The Consequences of Two Phone Calls

Bridget's Aunt Mary had sent me a long letter telling me how sorry she was for my loss, reminding me how much Bridget had loved me and had looked forward to sharing our lives with our child. She also asked me to write regularly to both her and to Bridget's parents, the latter in the hope of eventually mending the relationship with Bridget's family. In addition, she told me that Bridget's mother had been enraged at her husband for his remarks and for refusing to attend their daughter's funeral, resulting in a breakdown in the marriage that looked to be permanent. It took me a while, but I promised to write regularly to both her and them and began writing a quarterly letter that went to both Aunt Mary and the Murphys, initially with pictures of Maggie, and later with notes from Maggie to them as Maggie got older.

I don't know how people who intentionally become single parents can possibly think having a baby without a partner is a good idea. For the first month of Maggie's life, I was a zombie. She slept no more than two hours at a time. I was up every time she awoke, changing and feeding her. I slept when she slept and the only times I got more than two consecutive hours of sleep was on the weekends when my mother, who had decided that, with Bridget gone, she could be grandmother to Maggie, took care of her.

Gradually, things got better. By the time my extended time off ended, Maggie was sleeping five to six hours at a time. With my mother's help, I arranged for a neighbor woman who babysat her own grandchildren to care for Maggie as well during the week. My parents cared for her on the weekends when I was working. Between the costs of that day care and the room and board I was paying my parents, there was not a lot of money left over at the end of the month, but I decided to open a separate bank account for Maggie's college fund and began putting ten percent of my take home pay into that account on a regular basis. She was going to have the college education I had forfeited with my stupidity. My schedule was an endless cycle of packing our bags the night before, bathing and putting Maggie down to sleep, awakening at 5:30 to eat breakfast and head to the bus stop, then working until 3:30 P.M., running home to retrieve Maggie from the neighbor, starting dinner for the family and then cleaning up and doing it all over again. My parents were kind enough to get Maggie up, feed her breakfast, and get her to the neighbor's before they left for work. I had almost no life outside of the cycle, choosing to spend all my time with Maggie on my days off. We often walked for miles on those days, with me pushing her in a stroller for hours. She seemed to enjoy the motion and would coo and giggle as we strolled along.

I kept my promise to Father O'Reilly and brought Maggie around to see him. He agreed to baptize her, even though I wasn't Catholic, and even provided a set of godparents who would take the role quite seriously. Ryan and Sally Wilson were a few years older than I and had a daughter, Chloe, just two months older than Maggie. It turned out that they lived only a mile or so from my parents. Sally had met Bridget at a church sponsored women's function, where they had bonded over their pregnancies, occasionally getting together for a cup of tea at Sally's when Bridget was out for a walk. I had met them at the funeral but didn't really know them. Over time, we would become friends and our daughters would become lifelong best friends as well. At their urging, I occasionally attended mass with Maggie, not taking communion but enjoying the litany and the ritual.

For the next two years, the cycle of my life repeated almost without exception. Then, shortly after Maggie's second birthday, my grandmother died. She had lived with my parents for their entire married life, as my grandfather had died before my parents even met. To my surprise, I discovered that she had more assets than anyone might have realized from her very simple lifestyle. Even more surprising was the discovery that her will had split those assets between my mother, her only child, and my two brothers and me. I wasn't rich by any measure, but finally it appeared that I could afford a car and maybe even my own apartment.

When the will was read, the attorney handling my grandmother's estate asked me to remain a minute after everyone filed out of the conference room. He handed me a letter from my grandmother, which he asked me to open before leaving. It said simply "Dear Peter, Please use these funds to obtain the college education you should have gotten. Love, Grandmom." I had thought that dream gone for good, but decided to shelve the plans for the car and the apartment until I could explore whether the dream of a college education could be revived.

