Golden Years Read online

  You’re Bride Mary, are you not? they asked. Yes, s’ter, she said, as if she were pleading guilty to a criminal charge. They both embraced her and said that she was most welcome to Galway. They were proud to have one with such sterling academic credentials join them. They were sure she would be happy.

  Bride Mary was astonished: she began to cry again. They took her to a tiny ice-cream store just off the Square and bought her a cup of tea and a dish of ice cream, the latter a delicacy she had never experienced. Bride Mary realized in that ice-cream store that her life had changed forever.

  Unlike her contemporary the Irish writer Edna O’Brien, convent school was a pleasant experience for her. Most of the nuns were kind, sensitive women, despite their stern moral code which Bride Mary discounted as the result of the fact that they had always been nuns. Her school uniform hid the poverty of her past. Shrewd peasant that she was, she studied the manners of the girls who seemed to know how to behave and acquired the polish of a “nun’s girl.” She couldn’t hide Ballinasloe and didn’t want to, but celebrated its glories in terms she began to believe herself.

  Some of the more snobbish girls treated her with contempt, but many of her fellow students delighted in her quick wit and impish eyes. She decided that she had better conceal the hellion and the hoyden that she really was. The nuns, whom she loved, wouldn’t appreciate it. It would be the death of the poor old canon if she were sent home in disgrace. Slowly and without any conscious intent she became the leader of her form. The implicit rules of friendship she had learned on the banks of the Suck applied in Galway too. You had to be eager to help people and to console them when they were discouraged. She seemed to have a natural aptitude at caring for others, so much so the girls said that she would be a nun someday.

  As much as she loved them, she did not find that vocation attractive. I guess I like boys too much, she said. Bride Mary seemed to her friends to understand what sex was about. Boys will take whatever they can get and then drop you, she pontificated. It isn’t worth much if there’s not some commitment involved. The nuns said the same thing, but here was someone who seemed to know from experience that made her confident, though she never described that experience. She charmed the boys from the Brothers’ school during the brief contacts which were permitted, but kept them at bay.

  We have a picture of her at that time of her life. She is wearing the uniform skirt and black sweater of the school and knee-high socks. She is about fourteen at the time with the full body of a woman, long black hair, and a crinkling, happy smile. Though the other young women in the picture are certainly not unattractive Bride Mary O’Brien even then stood out, a beautiful, mischievous young woman whose eyes knew perhaps too much.

  She luxuriated in the comforts of the school, indoor plumbing, bathtubs, a comfortable bed in the dorm which, while chill by the standards of most of the students, was blessedly warm to her, especially under a big blanket.

  She did well in class, knowing the answers but remembering to be deferential to the nuns and restrained so as not to offend her classmates. She was often told that she was the smartest student in the school. She dismissed the compliment by arguing that she was only a peasant from the bogs.

  The nuns knew she had no money of her own, so they provided her with small tasks the pay for which enabled her to buy such things as underwear and the occasional chocolate or biscuit. If she envied the more affluent young women, it never appears in the letters she dutifully wrote to the canon and her parents, letters which were mostly straight factual descriptions of the school and its people. We have no idea what the impact of her letters was on James and Brigid Mary O’Brien.

  She found an outlet for her energy and, as she admitted herself to the canon, her destructiveness on the canogi field, a woman’s version of the male combat of hurling. Her long hair trailing behind her, one of her friends wrote, she rushed up and down the pitch like a womanly Finn MacCool.

  Under the guidance of a young nun, she drifted into the world of books and began to read with the same ferocious passion that she demonstrated on the playing pitch. She wrote long letters to the canon about what she had read in both English and Irish. We know that she delighted in Brian Merryman’s poem “The Midnight Court.” We would like to know where she found it in Galway because it certainly wouldn’t have been in the nuns’ library. We would also like to know how the canon reacted to her reading such sexually explicit and anticlerical material. Maybe he understood that those were themes you couldn’t avoid if you delved into Irish-language literature.

  We know that Bride Mary returned to her home above Newtown at Christmas and in the summer and that she worked diligently on the farm with her parents. The canon notes in his erratic journal that she returned in the same clothes she had worn when she went to school and worked just as hard as she ever did. However, she spent more of her free time, such as it was, reading than with her Irish-speaking ruffian friends, much to the canon’s delight.

  When she was fifteen, in the middle of a dark cold winter with the winds blowing all the way over from Newfoundland and the waves beating against the shores of Galway Bay, her father and mother both died. Brigid Mary Slaney O’Brien was only in her late fifties when she died of an untreated cancer that had rapidly consumed her whole body. Two months later her father collapsed with a massive stroke. At Easter the old canon passed on, leaving her a legacy. The farm we know was sold though: after all the encumbrances were paid, Bride Mary inherited only a little more than a hundred pounds.

  We have no record of her reaction to these three tragedies, because there was no one left to write the letters to, though the canon had saved the ones to him and the ones to her parents.

