Thomas Murphy (7 page)

DEAR MR. MORPHY,

We at AARP have checked our records and note that you have never chosen to join our ranks. Mr. Morphy, we are taking this opportunity, once again, to ask you to be a valued part of AARP. We see that you are seventy-two years young. If you are in good mental and physical health—and we certainly hope you are—our actuarial charts indicate that you will live another twenty years, perhaps more. So, Mr. Morphy, don't you think it's time that you joined the
tens of millions of Americans in AARP, enjoying the many benefits of membership? All you need do is check YES on the enclosed card. After that, AARP will do its best to make your next twenty years the happiest of your life. Best wishes from your friends at AARP.

Dear AA,

Forgive the informal address. The reason I never have joined AARP is that you don't have a clubhouse. I only join clubs with clubhouses. And you're not exclusive enough. I like clubs that exclude left and right, and hurt people's feelings. As for my next twenty years, I seriously doubt that they will be the happiest of my life, unless, of course you can bring back my wife, Oona, and my friend Greenberg. If resurrection is included among your many benefits, sign me up. Otherwise, I simply have too much on my plate at the moment. That is, when I don't spill half of it on the floor. Much as I would love to join my fellow members in Malaysian cooking classes and games of Mad Libs, what with my sudden urge to skin mules, split rails, and raise dead beets, well, where's the time? To be sure, my mental health seems to be in question at the moment, so you never know. I may change what's left of my mind. One more thing? It's Murphy, not Morphy, though I admire your
suggestion of change by the spelling. And I must tell you, seeing Morphy in print is so attractive, Morphy it will be from this day forward. Thank you, AA.

Best wishes from your friends near the bone yard,

Morph.

MURPH?
I've been
thinking about our plan. Jack picks me up at my apartment house in his red Corvair, and is making the turn off Second, heading for the Queensboro Bridge. I start to tell him that I've been thinking about it too, and am getting cold feet, when he says he thinks that one visit with Sarah would be too abrupt. I mean, I bring a stranger home for dinner, a guy I met in a bar, and he's here to tell my wife that she'll be without a husband in a couple of months. I know what I said about you having the words, Murph. But maybe I didn't think it through. I ask him what he's getting at. Well, he says, what would you think of this being just a first visit, where you and Sarah get to know each other a little. And then, after four or five more visits, when you've become more of a friend of the family, so to speak, you and I can sit down with her and lower the boom. Lower the boom, indeed, I tell him. I wish you'd thought of this before, Jack. I'd have held to my no, and sent you packing. Now
you're asking me to become part of your household, you and Sarah.

He goes quiet and looks ashamed, like a little boy who had misplaced an expensive gift. I remind myself that the poor slob is dying. Now we are across the bridge and into Woodside. I know there's no turning back, and I'm still curious to meet Sarah of the bittersweet smile. I want to look at her. So, I tell Jack not to worry. I will meet Sarah today, enjoy my dinner, I'm sure . . . Oh, yeah, she's a kick-ass cook, says Jack . . . and then we'll all sit down together the second time I visit, and, as you say, lower the boom, as gently as possible. But we must tell her that this was our arrangement from the start, Jack. That this is what you wanted me to do, and that's why I was doing it. If we're up front with her, she's likely to appreciate the trouble you took, and how careful you have been about her feelings. And, Jack? I give him my coldest Irish stare. There will be only one more time, not four or five. He nods. I understand, he says. I nod too, more unsure than ever of what I'm getting myself into.

There's something else you should know about Sarah, says Jack. I think, She's deaf? She reads like crazy, he says. She went to a fancy college. Smith. In Massachusetts. Ever hear of it? Oh, sure you have. Can you beat that? he says. She's blind and she sails through Smith College at the top of her class. God knows what she saw in me. Need, I suggest. That's what she said, Murph! Need! I never knew if
she meant hers or mine. You two really are going to hit it off! Anyway, she's an amazing reader. Has a thousand books in braille. And, I don't know, a million books on tape. When I told her you were coming for dinner, she mentioned a title of one of your books, or poems, I don't know which. Just like that. Off the top of her head. She knows everything you've written. He goes on talking talking talking.

