Uncle Eddie's Curse

My mother wasn't born in Ireland, but she could have been. Banshees and leprechauns followed her around, and omens were everywhere. We lived on a quiet street with little traffic, lots of kids, and big back yards. My sisters and I were in and out with our friends all day (our house was the neighborhood's favorite place to play), and my mother was convinced that it was bad luck not to go out the same door by which you entered the house. We'd come into the kitchen for a cool gulp or two of lemonade and try to sneak out the front door when her back was turned, but it rarely worked.

"You didn't come in that way," she'd say ominously, without turning her head, "you know better than that!"

We were positive that there was another eye somewhere under her red hair, watching our every move. If we were successful and evaded it, we'd spend the rest of the day in half-scared, half-proud anticipation: what disaster would our dangerous behavior precipitate? Something always happened - Dad's flat tire on the way home from work, a broken milk bottle, skinned knees, or a fall off the swing. We weren't really convinced, but it definitely made us wonder. We'd be careful to observe the "twice over the threshold" rule for a few days, and then, recklessly daring, contravene it just to see what would happen!

My grandmother was one of nine children and also Irish to the core. Her brothers and sisters had been fruitful and multiplied, so my mother had about 30 cousins of various degrees back in Illinois. Whenever, God forbid, a picture fell from the wall, Mother and Nana would look at one another and say, almost in unison, "I wonder which one it is this time?" The fallen picture signaled a death in the family, and sure enough, within six months, somebody died!! The family would sometimes expand to include people like Marilyn Monroe or Mahatma Gandhi, because deaths also always came in threes. Watching the evening news with my mother was a real treat - we felt as if we were getting a real scoop when Mother would say, "That's two - I'll bet the next one will be so-and-so (whoever was old, ill, or a target for assassins) - you wait!" She was uncannily right about half the time, and we weren't particularly familiar with the law of averages, so we were quite impressed.

My dad was a logical, rational engineer who had tried for years to reduce the aura of Celtic prescience that surrounded us. He was Swedish by descent and eminently practical, so his attempts failed miserably. He didn't seem to mind much, unless one of Mother's "premonitions" concerned something he really wanted to do. I remember one occasion in particular. He had to go on a business trip to California. He was looking forward to it and planned to make a brief visit to an uncle he hadn't seen for many years while he was there. Unfortunately, one of the pictures hanging over the mantel in the living room happened to fall and crash on the brick hearth. You can imagine my mother's reaction, especially given that the same uncle had given it to them as a wedding gift! Daddy left for the airport with a headache and a promise to call as soon as the plane landed, but my mother told us that we should make sure our navy blue dresses were cleaned and pressed, just in case. When he got home, safe and sound, he went around the house adding glue and masking tape to the back of every picture he could find. It must have worked, because nothing fell down for years!

My mother's family spent a lot of time indulging in the pleasures of fighting with each other. Everybody took sides, but the alliances tended to shift a lot, depending on who said what behind whose back at the last funeral. We lived in northern Michigan (my father couldn't wait to get away from the "family" — we moved when I was two years old), so we were sort of on the sidelines. Various aunts and cousins would call and fill Mother and Nana in on the latest family news, but we were far enough away for relative peace and quiet. We heard just enough to keep up with births and deaths, marriages and (horror of horrors in a good Catholic family!) the rare but fascinating divorce.

We girls seldom saw any of the multitudes of cousins. Most of them were just names to us, but we did know and heartily dislike Uncle Eddie. He was my grandmother's youngest brother - short, fat, and bad-tempered. He had stayed with us several times and spent the entire visit either demanding that we be quiet or sending us to fetch something for him. As far as I remember, he hadn't a good word to say about anybody. Mother and Nana dreaded his arrival as much as we did, and my father found lots of reasons to work late all the time Uncle Eddie was there. But, he was FAMILY, so he had to be endured and even welcomed.

Uncle Eddie was scheduled to come for a week one summer. We had prayed solemnly every night that it would be the week we were all at Girl Scout Camp, but the Almighty must have decided we needed penance for something and didn't oblige. We were looking forward to the last day of school with our usual uninhibited joy, when we came home that June day only to find that Uncle Eddie was arriving the day school let out for the summer vacation. What a dose of cold water that was - not only was the last day of school ruined completely before it even arrived, but the whole first delicious week of summer would be wasted! We'd be creeping about the house or sent hither and yon every single minute.

My sister Chris decided that we must have been incredibly bad to pray for such a selfish reason (she was in third grade and wanted to be a nun at that time) and wanted us all to say a rosary every night for a week in penance. I told her that Uncle Eddie was penance enough, but all that got me was a stern lecture on "making fun of religion" from my mother. Chris was a natural tattletale, and Elizabeth and I knew it. Elizabeth was smart enough to keep her mouth shut, but I could never resist an argument! I had to say two rosaries every night in consequence. It took me about 20 years to forgive my sister for that one, but I did it. She was a redhead like my mother, but without Mother's conviction that sisters should stick together through thick and thin.

