O'Hara's Love

In 1927 I was a 16-year-old Bricklayer trying to support my mother and seven brothers and sisters. We were living in a buggy flat above a grocery store in the Bath Beach Italian section of Brooklyn. My father had been killed four years earlier in the collapse of a New York building under construction. Mother had not received a cent for Father's death, because the contractor and the insurance carrier were in litigation as to liability. But Mother had positive faith in God and spiritualism and knew somehow that she would get the insurance money. Mother and I went once a week to the medium, Mrs. Miller, and communicated with Father. We believed he was in heaven guiding us. And Mother genuinely believed I was her pure champion and her son-saint on earth.

When Mike O'Hara, an investigator for the Workmen's Compensation Board, came into our lives, there was happiness for us. He took up our cause. Through him Mother obtained her due insurance money and bought a sweet, spacious old one-family house with a garden and peach trees in quiet Bensonhurst. We were convinced that God and my father had answered our prayers by sending Mike O'Hara to us. He was about 28; a tall, broad-shouldered, handsome man dressed in tweeds; an Irish-American who could have posed for collar ads. After we moved into our nice house, he came to see us and share our joy. In the cellar we had four barrels of chianti and muscatel wine and some 100 bottles of liquor made by my father and practically untouched since his death. Mother put the traditionally splendid Italian dinner on the table before O'Hara, and timidly wondered if he would be offended by the offer of wine. In all my life, I had never seen anybody who could drink like O'Hara. He only nibbled at the food, but by midnight had drunk a quart of grappa whiskey and two gallons of wine. It was as though he were drinking water. He chain-smoked and drank and drank. When I accompanied him to the subway, he walked erect and unwavering. Mother and I were so grateful to O'Hara. The wine and whiskey in the cellar were of no use to us. We were glad we had it to give to him.

O'Hara came often. We looked forward to his visits. Though Mother could hardly speak English, she and he talked about God and family in the language of the heart. He told us about his parochial school and college days, his hitch as a Marine, his adventures as a Pinkerton detective. He was very fond of us, and assured Mother he would always be a big brother to me.

Mother was anxious to have the pleasure of meeting Mrs. O'Hara. She imagined Mrs. O'Hara to be a great lady. Surely, Mr. O'Hara must have married a fine woman. But he kept finding excuses for not bringing his wife to our house in Bensonhurst.

My older sister, Mary, was going to be married to a paisano. We were fixing an apartment on the second floor for her. Mother begged O'Hara to bring his wife to the wedding party to be held in our house. He brought his wife to the wedding party. Milly O'Hara was completely different from what Mother had expected. Milly was a sloppily dressed, overgrown hoyden. It was a strange night. The house was full of rollicking non-English-speaking paisanos. The wine and whiskey flowed. The musicians played the tarantella over and over. O'Hara sat at a table drinking, a perfect gentleman winning the respect of all. The paisano men, mostly bricklayers and hod carriers, got drunk and whirled willing Milly around in the dancing and blatantly ogled her and ran their hot hands about her. The men were like so many bulls in heat after her. The paisana women whispered that the American woman, Mrs. O'Hara, was a shameless puttana, and Mother had to admit it with chagrin. Mother was awfully disappointed in Milly and felt pity for Mr. O'Hara. Sotto voce the men made raw, drooling comments about Milly's buttocks. Milly guzzled an unending stream of wine and whiskey and laughed, her big black eyes shining wildly. O'Hara constantly filled her glass and tended her as if she were a helpless innocent child. After the party, Mother shook her head and said, "Our dear friend and savior, Mr. O'Hara, has an alcoholically incontinent woman."

From then on, O'Hara brought Milly with him. They made a practice of dropping in on Saturday nights. To our amazement, Milly outdrank her husband. When I went close to voluptuous Milly to fill and refill her glass, I could feel Mother's shrewd eyes. I did not betray the lust for Milly that was mounting in me. Mother wished that O'Hara would visit without Milly. They would stay drinking until past dawn and then get back to the city in time for early Sunday Mass.

One Saturday O'Hara did not appear. I received a letter from him. He was seriously ill and going to St. Matthew's Hospital. The news inflamed me. I had been thinking night and day about Milly. I had overheard Mother tell my sister, "O'Hara's wife is a puttana. I feared she'd get Pietro itching for his first taste of woman. Her kind, the legs open easily and wide just for a bottle."

