Recipes for a Perfect Marriage (10 page)

In that moment, I didn’t care if Dan was afraid of his mother or me or his Uncle Patrick. I just knew that he had handed me something and was waiting for me to throw it back at him. I wasn’t comfortable holding it; nobody had ever given me this kind of power before. Nobody had ever loved me enough to care if I turned up to some lousy family gathering.

Part of me wanted to find out the reason why he felt he needed me to be there so badly, then rationalize it away, so he could go without me. Isn’t that what you are supposed to do? Communicate, talk about your problems, then reach an agreement about dealing with them. Except I knew that would have just been the scenic route to getting my own way. I thought the party was less important than my work. But Dan wanted me to go. He needed me to be there. Sometimes why and how just don’t matter. Dan was afraid for some reason, and he needed me to be there. It was a straight yes or no.

“OK. I’ll cancel Chicago and come to the communion.”

I don’t know what I was expecting—tears, declarations of heartfelt gratitude? An apparition of the Virgin Mary, come to welcome me to the fellowship of eternal martyrs?

Dan just said, “Thanks, baby,” and gave me a squeeze. Then he drained his coffee cup, brought it over to the sink, and switched on the TV.

I sacrificed an important work event to make him happy and he flicked on the TV?

Suddenly I felt very, very married.

James was very close to his brother Padraig, in age and appearance as much as anything else. We got along all right in the end, but we disapproved of each other for years. Padraig disliked the refined way of life I encouraged: trips to Dublin, elegant clothes, matching shoes and bags and their like. He found me ludicrous and shallow and I found him scruffy and too ardent in his politics—a subject that, as a younger woman, bored me to death. However, as the years passed, a grudging respect developed.

“No china today, Bernie?”

“And have you break every piece on me?”

“That only happened once!”

“Yes—and it’ll not happen again.”

“Such a strict mistress—James, I don’t know how you put up with her silliness.”

“He likes my ways well enough because my husband is a gentleman.”

“Is that why he gets his tea in a china cup and I get mine in a tin mug?”

“Be grateful you’re not drinking it out of a bucket with the dogs in the yard, Padraig.”

Then my brother-in-law would throw his head back and laugh until the tears fell down his face.

Padraig was the only person who dared shorten my name to the commonplace “Bernie.” I didn’t like it one little bit but he was incorrigible, so he got away with it. Though I would never have admitted it, I got a certain thrill from my brother-in-law’s light-hearted abuses, as I liked to think he did from mine.

Padraig and his wife, Mary, had seven children, and had been married only a couple of years before us. I liked Mary and we should have been great friends, except that we had barely exchanged a full sentence since the day we had met, much less a real adult conversation. Children constantly surrounded her. At her breast, running around her feet, calling at her from another room. There was not a moment of her day when she was not feeding, answering, scolding, or tending to one of them. Her house was a pigsty and horrified me at the time, although looking back on it now, it was just the home of seven children. Realizing what an easy life I had in comparison, every week I would call in with a cake and offer to help with her chores. Often, Mary would be sitting on the settle in the kitchen, surrounded by damp nappies and dirty dishes, reading to her children. It mystified me how she could be so calm in the midst of all this chaos, astonished me how she could be so patient as to occupy her children, play with them, when there was so much important work to be done in the house. She was an appalling housekeeper, there was no doubting that— but I admired her nonetheless because in her shoes, I knew I would surely have dropped dead long ago from nerves. Or—may God forgive me—buried at least two of the little so-and-sos and prayed that nobody would notice.

Some days, I would enjoy it. There was an adorable set of twin girls, Theresa and Katherine, who would call out “Honey! Honey! It’s honey auntie!” when they saw me walk up the driveway to their house. “A kiss for a cake,” I would tease them and they would shower me with squealing kisses, their little hands grasping for my basket.

But the moments of pleasure were always outbalanced by the bloody knees and the relentless bawling. I liked the twins because they paid me some attention, but mostly my nieces and nephews were a moving, messy blur of noise and neediness. Mary and Padraig seemed happy in their life but the disorderly mess of their home was my most effective contraception.

