Although the novel “Charming
Billy”, by Alice McDermott, is named after the enigmatic, indeed charming,
Billy Lynch; and, while the novel, beginning at the funeral services for the
beloved Billy, the story goes on to chronicle the life events of Billy and
those around him. While the next, most prominent character would most likely be
Billy’s best friend Dennis, there is one character whose impact on the story
itself and its meaning I feel, is far more reaching and substantial: Eva. The
simple, beautiful Irish girl who Billy met the summer he had returned from the
war out on Long Island, who was nannying with her sister Mary for a wealthy
family. As the summer days slipped away, Eva solidified her place in Billy’s
heart and in her departure, took it with her.
We are
first introduced to Eva as Billy’s loved ones are recounting stories of his
life and recalling memories, both the good and the bad. We come to know her as
the girl who stole Billy’s heart and died too young from pneumonia after
returning home to Ireland. All seemingly innocent enough, until we learn that
she never did die. She used the $500, that Billy had worked tirelessly for in
order to bring her back to the States, to open a gas station with her husband
and never replying to Billy’s letters to her family – continuing to spend her
years with her husband and four children.
Although
most character development occurred indirectly through her effect on Billy and
his life and second-hand stories and details uncovered by the narrator –
Dennis’s daughter – we are introduced to Eva in the flesh in one chapter out on
the Long Island Shore and only once more in her home town of Clonmel. We get
some physical description when the boys, picking up the girls for their date, not,
“Eva sat at the near end of the table, her back to them, and as she turned at
their entrance they saw she had Sally, the 5 year old, on her lap. Eva, too,
wore a dress. It had capped sleeves and a rounded neck and there was nothing
more beautiful than the way she turned in her chair and smiled up at them over
the little girls head,” (79). Besides the obvious physical appeal that
attracted Billy, there is a line that offers a more complete description of the
character that is the beautiful Eva, and Billy’s unwavering draw to her. After
meeting Mary and Eva the previous day on the beach the narrator recounts of
Billy, “when did he fall in love with her? Probably it was the day before,
before she had even come clearly into his view. But that afternoon he fell in
love with the rest of his life, and that was better still,” (76). And so, it
becomes increasingly clear that although Eva does not have an actual presence
in the story line, her influence is far reaching and can be found throughout
the novel.
Once this
level of understanding is established, traces of Eva’s influence can be found
everywhere. For instance, the heartbreak, which Eva caused Billy, fostered his
connection to Maeve’s dad and then to Maeve herself. On one of Maeve’s visits
to Holtzman’s shoe store it is said, “looking on, Maeve saw her father’s future
with this kind and attentive young man before she had the courage to imagine
her own…she saw that only through her father’s life, which was all the life she
had planned to know, would he gain any part in hers,” (132). Billy’s loss of
Eva and resulting love of drink linked him to Maeve’s father who suffered from
the same afflictions, subsequently linked him to Maeve and established what
would come; none of which happening without Eva. Similar to this is all the
pain he caused Maeve. She notes, that near the end she had a thousand and one
memories, ones she would never share of the terrible things that had happened
between her and Billy, things he had done and said. Things, which, “she couldn’t
begin to tell, because even just putting it into words would kill her,” (157).
A pain, which started with Eva, that consumed Billy, brought so much pain to
the woman who had loved Billy unconditionally. At the same token it was often
mentioned that if her father wasn’t so troubled, if Maeve hadn’t spent her life
taking care of him, and Billy suffering from the same burdens, that she would
never have loved Billy the way that she did. Thus, little choices,
inconsequential events that shape the future, shape everything that is to come.
As the
story continues, everything returns to Eva, her influence felt everywhere. For
instance, when talking about how lucky Billy was to find Maeve who was so
willing to love and accept him it was said, “so ready to give him her heart and
that surely it was a compensation of some sort for what he had lost, for the
Irish girl,” (161) Even discussing a relationship to which she is not a part,
Eva is still present – that she, from her supposed grave, was the reason that
Billy found Maeve. Similarly on page 181 it is mentioned, “what could he have
thought of Maeve? After the Irish girl, after that other future, the brightest
of them, had shattered in his hand,” (180). And so Eva is created, “the one”
for Billy, but not only that, she carried a whole future with her, a whole
other world that was taken from Billy when she left. That bright future
stripped from his hands, that is what pained Billy so much and that pain set
forth all that was to come, Maeve’s pain, late night phone calls to Dennis,
etc. The epitome of this ideal comes as Dennis is talking to Billy about how
life goes on, “ ‘Life goes on, Billy.’ He said. Billy whispered, ‘I won’t let
it.’” (206). He refused to go on, that split decision, that steel resolve to
not let go of what could have been, also decided the future, the life he would
have, the life that Maeve would have, and on and on.
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