by Mary Ann McGuigan
I knew how my voice could fit, but I don’t know how I knew. Nobody showed me. My brothers had a tight harmony. The sounds they wove together made sparks travel up the back of my neck. Eyes closed, I’d follow them to someplace better, a place without daily deprivations and threats so frequent they became the ordinary. They sang Clovers’ songs and the Five Satins. Smooth, sweet. But theirs was a private connection, not a party to crash.
They liked to sing in the entry hall of our apartment building in the Bronx, closed off from the street and the hallway inside, their voices encased in a kind of chamber that kept the good stuff from escaping. That’s where I found them singing “All I Have to Do Is Dream.” Their harmony was as effortless as the Everly Brothers’, but deeper, edgier, like they understood something about the words even the Everlys couldn’t, the need to imagine things into existence, the things you’re sure you’ll never have. I’d heard them do the song many times before in our apartment, where they couldn’t hear me singing along in the next room.
But here, in this little urban cathedral, they heard every note. Danny glanced at me where I sat on the top of the marble steps, and I was sure I’d get chased, but then Sean nodded. “Leave her be,” he mumbled “What harm?” So when they started over, I did too.
Finally, Sean motioned me over and we began the song again. I didn’t dare look into their faces. I feared that would be rude, with their eyes nearly shut, their concentration intense. Instead, I rested my gaze on the long skinny legs of their dungarees, hanging low on their hips, their dirty, worn sneakers keeping the slow beat. I tried to make my voice something they needed, but for me it wasn’t about sound. It was about fitting in, belonging, being given a right to something privileged. A rare offering from my brothers. They were sullen teenagers, kept their feelings out of sight. They grew up to be even more enigmatic, the only kind of Irishman my family produced.
My brothers kept the chances to sing with them to a minimum, although our mother, once she heard us, encouraged it. When Peter, Paul & Mary’s first album came out, their songs offered the perfect landing for us. We sang “500 Miles” in the hall, in the house, on the stoop. Our siblings teased and begged for mercy. But not Mama. “Let’s hear it again,” she’d say, her face lit with the delight only music brought her. No objections were tolerated.
A cousin’s Confirmation party was our debut for an audience beyond the immediate family. We got a rousing response, whistles and cheers, but it may have been the family’s relief at not having to hear Uncle Buddy sing yet another round of “The Boys of the Old Brigade.”
We never talked much, my brothers and I. There was no point. Words couldn’t promise much in those days. They couldn’t change things. But the singing did, even if it was only for the length of the song. As we got older and the stages of our lives were out of synch and our politics diverged, the songs—called on at family get-togethers—invariably brought me back to those times when the singing was a respite from turbulence. We had no money, no certainty of anything. We were fearful of big changes, grateful for the small ones, the harmony an unexpected relief.
I wanted that comfort to be part of my wedding ceremony. So when I married for the first time, believing I understood what it took to “be as one,” I asked my brother Sean to sing Paul Stookey’s “The Wedding Song” at the service. He resisted, maybe never quite convinced that the flawless harmony in that Bronx entry hall wasn’t something we imagined, or maybe suspecting I’d learn too late that connections are elusive for the children of want, requiring a selflessness I hadn’t mastered.
But he did it. For me. What harm?
Mary Ann McGuigan’s creative nonfiction has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Brevity, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. The Sun, Massachusetts Review, North American Review, and many other journals have published her fiction. Her collection Pieces includes stories named for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net; her new story collection, That Very Place, arrived in bookstores in September 2025. The Junior Library Guild and the New York Public Library rank Mary Ann’s novels as best books for teens; Where You Belong was a finalist for the National Book Award. She loves visitors: www.maryannmcguigan.com
Emerge Literary Journal 