You can see I'm nervous, he says. I tell him I'm nervous too. He chuckles. Maybe Sarah is the only one of the three of us who isn't nervous, Murph. She's a calm sort of person. Inside. Serene, I offer. Yeah. That's the word.
Serene.
See? I knew you were the man for this job. A few minutes more and we pull into a driveway beside a squat two-story wood-and-brick house, which looks like a sad passing thought. Here we are, says Jack, a pig in shit.

YOU'RE ASKING YOURSELF
how we got together, aren't you, Murph? He passes the roast. Sure you are. Everyone does. Everyone wonders how a dashing, sophisticated fellow such as myself got hooked up with a lumbering brute like Sarah. It was like this. In the summer of 2005, I was working as a lifeguard at the big beach in East Hampton. I was young, tan, ripped, you get the picture. It was early one Saturday morning, long before the crowds came out, and I was getting the lifeguard stand ready, stacking the
PFDs, and lugging out the big yellow umbrellas for the rich, arranging the towels, stuff like that. It couldn't have been six-thirty yet, when out of the corner of my eye I see this long-legged beauty walking toward the ocean. Stepping slow and careful, as if she's in her sleep, not running the way most of the younger people do. So I went on with my work, but I kept an eye on her at the same time. She was wearing a dark blue one-piece suit, and with that dusty gold hair of hers and those legs, I can tell you, it wasn't hard to keep watching. Then, as she's standing ankle-deep in the water, out of nowhere, a wave, maybe ten feet high, comes up and knocks her out of my sight. So I ran like crazy. The wave receded, and she was lying faceup on the pebbles, out cold. Like the superhero I am, I picked her up on my arms and carried her to dry sand, and gave her mouth-to-mouth. I'm not sure it was necessary, you know, but I wanted to get my mouth on hers, if you get my drift. And whack! She hauls off and slaps me. I'm telling you, Murph. She's small, but she packs a punch. She knocked me on my backside. Me! And then, if you believe it, she stands, extends her little hand and pulls me up.

Hey! I tell her. I was saving your life. Is that what you call it? she says. I laughed, and she laughed, and only then could I see she was blind. Later, she'd tell our friends, why else would I have fallen for Jack. Had to be
blind.
Isn't that right, babe? I tell her that she ought not to be coming to the beach alone, the way she is. And what does she
say, Murph? She says, Everyone's alone, which told me then and there I was way out of my class. She says she lives with her folks just down the road from the beach, and she's been coming there ever since she was a kid, and no hulking ape of a lifeguard was going to tell her different, and why don't I mind my own business. Not a word about almost drowning, you understand. And I call her a stuck-up ungrateful bitch, and she smiles that amazing smile, and I ask her out, and she says, Anywhere but the movies. And that was that. I won't tell you how hard a time her folks gave us, or how I first had her in her own bedroom while her folks were fighting downstairs. Maybe later. But that's our story, Murph. And when anyone asks how we got together, I tell them, She swept me off my ass.

Throughout the length of Jack's dinner table monologue, Sarah smiles her dark chocolate smile from time to time, but says not a word. While listening to Jack, I mainly hear her silence.

NOISELESS,
I have
drawn my straw pallet to lie on the floor beside my da's bed. Above me, he breathes like the polar sea. He floats in his sleep. I would like to ride the current with him—the two of us on a mare heading to deep waters, under the sea's sun. But he is alone in his dying, as I am alone in my living. I lie on my makeshift bed, my arms behind my head like angel wings. Every so often, I
look up. He begins to appear as glass, as a glass ink bottle into which I may dip my pen. I dip my pen in my father and write what he tells me. “Ah penny, brown penny, brown penny.” And now I am reborn, a new child again, learning to make my way in the new world. What is a rock? What is a daisy? Hours pass and I crawl around the poem I write of him and me. Soon I pull myself upright, vertical man, and I write of that, as my father instructs me. Automatic writing. Then it stops, and there are no further instructions, so I put down my pen and cap the ink bottle, resting my head on the parchment of his arms.

