Forbidden Fruit (44 page)

“Annie, where’re you —?”

Without any time or space intervening, I was in the hallway. Vernon, the doorman, called out to me, but I was already in the
street. It had stopped snowing. The moon was a string of pearls.

Thud! Could that be me who was hit? I was no longer running except in my mind. Someone, with Vernon’s voice, picked me up.
“My God, Annie, you coulda got yourself killed.”

Once on my feet, I sped back through the hallway into my apartment. The door was still open. A two-headed Coln was still reading
a couple of papers.

“I took the pills. All of them.”

“So?” said a couple of mouths. “Sit down and you’ll be okay.”

I was feeling not okay. Light was bursting my head. I made it to the bathroom through the airport landing lights, groped for
the cabinet, and emptied half a bottle of aspirins into my hand and started chewing. Anything to drown out the painful light
inside my head. Oblivion—I wanted it at any price.

I reeled into the kitchen and drank from the only bottle I could find. It tasted vile. I spat most of it out. Before I lost
my power of speech altogether, I got through to the operator.

“Please help me.”

“Sure, baby.”

“Get me a number in Ireland. I want to speak to Eamonn Casey, Bishop of Kerry.”

“Listen, kid, you don’t want no bishop across the ocean, you need nine-one-one. When I hang up, I’ll plug you into emergency.
Speak to them. Okay?”

Hearing me mention the Bishop, Coln gave up on me. He was convinced I was playing games at his expense.

“That you, Eamonn? Why don’t you answer?”

As I put the receiver down, my vocal cords started seizing up. Unable to talk, I mounted a chair and screamed. It was an Alpine
scream that went bouncing off mountains, echoing in every valley.

Coln came near me, his eyes big red angry suns. I was screaming for life, for time to repair myself, to have the strength
to look after my and Eamonn’s son.

My vision turned from swirling brown to giddying red-black and, after that, all I remember was falling into a void.

I came to lying on my side. I was dead and had made it to hell in the shape of a cockroach. One of my new family was munching
on my left eyebrow. Beside me was a pool of green discharge afloat with the undigested remains of Valium and aspirin tablets.
I swished away a dozen fat Upper West Side cockroaches, rolled over onto my stomach, and squinted at the light. The windows
were no longer steamed up.

I laughed, pained but happy. I had survived my death.

The green vomit was the remains of the Janitor-in-a-Drum cleaning fluid I had swallowed. It had saved my life, though it had
scorched my throat and, by the feel of it, burned holes in my stomach.

I got up with difficulty. My head throbbed and my ribs hurt. I checked that Peter and Coln were sound alseep. “Thanks, God.”

I called the cops and, holding my throat and stammering, gave my address. “Just tried, I think, to kill myself. Overdose.”

Minutes later, a police car drew up with flashing lights. I opened the door myself.

One of the cops, young, with blond hair and sharp features, looked over my shoulder. “Where is she?”

I pointed to myself.

He shoved me back inside, sniffing the air as he followed me in. “Sit,” he ordered, like a dog trainer.

I dropped onto the couch.

His partner, middle-aged, relaxed, said, “Easy, Mike.”

He took no notice. “What’s this all about, lady?”

I explained, in between coughs, about the pills and the liquor.

“I was reared by alcoholics,” Mike sneeringly said, for his own benefit. “You alone?”

I pointed to the bedroom.

“My son… my friend Coln.”

Mike exploded with self-righteous wrath. “You try an’ kill yourself with your kid in the next room? We’re gonna to have to
take him away. Go get him, Charlie.”

Mike dragged me to my feet and handcuffed me. “Suicide’s a crime, don’t ya know that?”

Coln appeared with Peter asleep in his arms. He did not like the look of this roughneck cop.

“What the hell,” he asked coldly, “is going on?”

“So,” Mike said, “you and the bitch have a fight, she tries to kill herself because of you and —”

“Now, wait a minute,” Charlie butted in, “take it easy, let’s just start over.”

“At the station,” said Mike, prodding me toward the door with his stick.

“Mike, will you take that fucking stick out of her back?”

“He’d better,” Coln said. “She calls for help and they send a moron like that.”

“Shut it,” Mike said. “She’s just admitted to attempting suicide.”

