Thomas Murphy (2 page)

LILLIAN HELLMAN
was
at a literary do I got asked to when I was a starting-out poet in New York. I overheard her tell some other big shot, “A crazy person is crazy all the time.” Words of wisdom, in my young experience. Everyone on Inishmaan was crazy as a loon, myself not excluded, and that was true, perhaps especially, of the times they seemed stable. It helped to remember when you were holding a normal conversation with Big Head Flaherty, for instance, that normality was an anomaly, a break in Flaherty's regular weather, and that this was the same guy who shot his cow because, as Flaherty explained it, the cow had made a joke about the size of his head. I started to tell Ms. Hellman that she should visit Inishmaan to prove her point in spades. But I didn't have the nerve to interrupt her, as she was chatting away with John Berryman, who looked okay to me.

I WASN'T CRAZY.
I just wanted to be alone, which may have seemed crazy on an island where most everyone was alone already, and that itself was alone. In school I failed every subject except solitude. Straight As in solitude. Since my school provided no teacher for that course, I had to award the grades to myself. I wrote no papers or exams, but I created some oral myths involving monks, tigers, lilac milk, and a magical three-legged stool. And another whopper about a day they dropped a giant turf
on the island. All my stories were well thought of in my set, if I say so myself. Of course, I was the only person in my set, which necessitated my saying everything myself. I was a good listener, though. At night (most of the solitude classes were taught in night school), I would go down to the beach and listen to the shifts of the tides. Then I would rhyme the stars. Stars rhyme, if you give them half a chance.

One day, I took a walk toward no destination. The Atlantic unraveled in welts in the just-risen sun, and gravel glittered in the road, on which there was no one but nine-year-old me. I kept walking, past rain pools and speckled birds and flimsy weeds, blowing slightly. Everything was still. My breath was still. At a peak in the road, I came upon a fox, bright red and alert, stopped in his tracks. I too stopped, twenty feet or so from the fox. The redness of his nose merged with the white fur around his mouth. The points of his ears were tan, his eyes black and steady. And there we stood for who knows how long. A minute? A year? Our face-off, begun in apprehension, settled into a kind of understanding upon which no other creature intruded—not the cows in the rocky fields below us, or the sheepdog on the threshold of Doyle's cottage, or the terns. I recall no thought, no decision. I cannot speak for the fox. Then, at what seemed an agreed-upon moment, we turned away from each other, each proceeding in the direction whence we'd come. I did not turn to
look at him again. But that night, in my bed close to the turf fire, I dreamed of a red bruise disappearing into the hills, and the furnace of his tail.

OONA SPOKE OF
CREMATION
. She preferred it to rotting in the ground, she said. Many do. And you? she said. What will it be, Murph. Earth or flames? Flames, I said. Like you, I'd rather be ash than Donne's bracelet of bright hair about the bone. And besides, I said, cremation won't require much of a transition. You've already given me the fire, darlin'. You too, said my hot little number.

SINCE THERE WERE
ONLY
160 people living on the island, I used to count them. Every month or so. I would walk from house to house, completing the job in a day, or sometimes in a morning, if no one had died or was born after I got past his house, or was missing at sea. I made my tally in a spiral notebook, recording the names of every islander as neatly as I could, and writing the first and last names of everyone, including those in the same family. I'm not sure why I undertook this project, but taking my little census gave me a feel for the whole island. I hated the place, but I didn't want to lose anything about it either.

Afterward I'd climb down the escarpment to the beach with my notebook, and read the list aloud to the
sea. Mary Albright, Peter Andrews, Peter Brody, Michael Brophy, Irene Cassidy—in alphabetical order, for the sake of equality. I did not want the sea to think I played favorites. After a while, the sea shouted the names back to me, though not alphabetically. And sometimes it would jumble the letters, creating new words. Powers became Worpes. Law became Wall. Figgis, Figs. And so forth. Like me, the sea never omitted a name. It understood Inishmaan, yet I could not tell if love or hate came with its understanding. Or mere indifference, maybe, the worst of all attitudes. I put my money on indifference.