  We have no letters for her remaining years, but she did keep a journal which she must have left behind when she graduated from the Secondary School. It doesn’t tell us very much about her life. The nuns, aware that she had no home, invited her to spend Christmas and summer as their guest, perhaps because some of them still had some hope that she would join them in the religious life. They must have decided that it would only be fair if she were permitted the same freedom that young women her age were granted by their parents. Her journal makes it clear that she wandered around Galway—city and county—with some degree of freedom, usually in company with her classmates. She describes, perhaps with too much poetry, some of the beautiful places she visited and even the Galway races.

  She also met many young men her age and older at parties and dances. She did not tolerate fools or predators easily. Such young men are dismissed abruptly. There are also some “nice boys” of whom she is fond, but she warns herself that she does not want to become “involved.” We do not know whether any of these summer romances became serious.

  We do know, however, that she did attend dances with her friends. We have a picture of her in a quite chaste strapless gown with a dancing card on her wrist. Her long hair is piled up on top of her head and she looks like a self-confident young noblewoman. The glint of mischief is still in her eyes. There is no hint of Ballinasloe in her demeanor.

  Occasionally, she philosophizes about herself, not with much depth but with considerable pathos.

  Back from the dance. It was fun. I had no trouble filling my card. The parents who chaperoned tell me that I’m darling. My friends say that they’re proud of me. I feel like a fraud. I’m still a kid from the Suck River who grew up without inside plumbing. I’m an Irish-speaking hellion with a veneer of civilization pasted on me by the good nuns and my friends. I suppose that as my life goes on I will become more of a fraud and forget my dear parents whom I loved so much and I will miss so much and the wonderful canon who told me toward the end of his life that I reminded him of a sweetheart who died of the flu.

  I am sad when I think about them. The canon said that when I left the Suck behind and came to Galway, I leaped from the feudal world into the early-modern world—early twentieth century, he said with a twinkle in his eye. I shall of course go to university next year
. The nuns are sure I’ll win a scholarship. Then perhaps to America. I don’t know about that however. I’ll have time to think about that.

  I’ll have to find a job somewhere in town and a place to live, probably with other students. I’ll miss the convent. The nuns have permitted me to become a woman, though still a very young one and in most ways very inexperienced. No that’s not fair to them. They have helped me to become a woman. Yet I can’t remain here. It would not be fair to them because I do not plan to join them, as much as I admire them. And I must spread my wings and learn to live on my own. That thought excites me and frightens me.

  I believe in God, though perhaps not the same God the nuns believe in. I know that You are a God of love and that You will take care of me. I trust my life to You.

  I wonder why I’m crying as I read these words. Perhaps because if you’re Irish you know that dreams never come true.

  We find a yearbook from the school which tells us that she graduated with high honors and then matriculated at University College, Galway.

  I put the file back into the folder. Bride Mary O’Brien was a fascinating young women. She had deserved a longer life. But who is to say what anyone deserves. She was correct that if you’re Irish, dreams never quite come true. But if you’re Catholic, you know that in the long run, the very long run, they do come true.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Mary Margaret

  Well, they finally let me out of the hospital this morning. After taking my blood pressure and temperature several times, asking me to tell them how many fingers they were holding up, and the names of my nieces and nephews, and if I had seen Raging Bull and liked Billy Joel, they said I could go home if I promised to be careful. There was some difficulty because I named an extra niece, April Rosemary’s unborn daughter Polly. I knew about her because the pictures say that it is a daughter and she’s going to be named Polly after her Grandma Nettleton who was one of Chuck’s commanding officers when he was in Bamberg (stories about which we hear often, always in slightly different versions). I did this deliberately to bait them because I was tired of being treated like some kind of freak.

  Chuck and Rosie showed up about then to take me home and confirmed the expectation of Polly II.

  They warned me to be careful and not to take any chances in the next couple of days, like playing tennis. I agreed so long as it is all right for me to fly down to DC with Rosie and Chuck on Thursday.

  I have class this afternoon and already missed too many.

  Then Rosie had to hold my arm as I walked out to the car.

  “I am totally all right,” I insisted. “I’m young and resilient.”

  “You missed the last stair,” she said.

  “It shouldn’t have been there.”

  I insisted that we stop at Grams’s on the way home. She was presiding over a nice little tea party for herself, Madge and Theresa, and the two off-duty women cops who were supposed to be outside in the car protecting her from any return attack by crazy Aunt Jane.

  “It’s all right, dears,” Grams says. “Poor dear Jane is locked away in the loony bin and she can’t get out.”

  Trust Chuck to say something gross. He picks up the lamp, examines it carefully, and says, “Lucky it didn’t break!”

  Grams and Rosie immediately shout, “Chucky!”

  This is what he wants to hear and he grins like a silly little boy. I just laugh.

  Grams hugs me and proclaims me a heroine for saving her life. I thank her, but I’m no heroine. Crazy Aunt Jane rolled over me like she was a tank. I hope she stays out of my dreams tonight.

  Then we go home, I change into a suit, and lump on my head and all I drive over to Rosary. Rosie and Chuck insist that they will drive me and I insist that I can drive myself. They follow me over just the same. My classmates applaud as I walk in just as the session begins. Even the teacher applauds. My face, always prone to blushing, turns very warm. I nod and smile but ignore them. I am totally no heroine.

