‘Yesterday I was in JCPenneys. It was so cold, I needed to get some warmer clothes. Anyhow, I asked a member of staff where the jumpers were. And the look she gave me! ‘Jumper! There’s a jumper? Where?’ she screamed as she looked out to the window. Took me ages to persuade her that there wasn’t anyone suicidal and all I wanted was to buy a sweater!’
We both laughed and it was easy, fun. ‘Don’t get Mam started on the whole footpath versus sidewalk debate. That drives her mad.’
Our food arrived and the stack of blueberry pancakes Ryan had recommended was delicious. We tucked into our food in a happy silence, and I was glad that he wasn’t one of those types who felt the need to chatter all the time.
‘I got a letter yesterday,’ he announced suddenly. ‘I’ve been accepted into the New York Police Academy.’
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Sorry. That was a bit uncool. But it does sound a bit wow to me. Is it a big deal?’
‘My parents are delighted. Mike is too. He’s already in the NYPD.’
‘What’s involved? Was it hard to get in?’
‘I had to do a written exam. There was also medical and psychological screening. Lots of paperwork to submit. They ran a background check and I had a formal interview. It took a while and, to be honest, I didn’t think I had a chance in hell of being accepted.’
‘So this is a celebration breakfast,’ I said. He smiled, but this time it didn’t reach his eyes. Somehow he didn’t seem very enthusiastic about it.
‘How long does the training last?’
‘Six months. The training bureau is here in Manhattan, so good enough for me. I can commute from home every day. That’s handy.’
‘Can I ask you something?’
‘Yeah, sure.’
‘Do you want to be a cop?’
‘Why do you ask that?’
‘It’s just, when you talk about writing and your books, your whole body lights up. You don’t seem as buzzed about this career move.’
‘You don’t miss much,’ he acknowledged. ‘My parents want me to do this. They’ve been pushing me to apply for the academy for years. Dad says I need to start a career.’
I wanted to say a lot more to him, but I also knew that I barely knew him. It wasn’t my place to give him career advice. Who was to say that becoming a cop wasn’t the right move for him?
When we finished our meal, Ryan asked, ‘Have you been in Grand Central Station?’
‘Course.’
‘But I bet you’ve not really seen it. There’s a lot more to this place than a train station.’
When we walked into the centre of the concourse, he said, ‘I like it here at this time. It’s quiet. In another twenty minutes, you won’t be able to move with all the commuters. I often come in here for a coffee while I wait for the library to open.’
‘It looks different when it’s empty,’ I admitted, looking around the room. In fact it looked almost like a church in this light, with large windows shooting early morning sun onto the floor.
‘Look up,’ Ryan said, touching my arm to stop me.
The ceiling was the most magnificent I’d ever seen. It took my breath away. ‘That’s absolutely stunning. I can’t believe I never noticed it when I was in here before!’
‘Here’s a little bit of useless trivia for you. Jackie O helped save this place, when they wanted to knock it down in the Seventies. She had to go to the Supreme Court to make sure it didn’t fall prey to a wrecking ball.’
‘What a travesty that would have been.’
When I looked back down, he was watching me and our eyes met. For a brief second we were the only two people in the world, as commuters faded to ghosts around us. Ryan felt it too, I could see it in his eyes. We were both moving together towards an inevitable moment, the agony and the ecstasy was waiting to know when.
Ryan pointed to the clock that sat on top of the information kiosk. ‘That has four faces and it’s worth about twenty million dollars. And the clock on the facade outside is a Tiffany one.’
‘It’s a hidden gem, isn’t it? We’ve walked by here loads of times, but I always assumed it was another boring train station.’
‘I know! And it’s got a few secrets up its sleeve.’ He grabbed my hand and we ran through a passageway towards the food court. ‘This domed area is pretty special. Stand here and put your ear to the wall.’ I made a face, sure he was making fun of me, but he insisted that I should trust him. He ran across to the opposite corner of the vaulted archway and leaned into the wall too, so I placed my cheek against the cold marble.
Then I heard a whisper. It was Ryan’s voice. And somehow, it was in my ear, whispering my name over and over. ‘Lucy. Lucy. Lucy.’
