Now I wish I could take it back. Her mother gave a rueful laugh. Your father is a creature of great ceremony.
Eileen wasnt sure what her mother meant, but she thought it had to do with the way it mattered to her father to carry even little things out the right way. Shed seen it herself: the way he took the elbow of a man whod had too much to drink and leaned him into the bar to keep him on his feet without his noticing he was being aided; the way he never knocked a beer glass over or spilled a drop of whiskey; the way he kept his hair combed neat, no strand out of place. Shed watched him carry the casket at a few funerals. He made it seem as if keeping ones eyes forward, ones posture straight, and ones pace steady while bearing a dead man down the steps of a church as a bagpiper played was the most crucial task in the world. It was part of why men felt so strongly about him. It must have been part of why her mother did too.
Dont ever love anyone, her mother said, picking the papers up and sliding them into the bureau drawer shed kept her ring in. All youll do is break your own heart.
2
In the spring of 1952, Eileens mother made the amazing announcement that she was pregnant. Eileen had never even seen her parents hold hands. If her aunt Kitty hadnt told her that theyd met at one of the Irish dance halls and found some renown there as a dancing pair, Eileen might have believed her parents had never touched. Here her mother was, though, pregnant as anyone. The world was full of mysteries.
2
In the spring of 1952, Eileens mother made the amazing announcement that she was pregnant. Eileen had never even seen her parents hold hands. If her aunt Kitty hadnt told her that theyd met at one of the Irish dance halls and found some renown there as a dancing pair, Eileen might have believed her parents had never touched. Here her mother was, though, pregnant as anyone. The world was full of mysteries.
Her mother quit her job at Bulova and sat on the couch knitting a blanket for the baby. When she tied off the last corner, she moved on to making a hat. A sweater followed, then a pair of bootees. Everything was stark white. She kept the miniature clothes in a drawer in the breakfront. The crafting was expert, with tight stitches and neat rows. Eileen never even knew her mother could knit. She wondered if her mother had made clothes for her family in Ireland, or to sell in a store, but she knew enough not to ask. She couldnt even bring herself to seek permission to rub the bump on her mothers belly. The closest she got to the baby was when she went to the drawer to examine the articles her mother had knitted, running her hands over their smoothness and putting them up to her face. One night, after her mother had gone to bed, she picked up the knitting needles, which were still warm from use. Between them swayed the bootee to complete the pair. Eileen tried to picture this baby who would help her populate the apartment and whose cheeks she would cover in kisses, but all she saw was her mothers face in miniature, wearing that dubious expression she wore when Eileen went looking for affection. She concentrated hard until she stopped seeing her mothers face and saw instead the smiling face of a baby beaming with light and joy. She was determined to have a relationship with this sibling that would have nothing to do with their parents.
Eileen was so excited to get a baby brother or sister that she physically felt her heart breaking when her father told her that her mother had miscarried. When a dilation and curettage didnt stop the bleeding, the doctors gave her a hysterectomy.
After the hysterectomy, her mother developed a bladder infection that nearly killed her. She stayed in the hospital on sulfa drugs while it drained. Children werent encouraged to visit the sick, so Eileen saw her mother less than once a month. Her father rarely spoke of her mother during this period that stretched into a handful of months, then half a year and beyond. When he intended to bring Eileen to see her, he would say something vague like, Were going, get yourself ready. Otherwise, it was as if shed been erased from their lives.
It didnt take long for Eileen to figure out that she wasnt supposed to mention her mother, but one night, a couple of weeks into the new order, she brought her up a few times in quick succession anyway, just to see how her father would react. Thats enough now, he snapped, rising from the table, evidence of suppressed emotion on his face. Clean up these dishes. He left the room, as though it were too painful for him to remain where his absent wife had been invoked. And yet they spent so much time fighting. Eileen decided she would never understand the relations between men and women.
She was left to handle the cooking and cleaning. Her father set aside money for her to shop and go to the Laundromat. She rode her bike to one of the last remaining farms in the neighborhood to buy fresh vegetables, and she developed her own little repertory of dishes by replicating what shed seen her mother make: beef stew with carrots and green beans; London broil; soda bread; lamb chops and baked potatoes. She took a cookbook out of the library and started ranging afield. She made lasagna just once, beating her fist on the countertop when it turned out soupy after all that work.
