by Colm Toibin
Eilis now wondered if there was any way she could go out into the street, find a way to stop this from having happened, or stop him from having told her. In the silence she almost asked Father Flood to go and not come into the store again like this, but she realized instantly how foolish that was. He was here. She had heard what he said. She could not push back time.
“I’ve arranged for your mother to come up to the Manse in Enniscorthy tonight and we’ll call her from the presbytery here.”
“Was it one of the priests who contacted you?”
“Father Quaid,” he said.
“Are they sure?” she asked and then quickly put her hand out to stop him replying. “I mean, it all happened today?”
“This morning in Ireland.”
“I can’t believe it,” she said. “No warning.”
“I spoke to Franco Bartocci by telephone earlier and he said to take you home, and I spoke to Mrs. Kehoe and if you give me Tony’s address I will send him word as well and let him know.”
“What will happen?” she asked.
“The funeral will be the day after tomorrow,” he said.
It was the softness in his voice, the guarded way he avoided her eyes, that made her start to cry. And when he produced a large and clean white handkerchief that he clearly had in his pocket prepared for this, she became almost hysterical as she pushed him away.
“Why did I ever come over here?” she asked, but she knew that he could not understand her because she was sobbing so much. She took the handkerchief from him and blew her nose.
“Why did I ever come over here?” she asked again.
“Rose wanted a better life for you,” he replied. “She only did what was good.”
“I won’t ever see her again now.”
“She loved how well you were doing.”
“I’ll never see her again. Isn’t that right?”
“It’s very sad, Eilis. But she’s in heaven now. That’s what we should think about. And she’ll be watching over you. And we’ll all have to pray for your mother and for Rose’s soul, and you know, Eilis, we have to remember that God’s ways are not our ways.”
“I wish I had never come over here.”
As she began to cry again, she kept repeating, “I wish I had never come over here.”
“I have the car parked outside and we can go to the presbytery. You know it will do you good to have a talk with your mother.”
“I haven’t heard her voice since I left,” Eilis said. “It’s just been letters. It’s awful that this is the first time I am going to phone her.”
“I know that, Eilis, and she’ll feel that too. Father Quaid said that he would collect her and drive her up to the Manse. I’d guess she’s in shock.”
“What will I say to her?”
Her mother’s voice was faltering at first; she sounded as though she were talking to herself and Eilis had to interrupt to tell her that she could not hear.
“Can you hear me now?” her mother asked.
“Yes, Mammy, I can. It’s much better now.”
“It’s like she’s asleep and it was the same this morning,” her mother said. “I went in to call her and she was fast asleep and I said I’d leave her. But I knew as I went down the stairs. It wasn’t like her to sleep in like that. I looked at the clock in the kitchen and said I’d give her ten minutes more and then when I went up and touched her she was stone cold.”
“Oh, God, that’s terrible.”
“I whispered an act of contrition into her ear. Then I ran next door.”
The silence on the line was broken only by some faint crackling noises.
“She died in the night in her sleep,” her mother eventually continued. “That’s what Dr. Cudigan said. She had been seeing the doctor without telling anyone and she went for tests without telling anyone. Rose knew, Eily, she knew that it could happen any time because of her heart. She had a bad heart, Dr. Cudigan said, and there was nothing could be done. She went on as normal. She knew that she had a bad heart and she decided to carry on playing golf and doing everything. The doctor said that he told her to take it easy, but, even if she had, it might have been the same. I don’t know what to think, Eily. Maybe she was very brave.”
“She told no one?”
“No one, Eily, no one at all. And she looks very peaceful now. I looked at her before I came out and I thought for a second she was still with us, she’s so like herself. But she’s gone, Eily. Rose has gone and that is the last thing in the world I thought was going to happen.”
“Who’s in the house now?”
“The neighbours are all there and your uncle Michael and they came down from Clonegal, all the Doyles, and they’re there too. And I said when your daddy died that I shouldn’t cry too much because I had you and Rose and the boys and when the boys left I said the same and when you left I had Rose, but I have no one at all now, Eily, I have no one.”
Eilis knew that she could not be understood as she tried to reply because she was crying so hard. Her mother was silent for a while on the other end of the phone.
“Tomorrow I’ll say goodbye to her for you,” her mother said when she began to speak again. “That’s what I thought I’d do. I’ll say goodbye to her from me and then I’ll say goodbye to her from you. And she’s with your father in heaven now. We’ll bury her beside him. I often thought at night how lonely he might be on his own in the graveyard but he’ll have Rose now. They’re up in heaven, the two of them.”
“They are, Mammy.”
“I don’t know why she was taken away so young, that’s all I have to say.”
“It’s a terrible shock,” Eilis replied.
“She was cold this morning when I touched her, as cold as anything.”
“She must have died peacefully,” Eilis said.
“I wish she had told me, or let me know something was wrong. She didn’t want to worry me. That’s what Father Quaid and the others said. Maybe I couldn’t have done much but I would have watched out for her. I don’t know what to think.”
Eilis could hear her mother sighing.
“I’ll go back now and we’ll say the rosary and I’ll tell her I was talking to you.”