Uncle Eddie's visit started out in the usual way. Mother met him at the front door, smiling a welcome. Daddy endured an evening of Uncle Eddie's criticism of everything and everyone with calm fortitude, and we sat politely in the living room, quiet as mice. We girls set ourselves to get through the next few days as silently as possible and made plans to spend most of our daylight hours down the street with other people's families.

Uncle Eddie had to have his favorite cereal the next morning, but Mother had forgotten to put it on the grocery list that week. Nobody else in the house would eat the stuff, so there was a box of it in the pantry that had been there since Uncle Eddie's last visit. That was back in September, and the cereal was less than crispy, but Mother figured some of it was better than none, so it was on the breakfast table waiting for him. Unfortunately, she had no idea that we had been using it as a stiffener for our flour paste. We had experimented with relief maps that year - I'd made one in school and it was so much fun that I decided to share the activity with my sisters. We didn't have poster paints to color the oceans, rivers, and landmasses, so we raided my mother's baking supplies and used food coloring. The cereal was great for making the sculpted mountains look rough, so we colored it purple (Mountains were always purple in the pictures) before we added it to the flour paste. Yes, the whole box. We got distracted from our cartographic project before completing it and forgot all about the cereal (we had been told at the time that if we didn't put things away we would be forbidden to make anything like that again) back in its corner in the pantry.

If it hadn't caused Mother so much trouble, Uncle Eddie's expression when the purple clumps landed in his bowl would have been a cherished childhood memory. He rather resembled a penguin, minus the tuxedo, and the quivering outrage on his face nearly sent us all into hysterics. We didn't dare laugh, and we weren't supposed to leave the table without permission, so we sat, staring at our individual plates and bowls and snorting like small piglets.

Uncle Eddie exploded. It was both entertaining and frightening, like watching a volcano in your back yard. "Mary Cleo Donahue!" he screamed. "I told your mother that you were a curse when you were born! You watch, Jessie, I said - she's just like that worthless father of hers! To play a cruel joke on an old man, at your own breakfast table!! Look at these brats of yours, giggling and making fun. They're as bad as you are - and that cold fish of a husband you married! I've never been so insulted in my life!"

Mother had been all set to apologize profusely and send us all to the nethermost depths of the basement to think over our sinful behavior and pray for forgiveness. She knew we'd be safe down there and could let out the gales of laughter that she couldn't encourage under the circumstances, for Uncle Eddie was hard of hearing so he'd never be any the wiser. But Mother's red-haired temper was tried beyond endurance. She'd loved her father dearly and lost him when she was 10 years old. On top of that, our Daddy had never been anything but pleasant to Uncle Eddie, even giving up his favorite comfortable chair for the duration of the visit. In stunned silence, we heard her say in a voice we'd never heard from her before,

"You are a disgraceful excuse for a man, Eddie Donahue. This is my home and my family - not a hotel. If you can't accept that and behave as a guest in my home, you can go to a hotel where they are paid to be insulted by rude, inconsiderate old men."

She walked out of the dining room and into the kitchen, back stiff and head high. She was absolutely magnificent! Nana used to say that we were descended from Irish kings. That day my mother would have outdone any of them, hands down.

Uncle Eddie rose from the table. We stared at him, wondering if he was going to drop dead of a heart attack before our eyes and not quite sure that we didn't want him to. He slammed the table with his fist, then raised it into the air, declaiming,

"A curse on this house of shame and everyone in it! God will punish you, Mary Cleo Donahue, for your wickedness - you and all you hold dear!" It was a great exit line, but Uncle Eddie couldn't resist one last dig. "At least a decent hotel will have clean sheets!" he shouted, "They won't be pink, either!"

He had been given Elizabeth's bedroom, and she loved pink. She said it made her feel as if she were sleeping in a rose, like a fairy princess. The thought of Uncle Eddie checking the sheets in a hotel room to make sure they weren't pink was too much for our frazzled nerves. All three of us burst into hysterical laughter, which sent Uncle Eddie into a speechless rage. He stormed out of the room and up the stairs to Elizabeth's bedroom.

Elizabeth told me, years later, that she was afraid he was going to burn up her sheets in revenge for our insulting behavior. It explained why she left the table with the water pitcher in her hand and crept up the stairs after him. Chris and I thought she was going to try to offer a glass of water to Uncle Eddie as a peace offering. Elizabeth was the peacemaker of the family and hated strife and argument. She'd apologize to anybody for things that weren't even her fault, just to end an argument.

Unfortunately, when she approached the open door of the bedroom, Uncle Eddie was lighting a match preparatory to a calming cigarette. Her worst fears realized, Elizabeth doused him with the whole pitcher of water! Dripping and furious, Uncle Eddie grabbed her and shook her 'til her teeth rattled. Hearing her child crying brought Mother racing from the kitchen and up the stairs, to find her baby being manhandled by the "disgraceful excuse." The ensuing screaming match ended with Uncle Eddie, suitcase in hand, scuttling out the back door and into his car. With a final slam of door and screech of tires, he backed down the driveway at 30 miles an hour. Mother's lilac bush was the only casualty of the day, but we all crept about for hours as if in a house of death. Nana wouldn't speak to Mother, and Mother refused to speak to us.

