Forbidden Fruit (46 page)

It smells like roses on a summer’s day
.

Another was called “Hate”:

It looks like the devil

It smells like a foul stench

It feels very rough

It tastes like bile

It sounds like an angry dragon

It makes me feel mad
.

I only wished his father was on hand to praise his nine-year-old son for his many achievements.

One day, Arthur said we ought to take advantage of the current property boom. Why not sell the Simsbury house for a profit
and go where the money was, namely, back to Westport? If we bought a rundown house there, he could fix it up and we would
sell it at an even higher profit.

In days of ever-rising property prices, it seemed a sound way to make a living. With money from the sale of the Simsbury house,
augmented by extra savings from Daddy’s insurance, I bought an old wreck of a house with just under an acre of land and a
small two-bedroom cottage. The cost was $95,000.

Mommy liked the idea of living in Westport because she would be closer to Mary. Also, Johnny promised to take her out to dinner
each month. I got a new job as secretary in a real estate office. It paid me $17,000 a year and we had extra income from renting
out the cottage. When I was offered a three- or four-nights-a-week job in the local hospital from 11:00
P.M.
to 7:00 in the morning, I took that, too. I used to come home from working in the real estate office, wash and feed Mommy,
shower, and go straight on to my second job.

For eighteen months, we fixed the house up and enjoyed the spaciousness of its rooms. Then Arthur decided it was so structurally
unsound that it was useless to touch it up. If we wanted to sell, we would have to rebuild from the floor up. “I can do most
of it myself,” he said, “but we’re in for a year and a half of hell.”

Eamonn came into our life once more, unexpectedly through television. In the summer of 1984, President Reagan was visiting
Ireland, to trace his roots. Eamonn, who detested U.S. interventionist policies in Central America, persuaded the other Irish
bishops to boycott the visit. Reagan’s cavalcade was shown on TV rushing past Galway Cathedral on his way to the National
University to receive an honorary doctorate of law.

For the first time, Peter, nearly ten years old, grasped that his father was important enough to cause problems to the President
of the United States. Unlike his friends’ fathers, his was real
because
he was on television.

I saw the boy watching his father wide-eyed. He was thrilled to hear that Eamonn was on the side of the underdog. He battled
oppression, from apartheid in South Africa to right-wing dictatorships in South America. This was a man Peter was keen to
get to know. Why, then, was he always kept at arm’s length?

As I put him to bed, he said, “He looked like a nice guy.”

Elated myself at having seen Eamonn’s dear face again, I smiled. “You like him?”

“I think so. Can I tell my friends my dad’s been on TV?” I shook my head. Peter, too, was now part of the conspiracy of silence.

“It’s okay,” he said wistfully. “They wouldn’t believe me anyway.”

Arthur had not underestimated the scope of the problems of the house. The misery would be worth it if at the end we made a
good profit. Then I could get a caretaker for Mommy as well as buy our next house. Such were the costs of extra labor and
materials, though, that I had to borrow a big sum at a high rate of interest to make our monthly repayment of $835.

By this time, Mommy’s senility was so bad she had to be tied to the bed to keep her from wandering. She got thin and refused
to eat anything but chocolate cake. In caring for her, Arthur proved to be something of a saint. Once, when I tried to sponge-bathe
Mommy, she nearly tore my eyes out. Arthur came to the rescue. Every other day, he put on his swimming trunks and carried
her screaming under the shower with him. For six months, when the house was a virtual shell, he made Peter and me sleep in
the now-vacant cottage while he slept in the living room of the house so he could hear Mommy if she cried in the night.

The strain eventually told on all of us. Arthur was temperamentally like a thistle, pretty to look at, sharp to touch. One
minute he would be relaxed, the next he would strike like a cobra. Peter started to distrust him, then to rile him. He bargained
with Arthur before he would help out. Part of the bargain was that Arthur had to be nice to him and curb his tongue. I had
been overprotective of Peter, so I approved the idea of Arthur putting a bit of steel in him.