NINETY-THREE.
Eighty-six. Seventy-nine.
Seventy-two. Dr. Spector is about to form an expression. Sixty-four, I say, to see if she will indicate alarm or mere clinical interest. Máire searches my eyes for mischief. She calls me Holden Caulfield without the maturity. The doctor says, Remember, Mr. Murphy, we are counting down from one hundred by sevens. Oh, I forgot, I say. In that case, sixty-five. Did you really forget, Mr. Murphy, she says, or are you just messing with me? It is the first thing to come out of her all morning that makes me like her. I forget, I say. She says, You think this is all a joke, Mr. Murphy? It depends what you mean by all, I say.

Were it not for the eggs, none of us would have to go through this arithmetical dance. Have I told you about
this? I'd like to say it could have happened to anyone, that it was a natural mistake. I simply forgot about the buggers. So the water boiled and boiled and then evaporated and the flames shot out from under the burning pot, onto a nearby roll of Bounty paper towels, thence to a wooden cutting board, thence to the backsplash. If the heat had not set off the fire thing, whatever it's called, on the ceiling, the whole house might have gone up. The entire Belnord, once the largest apartment house in the world. Whoosh. Just like that. Not the flames I had in mind to go down in. Danny Perachik, the super, the super snitch, called Máire, and she called the doctor. Jesus. It mattered not to Máire that I responded quick as a cat, swept down the extinguisher, which I had always wanted to try out anyway, and ended the crisis with a flourish. It was the last straw, she said, referring to previous straws involving the house keys and the car keys, and that time at Hornby's swimming pool. I wasn't safe living alone, she said. Everyone lives alone, I said. She gave me that look.

Nonetheless, so far so good. I am able to count down from one hundred by sevens. Look at me! I know what year it is. I can spell
syntax
. And
recommend
. If they asked me, I could even recommend a syntax. I can sing “Happy Birthday to You” flawlessly, like an angel. I sing it twice, once to Máire, once to Dr. Spector. I know the three branches of government, though I don't much care for them. I prefer tree branches, except for the government branch where
the judges perch. I'm gaga over those robes. I know where I live, at least most of the time. And don't bring up that business with Mrs. Livingston last Friday, because all the apartment doors on my floor look alike, and after some initial frustration with the lock, and Mrs. Livingston's expression of terror and surprise, everything was jake. And you can tell that whinging rat Perachik to stop running to my daughter every time I piss and miss the can.

But Dad, says Máire, you still must come back for more testing. No bullshit, please? She touches my shoulder. I am uncertain as to whether my morning's performance has won me anything but a temporary pardon. I'd call the governor if I could remember his name. I put my hand on hers in a gesture of reassurance. Who am I kidding?

In the too-bright waiting room rises a rack of pamphlets on assisted living. Who does not need assisted living, may I ask. If no one required assistance in living, writers would be out of business. Máire and I prolong our conversation with Dr. Spector, each saying things we do not mean. The doctor is cute in her white coat, with a face full of character, a noble face, also inquisitive, like Joanne Woodward in
They Might Be Giants
. I give her a wink. She smirks in mock disgust, and hands me a manila folder. This is a take-home test, Mr. Murphy. I tell her take-home tests are my favorite kind, 'cause you can look up the answers. She says that if I look up the answers for this one, I'll wind up behind the eight ball.

“I've read your poems,” she says.

“So you're the one”—old writer's joke.

“They're difficult,” she says. “Like you.” I smile. She doesn't.

“But worth the effort?” I am coy as a girl.

“We'll see,” she says.

Dr. Spector bids me, Be well, which I take as a command. I hug my fretful Máire good-bye, and head for home, where I go straight for the fridge and toss out the eggs.

CRAZY, OONA,
but
after one full year I still shout your name when I enter the house. Crazier, I poke my head into every room, including the bathrooms, just in case. Then, failing to rouse you, I settle in the kitchen. I used to lament that we had so many rooms, especially after Máire grew up and out, and there were just the two of us to rattle around the joint. Now, I'm glad it's as big as it is, so I can postpone my disappointment when I cannot find you. I don't mind being alone, Oona. I mind being alone without you.