When my father came home, ready to be hospitable to his less-than-welcome guest, he found himself instead in the deceptive calm of the eye of a hurricane. Mother had cooled off and begun to envision the seven plagues of Egypt falling on our heads. Not only had she violated the sacred tenets of FAMILY, she had set a bad example for her children! She spent the evening alternately crying and defending herself, while my father soothed, agreed, and sent us to bed early.

By the next day, Mother had recovered. She and Nana buried the hatchet, agreeing that Uncle Eddie's departure was really a blessing in disguise. At least they wouldn't have to put up with him any more, and the rest of the family couldn't stand him either so everyone would be on their side. Nana hadn't heard Uncle Eddie's remarks about her husband - she'd been upstairs sewing a new dress for Chris' doll. Once she understood what had happened, she hugged Mother and told her that the kings of Tara would have been proud of her. Grandpa Donahue had been the love of her life and a fine man.

"That wicked old goat will never darken your door again, Cleo," she said, patting Mother's hand. "He's been a thorn in everyone's side for 60 years and if anybody's cursed, it's him! Your Edward should have thrown him out long ago, but he's a good, kind boy and hospitable to a fault!" Nana never hesitated to tell my father that he was making a mistake in disciplining us too harshly, or advise him on how to rule his home, but she'd leap to his defense if anybody else did.

The week after Hurricane Eddie, my father had a minor accident on the way to work. He wasn't hurt, and the car was only dented, but my Mother went to church and lit about a dozen candles the next day. My sister Elizabeth caught a bad cold, and then the measles. She was quite sick for a while, running a high fever and delirious, but woke up on the third day of her illness demanding blueberry pancakes, so we knew she was going to live. Mother had a Mass said for her on the day she recovered, and started going to confession twice a week. Two weeks later, I fell off my bike and broke my arm. It hurt a lot, but I got to be waited on quite a bit and reveled in my special status.

Mother bought scapulars for everyone in the family (they were horribly scratchy, small squares of wool worn on a cord around one's neck, against the skin - kind of a mini hair shirt) and checked each morning to be sure we were wearing them. Daddy was exempt - he wasn't Catholic, so he missed out on a lot of Mother's anti-curse procedures. When Nana slipped on a piece of ice in the kitchen and almost broke her hip, Mother really snapped. We were treated to daily Mass, a rosary every night, and candles all over the place.

Finally, my father had reached his limit. He persuaded Mother to go and talk to Father Ambrose, a practical down-to-earth priest who played golf and bowled with my dad. Father Ambrose convinced Mother that her anger at Uncle Eddie may have been an unfortunate breach of hospitality, but it didn't call for a curse. Mother felt a little better, but she was still worried, so Father told her to write to Uncle Eddie and apologize. At least, he figured, that would be a better solution than a potential divorce - Daddy had meant it as a joke, but Father Ambrose was a fair psychologist and understood that even the most logical of men had a breaking point!

Mother duly wrote the letter, not expecting much in the way of forgiveness from Uncle Eddie. Weeks went by and no reply of any kind was received. Mother gradually returned to her relaxed religious observances, and we happily took off our scapulars and put the candles away in the closet. We all went to confession only on Saturday afternoons and Mass only Sunday, and life resumed its normal course.

A year after the curse fell upon us, Mother got an official looking letter from a law firm in Illinois. Letters from lawyers were as pregnant with omen as telegrams in our family. No pictures had fallen recently, but Mother waited to open it until Daddy got home from work, just in case somebody had died. We all gathered around to see what it was all about, as Mother slowly and apprehensively opened the letter and began to read. She looked as if she had seen a banshee jump off the paper! She handed it to my father with a trembling hand. He read the first few paragraphs, and all of a sudden he started laughing. He laughed 'til his eyes watered and he could hardly speak. Mother just sat there, looking stunned. When Daddy finally sobered up enough to speak coherently, he gave us the news.

"Uncle Eddie died in last month. He left your Mother $500 in his will. The lawyer says here that the bequest read: To my niece, Mary Cleo, in gratitude for her kindness and hospitality." Daddy couldn't help it, he started to laugh all over again. "It seems that Uncle Eddie had a stroke about two weeks after he left us. He never recovered fully and was in a nursing home until he died. The lawyer said that Uncle Eddie had made his will before he had the stroke and never changed it. It was dated the day after he got home from his visit with us."

"Well, Cleo, how about that for a curse?" he said, looking at Mother and grinning like crazy.

Mother didn't say anything for a minute; she just looked at her hands. When she looked up, she said triumphantly, "No wonder it didn't work! He came in the front door and went out the back! See what happens when you aren't careful about important things?"