MY HEAD HURTS
,
Oona. Too much TV, even in the daytime. Daytime TV. And not just TCM, either. Everything. Quiz shows. Would you believe it? I'm a gamer. I'm a goner. Yesterday morning, I watched
Let's Make a Deal,
followed by a movie with Ronald Colman. I don't mean I watched it in the company of Ronald Colman. He's dead, as you know. (Do you miss my uproarious wit?) The movie—it had
harvest
in the title—was about a World War I doughboy (Colman), who lost his memory in a battle, and was put in a mental hospital, from which he escapes. He wanders into the nearby town and meets Greer Garson, who loves him on the spot, memory or no memory. They marry and live in a typical woolly little English cottage, where he becomes a writer. Have you noticed, Oona, how fucking
easy it is to become a writer, according to fiction? You just sit down and scribble with some music playing behind you, and presto, you're Wallace Stevens. So, naturally, Colman is great at it off the bat, and he sells his first piece to a magazine in Liverpool. The editor summons him to Liverpool to praise his work and give him more assignments. As if an editor would ever do something nice like that. Anyway, as he is crossing a street in Liverpool, he's hit by a car, and at once his memory is restored. Turns out that he's landed gentry. Now having no memory of Greer Garson or the woolly cottage, he returns to his ancestral home, where he is much loved and a real big shot. His picture appears in the papers, and is seen by Greer, who goes to him but does not tell him she's his wife, or anything of their former life together. Instead she takes the position of his secretary, and serves nobly. Well, wouldn't you know it? One day Colman finds himself in Liverpool again, and he is disturbed by vague recollections. I can't remember exactly how he and Greer wind up at their old wooly cottage, but they do, and when everything floods back to Colman, and Greer is assured that he remembers her at last, and loves her, they embrace. The End. Jesus, Oona. Can you lose your memory just like that? Tell you one thing, darlin'. I'd never forget I loved you. You wouldn't let me. You'd hit me with a car first. Anyway, that was that. Máire called to check on me, as she always does. A Jameson and a good weep, and so to bed.

AT TWO
in
the morning, I appear on
Let's Make a Deal.
The host is Wallace Stevens. And here he is, says the offstage announcer. The Manecdote of the Anecdote, the Caviar of the Clavier, the Emperor of Ex Tempore . . . The curtain parts and there's old Stevens in his tweeds and stripes. He scans the studio audience like a sniper. I try to hide under the humongous sombrero they gave me before the show. Maybe he'll just see the hat and ignore me. No such luck. Who's there, under that handsome sombrero? he asks no one in particular. Is that you, Señor Murphy? The audience shrieks and applauds. Stevens drags me to the stage.

Standing beside him, I look like an orange mushroom. Thomas Murphy! says Stevens, presenting me to the crowd. There is much cheering. Thomas Murphy, ladies and gentlemen! So, what's it to be, Murph? He points to stage left, where a redhead in a silver dress is posing first before a barrel, then a curtain, and finally a huge black box, a seven- or eight-foot cube. Stevens drapes his tweedy arm over my shoulder. The barrel, the curtain, or the box?

Box! Box! Box! yells the audience. I'll take the box, I say, meekly. More wild cheering. Murph, says Stevens, what would you say if I told you that there is one million dollars in that barrel. Will you still take the box? Box! Box! Box! Louder than ever. I repeat, Box. Murph, says Stevens, what would you say if I told you that behind that curtain is a new hot tub (cheers), a new barbecue (cheers),
a new car (more cheers), and it's all for you to enjoy in your
new home,
the Isle of Capri? And I don't mean
on
the Isle of Capri, Murph. I mean, the whole isle. It's yours! If the price is right. Oh no, that's a different show. The audience howls. So, what do you say, Thomas Murphy? The curtain or the box? Before the crowd can yell Box Box Box again, I say Box, and everyone starts clapping rhythmically.

Well, says Stevens, you've said no to the barrel and a million dollars. And no to the curtain and the Isle of Capri. So, let's see what's in the box. He opens the front wall like a door, and there is nothing in the huge black container. Now the crowd is hysterical with pleasure, and Stevens smiles and thwacks me on the shoulder. You've done it, Murph, he says. You've chosen the prize of prizes, the best deal we've ever offered. But the box is empty, I say, sounding like a disappointed little boy. Empty? says Stevens. Empty? Why, Thomas Murphy, where are your eyes, man? The box is full! Full of you! And with that he shoves me inside, and closes the box. The audience has gone silent. Inside the box, it is black as pitch, and I'm suffused with the odor of turf. Then I hear a noise. Stevens is slipping me a note through the mail slot in the wall. It reads, And your poetry is shit, too.