After doing her homework by the muted light of the end table lamp, she sat on the floor, building towers of playing cards, or went upstairs to the Schmidts to watch television and marvel over the mothers who never stopped smiling and the fathers who folded the newspaper down to talk to their children.
At school she usually had the answer worked out before the other girls put up their hands, but the last thing she wanted was to draw any kind of attention to herself. She would have chosen, of all powers, the power to be invisible.
One day, her father took her to Jackson Heights, stopping at a huge cooperative apartment complex that spanned the width of a block and most of its length. They descended into the basement apartment of the super, one of her fathers friends. From the kitchen she looked up at the ground level through a set of steel bars. There was grass out there, blindingly green grass. She asked to go outside. Only as long as you dont step foot on that grass, her fathers friend said. Not even the people who live here are allowed on it. They pay me good money to make sure it stays useless. He and her father shared a laugh she didnt understand.
A frame of connected buildings enclosed a massive lawn girdled by a short wrought-iron railing. Nothing would have been easier than clearing that little fence. Around the lawn and through its middle ran a handsome brick path. She walked the routes of the two smaller rectangles and the outer, larger one, wending her way through all the permutations, listening to the chirping of the birds in the trees and the rustling of the leaves in the wind. Gas lamps stood like guardians of the prosperity they would light when evening came. She felt an amazing peace. There were no cars rushing around, no people pushing shopping carts home. One old lady waved to her before disappearing inside. Eileen would have been content to live out there, looking up into the curtain-fringed windows. She didnt need to set foot on that grass. Maybe someone would bring her upstairs and she could look down on the whole lawn at once. The lights were on in the dining room of one apartment on the second floor, and she stopped to stare into it. A grandfather clock and a beautiful wall unit gazed down benignly at a bowl on the table. She couldnt see what was in the bowl, but she knew it was her favorite fruit.
The people who lived in this building had figured out something important about life, and shed stumbled upon their secret. There were places, she now saw, that contained more happiness than ordinary places did. Unless you knew that such places existed, you might be content to stay where you were. She imagined more places like this, hidden behind walls or stands of trees, places where people kept their secrets to themselves.
When the soles of her shoes wore through, her father, in his infinite ignorance of all things feminine, brought home a new, manure-brown pair Eileen was sure were meant for boys. When she refused to wear them, her father confiscated her old pair so she had no choice, and when she complained the next night that the other girls had laughed at her, he said, They cover your feet and keep you warm. At her age, he told her, he had been grateful to get secondhand shoes, let alone new ones.
If my mother were well, she said bitterly, she wouldnt make me wear them.
Yes, but shes not well. And shes not here.
The quaver in his throat frightened her enough that she didnt argue. The following night, he brought home a perfectly dainty, gleaming, pearlescent pair.
Let that be an end to it, he said.
Mr. Kehoe came home late, but he never seemed drunk. He was unfailingly polite. Despite the fact that hed been there since she was two years old, it always felt to Eileen as if hed just moved in.
She took to cooking extra for him and bringing a plate to his room. He answered her knock with a smile and received the offering gratefully. Her father grumbled about charging a board fee.
Mr. Kehoe had a smear of black in a full head of otherwise gray hair. It looked as if hed been streaked by a tar brush. When he wasnt wearing his tweed jacket with the worn cuffs, he rolled his shirt sleeves and kept his tie a little loose.
He started battling through fitful bouts of coughing. One night, she went to his door with some tea; another, she brought him cough syrup.
Its just that I dont get enough air, Mr. Kehoe said. Ill take some long walks.
Even through severe coughing fits he managed to play the clarinet. Shed stopped trying to hide her efforts to listen to it. She sat on the floor beside his door, with her back to the wall, reading her schoolbooks. In the lonely evenings she felt no need to apologize for her interest. Sometimes she even whistled along.
One night, her father sat quietly on the couch after dinner with a troubled look on his face. Eileen avoided him, occupying her usual spot by Mr. Kehoes door. Heat rattling through the pipes joined the clarinet in a kind of musical harmony. She looked up and was unnerved to find her father looking back at her, which he never did. She concentrated on her beautifully illustrated copy of Grimms Fairy Tales. The day before, when shed told him that Mr. Kehoe had given it to her, her father had grown upset. Shed seen him knock on Mr. Kehoes door a little while later and hand him some money.