“I’d love if you would do that.”
“Goodbye now, Eily.”
“Goodbye, Mammy, and will you tell the lads I was on the phone to you?”
“I will. They’ll arrive in the morning.”
“Goodbye, Mammy.”
“Goodbye, Eily.”
When she had put the phone down she began to cry. She found a chair in the corner of the room and sat down trying to control herself. Father Flood and his housekeeper came and brought her tea and tried to calm her but she could not stop herself breaking into hysterical sobbing.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Don’t worry at all,” the housekeeper said.
When she was calmer Father Flood drove her to Mrs. Kehoe’s; Tony was already in the front room. She did not know how long he had been there and she looked at him and Mrs. Kehoe wondering what they had been talking about while they waited for her and if Mrs. Kehoe had finally found out that Tony was Italian and not Irish. Mrs. Kehoe was full of kindness and sympathy, but there was also, Eilis thought, a sense that the news and the visitors had caused excitement, distracted her pleasantly from the tedium of the day. She bustled in and out of the room addressing Tony by his first name and bringing a tray with tea and sandwiches for him and Father Flood.
“Your poor mother, that’s all I have to say, your poor mother,” she said.
For once, Eilis did not feel it necessary to be polite to Mrs. Kehoe. She looked away every time she spoke and did not respond to her at any point. This appeared to make Mrs. Kehoe even more solicitous, as she offered her tea at every moment or an aspirin and a glass of water, or insisted that she have something to eat. Eilis wished Tony would stop accepting further sandwiches and cakes from Mrs. Kehoe and thanking her for being so kind. She wanted him to leave and Mrs
. Kehoe to stop talking and Father Flood to go as well, but she could not face her own room and the night ahead so she said nothing and soon Mrs. Kehoe and Tony and Father Flood spoke as though she were not there, going over the changes that had occurred in Brooklyn in the past few years and offering their opinions on what further changes might occur. Every so often they grew silent and asked her if she needed anything.
“The poor thing, she’s in shock,” Mrs. Kehoe said.
Eilis said that she needed nothing and closed her eyes as they continued to talk among themselves, Mrs. Kehoe wondering to the other two if she should buy a television for company in the evenings. She worried, she said, that it might not catch on and she’d be left with it. Both Tony and Father Flood advised her to buy a set, and this seemed only to cause further remarks about how there was no guarantee that they would go on making programmes and she did not think she would take the risk.
“When everyone gets one, I’ll get one,” she said.
Finally, when they had run out of subjects, it was arranged that Father Flood would say a mass for Rose at ten o’clock the following morning and that Mrs. Kehoe would attend, as would Tony and his mother. There would be the usual congregation as well, Father Flood said, and he would let them know before mass started that it was being said for the repose of the soul of someone very special and he would, before communion, say a few words about Rose and ask people to pray for her. He arranged to drive Tony home but waited tactfully in Mrs. Kehoe’s front room with Mrs. Kehoe as Tony embraced Eilis in the hall.
“I’m sorry I can’t talk,” she said.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” he said. “If one of my brothers had died, maybe that sounds selfish, but I was trying to imagine what you’re feeling.”
“I think about it,” Eilis said, “and I can’t bear it and then I forget about it for a minute and when it comes back it’s as though I just heard the news. I can’t get over it.”
“I wish I could stay with you,” he said.
“I’ll see you in the morning, and tell your mother not to come if it’s any trouble.”
“She’ll be there. Nothing is any trouble now,” he said.
Eilis looked at the pile of letters Rose had sent her, wondering if between sending one of these and sending the next Rose had learned that she was sick. Or if she had known before Eilis had left. It changed everything Eilis thought about her time in Brooklyn, it made everything that had happened to her seem small. She looked at Rose’s handwriting, its clarity and evenness, its sense of supreme self-possession and self-confidence, and she wondered whether, while writing some of these words, Rose had looked up and sighed and then, through sheer strength of will, steeled herself and carried on writing, not faltering for a single moment from her decision to let no one share her knowledge except the doctor who had told her.
It was strange, Eilis felt in the morning, how deeply she had slept and how instantaneously, on waking, she had known that she was not going to work but to a mass for Rose. Her sister, she knew, would still be in the house in Friary Street, they would take her to the cathedral later in the evening and she would be buried after mass in the morning. All of this seemed simple and clear and almost inevitable until she and Mrs. Kehoe set out together for the parish church. Walking the familiar street, passing people whom she did not know, Eilis realized that one of them could have died and not Rose, and this could be another spring morning, a hint of heat in the air, with her going to work as normal.
The idea of Rose dying in her sleep seemed unimaginable. Had she opened her eyes for a moment? Had she just lain still breathing the breath of sleep, and then, as though it were nothing, had her heart stopped and her breath? How could this happen? Had she cried out in the night and not been heard, or even murmured or whispered? Had she known something the previous evening? Something, anything, that might have given her a clue that this was her last day alive in the world?
She imagined Rose laid out now in the dark robes of the dead with candles flickering on the table. And later the coffin being closed, and the solemn faces of everyone in the hallway and outside in the street, her brothers wearing suits and black ties as they had at their father’s funeral. All morning at mass and back in Father Flood’s house, she went through each moment of Rose’s death and her removal.
