The year She Fell (34 page)

I wasn’t really an American. My dad brought me over from Kerry—western
Ireland
—when I was twelve. My mother was supposed to follow with my younger brother, but in the end she just couldn’t leave her family and her home, and so she never came. She and Dad kept saying she’d be coming to
Washington
, but she never did. I think she was afraid even of visiting, that she’d get caught here somehow if she stepped on American soil. The Irish of that generation still lived in the 19
^th
Century, when family members emigrated and were never seen again. You can show them all the ads for $399 round-trip six-hour flights between Shannon and Dulles, and it makes no difference. They know once
America
’s got hold of them, they’ll lose
Ireland
forever.

And I guess there’s some truth to it. Dad and I never went back either, except for short visits. It was too lucrative to be Irish in
America
to ever settle for being Irish in
Ireland
again. Dad cashed in on his fine tenor and his intimate knowledge of beer and ales to manage and finally buy a pub in the District, where he held court, pouring out the Guinness, telling Irish jokes, singing maudlin ballads, deepening his brogue till his own grandmother would have had to ask for a translation into English.

He did well enough to send me off to a good college, where I wandered among the careless children of minor
Virginia
aristocracy, too alien to be intimidated by them. I’d been raised in a tavern, and nothing impressed me—until I met Ellen. She was soft and shy until she decided to be sharp and imperious, and I appreciated her in both modes, maybe not as much as she deserved, but more than the other fools at that college.

Ellen was the perfect college girlfriend, dependable, helpful, fun in bed. I knew she wouldn’t pick a fight right before finals, or seduce my advisor or my roommate or my roommate’s sister. Sometimes I was amazed at her sweetness, her smile, her kindness. I wasn’t really used to that.

And of course there was that indefinable class aspect. Sleeping with the daughter of the best family in a state, even if the state is
West Virginia
, had its illicit pleasures for an Irish boy who grew up over the pub. Not that she was a snob of any sort—in fact, she was very much the opposite—but there was something unerring in her knowledge of The Correct Way that gave her an aura of confidence. She had her insecurities—a thousand of them, last count—but I doubt she ever worried that she wasn’t dressed right or might pick up the wrong fork or say the wrong thing in a social situation. If she dressed that way, picked up that fork, or said that sentence, it was, perforce, correct.

This was the 80’s, and that kind of confidence was out of fashion. None of the girls wore white gloves or even dresses, and as for the right fork, well, most were lucky to have one fork apiece in the minimal college kitchens. But without being the least bit arrogant, or “stuck up,” as the sorority girls would call it, Ellen had an ease about her that made everyone take her a bit more seriously than they might otherwise.

She was an intriguing mix of the poetic and the pragmatic. She could recite great swaths of verse, with a sincere melodrama that even my father would have appreciated. One spring day, she did the entire Ode to a Nightingale as we sprawled out on the quads beside the dogwood tree. I told her, “Sure, and you must have some Irish in you.”

She replied, seriously, “My mother was a MacDonald, but that’s Scots.”

“No, sweetheart, the Scots haven’t a drop of poetry in them. I’d say some young
Dublin
boy came over to the MacDonald clan to train the horses, and stayed to seduce the lady of the house, and generations later, there’s your poetry.”

But in an instant, her practical side emerged. “Nonsense. I don’t believe genetics plays that much of a role. My forebears are as solid as could be, from a long line of bankers, and I don’t think any of us girls are remotely like that. Cathy likes to climb mountains, and I write poetry, and Laura—well, Laura’s got at least three different distinct personalities, not one of them solid. And Theresa—well, she hasn’t any of our blood, as she’s adopted, but she’s probably the most like Mother—serious and responsible and with a strong sense of mission.”

“Perhaps your mother writes romantic poetry, and hides it,” I suggested, and Ellen looked horrified at the idea.

“God, I hope not. Then I’d have to stop doing it. It’s my only rebellion.”

“What about me?” And I drew her down beside me on the grass. “Aren’t I a rebellion? Surely Mother wouldn’t approve of me.”

She kissed me quick, light, three, four times, her eyes sparkling. “She better not. Or you’re history.”

I believed her. Oh, she was in love with me, of that I had no doubt, from the very first. But the question was why. I’d like to think it was my charm and innate goodness that did the trick, but likely the poor Irish shebeen-owner’s son designation had more to do with it. If I’d been a blond scion of an insurance executive, a Phi Delt or a Sigma Chi, would she have been so intrigued?

It wasn’t the first time a good girl had fallen from grace for me, but it was, perhaps, the first time any girl had ever been so analytical about it. I was Ellen’s education, as much as her History of Theater class and her research paper on images of lions in children’s literature. She’d come to college to broaden her horizons, to experiment, to learn new ways, and I was on the syllabus.

I know—this is
America
, not
Ireland
. Good girls date bad boys all the time. Upper class and working class co-mingle freely. It’s true. Certainly none of our friends thought we were a mismatch. We were a glamour couple there at Jefferson, in fact, Ellen with her gentle grace and her drive to collect books for the poor children in town, I with the glib editorials in the student newspaper. Unlike the typical Greek-house good time kids, we were quietly confident about being different and knowing that different was better.