There was a campus of the state university system about a half mile from the hospital. I arranged to have Maggie's caretaker keep her a bit longer than usual one afternoon and walked over to the campus to see what I would have to do to be admitted and what courses were available. The campus had an engineering program, taught mostly by professionals who were adjunct professors, which meant that many of the classes were scheduled in the late afternoon or even at night, fitting well with my work schedule. With my SAT test scores and my prior college transcript, I would have no trouble getting into the program, although I would have to limit myself to one or two classes a semester. The registrar's office told me that would not be a problem, but the program would take me seven or eight years to complete if I took it on that basis. I went home to discuss this with my parents, as they would have childcare duties the evenings I was in class and they agreed to assume that responsibility. I enrolled and registered for two of the next semester's classes soon afterward.

The guys I worked with thought I was crazy to even try to simultaneously work full time, care for a young child, and try to get a college degree, but they were encouraging and supportive nonetheless. Most of them had suffered through the less than stellar Philadelphia public school system and they had little hope of getting more education or improving their current situation. As with the gift of time following Bridget's death, they were generous in their support and willing to be flexible about swapping days off if I needed to attend class. It didn't hurt that I became a regular at the bar across the street from the hospital which was the Friday afternoon gathering place for our shift, always buying at least one round for the group before heading home, even though I had given up alcohol entirely after the incident with Bridget in Brian's Chevelle.

It took me almost eight years to complete my engineering degree, which I received shortly after Maggie's tenth birthday. My part-time status, unusual in the engineering program, had allowed me to get to know the professors in more depth than most of my classmates. Several had come to know me well enough to discover my history and had become friends. When I graduated, two of them asked me what my plans were. I told them I was going to look for an engineering job. They suggested talking to the director of facilities at the university, as there was an opening for an assistant facilities manager at the campus I was attending. The job had even better benefits than the hospital, including free education anywhere in the state university system for children of employees. Better yet, the job paid more than two and a half times what I was making at the hospital. With strong recommendations from both professors, I applied for the position and was hired. Somewhat regretfully, I resigned from the hospital and said goodbye to the men who had become such good friends. I did continue attending Friday afternoon bar sessions at least once a month and buying the gang a round or two. I also began looking for opportunities for some of the guys to move over to the university staff in some capacity and eventually was able to place several in better circumstances than their hospital orderly positions.

At graduation, my father had handed me a card. Inside the card was a check for the entire amount of room and board I had paid to my parents from the time Bridget and I had married. They had opened a separate account and deposited the payments each month in anticipation that we would someday want to own our own home. After discussing the subject with Maggie, I began looking for a house that would fit our needs. To Maggie's and my delight, there was a small three-bedroom, two-bathroom ranch house with a quarter acre lot on the same street as and only three houses down from Ryan and Sally Wilson's house. By now, I'd become good friends with the Wilsons and their daughter Chloe and Maggie were almost surgically joined together in the kind of tight friendship that only pre-teen girls can form. The house was well cared for, if a bit dated, but well within my price range. My offer was accepted and thirty days later, it was ours.

Up until this point, I had been so busy with work, school and raising Maggie I had not dated at all. Sally had tried on several occasions to pair me up with one of her friends. Finally, after the fourth or fifth failure, Sally accepted that I wasn't ready for another relationship and I certainly wasn't going to engage in casual sex after my first experience of that kind had gone so awry. Maggie and I had gotten into the habit of visiting Bridget's grave once a month of so. She understood that her mommy was gone, but, as she got older, she began to ask why all the other girls she knew had mommies and she didn't. I put her off by telling her that I was too busy caring for her, working, and getting my degree to look for another mommy but that I'd work on finding one for her after I graduated. She seemed to accept that explanation and the questions ceased, at least for the moment.

CHAPTER FOUR

We had been in the house for about a year when I got my second life-changing telephone call. It was an August Saturday morning and I was preparing to mow the lawn. Maggie was at a sleepover at Chloe's. When I picked up the telephone, I expected to hear either Maggie's voice asking me to bring something down to Chloe's that she'd forgotten or Sally's or Ryan's voice asking me to make an adjustment in the schedule for the day. It was neither.