Until the twins’ first holy communion.

I decided to host a party for Theresa and Katherine’s big day. The weather was warm enough for the children to play outside, and I enjoyed baking and preparing the house for guests. Hospitality was something that was generally offered in a casual drop-in way in those days, but entertaining James’s family in a grander fashion was a way I had of making up to him for the way things were between us.

James loved people and took every opportunity to fill our house with them in all shapes and sizes. When we were first married, I scolded him constantly for bringing neighbors in, inviting his pupils’ parents to call by, having an open house policy with his siblings. My own parents had been ferociously protective of our privacy and nobody ever came into our home. But James, with his unfettered, popular ways, won out and I rose to the challenge of being as organized as a priest’s housekeeper, with a selection of fresh cakes constantly at the ready. I grew to like the flow of visitors. It broke the day up and kept me on my toes. Taking my apron on and off, always having to have tidy hair and smart shoes by the scullery door to change into, in case it was the priest or the doctor. It gave James and me something to talk about and stopped us from dwelling on ourselves. That was a trick I learned about marriage early on. Keeping myself busy.

I made a particular fuss over the twin girls and dug out special treasures for them both from my own collection. A pair of lace gloves for one and a set of mother-of-pearl rosary beads for the other. There would be in excess of eight adults and so many children I didn’t dare count on the day. On the Saturday before, James killed and prepared three chickens, then he went to Kilkelly and collected ham, jelly, oranges, custard powder, glacé cherries, tinned peaches, chocolate, a bottle of sweet sherry, and a bottle of Sande-man port. He spent four shillings on toffee, so that each child would have a bag of sweets to go home with. It cost a small fortune, but neither of us cared. We had the money and it gave James pleasure to spend it on his family. With no children of our own, I saw my indulging him in this way as some small compensation.

Things had been cold between us for months, but in jointly preparing for the party, a temporary truce had been called. When James found me still baking at seven o’clock in the evening, he rolled up his sleeves to help. I felt relieved that my husband’s dour mood seemed to be passing, and so I insisted he don my frilliest apron, then instructed him in measuring, beating, and mixing a honey cake. When I realized in horror that we had run out of sugar, James, in high spirits, tipped in nearly a full jar of the honey. He made an awful mess, trying to halt the sticky stream by turning the jar on its side, dripping cheeky wiggles all over the clean table. We laughed at his ineptitude at managing the honey, and my end-of-the-world dramatics over the sugar shortage. James finally declared that he would never complain about his job ever again, as a woman’s work was infinitely more complicated and the stress of it unmatched.

I don’t remember there ever having been as much warmth between us as on that night. Although there was no reason for it, there was an air of anticipation about the party. As if, in our own separate worlds, we felt like something magical was about to happen.

James made love to me that night. As I rose from the bed as usual, I could feel his arms weighing down on my breast to try and hold me there. When I pulled myself away, he turned his body with a suddenness that indicated his disdain.

The party was a success, although James had detached himself from me again. He did not comment on my outfit as we left for the church, which was his way of punishing me. While he laid his hand on my waist to guide me into the pew, all life had gone out of his touch. I felt a pang of sadness at how quickly our rift had returned, and although I was busy making gallons of tea and slicing mountains of cake and keeping legions of children out of my parlor, I don’t think the disappointment of that entirely left me.

The honey cake was a huge success and gone within minutes. People said it was the nicest cake they had ever eaten, and asked what I had done differently to make it so special. I tried to find James and tell him of his victory, but he was deep in conversation and I was afraid to intrude. I had been feeding James’s tolerance with these small shows of affection over the years, but he had moved onto a different level now, and I sensed that it was going to take more than a lighthearted compliment to bring him back.

Perhaps it was that realization that made me see what I did. Or perhaps it was just a moment of clarity that comes to us all when we know that something is right.

It was a small thing.