  I drive home at three-thirty. Shovie is waiting for me at the door, jumping up and down with joy. She hugs me, then bursts into tears. “I thought you were dead,” she sobs. Our family, excepting me, are prone to tears. Chucky is the worst weeper of all. Poor little Shovie has death on her mind. Like we all do these days.

  Chucky and Rosie are in her office working on their book.

  “I’m going down to the darkroom to work on the film,” I say.

  “Young woman, you certainly are not!” Rosie jumps up from her desk.

  “I certainly am!” I say firmly.

  Mothers and daughters bond by fighting.

  “Don’t ruin any of the film,” Chucky mutters, just stirring up the pot, which he loves to do. Like I say, he really is a silly little boy. Compared to him Joey Moran is a grown-up.

  “You need a nap,” Rosie says.

  This is true. I do need a nap. BUT I have to start to catch up with April Rosemary’s work in the darkroom. We’re buds now, which is neat, but we still compete on some things, like all sisters do. Except maybe Rosie and Aunt Peg who are codependents.

  “I do not need a nap!”

  She ponders this and then comes up with a compromise.

  “I’ll come down and work with you.”

  I probably need someone to keep an eye on me, though I won’t admit that.

  “Suit yourself,” I grumble.

  “It’s all right if you two argue down there, but don’t destroy any of my precious film. I’ll fire you both.”

  We both dismiss him with loud sighs of protest and loud cries of “Chuck-KEY!”

  We work smoothly and effectively, just to show Chucky. The chemicals get to me just a little so I’m glad Rosie is with me.

  The phone rings. She answers it promptly even though we’re in the darkroom.

  “O’Malley residence.”

  She hands the phone to me in the dark.

  “Some boy …”

  “Where have you been all day, Joey Moran? I could have been dead and buried!”

  Rosie whispers that he’s been calling all day. I know THAT.

  “Sure I went to school … I’m totally recovered … I’m in the darkroom with Rosie working on the films from the Russian shoot … I certainly am going to DC. I can’t play tennis till next week … Only a little headache … Bad dreams last night … Crazy Aunt Jane coming at me with the lamp again … Well … Only for an hour or two. We can watch Star Trek … I have to get a good night’s sleep … thanks for calling … Bye.”

  “You’re as bad as your father,” Rosie tells me. “I’m astonished that such a nice boy puts up with your guff.”

  “He says he loves me.”

  “And that act at the hospital about the unborn niece. You were just making trouble.”

  “Apples don’t fall that far from their trees!”

  We both laugh because we know that I inherit the contentiousness from her and the childishness from Chucky.

  We hang up the films we’ve just finished.

  “Let’s do some proof sheets,” I say.

  “We should do all the developing first.”

  “You always want to defer gratification,” I reply.

  We both laugh because I know that she wants to see some proof sheets too. Also I know—though she doesn’t know that I know—that she and Chucky aren’t deferring gratification much these days. They’re gaga about one another. Again. Maybe death does that to people. I think that’s very healthy. It is also very healthy that I think it’s very healthy. I hope that when I’m almost fifty my husband and I have the same sort of romance going.

  Might it be that way with my current nuisance? Would Joey Moran be gaga about me in 2010? Well, that would be up to me, wouldn’t it?

  Then the phone rings. She grabs it again. Like Chucky says, its her house.

  “Another boy.”

  “Mary Margaret O’Malley,” I tell the caller.

  “It’s Ted.”

  “Ted who?”

  “Ted McCorm
ack … I called the hospital. They said you had been released. I just thought I would check.”

  “I’m okay, Ted. Working in the darkroom.”

  “I wanted to apologize …”

  “You didn’t hit me over the head with a lamp.”

  “She might have killed you.”

  “Well, she didn’t kill me. Even if she had, it wasn’t your fault.”

  I’m using my responses to tell Rosie what’s going on.

  “Well, can I at least say that I’m sorry it happened … Mom really flipped out this time. No one expected she’d be so violent.”

  “How is she doing now?”

  “She’s in Valley View, sedated like a vegetable. Dad says she looks terrible. So does he … Jenny and Micky said they’re sorry too. The three of us wonder how much we missed by drifting away from you guys.”

  I feel tears sting at the back of my eyes. If I’m not careful, I’ll become a constant weeper like the rest of the family.

  “Well, we’re all young enough to correct that,” I said.

  “I hope so … We had a family meeting this morning. Father was very candid about everything … My brother Chris was a bastard as usual … His firm should play hardball with you guys and teach you a lesson.”

  “I don’t think Chris knows what hardball is here on the West Side.”

  “Chris is pretty good, I think, at estate planning. After that his view of what happens in court is based on television and films.”

  “I hope your mother recovers quickly.”

  “So do I. Father says it’s likely to be a long haul … Well, I just wanted to say I was glad you’re feeling better. Micky and Jenny will be too when I tell them.”

  “Give Micky and Jenny my love,” I say almost choking on my words.

  “Well!” Rosie says when I hang up. “Does that young man have a crush on you?”

  “He has a crush on the O’Malley clan,” I say. “He thinks he and his sisters might have missed something. He heard about the saints marching in.”