The voice on the other end of the telephone had a distinctive Irish lilt to it that I'd not heard from a woman since Bridget's death. After the initial hello, it asked "Is this Peter Morton?"

"It is," I replied.

"Are you the Peter Morton who was married to Bridget Murphy?"

"May I ask who's calling?" The answer triggered something inside me that I had thought I had long since put behind me.

"This is Moira Murphy. I'm Bridget's youngest sister." Immediately, eleven years of sorrow, pain, anger, rage and loss erupted out of me. It would be fair to say that the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa was a mere hiccup compared to the explosion of emotions those words created.

"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT?" I screamed into the phone.

"Please, Mr. Morton, don't hang up. I want to apologize for how our family has treated you and your daughter. We are ashamed and embarrassed at how badly we've behaved. My family has asked me to meet with the two of you and personally convey how sorry we are for what we've done."

"IN WHAT FUCKING ALTERNATE UNIVERSE DO YOU THINK THAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN?" I screamed at her. "WHY THE HELL WOULD I EVEN CONSIDER SUCH A MEETING? YOUR FATHER MADE PERFECTLY CLEAR THAT BRIDGET WAS DEAD TO YOUR FAMILY AND HE WANTED NOTHING TO DO WITH HER OR MAGGIE OR ME. YOU NEVER ONCE REPLIED TO ANY OF THE LETTERS BRIDGET OR I SENT TO YOU ABOUT US. WHAT GIVES YOU THE RIGHT TO COME INTO OUR LIVES NOW?"

Her reply shocked me. "We didn't know there were any letters. My father hid them from us all. We found them after he died last month." I had not known her father was dead nor had Aunt Mary ever indicated that the letters I had sent were being redirected. Perhaps she hadn't known.

It took me a minute, but I began to recover control and was able to reduce my anger to manageable proportions. "Where are you and when would you like to meet?" I asked.

The answer was another surprise. "I'm at your train station. I thought I had arranged to stay with your friend Brian's parents. They had agreed to try to set up the meeting with you and Maggie. I've called them a number of times yesterday and today, but I can't seem to reach them."

Brian's parents had said nothing to me about this, but I knew where they were. Brian's wife had been expecting their first child and had gone into labor a month early. Dick and Joyce had driven out to Pittsburgh to be with them because Brian's wife's parents were on a trip to Europe and wouldn't be home for several weeks.

"I'll give you thirty minutes" I told her. "My daughter is at a friend's house and I WILL NOT take her from there or allow you to meet her unless and until I'm convinced that there is a very good reason to let your family back into our lives. Otherwise, you can apologize to me and I'll tell her when she gets old enough to understand that her mother's family finally decided that they'd been assholes and were sorry about it. There is a diner two blocks from the train station. The ticket agent or any passenger can give you directions or you can take a cab. I'll be there in fifteen minutes. I'll be in a blue t-shirt and khaki shorts. If you get there before me, ask to be seated and I'll find you." With that I hung up and went to look for my car keys.

When I walked into the diner, I found a short, slender woman with Bridget's red hair and green eyes sitting at a table toward the back. Although her build was completely different from Bridget's, the family resemblance was clear. Next to her were two large suitcases. In my anger, I'd not thought about her being unable to connect with Joyce and Dick and having to cart her luggage around as a result. Now I felt like a jerk. I introduced myself, apologized for my thoughtlessness, and we made small talk for a few minutes while waiting for the waitress to bring us coffee. Once the coffees were placed in front of us, I looked at her and said "You have thirty minutes. Make your case."

