Forbidden Fruit (4 page)

The spire of my being did not rise up into a supernatural heaven; it was thrust upside down, like a spear, into the rich dark
earth. Down here I wanted happiness.

When I was eight years old, I took charge of my mother, Hannah, whom father called Wishie because she was always saying, “I
wish this or that.” Booze was her family, flag, creed, God. Dear Wishie, with the face of a rose garden and the mouth of rotten
apple. How often I had to fish her out of the empty bath when she missed the can. I hauled her out by her arms which were
limp as overcooked noodles. When she went completely crazy, I took
a knife and cut a crisscross on the palm of my left hand and held it up to her, yelling, “Stop it, stop it!” The sight of
blood, danger, was the only thing that could bring her, a mother, to her senses.

Could she drink! A thirsty camel at a water hole would have stopped to watch. It made your head spin just to breathe the air
around her.

When Jack, my father, was at medical conferences, I slept beside her. Soon as she woke, she grabbed a bottle as if it were
the alarm clock. She drank to cure hangovers.

I can see her standing, one hand on her hip for balance, the other with a bottle of Ballantine raised at the diagonal, “Shit
on ‘em”—this to no one in particular—before trumpeting a blast of Ballantine. Once she grabbed a bottle in each fist,
and played two trumpets at once, maybe to prove how good she was. Often she cooked in a green sweater and nothing else, and
I mean
nothing
. She was bottomless save for a blackthorn bush under her navel. In her tough, West Side, drinking Irish talk, “I’m okay,
Annie, for Chrissake, leave me be, willya?” as she aborted another bottle.

My doctor father said I was born drunk. Instead of me, Mom should have given birth to a crate of Ballantine.

Whenever she boiled an egg I reached for the fire extinguisher. Get in our old Cadillac with her behind the wheel, I used
to say, and don’t kid yourself it isn’t suicide. Is there no penalty for being drunk in charge of a child?

“Don’t tell ya father, it’d only upset him.” She made me promise, as she sank the pint of vodka she had just bought to replace
the pint she drank the day before. She could find a needle in a haystack if it had a lick of vodka on it.

So she wouldn’t get too drunk, I used to dilute the vodka with water before she did, but Daddy saw the motes in it, till I
learned to put the water through fine muslin first.

To save her, since I loved that nutty lady, I lied to her and I lied
for
her until lying was as easy as breathing. I enjoyed it. Like Mommy, I kept replacing the little sips taken from the bottle
of truth with liquid from the faucet of my own imagining.

I also made a frightening discovery that most people—not my father—like being lied to; it makes life more comfortable.
Nobody wanted to know the truth about Mommy any more than she did. Lying became for me a form of Christian charity.

What about you, Eamonn? Do you care for truth or do you, like the rest of us, demand that people tell you lies?

We left St. Mary’s for his big stone Palace next door. The very word raised my hackles. Another barrier between him and me.

Did he intend to show me once and for all that he was a princeling of the Church? Inside the Palace, backs straightened like
candles and “Morning, my Lord,” “Yes, my Lord,” “No, my Lord,” all spoken by men and women, some of whom knelt to kiss his
ring. Was this, I thought naughtily, the clerical version of kissing ass?

He introduced me to his lay secretary, Pat Gilbride, with, “This is my cousin, Annie Murphy, from America.”

Pat was a big happy blonde in her late twenties with a Cheshire Cat smile and hooded eyes that looked right at you.

When Eamonn got me to shake hands with Justin, the odd-job man, he relaxed. He slipped easily into his one-syllabled man-of-the-people
talk. Justin had patches on knees and elbows, and a brogue that completely foxed me. In his presence, Eamonn, almost dancing
a jig, was funny and tender, paternal and exigent at the same time.

Afterward, Eamonn whispered, with twinkling eyes, “A grand Catholic is Justin. If he hanged himself he’d use a rosary.”

He held up his own beads, with the crucifix on top, noosed his wrist and tugged upward in a vivid demonstration.

He liked Justin, I think, because Justin would never doubt that he was the greatest man alive after the Pope.

