Forbidden Fruit by Annie Murphy, Peter de Rosa Page B

home in Connecticut. Those kids were wild and they gave their lice to us. Everyone
     called us “dirty Irish.” Even Daddy got lice and was unable to make his hospital visits for three days.
    Daddy gave the O’Haras vitamins and Mommy fed them good food. In one month, they were all back to health.
    Eamonn was saying, “I keep two double beds in my room to house families like Helena’s.”
    He had a special interest in Helena. When she came back from America in the fifties, he had helped her overcome her fears.
     He had even taken her to London where he introduced her to her husband, Patrick.
    Eamonn seemed to look on Helena as the reincarnation of another Helena, his saintly and prolific mother who had, besides ten
     kids, several miscarriages to help her on the road to heaven.
    “If Helena takes over your room, where will you sleep?”
    “In the spare bedroom.”
    This room was used for vesting when he said Mass at home.
    I was not happy that his niece had rights over his room when mine were not yet firmly established. The forbidden deed was
     taking place in my territory. This, I think, helped Eamonn fool himself that sex was not sin but therapy.
    “Remember Inafield, Eamonn?”
    He smiled. “Didn’t I spend a day there with your family? I met your parents, Peter and Johnny, and your sister, Mary.”
    “
And
me.”
    “Did I, now?” he said, teasingly.
    Inafield, our home “in a field” of fifty acres, was a big old Victorian hunting lodge five blocks from the center of Redding,
     Connecticut.
    I stored in memory almost every moment of that day. I heard crazy stuttering laughter coming from our pine-paneled bar and
     I, who could never resist laughter, wondered what sort of person could possibly make a noise like that.
    It was Eamonn. I went into the bar and jumped up on the radiator because I wanted to hear it again.
    That was the first time he met my father. He was always thankful to Daddy for helping Kitty. His gratitude was finally expressed
     in his offer to help me find serenity in Ireland.
    He and my father got on famously. He made Daddy play all his Dixieland jazz. Eamonn tapped his feet and swayed from the hips
     and moved his hands as though music was coursing through his body like blood.
    Sixteen or so years later, I found myself lying naked next to the jazzman, asking, “Hey, remember how I cursed you?”
    “Wait, ‘tis coming back into focus.”
    “You told me to stop and I said I would for fifty cents and you said, why should I pay you to stop cursing me? So I took you
     into my bedroom where I kept a big Indian head I used as a piggy bank. ‘Put fifty cents in there,’ I said, ‘and no more curses
     from me.’ You said ‘Why pay you to stop being wicked?’ So I called you a son-of-a-bitch and you ran after me threatening to
     wash my mouth out with soap and water and I yelled, ‘Stop it, if Daddy hears about this he’ll kill you.’ And you said, ‘I’ll
     tell him you cursed,’ and I said, ‘I’ll tell him I didn’t,’ and you said, ‘Why would he believe you and not me?’ and I said,
     ‘Because I’m the best liar around.’ “
    “You were a liar even then, Annie.”
    “I’ve reformed,” I lied.
    “I can tell,” he lied. “Didn’t I chase you somewhere?”
    It occurred to me that his chasing of me, like his famous laugh, had stayed in my mind through the years without my knowing
     it.
    “You chased me into the garden where there were raspberry bushes and I hid inside them and laughed and cursed at you all the
     louder because I was getting scratches on my legs and you were laughing too but red-faced because your groping hands couldn’t
     quite reach me and you said, ‘Just you wait, little Annie, one day I’ll catch up with you.’ “
    He stroked my breast fondly. “Didn’t I keep my word?”
    Sure
, I thought.
But my curses did work, after all. Eamonn, you should’ve paid up your fifty cents
.
    “When Helena comes,” he said, “I will be spending