“Whatever happens,” Coln insisted, “I’m taking her boy to his grandparents.”

I went across to him. “Thanks,” I said, and stretched my cuffed hands so they went around Peter’s warm red cheeks and kissed
him. “Good-bye, my darling.”

Mike pointed me toward the door. By the time I reached the sidewalk, an ambulance drew up. I was about to get in when Coln
came out with Peter, fully awake, on his shoulders.

“It’s cold,” I said to Coln. “Take him back in.”

“Mommy, Mommy,” Peter cried. “I want to come.”

I held up to him my cuffed hands in prayer, silently pleading forgiveness. I felt ashamed. In my head now, Eamonn was saying,
“Did I not tell you, Annie, you would never make a good mother?”

How could I have done this? I had fought hard to keep Peter from being adopted, and now, in one night of madness, I had risked
giving him into the hands of strangers.

As Charlie uncuffed me and two paramedics took me by the arms, I whispered to Mike, “You’re right, I deserve all I get.”

In the ambulance, time stopped. Nothing of importance happened. All I wanted to do was kiss my son, stroke his soft hair.
On the journey, a paramedic took my blood pressure. “It’s low. Pulse slow, too. Warn them we may need a pump.” To me: “What
kind of pills did you take?”

I told him.

“These bruises, some guy beat you up?” I explained about running into the street and being hit.

In minutes, I was wheeled into the emergency room of St. Luke’s Hospital. Hands, voices. “Strip her. She’s pretty beat up.
Fingernail missing. Looks like a break in small finger on left hand, book her for X ray. Contusions on face, arms, ribs” —
I was turned over—“My God, on her back, too, like she’s been dragged over stones. Blood pressure low, but rising. Prepare
alkaline solution for her stomach. She’ll be drinking that for weeks.”

After my wounds were dressed, I was sent upstairs to see a psychiatrist. Minds don’t get fixed as easily as ribs.

He was young, relaxed, with big blue eyes. I told him everything. It took a couple of hours, with the cops waiting impatiently
outside and him taking notes. After which:

“Ever done anything like this before?”

I shook my head. “Never. And never again.”

He pondered for a few moments, went out of the room, came back in again, yawning. “I want you to go to AA. Heard of Alcoholics
Anonymous? Good. If I let you go, promise you’ll come back and see me in forty-eight hours?”

“Let me go? Sure, you can count on me.”

He scribbled on a pad. “Bring me a note from AA that you’ve been to see them.”

I nodded, speechless.

“You say you have a son. Will you do this for him?”

“Oh, yes.”

He looked at his notes. “Coln, yes? Your companion, he drinks, too. Break it off with him, in five days at most? Fine. Otherwise,
I’ll be obliged to pass your citation on to the family court.”

I went home and called my father. He told me not to worry, that he would look after Peter for as long as I needed. However
bad I looked, I went to work at the hospital. I would need the money.

I realized finally that my affair with Coln would never work, not after I had discovered the real meaning of love on the dunes
of Inch beach. Never would I be able to say to any man, “I love you,” with the same truth and intensity as I had said it to
Eamonn. In a moment of unbearable honesty, I admitted to myself that I would rather have died than abort Eamonn’s child.

That night, when I met with Coln, no words, no explanations, no kisses. Just: “Good-bye, Annie.”

One more time in my life: “Good-bye.”

That hurt, but I was overjoyed to have been given one more chance.

W
HEN I WENT to a downtown AA group on 23rd and Seventh, I was introduced by Ethel. She reminded me of Sister Ignatius—anyone
could tell she was a saint, in her case a reformed one. Five years before, she had lost custody of her child. Under the influence
of drink, she had blacked out and beat him, breaking both his arms and legs.

I attended AA weekly for three years. The meetings usually lasted an hour. Sometimes I went in the middle of the night when
I had a break at work, sometimes I rose at 7:00
A.M.
I never touched liquor during that time.

I took a small apartment at Stuyvesant Town and my parents rented a place a couple of blocks from me. Daddy asked if he could
come with me to the open AA meetings and I often picked him up by cab. “For my benefit, sweetheart,” he said, but it was really
so he could stay close to me.

We went through the various steps together, making amends for the hurts we had caused. We made coffee and helped clean the
place up. Never had we been so close. It was one of the great blessings resulting from my fall.