One day in August 1986, my life brightened when my seventy-six-year-old mother had a sudden burst of lucidity. She had not
spoken for almost a year and now, in a four-hour spell, she was able to talk with me about the past and the good times we
had spent together. I pulled back the drapes to let in the light and stroked her silver hair. Peter joined us for a while
and sat on her bed, and all three of us prayed for Grandpa.

After Peter left, she said, “Do you know, I was never able to think badly of Eamonn. Whenever I was tempted, I looked at Peter
and said to myself, ‘God brings so much good out of evil.’ “

In those few precious hours, Mommy and I ranged over all the people we had known and loved, all the crazy things we had done;
we asked pardon of each other for mutual hurts. This was the most unexpected boon of my life.

“I’m hungry, Annie. Could I bother you for a hamburger?”

Never had I received a request with such joy. “With onions and relish?”

“You bet. And a chocolate milk shake.”

“You got it,” I said.

I went down to prepare them. When I returned minutes later, she did not even know who I was. I looked helplessly at her, at
the tray of food in my hands. I sadly closed the drapes, but in my heart I knew my God had been kind to both of us.

Two weeks later, on a golden September day, Arthur called me at work. “Annie, I’m going to give your mother a cup of tea with
a drop of whiskey in it to warm her up.”

Give a glass of whiskey to an old alcoholic?

Then I grasped what he was telling me. “She’s dying, isn’t she?”

“I’m going to carry her out to the garden, Annie. I want her to sit in the sun.”

“I’m coming home,” I said.

When I got there, she was, with Arthur standing over her in mourning, like a part of the fall, a leafy lost-looking fragment
of a lady sitting hunched in a garden chair, holding an empty cup. I went down next to her and cried. I felt overwhelmingly
all the pain and the innocence of her damaged life. She had deserved better.

But she was with Daddy now. Paradise, the renewal of all that is best at its best. We buried her next to him.

Our house was nearly finished. It was beautiful. We even had a goldfish pond and an arbor with wisteria. I was sorry Mommy
could not see it.

To cut out the middlemen, I advertised the house myself and sold it to a young couple, both investment bankers, for $430,000.
That was $40,000 more than a real estate agent had said was possible. After paying back our loans, we were left with $280,000.
I grabbed Peter and hugged him fiercely. We had made a start in the world. We had choices.

I
N THE NEIGHBORING TOWN OF WESTON, I paid $260,000 for 5 Fanton Hill, a small ranch-style corner house with a small plot of
land. Weston is a picture-postcard town in the heart of Fairfield County. It is full of oaks, poplars, silver birches, and
Scotch pines. In those days, most houses, usually with several acres, were selling for half a million to two million dollars.
We did not know it at the time, but we bought at the height of the real estate boom.

I was fortunate to find a $400-a-week job in insurance but within a month, I got basal cell carcinoma on my right nostril.
With Peter to care for, I was terrified. The doctor said the cancer had progressed inside and out. He was afraid that it would
reach the nerve, causing the right side of my face to collapse.

I kept the news from Peter. He was making great progress with his studies and I did not want to upset him. As to Arthur, he
had endured a lot since he came into my life. He had proved to be good and generous yet, always honest, he admitted: “If your
face sinks, Annie, I’ll probably say good-bye.”

The time came for the doctor to operate on the side of my nose. After I came around, he started to remove the dressing. His
message to me was: “However bad you may look in the future, it could have been much worse.” When he handed me a mirror, I
took one look at myself and passed out.

When, seconds later, I came to, he told me I would have to do my own dressings for a couple of weeks and swallow some awful-tasting
medicines until he was able to do reconstructive surgery. Meanwhile, fearing to lose my job, I continued working in the insurance
office.

I was relieved to return to the hospital, where the doctor took material from behind my left ear and rebuilt the nostril.

When, a couple of weeks later, he handed me a mirror for a second time, I had to agree I didn’t look too bad. Even so, I lost
confidence. Apprehension, the trauma of the operation, worries about what people thought of me brought on a deep depression.
The music went out of my life. Often I stretched out my hand as though wanting someone whom I trusted to take it and sing
to me and lead me on. But only one person was capable of doing that and he belonged to my past.