The others were surprised, almost alarmed, when she said that she wanted to go to work that afternoon. She saw Mrs. Kehoe whispering about it to Father Flood. Tony asked her if she was sure, and when she insisted he said that he would walk with her to Bartocci’s and then meet her later back at Mrs. Kehoe’s. Mrs. Kehoe had invited him and Father Flood to have supper with the other lodgers followed by a rosary to be said for Rose’s soul.
Eilis went back to work the following day as well and was determined to go to her classes that evening. Since they could not go to a movie or a dance, she and Tony went to a diner nearby and he said he would not mind if she did not want to talk much or if she cried.
“I wish this hadn’t happened,” he said. “I keep wishing it hadn’t happened.”
“I think that too,” Eilis said. “If only she’d let one of us know. Or if only nothing had happened and she was well at home. I wish I had a photograph of her so I could show you how beautiful she was.”
“You are beautiful,” he said.
“She was the most beautiful, everyone said that, and I can’t get used to the idea of where she is now. I’ll have to stop thinking about her dying and her coffin and all that and maybe start praying, but it’s hard.”
“I’ll help you if you like,” he said.
Eilis felt, despite the improving weather, that all of the colour had been washed out of her world. She was careful on the shop floor and proud that not once did she break down or have to go suddenly to the bathroom and cry. Miss Fortini told her that she was not to worry if she needed to go home earlier any day, or if she wanted to meet her outside working hours to talk about what had happened. Tony came every night to meet her after the classes and she liked how he allowed her to remain silent if she wanted. He simply held her hand, or put his arm around her and walked her home, where her fellow lodgers made clear to her one by one that if she needed anything, anything at all, she was to knock on their door or find them in the kitchen and they would do everything they could for her.
One night when she went up to the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea she saw that there was a letter for her on the side table that she had missed earlier. It was from Ireland and she recognized the handwriting as Jack’s. She did not open it immediately but took it downstairs with her when the tea was made so she could read it without being disturbed.
Dear Eilis,
Mammy asked me to write to you because she isn’t able. I am writing this in the front parlour at the table by the window. The house was full of people but now there isn’t a sound. They have all gone home. We buried Rose today and Mammy asked me to tell you that it was a fine day and the rain kept off. Father Quaid said the mass for her. We came down on the train from Dublin and arrived yesterday morning after a bad night on the mail-boat. She was still being waked in the house when we arrived. She looked beautiful, her hair and everything. Everyone said she looked peaceful, just asleep, and maybe that was true before we came but when I saw her she looked different, not like herself at all, not bad or anything but when I knelt down and touched her I didn’t think it was her at all for a minute. Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but I thought it was best to let you know what it was like. Mammy asked me to tell you everything that happened, about all the people who came, the whole golf club and Davis’s office shut for the morning. It wasn’t like Daddy, when he died you would think he was alive one minute. Rose was like stone when I saw her, all pale like something from a picture. But she was beautiful and peaceful. I don’t know what was wrong with me but I didn’t think it was her at all until we had to carry the coffin, the boys and myself and Jem and Bill and Fonsey Doyle from Clonegal. It was the worst thing about it in that I couldn’t
believe we were doing that to her, closing her in there and burying her. I’ll have to pray for her when I get back but I couldn’t follow the prayers at all. Mammy asked me to say that she said a special goodbye to her from you but I couldn’t stay in the room when Mammy was talking to her and I nearly couldn’t carry the coffin I was crying so much. And I couldn’t look at all in the graveyard. I covered my eyes for most of it. Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you all this. The thing is that we have to go back to work and I don’t think Mammy knows that yet. She thinks one of us might be able to stay but we can’t, you know. Work beyond is not like that. I don’t know what it’s like over there but we have to be back and Mammy is going to be here on her own. The neighbours will all come in and the others but I think it hasn’t hit her yet. I know she’d love to see you, she keeps saying that is the only thing she is hoping for but we don’t know what to say about it. She didn’t ask me to mention this but I’d say you’ll be hearing from her when she’s able to write. I think she wants you to come home. She’s never slept a night on her own in the house and she keeps saying that she won’t be able to. But we have to go back. She asked me if I had heard of any work in the town and I told her I’d ask around but the thing is I have to go back and so do Pat and Martin. I’m sorry for rambling on like this. The news must have come as a terrible shock to you. It did to us. We had trouble finding Martin for the whole day because he was out on a job. It’s hard to think of Rose out in the graveyard, that’s all I have to say. Mammy will want me to say that everyone was good and they were and she won’t want me to say that she’s crying all the time but she is, or most of the time anyway. I’m going to stop writing now and put this in an envelope. I’m not going to read it over because I started a few times and when I read it over I tore it up and had to start again. I’ll seal the envelope and I’ll post it in the morning. Martin, I think, is telling her that we have to go tomorrow. I hope this letter isn’t all terrible but, as I said, I didn’t know what to put into it. Mammy will be glad I sent it and I’ll go and tell her now that it’s written. You’ll have to say a prayer for her. I’ll go now.