So, here's what I do—not always, but once in a while. I create a conversation with the furniture we acquired together, all of it, every piece. And the prints and paintings on the walls, too, including the Raphael Soyer sketch of the old man, who suddenly looks like me, and the
eighteenth-century map of Ireland I spilled coffee on, and the English tavern table we got for a song at that auction in the Bowery. Every chair, lamp, stool. Every picture—that photo of wrinkled old Auden you bought me for my thirty-sixth birthday, half a life ago, predicting that I would have even more wrinkles than Auden when I reached his age. As I go through the lot, I ask you if you remember when exactly it was that we acquired this object and that.

Naturally, you get everything right, each precise detail of time, day, and weather, and who was wearing what. And as you tell me about the pencil drawing of Synge that I found for us on Merrion Square in Dublin, that's sitting on my writing desk now, or the fake Bokhara rug we were suckered into buying from that shyster on Mott Street, I too start to recall all the relevant information. I relive us. The entire process takes about two hours—Jesus, Oona, we have so much stuff. And when I'm finally done, having covered every item, I'm usually pretty tired, so I head for bed. Our bed, darlin' girl, I save for last.

ON THE OTHER
SIDE
of the wall, in his bed, Flynn lies with his death throes. That's how it is on the island. You die in the house you were born in, and you live there in between. Flynn is eighty-eight, his weight down to ninety-six pounds. His eyes are tide pools, his feet like crabs flinching on the beach. There's no voice left in him. Cait
and I play checkers in the kitchen. We are ten. Through the wall, we hear Flynn thrashing about in his sheets, like rustling paper, but do not look up from the checkerboard between us. Flynn's daughter, Cait's ma, sweeps the floor. She does not look up either. She knows from birth how it is.

We have forgotten how to be sad here. I think that may be the worst of it—to forget how to be sad, and how important was a life. Cait studies the checkers, then double jumps me, letting her arms fall at her side. She frowns in victory.

THIS PLACE.
This
time. This time of life. If autumn is fall, winter is fallen. Stone harvest. This wine. This judgment, and the absence of judgment, meeting somewhere in the middle and the do-si-doing around this and that. This folk dance. This allemande left and allemande right. This graceless body. These rocks. Stone harvest. This desire to know and not to know, to be right and nothing close to right, to think with one's senses, and not to think. This going back to Flynn's death, to Cait. This going back to horses in the rain. This wish to ride and not to ride, but rather to watch others and wish them well. To move noiselessly in a curragh. Then in a kayak. Stone harvest. To observe and be part of, too. This state of equilibrium, tottering—o my Wallenda—this state of calm, of knowing how to do something, at long last. This discovery of form,
of place. And bang! The hammer on the nail. The cracked jug. The flatiron. This water trembling in a glass, still and not still. This red door in a rock wall. This resignation. This endurance. This graceless body. These fields and beehives and dogs and donkeys.
Dia dhuit, asal.
This dolmen opening to light. This desolation. This chisel. This mortise. This remembering and forgetting, and remembering again, and knowing without remembering exactly. This faith. This gratitude. Say grace. This chair. This pen. Stone harvest. This black and white season that dies and lives for all eternity. This time of life. This time. This place.

A WEEK PASSES
before I hear from Jack of the bar again, this time by a note. He must have secured my address from barkeep Jimmy, who, unlike most of his profession, is as discreet as a parrot. But what the hell. I had not forgotten about Jack and his blind Sarah—I remember what I want to. I don't mean to sound unfeeling about Jack's story, but there was something darkly appealing about the idea of talking to a blind woman about her husband's impending doom. Whatever Jack imagined about the power of poetry, this certainly would be a test. Feeling neither way, should I do it or not, I simply wondered if I could pull it off.

Jack's note was one line: “Still thinking?” And a phone
number beneath it. But the envelope also included a snapshot of Sarah, taken, it appeared, at Christmastime. She was standing with a Christmas tree behind her, the glow of the lights competing unsuccessfully with the glow of the girl. Naturally, I looked first at her eyes, which were gray and did not seem blind but full of wit and knowing. Her hair was like straw in the rain. Her face, neck, and arms were pink and tan. Her body was on the small side, and classic, a Vespa. Male that I barely still am, of course I studied her breasts. The cleavage showed in the arc of the collar of her dress, which was the color of jade, a foggy green. Something ironic or scolding about the mouth, I thought, and the way she was standing. It was a “Don't take a picture of me” pose, at once pleased and annoyed. I could hear her say, “Jack! Cut it out,” just before she turned away.