Mother's opinion of Milly would not leave me. Milly was a puttana--how could I miss having my first sexual experience? I was a battleground of faith and desire. My flesh would not give me peace. From my bedroom window I saw a woman across the way undress every night. In the subway I was jammed up against women and their rounded parts. Desire tormented me while laying bricks on the skyscrapers. The more I tried not to think of sex, the more desire pained me. My mind was in my groin and I could not get Milly out of my mind. Mother's words, "O'Hara's wife is a puttana," rang as a prelude to fate, like time turned about, an act that happened in the future. Masturbation maddened me. At night in my sleep, teasing, luring Milly gave me nocturnal emissions to my fury. The struggle to remain a "good" boy I could not seem to win--or was it a victory I really did not care to seek? A rainy day would do it. Can't lay bricks in the rain. It would have to rain before O'Hara returned home from the hospital. The rain came. Raindrops on my window were tom-toms drumming Milly, Milly, Milly, sex, sex, sex. My flesh between bed sheets was an unbearable flamboyant symptom. I tried to concentrate on my mother, my duty as breadwinner and head of the family, of Father in heaven, of Christ and the Madonna, of my debt of honor to O'Hara, but the rain knew what I had to do. I spent a long vacillating time in the bathroom, showering, brushing my teeth, shaving the few hairs on my face, combing my hair, flexing my muscles, hard all over, too hard, brittling hard. In the mirror I visualized my approach to Milly. "I came because--oh, my--I didn't know Mike--I mean Mr. O'Hara, wasn't home," or, "Good morning, Mrs. O'Hara, I don't mean to bother you--I just thought Mr. O'Hara," or would I rashly come right to the point?

I dressed, put on my beret and trench coat, and told Mother I was going to New York to look for some needed tools.

That was the first lie I ever told Mother. That lie seemed to liberate me and cast the die. It was heady and thrilling. Like going alive to another world.

The O'Hara flat was on the Upper West Side. I had the address from his letter. I might have hesitated and said no to myself had the building been imposing, but it was an uncaring tenement. The letter box in the vestibule that read M. O'Hara sent a pleasant shiver through me. Going up the dark stairway, I had the sensation of being all body in the middle. I felt I was a composition of flesh galvanically magnified, each organ alert. I stood before the door of apartment 4B with my heart pounding as though I had run a long race at top speed. It seemed that it was not my hand that knocked on the door. The scuffing of Milly's slippers came to me. Milly opened the door. She was wearing a near-transparent soiled shift. I was the last person in the world she had expected to see at her doorway. A quick flush of self-consciousness showed on her face. She gathered something from my tension, my speechlessness, my nervousness. From the obscure room behind her I heard the horny sound of a dog's paws. A dirty little ragged poodle appeared and looked at me curiously. Milly said, "Come on in, Pete." Then she slurred, with grinning uncontained eyes, "Mike's in St. Matthew's. I'm alone."

I followed her into the front room. I did not have the coordination to remove my beret and trench coat.

"Mrs. O'Hara," I said, "my mother asked me to find out about Mr. O'Hara--if it hadn't been for Mr. O'Hara--"

My knees refused to carry me. I sat down. The poodle licked my hand. Sex magazines and empty bottles littered the filthy room. There were smells of tobacco and drink. Under the divan, and tied in a knot, was a used white rubber contraceptive. That and the disordered sheetless bed in the next room quivered me. Milly squatted in a chair opposite me, giving me a view of her hefty round white thighs. I could not believe I was there alone with Milly. Frozen with lust, I could not utter anything. I sat there as if I had been struck dumb. I wanted to be honest and grimly tell her what I had come for; even expressing it in four-letter words. Her well-shaped Amazonian limbs churned about impulsively. My throat was thick. I had to have a drink of water. In the rancid bathroom I found an unwashed glass with lipstick on it. The lipstick smudges thrilled me. Clothes, socks and underwear were heaped on the floor. In the wastebasket was a used Kotex. I tried to urinate but couldn't. I washed my hands and dried them with a tired towel smelling damply of Milly O'Hara.

I returned to the front room. She was looking out the window. I managed to say stupidly, "Watching the rain, Mrs. O'Hara?"

"No, honey. I never know when that lousy Secret Service agent brother of Mike's is spying on me. He's got a key to this place and he pops in and out to see what's going on when Mike's not here. He's too goddamn good for this world--doesn't drink or screw. Raymond's a stuffy bastard. I always have the feeling he'd like to 'harpoon' me himself, the prissy bastard. Christ, what I wouldn't do for a blast! Honey, didn't your mother send a bottle with you?"

