LOVE’S DOORWAY TO LIFE: FICTIONS A Written Creative Work submitted to the faculty of San Francisco State University < In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree JO!} CO Master of Fine Arts In Creative Writing by Andrew Gavin Murphy San Francisco, California May 2017 Copyright by Andrew Gavin Murphy 2017 CERTIFICATION OF APPROVAL I certify that I have read Love’s Doorway to Life: Fictions by Andrew Gavin Murphy, and that in my opinion this work meets the criteria for approving a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. M Peter Omer Professor of Creative Writing Michelle Carter Professor of Creative Writing LOVE’S DOORWAY TO LIFE: FICTIONS Andrew Gavin Murphy San Francisco, California 2017 A collection of fictions based in and around the north of Ireland, interwoven with the author’s personal history in Ireland and the United States. I certify that the Abstract is a correct representation of the content of this written creative work. S '/9 /± T_ Chair, Thesis Committee Date ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author wishes to thank all the faculty of the Creative Writing and English Department at San Francisco State University for their generosity inside the classroom. He also wishes to thank his fellow graduate and undergraduate students who provided inspiration, peer support, and creative validation. Finally, the title of this manuscript is borrowed from Patrick Kavanagh’s poem, “Innocence.” TABLE OF CONTENTS A Belfast Story.....................................................................................................................1 Godsend...............................................................................................................................8 Brogan on Adelaide Park...................................................................................................12 Empathy for the Unknown................................................................................................ 20 Lavery’s Gin Palace, 1980.................................................................................................32 In the Conservatory............................................................................................................35 Our Eliza............................................................................................................................37 PT-109................................................................................................................................49 Climbing Slieve Gullion....................................................................................................51 1 A BELFAST STORY July, 1972.1 was working as a cleaner for the Council, so I was. At the leisure centre by the old Gasworks. The one they tore down years ago. What was it called? We were in the canteen for our afternoon tea break. I grabbed Bridie McClain’s wrist and wouldn’t let go. I’d left the washing out, I told her. There was no milk in the house, I said to Bridie, and if Howard Orr closed up his newsagents we’d have none for our tea in the morning. Something like thirty bombs in an hour. Bridie’s long dead from the cancer, so she is. Probably from all the asbestos coming down when that building thumped like a rug being struck by God’s broom. A month or two later Father McManus called in to our flat. We thought we were pretty much living in the city centre, but Father McManus said it was still the lower Falls. This was after trying the Antrim Road. Before that it was a wee flat off the Woodstock Road. Anything we could afford was on one side or the other, and neither side wanted us. Father McManus said we’d be doing everybody a good turn if we moved on. He said he couldn’t protect us. I said I want to have babies, Father, and he said you best be having them somewhere else. The last place was that room in the Holy Lands, on Fitzroy Avenue, sharing a flat with a bunch of hippies. They’d sit around and smoke their blow, play their music. Van Morrison, they said, had crashed there once. They kept saying it, as if it were true. Their dopey smiles were a relief at first. There was this Spanish girl in the house called Veda. Some fella named Hugh had gotten her pregnant and brought her back. Veda wasn’t her real name, but she loved that malted veda bread they sell only at home, so that’s what we called her. She had no English at all. Must’ve been seven, eight months pregnant. Ready to burst, so she was. The only time I saw her lose herself was when she was eating a big slice of toasted veda, gobs of butter dribbling off. She’d take a bite and blow air out her nose, as if even breathing would ruin the taste. The rest of the time she was sat on the settee, her 2 Hugh off his head on something and strumming his guitar. Veda’s eyes darting around like a blue-arsed fly. Then comes the day when my Liam brings home two tickets for the ferry to Liverpool. You’d seen me watching Veda, you said. I looked more scared than the pregnant Spanish girl, you said. It was only later I learned that vida means “life” in Spanish. Her baby would be a year older than our Karen now. But Veda left, too. We were sure of it. “You’d have to be away with the fairies to stick that loony bin,” I used to say. “Away back home to sunny Spain with you, Veda,” you’d say, as if she were still in the room with us. I should feel lucky, the doctor said, that you haven’t gotten...what was the word he used? Aggravated? Remember that barman in San Diego, on our holiday? The man from Dungannon? “So what part of Belfast you from then?” he asked. “What the fuck’s it to you, mate.” That’s the only time I’ve ever seen you walk away from a full pint. “Five thousand miles away,” you said later, in the hotel, “and they still want to pitch a flag on your head.” “Or paint the flag on you like a kerbstone,” I said. “You finally went and said it, luv.” “Aye,” you said, “being five thousand miles away helps.” “And doesn’t,” I said. That time we came back for Willy McCausland’s funeral, 2010 was it? He was always good to you, Willy. The reception was in that bar in Ballyhackamore. All silver furniture and neon. Suppose some things do change in Belfast, but a pub should not have a television as big as your living room wall. 3 “When’s the film start,” you whispered in my ear, and I couldn’t stop giggling. “Where’s the popcorn,” you said. Oh, Liam, sometimes I forget how much we laughed. You used to say I was the only woman who came back from holiday with a sunburnt tongue. I could always talk for Ireland, but never thought it would be my job to remember. Emma, the saint, had Mum by then. She’d taken to her bed in the spare room, shifting only when Emma and Charlie turned her to bathe and replace the bed clothes. Guess that’s one upside to me and Mum. Sometimes I wonder, God forgive me, if that’s all she was waiting for. Why she’d stuck it out for ninety-four years. Just waiting for her wee Lucy to come back and wipe her arse. Her way of saying that’s what you get for marrying a Catholic. Emma never asked if I wanted to see her while I was back. She talked about Mum, told me how she was doing, but never as much as twitched her chin to suggest I call on her. We had time to kill before the flight. Driving away from Willy’s funeral, you asked me if I wanted to drive by St. Mathew’s, or maybe have some lunch in town. “Just take me to the airport,” I said. And that’s what you did. We dropped off the rental and sat there, six hours before the flight. And we waited. We waited to leave. My knees were up and down like a fiddler’s elbow. I didn’t get up to pee even, and you knew to say nothing. You knew not to be cheeky. You knew not to grab my knee, to try to steady it. “You’re awfully quiet,” is all you said, your Jimmy Stewart smile as sly as the day is long. When I look at you now, it’s like you’re still waiting on me to laugh at that joke. Is that why this has happened to you and not me? Because you’re the patient one? I told you about it that first night we met. At the Orpheus? You’ll shake your head like you don’t, but you remember. When I found Daddy’s banknotes under the mattress and started playing shopkeeper with Emma? We thought they were tiny newspapers. “Latest news from France!” I shouted, holding a banknote over my head with both hands. “Hitler’s on his heels!” 4 Emma used stones for coins, Liam. She bought banknotes with stones we’d find in the middle of Shankill Road and shined with our skirt tails. I told you all this after we danced. After you pulled out a five pound note to buy me a Coke. I hadn’t seen one of those since that day playing with Emma. That’s why I told you all about it. Or maybe I was just nervous after you told me your name. Mum thumped us. She thumped us a lot, but I remember that one, so I do. It was Daddy’s money from his settlement. From his accident at the shipyard. Mum thumped us because she knew she could never have that money. She thumped us like she knew Daddy would have thumped her if she’d spent a pence of it on matches. Oh, Liam, we danced that night. Remember? Late August, 1960. At the Orpheus. Liam and Lucy. Lucy and Liam. Remember? Walking through the city centre after, to catch the tram? Oh, we ain’t got a barrel of money Maybe we’re ragged and funny..