I had just given Katherine the lace gloves. She was so excited she ran off, without thanking me, to show them to her mother. Mary was distracted adjudicating some toddler scrap, and sent Katherine back to show her father. Padraig was sitting close to where I was standing, talking with James. Katherine put the glove on, her tiny hand swimming in it, and held it out for her father to look. As Padraig studied the lace glove, I watched his seven-year-old daughter’s face and was taken aback by what I saw. Her eyelids were flickering in anticipation of what her father would think of the gloves, a look of such deep concern that you would not expect it from a child. After less than a minute he said, “They are beautiful, Katherine. You look like a real lady.” I am sure Padraig gave me a flirtatious wink then, but if he did, I didn’t see it. I could not take my eyes from young Katherine’s face. Her eyes lit up with adoration for him, undiluted by age or experience or expectation. She was looking at Padraig the way I had looked at Michael Tuffy. With pure love.

I had never looked at my husband in that way, and I knew I never would. But James was a good man nonetheless, and he deserved to be loved in that same adoring way.

I knew then that I had to give him a child.

“What do you wear to a first communion?” I asked Kay, Dan’s sister.

Kay often dropped by on her way home from work. She was a schoolteacher and had that sunny, smiley disposition of the head girl that makes you think it must have been an easy transition from student to teacher. Kay said “fiddlesticks!” instead of “fuck,” but I liked her. Knowing how relentlessly downtrodden she was by her mother made me believe she was tough behind that candy-girl personality.

The next three hours bore this out, as she bundled me into her car and marched me into a discount designer outlet on the outskirts of Yonkers. In and out of various pastel shades of awful suits later, we settled on a bias cut calf-length dress in slate gray and a fuschia wrap. I was waiting for my card to go through at the register when I looked at Kay and suddenly I saw Dan in her. The broad mouth, an imperceptible slant in the eyes, that wide-open expression. And it hit me:
This woman is my sister-in-law. I am married. To her brother. Dan.
There was a feeling of shock, like I was realizing it for the first time.
Oh my God! I am related to this person. Married! For the rest of my life! What have I done!
I can’t even say that it was a negative feeling. Only that it was a shock. Like waking up in the hospital or winning the lottery. Shock is like that. Neither good nor bad.

I got over it by the time I signed the receipt, but felt I had somehow shifted into a different gear.

*

Little deirdre loved my sugar-pink iced cake with silver baubles laced around its edges, and her friends were duly impressed with it and the fifty-dollar Gap Kids gift certificate. For the adults, I made an understated honey cake, which I sliced, drizzled with lemon icing, and set on two large trays covered with gingham napkins. Traditional, but not showy enough to intimidate Eileen, who grunted her acknowledgment and said she hoped I was feeling better. I saw her hand the tray around herself, and nod in my direction once or twice.

Uncle Patrick sought me out. I think Dan had told him to, as he did not seem to have the first idea who I was and seemed a little overwhelmed to be there. He reminded me of the men my grandfather used to bring into our house in Mayo. Seemingly quiet, simple men, but once you got them talking, they had these enormous intellects. Living among nothing but fields and cattle, they became addictive, voracious readers of everything from great Russian literature to magazines and local newspapers. They knew about the Chinese state, and papal law, and ladies’ fashions.

“So you’re Dave’s wife.”

“Dan’s.”

He ignored that. “And she’s a grand wee thing,” he said, nodding at nine-year-old Deirdre—her chubby, flat chest crammed into a white JLo tracksuit.

He said it like he cared as much as I did. Which was not much.

“You made the honey cake?” He paused while I nodded. “Eileen told me.”

His singsong accent rolled around her name with real romance. The point was not that I had made the cake, but that his sister had told him about it. That was nice, and we sat for a moment and let the brief fantasy of Eileen being nice float over us.

“There was too much sugar in it for me, girl.”

I am used to this type of comment. Because I have a job that is creative and in the public domain, a certain breed of opinionated fool feels it is their “duty” to criticize me. In the interest of improving my recipes, of course. I always have an answer.