My new AA friends reminded me of the girls at St. Patrick’s. Only when you hit bottom do you appreciate the greatness of other
people.

At one meeting, I admitted to having had an abortion. Afterward, Daddy drew a diagram and explained to me how the embryo develops.
“At this stage, sweetheart,” he said, gripping my arm fondly, “it’s not a life. Abortion is wrong as a form of contraception,
sure. It’s bad for the body and the psyche. But you were
saving
a life, your own.” He tapped my arm. “In future, be more careful.”

Another time, he said, “Apart from one six-week spell, you’ve been a damn good mother. Everybody’s entitled to one mistake,
eh?”

“If you say so.”

“I do say so. However awful you feel, you never miss a day’s work, you always put your son first.” He smiled on me kindly.
“You certainly proved Eamonn wrong, didn’t you?”

I said yes, but without conviction.

“To be a successful pagan like you,” he added, “you need to be a good Christian and then some.”

I rejoiced in his new mildness until—oh God, oh, no—it hit me that this was his way of preparing for his death.

I saw other signs. His favorite phrase, repeated over and over, became “I don’t give a damn about this or that,” as if he
had left planet earth already. He also helped me find a job in a law firm, which sent me to a word-processing school. This
gave me a valuable skill and meant a raise in salary.

One memorable incident occurred at the end of September 1979, eight months or so after Coln and I parted. Eamonn appeared
on television in company with the Pope, who was on a visit to Ireland. He was in a biretta and cassock with a purple-lined
cape, which fluttered in the wind. I saw the same animated face, the same fluttering movements of the hands. He had filled
out a little but seemed not to have aged at all.

The item was so brief, I scarcely had time to grab Peter and fix his gaze on the screen. Afterward, with a lump in my throat,
I said, “That man was your daddy.”

“Which one?” he asked.

A few days later, I was able to show him some pictures of Eamonn in an Irish-American newspaper. His five-year-old son was
not too impressed.

“What’s that funny hat he’s wearing?” he wanted to know.

I bought several copies of the paper and cut out Eamonn’s pictures and the account of Pope John Paul II addressing a crowd
of two hundred thousand people, mostly youngsters, at the Ballybrit Racetrack in Galway. The Pope descended by helicopter
and celebrated Mass in green vestments. At the Mass, assisted by Eamonn, he had said: “Do not close your eyes to the moral
sickness that stalks your society today…. How many young people have already warped their consciences through sex and drugs?”

Hardly an uplifting message, but the crowd enjoyed it.

I was reminded of my halcyon days in Ireland and the wonderful people I had met there. I was genuinely pleased for Eamonn,
who was doing what he loved. Maybe he would make it to cardinal, after all.

When Peter was in kindergarten, I was doing two jobs. I made $175 a week as a secretary in a lawyer’s office and another $90
working nights as a switchboard operator in a hotel. It was at this time that Daddy started to say frantically, “You’ve got
to get Peter out of New York.”

Peter certainly hated kindergarten. A few times he had been beaten up for his lunch money. Another reason Daddy wanted us
to move was that he thought a change of air would improve his own health.

Signs of cancerous growth in his right nostril had given him a premonition of his end. He kept insisting, “If anything happens
to me, sweetheart, take your mother and Peter to one of those nice Connecticut towns like Westport or Ridgefield.”

One April day in 1980, I visited him after work to find him pale, weak, and vomiting. Subsequent investigations showed he
had cancer of the pancreas. It spread to his kidneys, lungs, stomach, bowels. Mommy couldn’t cope, so I had to lift and diaper
him. As he got worse, I spent the nights with him and, in the end, I took to living permanently at his place to be near him.

Once, he awoke and, seeing me beside him, said, “Didn’t you promise me once when I cursed you that when I neared the end you’d
get back at me?” I nodded. “Shoot, sweetheart.”

“You’re not dying yet.”

He winced. “You’d better believe it.”

In spite of all the damage we had done to each other over the years, the bitterness was long gone.

“Okay, Daddy, ready? Well, you may not be able to take this because you are a dry old stick. But… I really love you. I only
loved one man more and that was because he reminded me of you. Even when you called me a—you know what you called me—I
knew you loved me and this was your way of expressing it.”