NO MATTER HOW FAR

Central Wrap hummed like a telegraph as I tossed the brown packages wrapped with twine onto the conveyor belt or over the head of a favorite co-worker, who during the 1958 pre-Christmas season at Stern's Department Store, opposite the lions in front of the New York Public Library on 42nd Street, was a wavy-haired, cobalt-eyed, well-built young man named Gerard Guilfoyle. His dark good looks were matched by the deftness with which he caught the flying surprise that almost clipped his right ear, “Guess I'll have to walk you home tonight, Liz, just to get even.”

Although Gerard lived in middle id Pelham Bay Park and I was from the working id South Bronx , we both took the Lexington Avenue Local home. As the train approached my stop, Cypress Avenue , Gerard grabbed the overhead leather strap, swaying to the undulation of the train “I'll walk you to your building, Liz.”

“That's really nice of you, Gerard, but not necessary,” I lied. “Besides, tomorrow's a school day. You have a long ride ahead of you.” As the doors of the train slid open, Gerard cradled my elbow in his hand, and we ascended the dingy IRT stairs to the street where the crispness of the winter air stung my nostrils. Orion the Hunter and The Pleiades watched us as Gerard caressed my shoulder pushing up the collar of my navy blue chesterfield to warm me.

While I shivered, Gerard broke my crystal reverie, “Sure are a lot of bars in this neighborhood. Colorful names, too.”

“Never paid them much mind,” I said, inching away from him. I never had but Gerard was right. There were too many bars on this street and every one bore an Irish stamp – The Shannon View, The Rose of Tralee, The Eire. As I changed the topic, who should emerge from the bowels of Loughery's but the ruddy-complected Mr. Slattery, known to all as Scatteration, who doffed his Donegal tweed cap, swept it across his waist and bowed when he saw me. There was no avoiding his elfin self as he always scurried across busy 138th in the middle of the street directly in front of the triple oak doors of St. Luke's, our parish church, as he had explained to me too many times before, and as he explained again to me and Gerard, “You never know who's been bribin' who to get a driver's license these days or what maniac might be careening down our fair thoroughfare terminatin' the life of an innocent like myself. And should I suddenly be needin' a priest, aren't they right there in the rectory countin' the two and three dollars that every decent parishioner donates each Sunday in the yellow envelope.”

“Elizabeth, Elizabeth ,” he said to me, “my girl, you're growin' grander everyday.”

“As you are yourself, Mr. Slattery, how are you?”

“Fair to middlin', fair to middlin'. And who is this stout buckadah protectin' ya from the cold. It's a firm handshake ya have, Mr. Guilfoyle. I knew a Cornelius Guilfoyle when I first came to this country. Are your people from Leitrim?”

“I really don't know where my people are from. My parents were born in Manhattan .”

“Your grandparents then?”

“I don't know, Mr. Slattery.”

“A narrowback, are ya? ‘Tis sadness itself when those glorious blue eyes and that glossy thicket of black hair have lost their Celtic lineage. You'll never know where you're goin', Gerard, until you find out where you've been. Never know your heart ‘til you find its home place. There's no denyin' what you've come from.” He reached up to pat Gerard on the shoulder and shook his head in sympathy.

“I'll try to find out, Mr. Slattery. I'll ask my folks.”

“At your right hand there is a great Irish girl herself, her parents sprung from the magical mists of the Mourne Mountains in County Down , even if it is in the God-forsakin' North.”

“Not as magical as Mayo, even if it's in the God-forsakin' South, Mr. Slattery.

“And those County Down parents are wondering where I am right now.”

“Right you are, right you are, my girl. I'll be dodgin' myself. ‘S been a pleasure meetin' yourself, Gerard Guilfoyle, The Man from God Knows Where .” Mr. Slattery turned and disappeared into the dark night while Gerard laughed as we approached my building.

“He's had a few, Gerard. The Man from God Knows Where is a poem we recite at family parties.”

“A real charmer.”

Gerard was charming too, and as we dashed across the street in the protective shadow of St. Luke, the physician, I prayed that Gerard would traverse that street again, but somehow I knew that Loughery's and the Shannon View and even the endearing Mr. Slattery scared away the man from God knows where. Not even St. Luke could heal the schism of an ocean and centuries of mysticism and mythology.

For in the South Bronx we were a breed apart. We still identified ourselves by the parish that baptized, married and buried us, just as my mother told she was from the lush green hamlet of St. Malachy's in Kilcoo, Tularee. We still drank tea with milk instead of the ubiquitous American Maxwell House. We blessed our throats with candles on the feast of St. Blaise to ward off the winter chill (God forbid we couldn't talk) and bore the dust of the earth on our foreheads on Ash Wednesday to remind us from what we came and to what we would return. We crossed ourselves when we passed a church and in so doing we paid tribute to the Father who had dug the potatoes in the fallow fields of Kilcoo, to the Son who navigated the ocean to the land of heaven knows what, and to the Holy Ghost who imbued us with the Spirit that made us what we were, and no matter how far we strayed and took on fancy American airs, what we would always be.