One person I liked immediately was Eamonn’s priest-assistant. Tall, with a marvelously gentle sense of humor, Father John
O’Keeffe was a blend of Jimmy Stewart and Sean Connery. He had heavy brows, soft eyes, and a fine ski nose. A laughing Kerryman,
he was not in the least scared of Eamonn, who said to me, “Clever chap, he has three degrees.”

In Eamonn’s study, dominated by a portrait of Pope Paul VI, the phones never stopped ringing. As he took the calls he thumbed
through a pile of mail. He could do several things at once—talk down the phone to an Irish priest in South America promising
funds for a village well, read a Latin document from a Vatican official, and, muffling the phone, explain to me what we might
do for the rest of the day.

Though this was routine for him, had he brought me there on my first morning to impress me with his power? Few women would
object to that.

At lunch, the only other guest was a Scot named Ian Simpson from the Scottish Finance Office. Eamonn sprinted through grace
whether his guests approved or not.

Mr. Simpson was a small, bald, soft-spoken man. “Come to Edinburgh, the Athens of the north, Miss Murphy.” He promised to
show me Princes’ Street and the Castle.

Even to be near Eamonn had its perks.

The best food and French wines were served by soft-shoed nuns with humble demeanor and downturned gaze. Did these women have
eyes at all? How could Eamonn tolerate such servility?

The contrast between the two men was marked. Eamonn’s face seemed made of pieces of brightly colored glass; Ian’s was of a
single grayish hue. Eamonn spoke in a rainbow stream of words, combined with broad heartfelt gestures; Ian’s utterances were
spare and dry as desert sand and came from no further than his lips.

Another thing: Whereas Eamonn addressed him as “Ian,” the Scot never dared call Eamonn anything but “My Lord.” No equality
here. Ian was not descended from the Apostles.

They spoke of financial help to the deprived areas of Kerry. Tens of thousands of pounds sterling were mentioned. Eamonn guaranteed
everything. Occasionally, with his right index finger, he banged on the fingers of his left hand one by one with the force
of a hammer to make his points.

For a couple of hours after lunch I was left alone in his study. On his desk was a photograph album, surely for me to examine.
It contained newspaper clippings and pictures of his ordination as a bishop in late 1969.

One picture showed Eamonn with the Primate, Cardinal Conway, President de Valera, Cardinal Heenan of Westminster, and the
papal Nuncio. Eamonn, looking truly magnificent in his episcopal robes, was referred to as, at age forty-two, the youngest
member of the Irish hierarchy.

Cardinal Heenan preached the sermon. “Bishop Eamonn is a friend and father of the poor, he sought shelter for the homeless.”
There were pictures of Eamonn’s ring—a hundred years old—of Eamonn smiling under his tall miter, and standing on an open
bus while waving to the crowds.

Was Eamonn challenging me? Was he saying, “Here is a mountain, Annie. Do you have the strength and stamina to climb it?” Or
—far more likely—was this all in my imagination?

He liked the best, and how could I be described as good, let alone the best? Did I mistake a show of power for an invitation
to love? To topple such a man would be like burning down a cathedral. I had no wish to do any such thing. Did I?

Memories stirred in me. I was twelve years old when my elder brother, John, came rushing into our house in Redding, Connecticut.
He was white with anger and my father asked him what was the matter. John blurted out that he had just caught a visiting monsignor
from Toronto in the garage with his secretary from Montreal. “Doing what, for heaven’s sake?” my father asked. “He was… making
love to her,” John said. Mommy stepped forward and struck him across the face. “Can’t you see Annie’s here?” she roared. I
was stunned, but my elder sister, Mary, went into hysterics at the thought of a holy priest having sex. Such things did not
happen in Connecticut. “Who,” she gasped, “is going to forgive him his sins?”

Next, I was a teenage waitress at the Avon Inn in New Jersey. I often saw men who had checked in in priestly garb dressed
as laymen and taking women out for the night—and taking them in. One priest in particular annoyed me because he was so preachy
by day and so damned promiscuous by night.
Heavens
, I thought,
and these pious hypocrites give us poor mortals such a hard time of it
.

This was a major reason for my leaving the Church, that and the feeling that Catholics put a sin-tag on every thought, word,
deed, and omission. I didn’t want to reduce my Eamonn to the level of clerics who lead double lives. There was surely no danger
of that since it was his strength not his frailty that overwhelmed me. With great generosity, his one thought was to resurrect
a girl whom my father had told him was dead and buried.