I looked across at him in shock and he laughed, shouting across to me, ‘This is the Whispering Gallery. Some crazy acoustic stuff going on, but it means you can communicate in whispers from one side to the other. Go on, try it. Whisper into the wall!’
With all the wonder of a child, I leaned in and whispered, ‘You are full of surprises, Ryan O’Connor.’
His whisper came back almost immediately, ‘I would like to surprise you every day, if you’ll let me.’
I looked over to him, but his face was still leaned into the wall, waiting for my response. ‘I don’t think you should accept the NYPD offer. I know I have no right to say this to you. I know it’s none of my business. But I have this instinct that it’s the wrong move for you. That if you take that job, you’ll never finish your novel and find out what that agent thinks.’ I finished my long whisper, breathless and also embarrassed. There was silence from him. I didn’t dare look at him. I’d spoken out of line. I should have kept my opinion to myself.
‘What if the agent doesn’t like my book?’ his whisper came back.
‘I don’t think that’s the question you need to ask. What if the agent does like it?’
His sigh transferred across the magical dome and caressed my cheek.
‘I think that, somehow, you know me better than any other person alive and I’ve only just met you. I’ve not even kissed you yet.’
I felt heat travel through every part of my body and I moved away from the wall, towards the centre of the dome. As Ryan came towards me, I felt the hairs on my arms rise in attention to the possibilities of the question. It was as if the earth was shifting on its axis and it thrilled me. It was time for the inevitable.
‘Can I kiss you, Lucy Mernagh?’
My answer was a sigh, but he understood it and in a second I was in his arms. He kissed me, a kiss worthy of every romantic comedy I’d ever dreamed I could be part of. And I knew that there would never be another man for me.
I was his and he was mine.
20
LUCY
September 1992
Innisfree, Prospect Avenue, Brooklyn, New York
An invite to Innisfree came within a week of our first date. Mike had told their parents about me and they insisted I visit. His mam, Peggy, had received phone calls all week, following my evening in Farrell’s. She was disgusted that most of her friends had met me before she had. I begged Maeve to come with me. But she had a date with a Dutch guy called Eric who lived in the apartment next door to us. He’d been watching her with puppy eyes ever since we moved in last month. I felt sorry for him, because I knew she wasn’t really interested in him. Every time he bumped into her, which I reckon he orchestrated with intent, he begged for a date. And every time she laughed, flicked her long, shiny hair and said no. Until she found out that he worked for a talent agency. This was serendipity for him because Maeve had decided a week previously that she wanted to be an actress. It was a fad. Like the time she wanted to be a pop star. We’d queued for hours so that she could audition for a TV show in Dublin. Only for her to be knocked back because of the not so little issue that she was, like me, without a note in her head. Maeve was one of those people who took notions and couldn’t be dissuaded from them, until the next notion hit. So it was exit stage left for Toby and enter stag
e right for Eric.
‘Imagine the possibilities,’ she’d told me, when I expressed surprise at the news.
‘I can’t. Enlighten me.’
‘Well, he must get to all the cool parties. And you never know who I’ll get to meet there.’
‘Please be nice to Eric. I think he really likes you.’
‘I’m always nice,’ Maeve said, and I couldn’t help but laugh. She was incorrigible.
I changed my clothes three times before I settled on my denim pinafore, with a short-sleeved white T-shirt underneath. Ryan must have been watching out for me, because he was at the front door before I was halfway up the short path to Innisfree.
‘Your home is beautiful,’ I said. It looked so different to any home I’d ever been in before. A three-storey brownstone with beautiful bay windows in the front. I thought about our cottage at home, with the low ceilings and small, odd-shaped rooms, which I’d always considered beautiful too. They were so different it was impossible to compare them.
‘Never mind our house, you’re beautiful,’ Ryan said, then gave me a quick kiss.
I flushed again and wondered when I’d stop feeling like a teenager in his company.
‘Everyone is in here.’ He led me into a large open-plan sitting room. It had high ceilings edged by intricate coving, and was filled with well-worn and lived-in furniture, which to me made the room picture-perfect.
