“You never heard of the Clancy Brothers?”
Richie starts singing:
“‘As I was a goin’ over the far-famed Kerry mountains,
I met with Captain Farrell and his money he was counting.
I first produced my pistol and I then produced my rapier,
saying “Stand and deliver” for he were a bold deceiver…’”
He’s belting it out at the top of his lungs.
For some reason, I start laughing.
“Never mind. You’re not Irish.
You wouldn’t understand,” he says.
“It was different then, that’s all.
But when he returned,
something that had been part of him fell out.
He’s never been the same.
I’m trying to understand.”
I don’t know what to say.
I’m sorry?
That sounds ridiculous.
I hate wars?
Not helpful.
“I remember your dad’s beautiful tenor.
I’d lean out my window and listen!”
“Yeah,” he says, “he has a great voice.”
Then Richie tosses me a generic wave
and splits.
I wonder if this is what that paper
he gave me is about?
OF COURSE!
Mother, Davy, and I are having a
meatballs-and-spaghetti dinner
on our lime-tinted
formica kitchen table,
minus my father, of course.
We don’t discuss him.
Or when he’s coming back.
Or if.
Or where he went?
Which means every single minute that he’s gone,
I’m tense.
To help ensure my survival,
I try to entertain Judith.
I tell her in dazzling detail
about our teachers’ romance.
“So, Mom, where do you think
Mrs. Noble and Mr. Zeitler went?”
“To hell!” she says.
Of course!
She stands firmly against happiness,
as if it’s a bad religion.
Davy helps her clean off the table.
Then I hear him playing the chords to
An American in Paris on the piano.
Mother hums along, or tries.
Her voice goes sharp, but even if it didn’t,
it grates on me.
I can’t blame Davy for playing it safe.
Being designated “the good one,”
the one who doesn’t get smacked.
NOTEBOOK PAPER
In my bedroom, I figure
I should get around to reading
what Richie wrote me.
I open his lined notebook paper,
read his neat, self-conscious handwriting:
When I die, Dublin
will be written in my heart.
—James Joyce
What’s this supposed to mean?
Is Dublin a substitute for the Bronx?
True, many Irish live here,
but there’s nothing about this place
that would inscribe it in anyone’s heart.
Our history is pedestrian,
except for Edgar Allan Poe.
And Woodlawn Cemetery
is a who’s who of famous people:
Joseph Pulitzer, Herman Melville,
Fiorello LaGuardia,
except that most of them
didn’t live in the Bronx.
They came here to rest in peace.
Personally, I believe if you can’t find peace
when you’re alive,
when you’re dust it’s probably too late.
IN CASE WHAT?
I signal Richie to meet me downstairs.
I fix my hair and dab eyeliner on.
Just in case.
“In case what, Maisie?”
I ask myself.
“In case Richie and you…”
But then my self shuts up completely.
Richie and I are not a thing!
I just love makeup!
In the lobby we go over
French phrases.
I complain to Richie
that the French don’t really want anyone
to learn their language.
What’s the point of giving every noun an article?
Why’s a table feminine?
Why’s a horse masculine?
What could that possibly add
to understanding or enriching anything?
“Tu es drôle,” says Richie.
“I am not! I’m serious!”
MAD LOVE
“What did you mean
by that James Joyce quote?
Why this mad love for Dublin?”
I ask, hoping for more info.
He tells me Dublin’s been around
since something or other BC.
It’s near Neolithic burial tombs!
The Druids lived there.
There’ve been religious wars, rebellions.
It has cobbled streets, thirteenth-century castles,
rolling green hills that pitch into the Irish Sea.
“My dad told me that the people in the pubs
sing ballads that break your heart.
George Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde,
Jonathan Swift were born there.
It’s the most beautiful place on Earth,”
he says.
“Except for Paris. Joyce lived there
while he wrote Ulysses.
One day I’ll live abroad.
That’s a promise.”
Someone walks in front of us on their way
to the mailboxes. We grow silent.
“My dad’s back home,”
Richie mumbles.
“He swears he’s never drinking again!
I hope he means it this time!”
I nod, say I truly hope so, then add,
“I wish my mother could do something
to change.
But there’s nothing she could do
to quit being herself.”
“Well then, here’s to alcoholics,”
says Richie.
“Hear, hear!” I say.
So, with fake feeling, I fake toast.
A CLUE?
“Richie, what about
‘When I die, Dublin
will be written in my heart’?”
I can’t shake the quote.
“God, I hope by the time I die,
a lot of other places
are written in my heart.
France. Bali. The Amazon rain forest.
I’m trying to live, not die, Richie.”
“Me too,” he says.
“Good! Do you believe we’re all marked
by the place we’re born?
That these streets and old buildings
will always stick with us
like a wad of gum
that’s lost its flavor?
Or are you trying to teach me
about James Joyce?”
We’re both silent as an old man
in a beret enters the lobby
and pushes the elevator button.
He smiles at us, revealing a gap
between his teeth.
In that moment, I picture him as a young boy.
I smile back.
Finally, the elevator comes and he hobbles inside.
“You gave that guy a reason
to keep on living,” says Richie
with a lilt in his voice.
“I don’t know much about Joyce,” I say,
“except the famous Molly Bloom speech:
‘… yes and his heart was going like mad
and yes I said yes I will Yes.’”
“Likely the sexiest lines ever written,”