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.
They meet me on the streets and tell me I look grand, that I look more like a Yank all the time. Alice Egan argues, Frankie McCourt hasn’t changed one hour, not one hour. Isn’t that right, Frankie?
I don’t know, Alice.
You don’t have the slightest bit of an American accent.
Whatever friends I had in Limerick are gone, dead or emigrated, and I don’t know what to do with myself. I could read all day in my mother’s house but why did I come all the way from New York to sit on my arse and read? I could sit in pubs all night and drink but I could have done that in New York, too.
I walk from one end of the city to the other and out into the country where my father walked endlessly. People are polite but they’re working and they have families and I’m a visitor, a returned Yank.
Is that yourself, Frankie McCourt?
’Tis.
When did you come?
Last week.
And when are you going back?
Next week.
That’s grand. I’m sure your poor mother is glad to have you at home and I hope the weather keeps fine for you.
They say, I suppose you notice all kinds of changes in Limerick?
Oh, yes. More cars, fewer snotty noses and scabby knees. No barefoot children. No women in shawls.
Jesus, Frankie McCourt, them’s peculiar things to be noticing.
They’ll watch to see if I put on airs and they’ll cut me down but I have none to put on. When I tell them I’m a teacher they seem disappointed.
Only a teacher. Lord above, Frankie McCourt, we thought you’d be a millionaire by now. Sure wasn’t your brother Malachy here with his glamorous model of a wife and isn’t he an actor and everything.
The plane lifts into a western sun which touches the Shannon with gold and even though I’m happy to be returning to New York I hardly know where I belong anymore.
43
Malachy’s bar is so successful he provides passage for my mother and my brother Alphie, on the SS Sylvania which arrives in New York on December 21, 1959.
When they emerge from the customs shed there’s a piece of broken leather flapping from Mam’s right shoe so that you can see the small toe of a foot that was always swollen. Does it ever end? Is this the family of the broken shoe? We embrace and Alphie smiles with broken blackened teeth.
The family of broken shoes and teeth destroyed. Will this be our coat of arms?
Mam looks past me to the street beyond. Where’s Malachy?
I don’t know. He should be here in a minute.
She tells me I look fine, that it didn’t do me any harm to put on a bit of weight though I should do something about my eyes they’re that red. That irritates me because I know that if I even think of my eyes or anyone mentions them I can feel them flush red and of course she notices.
See, she says. You’re a bit old to be having bad eyes.
I want to snap at her that I’m twenty-nine and I don’t know the proper age for not having bad eyes and is this what she wants to talk about the minute she arrives in New York? but Malachy arrives in a taxi with his wife, Linda. More smiles and embraces. Malachy keeps the taxi while we retrieve the suitcases.
Alphie says, Will we put these in the boot?
Linda smiles. Oh, no, we put them in the trunk.
Trunk? We didn’t bring a trunk.
No, no, she says, we put your bags in the trunk of the taxi.
Isn’t there a boot in the taxi?
No, that’s the trunk.
Alphie scratches his head and smiles again, a young man understanding lesson number one in American English.
In the taxi Mam says, Lord above, look at all those motor cars. The roads are packed. I tell her it’s not so bad now. An hour earlier it was the height of the rush hour and traffic was even worse. She says she doesn’t see how it could ever be worse. I tell her it’s always worse earlier and she says, I don’t see how it could be worse than this the way the motor cars are crawling along this minute.
I am trying to be patient and I speak slowly. I am telling you, Mam, this is how the traffic is in New York. I live here.
Malachy says, Oh, it doesn’t matter. It’s a lovely morning, and she says, I lived here, too, in case you’ve forgotten.
You did, I tell her. Twenty-five years ago and you lived in Brooklyn, not Manhattan.