Mother's words, that Milly would give herself to any man for a bottle, echoed within me. That was it. I hurried elatedly through the rain to a bootlegger's address that she gave me, and bought a quart of whiskey. Within an hour I went and got her another quart of the cheap whiskey. I figured that if she got dead drunk I could have her without her even knowing it.

I sat beside her with a trembling hand on her bare knee as she drank. Milly O'Hara; the unkempt straight black hair with the bangs, the puffed child's face, the loose large mouth, the sturdy undeveloped peculiarly pointed breasts, the acrid cloying sexual odor of her body, the free and easy air of the puttana. I kissed her knee and hand, mumbling, "Mrs. O'Hara, I love you--Milly, I love you!" She closed her eyes and offered me her mouth. I clasped her and kissed her hot whiskey-wet mouth. I felt her body heave to an inviting resistless calm. She went to the bathroom. I followed, begging for "love," clinging, stumbling. After she urinated and stood up, I threw myself upon her. She lost her balance and we both fell awkwardly to the floor.

She handled me. She grabbed my hips and surged upward, saying, "Pete, honey, if you don't blab to no one, I'll let you have all you can take. Kid, you're built like a man!"

As my virginity departed, the poodle barked and gnawed at my shoelaces. When I arose, I blushingly told her she was the first woman I had ever had.

"You were cherry when you came here? You'll never forget cutting your teeth on me then, kid. You forget a lotta things, but you always remember the one who copped your cherry. Let me tell you, Pete, girls are only too glad to get rid of their cherries."

We sat in the front room again. I still had not removed my beret and trench coat. My experience had confused me. Sex was so toiletlike and different from what I had ecstatically imagined it to be. In reality it was the way of animals. It was a graceless, gutty, sticky, smelly business that repelled as powerfully as it attracted. My dreams of women being so many living flowers tumbled.

Milly was then as uninhibited as a jungle beast. She told me all she wanted from life was drink and men.

"Mike should have been a priest. He's a religious cardboard gentleman. His goddamn goodness kills me. Being in bed with him is like sleeping with an old woman. I hate marriage and housework. I'd rather work in a whorehouse where two and two make four. I have fun with the milkman and the iceman and Lou the mulatto janitor. As long as they bring me booze, I got plenty of ass to give--like throwing meat to dogs. Come back with a couple of bottles, Pete, and spend the night with me. Won't you, kid?"

"What will I tell my mother?"

"You poor kid! Tell her you spent the night at a pal's house. I gotta douche. I don't want to get knocked up."

While she was washing up in the bathroom, I was getting excited again. I was thinking of stripping off my clothes and going to bed with her. But I had a fear, a premonition not to do so. I heard a key unlock the entrance door, and was afraid that it was Mike returning unexpectedly from St. Matthew's. It was Mike's brother, the Secret Service agent. He came into the front room. He was a big man with a pinched face and thin mouth. I nodded to him and huddled back into the chair. He glowered at me. I looked down and saw that I had not rebuttoned my fly. I placed my hands over my open fly.

Milly came out of the bathroom and walked drunkenly into the front room. She brought with her the strong telltale (continued on page 131)O'Hara's Love(continued from page 74) douching odor of Lysol. Ever since then, Lysol reminds me of my lost virginity and that scene. She said, flustered, "Bill, this is the boy of the Italian widow--in Brooklyn--you know--that Mike helped in the compensation case--Mike and I visit them--these Italian people got big hearts--make you feel at home--"

Bill slapped her hard and spat, "Drunken no-good bitch!" He turned to me. His mouth tightened. He motioned with his thumb for me to leave, and said through his teeth, "You ungrateful wop bastard, beat it!"

I was scared. I left in haste. Then I was beset. I had lied to Mother, the touchstone of my being. I had laid a Samaritan's wife. I was no longer virgin. That morning I had become another person. My flesh won. The spirit lost. I had broken the magical golden string linking me to heaven. Remorse made me feel I had to immediately run to Mike, tell him the truth and save him from an evil woman. I ran all the way to St. Matthew's.

Mike O'Hara shared a room with an aged Passionist monk. He was propped up in bed, pale and weak. He greeted me as warmly as if I had been his son. He introduced me to the old bearded monk in the adjoining bed as "one of the best boys in the world." The monk was senile and quite deaf. He smiled and gave me his blessing in Latin. Mike asked me about my mother and family. He said we were not to feel obliged to him--that he had only done his Catholic duty in helping us, and so forth.

I was impatient to unburden myself.

"Mr. O'Hara ..." I said. My throat stuck. My eyes burned. "Mr. O'Hara ... There's something I have to tell you. I ... I've 'been' with your wife ... !"