She began. "My father was a very proud and rigid man with a fierce temper who never apologized to anyone for anything or ever let the words 'I was wrong' or 'I'm sorry' fall from his lips. He valued his standing in our village more than anything. Bridget's pregnancy endangered that standing. He made a terrible choice when he banished my sister from our lives. I think he regretted it after he made it, but he had no ability to walk it back. He was still angry when she died and your telephone call left him feeling backed into a corner. He could either acknowledge that his daughter still meant something to him despite her indiscretion or he could lash out. He chose the latter. That choice poisoned my parents' marriage for the remainder of his life. My mother is still angry at him, even after his death, for cutting her off from her child and grandchild and even more so for not allowing her to come to the funeral. My sisters and brothers all fled the house as soon as they were able. They are all married. I stayed with my parents to support my mother until my father died. After he died, we were going through the things in his shed when we discovered a box. In the box were a number of letters from Bridget and more than forty letters from you, with photos of Maggie and the notes that she'd written her grandparents. None of us had ever seen the letters or the photos. My father had apparently read them repeatedly, as the letters showed considerable signs of handling and the photos were somewhat worn from being removed from and returned to the envelopes they'd come in. We cannot undo the damage he has done but need to express our regret to you and Maggie."

She continued. "I graduated from a nursing school last year. Your hospitals in the U.S. have been heavily recruiting nurses from other countries, particularly Ireland and the Philippines. I've been offered a job at the hospital where you previously worked and I've accepted it. I begin work in two weeks. I chose to accept this position because it was located so close to Maggie and you. My mother and my brothers and sisters asked me to come early and try to meet with you to see if you might accept our apologies for all the hurt we've caused you and allow us to get to know you and Maggie. Will you please consider doing this?"

I had not spoken a word during Moira's entire recital. I could hardly believe that one man's arrogance and pride had poisoned so many lives and relationships. I sat there silently for some minutes, wondering what my decision would be and how to respond. As I looked at Moira, I could see tears beginning to run down her cheeks. She was staring intently at me, awaiting a response. This could be the beginning of the reconciliation with Bridget's family that she and her Aunt Mary had hoped for. Or I could channel Bridget's father and tell them all to go to Hell.

Finally, without answering her question directly, I asked "Where are you staying this evening?"

She answered, "I don't know. I was supposed to stay with Dick and Joyce, but you tell me they are away. I know no one else here and have no idea what's available. Do you have any recommendations?"

"Perhaps my parents would be willing to allow you to stay with them. They have several rooms that aren't being used since my brothers moved out. I'm not ready to introduce you to Maggie yet. I have to think about it some more. If the Youngs get back before I make a decision, you can move up to their house. Let me call my mother and see if she's willing to have a house guest for a few days.

. I stepped outside to call my mother. "Mom, can you do me a favor? I got a visitor out of the blue today. It's Bridget's sister. Her name is Moira. She's here to make peace with me on behalf of her family and she wants to meet Maggie. She was supposed to stay with Dick and Joyce, but they're out with Brian and his wife helping with the baby. Can you put her up for a couple of days while I figure out what to do? And while she's there, I'd like you and dad to hear whatever it is she has to say and help me decide."

Mom said she'd put sheets on the guest bed and to bring Moira over.

With that, I walked back into the diner, dropped a five-dollar bill on the table for the coffees, picked up Moira's two suitcases, led her to my car and drove her to my parents' house and, as it would turn out, into our lives.

I didn't tell Maggie about my visitor. Nor did I speak to Moira for several days. My parents apparently engaged in some long and pointed conversations with over the time she was their guest. Mom had no history of taking prisoners when she was upset, as demonstrated by her response to Bridget. So when she called and told me that she thought I should give Moira a chance to meet Maggie and get to know us as family, I was more than a little surprised.

Dick and Joyce were still in Pittsburgh with the baby. Mom and dad were about to leave on vacation and didn't want to leave a stranger alone in their house. They asked me if I'd allow Moira to use my guest bedroom while they were gone. This would allow her to meet Maggie and allow us to get to know one another. I was almost incredulous. My mother was not inclined toward having unmarried persons of the opposite sex share quarters. If she was suggesting this, she must have really warmed to Moira. I went over to pick her up from mom and dad's house and moved her into the guest bedroom at mine.

Moira asked how long she might have to stay with us, not wishing to be a burden or to overstay her welcome. She also asked about meeting Maggie. My anger briefly flared again, then subsided as I realized that Moira was a young woman alone in a strange country with neither family nor friends available at the moment.