Anyway, it’s hardly as if once we married, I was some poor adjunct to my wealthy wife (not that she was wealthy yet, or maybe ever, if her mother proved to be as manipulative with her last testament as she’d been with every other gift she made). This is
America
. I made a success of myself. I ended up relatively rich, at least by Irish standards, and famous in a minor way, though not for the right reason, and the glamour that comes from being on TV dusted me with glitter, and glitter counts for more than anything else in
America
.

But Ellen couldn’t have known at the time that I’d turn out acceptable— and she must have counted on my earning her mother’s automatic disapproval.

I was young enough then not to care too much why a woman wanted to come to my bed, as long as she came. And I had no illusions about the gulf between us. She liked to pretend this was nothing new, visiting with my da in the pub, helping pull a few drafts while he told stories of the potato famine and the Easter Rebellion and a dozen other atrocities he knew only from the history books. But I overheard her a couple times on the phone, telling one sister or another or even once her mother about “Mr. O’Connor, the pub owner” and his adorable brogue, and there was that proud challenge in her voice. She was, in her polite way, spoiling for a family fight about this.

Her mother was too smart to give her one, no doubt thinking that there was no percentage in making a fuss over a temporary college relationship.

She was right, as it happened. It didn’t last, our romance. I called it quits the week before graduation, to give us both time to get used to it. It wasn’t as if we’d made any plans to be together. I knew I was going to
Washington
to work for the
Post
, and she was looking for a teaching job. I could have just let the relationship fade into nothing, but that didn’t seem fair. I knew Ellen and her sense of ethics, and I knew as long as she thought we were still a couple, she’d never date another. So as nicely as I could, I cut us apart and headed off to my new life alone.

I used to be nostalgic
about that first summer at the
Post
. For a long time, all I could remember was hanging out with the other new reporters, drinking and talking politics, chasing down leads and writing stories that occasionally even got into the morning edition. And the girls, of course, the ones who thought every young male reporter had to be the next Woodward, were ever a cherished memory.

But now I remember all the disorientation, the uncertainty, the constant recognition that I was in over my head and sinking fast. I drank more that summer than I ever did in college, and it wasn’t just for fun. I was scared. The
Post
in those years after the great Watergate triumph was a place of long hours and cutthroat competition. If I did well that first year, the world was open to me. If not, I’d live the rest of my life knowing that I’d blown my big chance.

It’s easier to accept that now that I’ve arrived somehow on the other side—grownup and recognized as an authority. Now I’m the kind of person who made the younger me feel inadequate and desperate to catch up. Back then, all I knew was that I was on a constant jag, hardly able to take a deep breath. It felt like excitement, but it was mostly fear.

Ironically, I’d gotten the job because of my father. His pub was just down the street from the
Post
building, and a favorite hangout for political reporters because of the Guinness and Irish music . . . and because of my dad, who could spin a better sob story than most of the
Post
’s high-paid feature writers. I helped him tend bar on my college breaks, and he introduced me to the right people, and in the end, that counted more than the degree and the editorship of the college newspaper and the clutch of writing awards.

So that summer sometimes I hung out there with my new colleagues after work, coming in after the last deadline, long after the happy-hour folks had gone home to the suburbs, drinking and talking about serious journalistic issues—noble ethics and ignoble editors and scoring the best assignments. One night, Dad waited till after they all left to tell me thought I was drinking too much, even for an O’Connor. He waved away my explanation that I was just stressed out from working hard. He’d never worked too hard, and he’d never stressed out from anything to do with a job, even when it wasn’t clear he could make payroll. The only reason he could accept for drinking this much was a woman. He attributed it to Ellen, or rather, my break-up with Ellen. “You’re missing her, aren’t you?”

I was in a martyred mood, because the unworthy colleague at the next desk had gotten promoted to the State Department beat, the one that came with invitations to embassy parties and a silver spoon for the caviar bowls. So as soon as Dad said her name, I thought maybe he was right. Ellen—Ellen would know how to soothe me. Ellen would tell me I was the best writer in the history of the
Post
, that the other young wolf should be writing obituaries at the
Ottumwa
Gazette . . .
Ellen would make me feel better.

But that only made me feel worse. I drained the last drop of Guinness and held my glass out for more. Dad ignored it. “You should have stuck with her,” he said, polishing the bar with a pristine cloth. “She might not have been exciting, but she was reliable. She’d stick with you.”

I supposed this was an implied rebuke to my mother, neither exciting nor particularly reliable. She just never could get herself quite stuck to Dad, and still lived with my little brother Pat in Kerry. And that made it all the more sad. Only twenty-two, and I was like my old man, bereft of the love of my woman.

But then I remembered all the good points I’d made when I set her free. “Ellen deserves better than that. She deserves a man who thinks she’s better than just reliable, who thinks she’s the center of the universe and all that.” I meant it then, but thinking of her all alone made me feel even worse. She did deserve better than me, but the poor girl loved me, and so probably she would never open her heart to another man.