O'Hara looked perplexedly at me for a moment, then chuckled, "Peter boy, that was fine of you to stop and see Milly. I'm sorry; the reason I never invited you and your mother was because we're kind of not settled in that apartment. Well, I mean Milly is such a child in many ways and not the world's best housekeeper, and our place always looks like a hurricane hit it. I thank you for dropping in on Milly. My being here is tough on her--all alone with the poodle. Did Milly say whether she's coming to see me this evening?"

"... Mr. O'Hara ... !"

"Peter, you seem distressed. Can I help you?"

"I want to help you, Mr. O'Hara--I want to help save you from--Mr. O'Hara--it's terrible--you don't understand," I shouted. "I've just had sexual intercourse with your wife!"

"You what--?!"

"I had--for God's sake, Mr. O'Hara--I screwed Milly!"

O'Hara jerked upright and repressed his breathing. His wan face flooded red.

I burst out into tears. "I'm sorry, Mr. O'Hara. I'm awfully sorry. Forgive me, Mr. O'Hara."

A headshaking tremor seized O'Hara. "... How ... did it happen ... ? Whose idea was it ... did you go to my place--knowing I was here--looking for 'that'?"

From then on, sex and lies had to go together for me. On that path there was no turning back.

"Oh, no, Mr. O'Hara. Because of the rain I couldn't work today. Mother and I were worried about you--she told me to visit you--I thought maybe you had come back from the hospital--so I went to your place first--when I found out you weren't home I wanted to leave right away. Milly asked me to buy whiskey for her--I did--I didn't know how to refuse--you know I don't drink. She got drunk and grabbed me and excited me--you know what I mean--I swear, Mr. O'Hara--I had no intention--I wouldn't dream of it--especially after all you did for us--I never touched a woman before--I was virgin--then I couldn't help myself--she told me about laying with a lot of other men for a long time--that you were made of cardboard--I know I shouldn't repeat these things, but don't you see I'm doing it to help you save yourself from her--she's a bad woman--I'm so sorry--save yourself, Mr. O'Hara, please save yourself!"

O'Hara believed me and felt bad that Milly had taken my virginity. Tears came to his eyes. He patted my head.

"You're a good kid. Milly should not have done this to you. But Milly is a kid, too. She's my responsibility, my love, for better or for worse. I'm a captain on a sinking ship. I will not desert Milly--regardless."

On the subway back to Brooklyn, I saw a pair of pretty legs. Desire fanned up and came to me like a giant wave. I felt foolish. If I hadn't idiotically blurted the truth to O'Hara, I could have returned to Milly.

Mother asked me if I had found the tools I had sought. I could not become an accomplished liar in one day. I lamely told her I could not find what I needed, then decided to go see Mr. O'Hara at the hospital.

"Did you see Mrs. O'Hara?"

"Oh, I forgot to tell you--yes--you know, I thought maybe he was home from the hospital--he lives near the hospital--it was raining hard--his place is near the subway station--so I went to his apartment first--I didn't go in--she came to the door. Mr. O'Hara's brother was there--I think he lives there, too--they were nice to me and told me Mr. O'Hara was in the hospital. Mr. O'Hara is pretty sick--he was glad to see me--he asked about you--when he gets better he'll visit us again--"

Regret veiled Mother's face. She knew I was not telling the truth.

• • •

Laying Milly was my fall in the Garden of Eden of our home. And I would want more and more of that forbidden fruit. I rebelled against the idea of being watched by my father from the other world.

When I went with Mother to the old medium for the weekly spiritual communication with Father, I saw it all differently from when I was virgin. I wanted the wilderness of the truth. My future sex life could not bear to have heaven as an audience. My senses clamored for the smell and feel of woman and not for the sterile phantasmagoria of heaven. In the transformation I gained sensuous liberty and forfeited the assurance that all things were the will of God and death the door to the eternal true life.

As old Mrs. Miller went through the routine of bringing messages from Father, I saw her as a psychologist faker.

I had sought and gotten Milly's thighs and shattered the precious bond with Mother. From then on I would lie with many wives, and surely not blurt the fact to their husbands. I was to become a competent liar and deceiver like countless millions of men and women.

Mike O'Hara never came to the house again. Mother knew why, but never brought up the subject. I eavesdropped while she confided to my married sister. "My golden son has changed. He does not look me in the eye. He has added more horns to the head of good Mr. O'Hara. I knew it would happen the day Mr. O'Hara brought his wife here. Milly O'Hara is a puttana. What happened to my Pietro could not have been otherwise. The flesh is as nothing. It is what Milly has done to his soul."