Arthur wanted to build our house upward in a big way. He was already talking of selling this mythical monster for over a million
dollars. His previous renovations were only an apprenticeship. This new project was a trial of strength from which he hoped
to emerge triumphant as never before. The only trouble was, I was too tired to support him. For the first time in years, it
was an effort for me to go to work.

“All right,” Arthur conceded grumpily, “we can’t afford to live in this area. We’ll fix this place up, sell it, and buy cheaper
somewhere else.”

We put it on the market but there were no offers. This was 1987, when the stock market crashed.

There was one reminder of Eamonn at this time. A friend from Ireland sent me a newspaper clipping, a couple of months after
the event to which it referred. Eamonn was found guilty of having excess alcohol in his blood while driving in the heart of
London. He was fined two hundred pounds. The police had no idea that they had hooked a bishop. In Ireland, of course, he would
most likely have got off with a caution, but this was in Protestant England where he was not well known.

This warning had come none too soon. When the news leaked to the media, he claimed that his friends were to blame for forcing
drink on him. His instinct was always to deny. Later, he wrote a public letter of apology to the faithful, which was read
out at all Masses in Galway.

One small incident dictated the future course of our life.

Peter, a thirteen-year-old six-footer with a burly frame, was playing with Arthur in the garden when he threw a ball that
knocked Arthur’s glasses off, smashing them. “Glass in my eyes,” Arthur yelled. “What’re you trying to do, kid, kill me?”

Peter stood his ground. “It was an accident. I only wanted someone to play catch with. That’s why I miss my dad.”

Quite out of character, he ran to me, threw his arms around me, and burst into tears.

I don’t know which of the three of us was most shaken.

Peter, who was doing well at his studies and seemed so content with his many friends, was revealing for the first time how
profoundly lonely he was. He had no father to speak to; no point of reference for his life.

Arthur was sobbing, “Oh my God, Peter, I’m sorry. I don’t care if I go blind, anything to make you happy.”

“It’s not your fault,” Peter said. “
You’re
not my father.”

The boy’s cry of dereliction, my operation and lack of energy, the strain of rebuilding the house and not being able to sell
it, precipitated a crisis.

In early May 1988, Arthur simply took off. I looked for him, made several phone calls, but he had vanished.

It was a whole week before I got a call from Arthur, and from the unlikeliest place.

“This is —”

“I know
who
you are.
Where
are you?”

“Shannon Airport.” Sounding like a whipped dog, he said, “I’m just back from seeing Eamonn in Galway.”

“What did he say?”

“He called you a whore and your son a bastard.”

“He did
what
?” I said.

Within twenty-four hours, he was back home, repentant, frightened, trying hard to explain. He had figured that I could sell
the house, pay back the mortgage, and still come out with $120,000. It would be better for both of us if he went home alone
to Scotland. Once in Edinburgh, he had the brilliant idea of doing Peter a last favor. He would go to Galway to confront his
father.

I could not have chosen a more unsuitable envoy.

In Galway, he feared that if he drove unannounced to the Bishop’s Palace, he might not be allowed in. He went to the bus depot.
There, he told a cabdriver that he was a close friend of the Bishop’s cousin and he had come on her behalf to discuss with
him a family matter. For twenty pounds, the cabdriver agreed to drive ahead of him up Taylor’s Hill to the Bishop’s door.
He made a call to check that Eamonn was at home and to say that he was bringing a foreigner on a family matter.

Eamonn himself came to the door of the Palace and the cabdriver made a quick introduction. “This is Arthur Pennell from Connecticut.”

“Come in, come in, come in,” Eamonn said, anxious not to make a scene in front of a witness.

In the Bishop’s study, the conversation did not last long.

Arthur said, “I’m with Annie, Bishop. I have been taking care of your son for nearly seven years.”

“
My
son?”

“Peter’s a teenager now and getting rebellious. He needs the attention that only a father can give.”