girls had to suppose that Daddy was proud of us in other ways, it wasn’t clear how just yet.
He wanted us to be good-looking, which might mean sexy—but not too obviously. Staring at Miriam—her mouth, lipstick—not knowing what to think, how to react: Did he approve, or disapprove?
He’d seemed to be impressed by good grades but report cards were not very real to him, school was a female thing, he’d dropped out of high school without graduating, never read a book nor even glanced inside a book so far as I knew, pushed aside our textbooks if they were in the way on a counter, no curiosity except just once that I remember, pushing aside a book I’d brought home from the public library—The Diary of Anne Frank.
What was this, he’d heard of this, vaguely—in the newspaper, or somewhere—Anne Frank. Nazis?
But Daddy’s interest was fleeting. He’d peered at the cover, the wan girl-face of the diarist, saw nothing to particularly intrigue him, dismissed the book as casually as he’d noticed it without asking me about it. For always Daddy was distracted, busy. His mind was a kaleidoscope of tasks, things to be done, each day a ladder to be climbed, nothing random admitted.
And what pride we felt, my sisters and me, seeing our father in some public place, beside other, ordinary men: taller than most men, better-looking, with a way of carrying himself that was both arrogant and dignified. No matter what Daddy wore, work clothes, work boots, leather jacket he looked good—manly.
And the expression on our mother’s face, when they were together, with others. That particular sort of female, sexual pride. There. That’s him. My husband Jerome. Mine.
To their children, parents are not identical. The mother I knew as the youngest of seven children was certainly not the mother my older siblings knew, who’d been a young wife. Especially, the father I knew was not the father my brothers knew.
For Daddy treated my brothers differently than he treated my sisters and me. To Daddy the world was harshly divided: male, female.
He loved my brothers in a way different from the way he loved my sisters and me, a fiercer love, a more demanding love, mixed with impatience, at times even derision; a hurtful love. In my brothers he saw himself and so found fault, even shame, a need to punish. But also a blindness, a refusal to detach himself from them.
His daughters, his girls, Daddy adored. You would not have said of any Kerrigan that he adored his sons.
We were thrilled to obey him, we basked in his attention, his love. It was a protective love, a wish to cherish but also a wish to control, even coerce. It was not a wish to know—to know who we were, or might be.
Yet, Daddy behaved differently with Miriam, and with Katie, than he did with me. It was a subtle difference but we knew.
He’d have claimed that he loved us all equally. In fact, he’d have been angry if anyone had suggested otherwise. That is what parents usually claim.
Until there is a day, an hour, when they cease making that claim.
TWO FACTS ABOUT DADDY: HE’D FOUGHT IN VIETNAM, AND HE’D come back alive and (mostly) undamaged.
This was about as much as Daddy would say about his years as a soldier in the U.S. Army, when Lyndon B. Johnson was president.
“I enlisted. I was nineteen. I was stupid.”
We knew from relatives that Daddy had been “cited for heroism” helping to evacuate wounded soldiers while wounded himself. He’d been awarded medals—kept in a box in the attic.
My brothers tried to get him to talk about being a soldier in the U.S. military and in the war but he never would. In a good mood after a few ales he’d concede he’d been God-damned lucky the shrapnel that got him had been in his ass, not his groin, or none of “you kids” would’ve been born; in a not-good mood he’d say only that Vietnam had been a mistake but not just his mistake, the whole country had gone bat-shit crazy.
He’d hated Nixon more than Johnson, even. That a president would lie to people who trusted him and not give a damn how many thousands of people died because of him, Daddy shook his head, speechless in indignation.
Most politicians were those blood-sucking sons of bitches. Cocksuckers. Fuckers. Even Kerrigan relatives who were involved in local, western New York State politics were untrustworthy, opportunists and crooks.
Daddy would only talk about Vietnam with other veterans. He had a scattering of friends who were veterans of Vietnam, Korea, and World War II he went out drinking with, but never invited to the house; our mother did not know their wives, and our father had no interest in introducing her. Taverns, saloons, pubs, roadhouses—these were the gathering places of men like Daddy, almost exclusively male, relaxed and companionable. In such places they watched championship boxing matches, baseball and football, on TV. They laughed uproariously. They smoked, they drank. No one chided them for drinking too much. No one waved away smoke with prissy expressions. Who’d want women in such places? Women complicated things, spoiled things, at least women who were wives.
Returning home late from an evening with these men Daddy was likely to be heavy-footed on the stairs. Often he woke us, cursing when he missed a step, or collided in the dark with something.
If one of us left something on the stairs, textbook, pair of shoes, Daddy might give it a good kick out of pure indignation.
In our beds, we might hear them. Our mother’s murmurous voice that might be startled, pleading. Our father’s voice slurred, abrasive, loud.
A sound of a door being slammed, hard. And though we listened with quick-beating hearts, often we heard nothing further.
Katie had hoped to interview our father for a seventh-grade social studies project involving “military veterans” but this did not turn out well. Calm at first telling her no, not possible but when Katie naively persisted losing his temper, furious and profane, threatening to call the teacher, to tell that woman to go fuck herself until—at last—our mother was able to persuade him not to make such a call, not to jeopardize Katie’s standing with her teacher or at the school, please just forget it, try to forget, the teacher had only meant well, Katie was in no way to blame and should not be punished.
Punished was something our father could understand. Punished unfairly, he particularly understood.
Katie would remember that incident for the rest of her life. As I will, too.
You didn’t push Daddy, and you didn’t take Daddy for granted. It was a mistake to assume anything about him. His generosity, his pride. Dignity, reputation. Not being disgraced or disrespected. Not allowing your name to be dragged through the dirt.
There were many Kerrigans scattered through the counties of western New York State. Most of these had emigrated from the west of Ireland, in and near Galway, in the 1930s, or were their offspring. Some were closely related to our father, some were distant, strangers known only by name. Some were relatives whom we saw frequently and some were estranged whom we never saw.
We would not know why, exactly. Why some Kerrigans were great guys, you’d trust with your life. Others were sons of bitches, not to be trusted.
We did notice, my sisters and me, that girl-cousins with whom we’d been friendly, and