His mam was tiny, one of those women who made you feel awkward standing by them. She was no more than five feet and from a distance looked much younger than her years. She wore her long hair in a loose bun; coupled with her jeans and sweatshirt, she could have passed for a woman half her age. It was only as I got closer to shake her hand that I noticed the fine lines around her eyes and mouth. Ryan was like his dad. Tall and lean, with the same eyes and smile.
‘You’re very welcome to Innisfree, Lucy. I’m Joe. And this is Peggy.’
‘Thank you for having me. I got you something.’ I handed a gift bag to Peggy. I’d called to The Butcher’s Block earlier that morning as I decided an Irish care package might be a nice gift. The Butcher’s Block was a supermarket in Sunnyside, Queens, and a mainstay for every Irish immigrant living in the locale. They stocked everything from Kimberley Mikados to Batchelors baked beans.
Peggy opened the bag and whooped, holding up one of the items in the bag like a trophy. ‘Kerrygold butter!’
‘Well, you might as well have given her a bar of gold!’ Ryan said. ‘Kerrygold butter was and has always been a special treat here. We didn’t get it every day growing up, because it’s expensive, but on special occasions we looked forward to it.’
‘Peggy is making colcannon and ham for dinner today. And I know what I’ll be doing with that butter. A great big knob is going on top of the mash,’ Joe said.
‘The ham is glazed, ready to go into the oven. I better get on with it if we’re to eat in an hour.’
‘No better cook than my Peggy,’ Joe said with pride.
‘I miss my mam’s dinners. I don’t think I paid enough attention to her over the years. I’m afraid I’ve never quite mastered her knack at cooking, so this will be a treat for me.’
‘Irish grub was the thing I missed most from home when I first got here. But then I met Peggy and that saved the day,’ Joe said.
‘Last week, I paid four dollars for a packet of Knorr meal maker because I had a goo on me for my mother’s shepherd’s pie. She always makes it with one of them,’ I said.
‘Sometimes when homesickness takes over every part of you, a taste from home is the only medicine needed,’ Peggy said, patting my hand. ‘If you ever want anything that your mam cooked for you, tell me and I’ll do my best to recreate it.’
And I could see that her offer was genuine. Right now, in this house with the O’Connor family, I felt the closest to being at home since I’d arrived in the USA. She examined the rest of the items from the gift bag. ‘And Cadbury’s chocolate, Brennan’s bread, Barry’s tea! Ah, love, that’s very good of you.’
‘I thought you might like them more than a bunch of flowers.’
‘You thought right. Joe, get our guest a drink. I’ll have a glass of wine. I’ll be out in a minute, once I’ve got the dinner sorted.’
‘Can I help?’ I offered.
‘Not at all. But the offer is appreciated.’
We took a seat on the sofa that was as comfortable as it looked. ‘Is that an original fireplace?’ I asked.
‘It is. I know it’s more fashionable to have central heating with radiators, but you can’t beat watching the flames flicker and ebb,’ Joe said.
Mike walked in, wearing his uniform. ‘Yo!’ he called out to me.
‘Hi, Mike.’
‘What time are you on at?’ Peggy called from the kitchen. ‘Dinner will be ready in forty mins or so. Ryan’s Lucy brought Kerrygold with her.’
‘That’s lit! I’ve got time for dinner.’
I felt ridiculously happy at being called Ryan’s Lucy, and curious at how excited Mike was about Irish butter. ‘I get why your parents miss certain foods from home. I do myself. But how come you guys crave it so much, when you were both born here in New York? I thought you’d be all peanut butter and jelly sambos, or pancakes with an extra side of pancake.’
‘Ha! I’m partial to a good PB&J. But while we might not have been born in Ireland, we all grew up Irish,’ Ryan said.
Joe handed me a glass of wine, then Peggy joined us. ‘How are you enjoying living in Woodside?’
‘I found it difficult to adjust at first. Everything is so different to where I’m from. Things move at a different speed there. It’s taken me a while to catch up. My sister, Maeve, she’s settled in quicker than me.’