Now I am 55. I have a son in Palm Beach, Florida, and a son in Hollywood, California. My wife is still with me. The attrition between sex and religion has worn away. Sex and religion have become one, and both accrue to the greater glory and sublime pleasure of the other. Material things, social systems and mores are trash to me. My spirit and flesh dwell indivisible in heaven and the beds of beautiful girls. I have united passion and heaven for myself.

• • •

For years I had dreaded ever meeting O'Hara again. Finally I felt quite positive that Mike and Milly O'Hara were dead. But recently, after leaving the bistro Tony's Wife, and while walking along Second Avenue in the 50s, I came face to face with Mike O'Hara. I tried to walk past him, but O'Hara's eyes would not allow it.

"Hello, Peter," he said in the very same soft tone he had used decades before, and he motioned toward a nearby bar. The bar was a popular scummy little dive frequented by editors, TV people, bums, prostitutes, fairies and Lesbians. It was the place where fragmented lives started drinking in the morning.

Milly was sitting at a small round table. Her appearance was shocking. Only by her eyes did I recognize her; the magnificent big, bold, black, amoral eyes.

"Milly, dearest," said O'Hara, "you remember young Peter." Milly grinned and nodded. O'Hara said tenderly, compassionately, "My Milly has been through hell twice with two brain operations for the removal of malignant tumors. The Good Lord stood by her."

Milly smiled her wild smile and said with difficulty, "Hello ... Petey ... long time. I'm a goddamn mess ... left side paralyzed--it's a sonuvabitch--arm and leg as dead as Kelsey's nuts ... they can't kill me--still in the race--can still lay the Army and Navy--still tight where it's good to be tight--"

I've seen exhumed corpses look better than Mike and Milly O'Hara. Milly was bloated shapeless, her skin was sickening, her hair, still lividly black, was cropped close and the frightening scars of her brain operations showed. She wore ridiculous big earrings, cheap rings, and a tattered vomit-splattered dress. The layers of paint on her face were awry. Yet she still radiated a bestial sex appeal. Milly O'Hara in her 60s, horribly broken down, still flew the same colors. There was a weird insensible fascination about her; the crazy but real, never-ending magnetism of the puttana. She drank her whiskey straight, washing it down with beer, shakingly raising the spilling glasses to her mouth.

I noticed O'Hara's grimy black tie, dirty ripped white shirt, shiny-worn, frayed and stale blue-serge suit, the cracked beat brown shoes, his greenish denture. He handled his whiskey glass the same way he used to; the coddling touch with the ever-smoking cigarette between his nicotine-dyed fingers. He was a tall, bloodless, white-haired skeleton, a graveless Lazarus; and all that remained were the cloudless blue eyes, his faultless long hands and the noble bone-work of his chaste face.

My "How've you been, Mike?" was as hollow as his gaunt dying cheeks.

"I've been just fine, fine, Peter. My ulcers kick up now and then. Certain foods don't agree with me. Milly's been bearing the cross, though. In and out of hospitals. Last year she fell asleep smoking. Set herself on fire. Bad infection. But skin grafts fixed her up. I'm thankful to God for Milly. I couldn't live without her. We get along swell."

I joined them drinking. O'Hara wanted to pay for the drinks. Said I was their honored guest. While we were drinking, Milly urinated, and her urine formed a pool in the sawdust on the floor.

"I'm sorry we sort of lost touch with each other," said O'Hara. "Your first novel is very dear to me. I reread it because you describe your mother so lovingly. What year did she pass away to her reward?"

I shrank from the mention of the past. Guilt I could not stave off welled in me.

"Mike, that's been ages ago."

Milly was sodden. She talked profanely of her sex affairs and boasted that she was better than ever at it.

O'Hara smiled benignly. "She's my little girl Milly who'll never grow up. Dear God, I don't know what I'd do without her."

They drank until midnight. Drinking intensively, profoundly, as though their drinking was the most sacred of rituals. When I rose to leave, Milly was sprawled face downward on the table. O'Hara, his eyes pure, his voice clear and steady, said, "Peter, I've been waiting for you. I knew we'd see each other again. There is something I have to give to you. I knew you'd be directed to me before I met my Maker, because I prayed for it."

He took my hand and pressed a weathered scapular of the Blessed Heart of Jesus into my hand; the very same one my mother had given him. I did my best to fight off tears.

I'll never forget the peace that was in Mike O'Hara's face.