I told her she didn’t have to pick at crumbs, there was more food in the kitchen, she’d tell me leave her alone, that I was getting to be a right bloody torment. If I told her she’d be better off if she’d stayed in Ireland she’d bristle, What do you mean I’d be better off?

Well, you wouldn’t be lying in bed half the day with the radio stuck to your ear listening to every half-witted show they have.

I listen to Malachy on the radio and what’s wrong with that?

You listen to everything. You do nothing.

Her face would grow pale, her nose pointed, she’d pick at crumbs no longer there and there might be a hint of watery eyes. Then I’d be pricked with guilt and invite her to stay for the night so that she wouldn’t have to take that long subway ride to Manhattan.

No, thank you, I’d rather be in my own bed, if you don’t mind.

Oh, I suppose you’re afraid of the sheets, all those diseases from foreigners in the Laundromat?

And she’d say, I think now ’tis the drink talking. Where’s my coat?

Alberta would try to soften the moment with another invitation to stay, that we had new sheets and Mam needn’t be nervous.

’Tisn’t the sheets at all. I just want to go home, and when she saw me put on my coat she’d say, I don’t need anyone to walk me to the subway. I can find my own way.

You’re not going to walk these streets by yourself.

I walk the streets by myself all the time.

It was a long silent walk up Court Street to the subway at Borough Hall. I wanted to say something to her. I wanted to get past my irritation and my anger and ask her that simple question, How are you, Mam?

I couldn’t.

When we reached the station she said I didn’t have to pay a fare to get through the turnstiles. She’d be all right on the platform. There were people there and she’d be safe. She was used to it.

I went in with her thinking we might say something to each other but when the train arrived I let her go without even an attempt at a kiss and watched her stumble toward a seat as the train pulled from the station.

Down near Court Street and Atlantic Avenue I remembered something she had told me months ago while we sat waiting for Thanksgiving dinner. Isn’t it remarkable, she said, the way things turn out in people’s lives?

What do you mean?

Well, I was sitting in my apartment and I was feeling lonesome so I went up and sat on one of those benches they have in the grassy island in the middle of Broadway and this woman came along, a shopping bag woman, one of the homeless ones, all tattered and greasy, rootin’ around in the garbage can till she found a newspaper and sat beside me reading it till she asked me if she could borrow my glasses because she could only read the headlines with the sight she had and when she talked I noticed she had an Irish accent so I asked her where she came from and she told me Donegal a long time ago and wasn’t it lovely to be sitting on a bench in the middle of Broadway with people noticing things and asking where you came from. She asked if I could spare a few pennies for soup and I said instead she could come with me to the Associated supermarket and we’d get some groceries and have a proper meal. Oh, she couldn’t do that, she said, but I told her that’s what I was going to do anyway. She wouldn’t come inside the store. She said they wouldn’t want the likes of her. I got bread and butter and rashers and eggs and when we got home I told her she could go in and have a nice shower and she was delighted with herself though there wasn’t much I could do about her clothes or the bags she carried. We had our dinner and watched television till she started falling asleep on me and I told her lie down there on the bed but she wouldn’t. God knows the bed is big enough for four but she laid down on the floor with a shopping bag under her head and when I woke up in the morning she was gone and I missed her.