‘It gets easier. The first year was the hardest, but when you find your own, meet like-minded people, then it kinda falls into place,’ Joe said. His accent had a strong hint of Irish, dancing with the New York twang. I wondered if that was how I’d sound in a few more years.
‘My eyes were on stalks when I arrived, but for you back then, it must have felt like a whole new world,’ I said.
‘Don’t get him started. Dad loves telling his immigration story,’ Ryan warned.
‘I’d love to hear it.’ I meant it. I settled back further into my seat, sipping my white wine.
‘I left home in 1955. And while I hated saying goodbye to my parents and brothers, I couldn’t wait to leave. There was nothing for me in Ireland but hardship. And sure, we Irish know how to leave when there’s an economic crisis. It’s in our DNA. I had sixty dollars in my back pocket and very little else. But I was lucky. I had somewhere to go. There’s a saying that New York was built by the Irish. Well, my Uncle Richard, who gave me this house, was part of that. He left Ireland in the Twenties, made a few bob working as a sandhog in construction. But he never got married.’
‘He was a good man and would have been a good father, if he’d had kids,’ Peggy added.
‘He would. A lot of my childhood memories are dust now, but I have a vivid one that’s never lost colour. Uncle Richard came home to Ireland to visit my gran, who was dying. A few hours after he walked into her small bedroom to say hello, she said goodbye to us all. Uncle Richard looked so handsome, all dickied up in a fancy grey three-piece suit. Half his suitcase was full of candy and Hershey’s kisses. We’d never tasted anything like those treats back then. When he was leaving, hot tears burnt my eyes. I’d not cried when my gran died, but it was all I could do not to start sobbing when he shook my hand goodbye. I asked him to take me back with him. He laughed and said, “You can’t leave your mam. She’d kill me!” But he never forgot my request, and when I was eighteen he wrote to Mam, enclosing the money for my boat fare. It would have taken me half a lifetime to save that sum up. Richard wanted someone to take care of him in his old age. He’d bought Innisfree and he was lonely here. He made it clear that he’d leave his house to me when he died, if I took the chance of a lifetime and came over.’
‘I can’t imagine what that must have been like for your parents, watching you leave,’ Lucy said, thinking of her own parents standing in Dublin airport, her mother clutching a bottle of holy water, her dad clutching her mam.
‘It was a different time. They understood. Dad told me to pack my things and never look back. He hadn’t been working for nearly a decade. And I had no fear in those days. I was all spit and muscle and thought I could take on the world. Mind you, two days into the journey and I didn’t feel so invincible. No aeroplanes back then, just the boat to Ellis Island.’
‘I never got seasick once,’ Peggy said. ‘But I’ve always had a stronger stomach than Joe.’ When they smiled at each other, I could see a lifetime of love pass between them. I felt Ryan’s eyes on me and I wondered if he was wishing for a lifetime of love with me, as I was with him. My face burned at the thought.
‘Did you meet on the boat?’ I asked.
‘No, Joe was in New York for over a year before I arrived. My cousin Colm was living in Brooklyn and promised to send the fare to me once he had it saved. I could have gone to London, but once I saw Rebel Without a Cause, I thought I’d have a better chance at meeting a James Dean over here than I could in England!’
We all laughed as Joe brushed his white hair back into a quiff and pouted.
‘Some rebel,’ Peggy said.
‘Tell Lucy how you met,’ Ryan said. ‘Serendipity throughout this story.’
‘Lucy doesn’t want to be listening to that …’ Peggy protested.
But I quickly told her that yes, I did want to hear. The more time I spent with this family, the more charmed I was.
‘Colm sent the fare over, earlier than we anticipated, because a friend of his loaned him the money. I was to join Colm at his boarding house in Brooklyn, which was run by a Cork woman. Anyhow, there were no phones back then – your generation have it much easier than we did. All I had was a scribbled address in a small notebook. Colm couldn’t take time off work to meet me off the boat. But I figured if I managed to cross the Atlantic on my own, I could make my way to Brooklyn too.’
The Moon Over Kilmore Quay: a heartwarming and emotional family drama perfect for summer 2021 Page 15