It was this generosity that attracted me to him and made me want to get as close to him as I dared.

H
E DROVE ME HOME THAT AFTERNOON in a quiet mood. He had a kind of puzzled look on his face as if he were grappling with a problem
with which he could not cope.

I had seen enough to know that this masterful man hated to be led. He had so much more to lose than I: honor, prestige, power.
What could I offer him in recompense?

Nothing, unless there was deep inside him a torrent of need still to be revealed. I could lead only by following. I could
attract only by not attracting. On my part, there was no guilt or guile in this. It was instinctive. It expressed the intent
of a woman who had come out of darkness for the first time in her life and felt she was owed happiness.

But how could Eamonn bestow happiness on me, and what form would that happiness take? I had no clear idea as yet. I only knew
that I wanted to be worthy of someone so good and so considerate.

The second night, we edged ever closer as we sat and talked by the fire.

“I can do more for you, Annie,” he said, neither humbly nor proudly, “than any psychiatrist.”

I did not doubt it. If only I could find a way to open my heart to him. Yet if I succeeded, it might lead to his ultimate
failure. So deep now was my respect for him I did not want him to fail. He was bigger than I was, bigger even than any possible
love between us. How could I want to corrupt a man whom I loved because he was incorruptible?

His personality so overpowered me, maybe I believed that this wizard and this magical land could accomplish the impossible.
I blocked my ears to the drums of doom.

He stretched out and stroked the back of my hand. “Care to tell me about your marriage?”

“It was a disaster.”

“Your husband was a Catholic?”

My father had told him otherwise, but Steven’s religion was not the reason why our marriage failed.

“He was a Jew. I was married in front of a rabbi.”

“ ‘Twasn’t a real marriage, then.” Eamonn said it with a certain amount of satisfaction. “The Church does not recognize the
marriage of a Catholic in such circumstances.”

“I had ceased to think of myself as a Catholic then.”

He reflected for a moment. “That was your trouble, Annie.”

I let it pass. I was still feeling the pain of a marriage that I had never been able to speak of to anyone.

Tears must have rainbowed in my eyes as I silently recalled all this, for Eamonn said, ‘Ready to talk?’

As I shook my head, a sharp chill come over me.

“You are free in the eyes of God, Annie,” he said, stroking my hand fondly, “to marry again.”

“No.”

“To love again.”

“To love.” I omitted the word
again
. “Perhaps.” The expressive motion of his hand on mine told me he liked both distinctions.

What is it about firelight that brings out deep things in the mind and heart? Especially this sort of fire made of peat, dug
from the very land on which people walk and live and love. I had read that the great old Irish storytellers liked nothing
more than to tell their stories by a big turf fire which, at the day’s end, was never put out but simply covered over. Fires
would thus go on for generations, until perhaps the house was demolished. A sign, this, that people’s stories, like the land
itself, its rivers, fields, and hills, would never end. Stories outlive mountains.

So we contented ourselves with telling stories—carving the past in fabled stone—of our families, of mutual relatives,
laughing and sobbing, and hardly knowing the difference.

He told me he was the sixth of “a pewful of children,” ten in all. They lived in a yellow Georgian house at Adare in the County
Limerick, with white and pink roses round the door.

John, his father, was manager of two dairies. He rose at 4:30 every morning and came home late at night but he always squeezed
in Mass during the day.

His mother, Helena, dead now for over ten years, was a perfectionist. Good clothes for the children, finest food served at
table with lace and silver, fresh flowers, and best china. She never complained, though her health was always bad. She was
a brilliant pianist—Eamonn pointed to her piano by the wall. All the children took music and dancing lessons and Eamonn
won many prizes in Irish dancing.

“I was a thin child, Annie, with stomach problems, bronchitis, fevers. I loved sport but was too sickly for it so I made do
with music.”

He told me of his seminary days—“I never broke a rule, not one”—and of his first years as a curate in Limerick. In those
days, in some pool halls, youngsters aged fifteen to nineteen were abusing kids of nine years and up. It took courage to confront
them. He knew he could not stop homosexuality. But he could stop child sex-abuse.