Being a natural mother can be odd. I'm often asked about my life, and how I spend my time. Do I ever get lonely? Sure, but not nearly enough to go to a bar in town by myself, to rub elbows with the angry drunk locals who never made it to the city for a career. That was high school for me. Townies are really sensitive about their lack of experience; a trait that is not well-heightened by excessive amounts of alcohol.
They prefer to remain singularly clannish and inbred by pretending an exclusivity that has successively bred the fatal Tay-Sachs disease into their children, offering roadblocks to their status by remaining exactly where their parents and grandparents dropped them, stubbornly adhering to the idea that someone who has only gone to school in one small town somehow has a leg-up on the rest of us Rocklanders. Good luck with that. I found out through their local genetic study that I wasn't "Irish" enough to be considered for their Tay-Sachs research, and my Norman ancestors would be very glad to hear that. Job well done, for a sophisticated merchant family with ancient roots.
Provincial pockets of lonely cousins are still rather common in this area, as a place built before the relative ease of commercial travel, bane as that is to the environment and our collective health. I found another pocket of genetic oddity in Brooklyn, introduced to me through my rabidly social cousin, who drinks like a good time is at the bottom of each and every glass. When I dated a friend of his, the car service driver from Park Slope was astonished at the change in scenery on the way to his house. This is Brooklyn?! He was from the Middle East, and he'd never seen a seaport town with no lawns like the Jersey Shore in a city borough, but that's exactly what it is.
The houses are built right up to the curb, often with no grass; just crushed shells or stones. Everyone was related to one another, and that was the way they preferred it, trips to the green motherland of Eire or not. Most homes had an old-fashioned nautical theme, with anchors or ropes and buoys prominently displayed. My boyfriend John had kept a boat that he didn't use often enough to justify the fees attached to mooring it all year long, and many of his friends had boats, too. The one bar in town had a pier to the jetty; we often went for boat trips to restaurants and bars that were only open in the summertime to boaters who pulled up to the dock.
His family and friends were immediately suspicious of me, because they couldn't tell just by looking at me who I was related to, in their town. Uh, probably the lot of you, though we've had a good deal mixing of the air since then, I'd suppose. Their Irish decor was also everywhere, and I remained (besides my cousin who introduced us) the only person in his crowd who'd actually been to Ireland. Twice. But, that's clannishness for you. I didn't expect a bunch of high school drop-outs who'd married their cousins and/or half-siblings to take a shine to me, and John and I were frequently on the outs from his drinking habit.
He was the only really successful man in his area, which made him both big-headed and a huge target in equally large measures. He made a lot of money with his trucking business, much more than he knew how to spend well or efficiently. I immediately suggested he begin trust funds for his nieces for their college education, to which he cynically huffed, "They ain't goin' ta college. They ain't goin' nowhere." Ah. Keen to help, are ya? And that was that. He was similarly spooked by the subway ride to my office in Manhattan, and the one work-related event where art directors are treated like rock stars, with free food and drink. He could distance himself from my life while at home with me in Park Slope, but not in the bigger world, and that's the place I lived in.
His best friend was an affable short Mick with a round, cheerfully red face who married the prettiest girl at school, and we all wondered about that. She and John seemed awfully chummy, too, which was confirmed for me by my ever-drunk cousin who manages to stay sharp as a whip, G-d bless 'em. He finally admitted that they'd dated for a brief second in junior high, and that was that. With the size of their neighborhood, there weren't a lot of options around. Suffice to say, they were cordial to me and also deeply unnerved by my presence as resident townies, which I respected by staying politely in the background so as not to offend, as I was taught. But their daughter Allie knew of no such barriers that existed between us.
His best friend's daughter loved me from the moment she met me, with her perfect spiral curls and big round eyes. She loved going to the beach with me because unlike her towel-bound parents, I actually love swimming in the ocean. They seemed to be of the belief that the beach was just one big outdoor bar, without need of a cooler, what with all that sand for beer bottles to go into. Allie seemed nonplussed by her parents bad alcoholism, preferring instead to sit next to me whenever she could, at their family get-togethers. My cousin made a lame attempt at making fun of me for playing with her Christmas toys on the floor with her on Christmas Day, but like my stale beer, it fell totally flat among so much dead-eyed, robotic arm-lifting. Ranking on the only adult present enough to enjoy the company of a child wasn't funny in his 40s.
It was like the joy had gone out of all of their lives, in service to a disease that so plagues Celtic people in this century, still. In between our horrible make-ups and breakups fueled by his illnesses, John would relay her messages to me that she missed me, and that it was the first thing she said whenever she came over to his house with her parents. "Where's Marie? Is Marie coming over?" She wouldn't be the first child to miss a mother she never really had. It's not my place to rear the children born to so many sick parents, but it is my fate to do it better than they ever could. I'm right here, Allie. I'll be right here, where you can always find me. Always.
