Migrations

by Charlotte McConaghy

  Rain begins with a rumbling shudder.

  The plastic windshield does its best to protect us but soon we are drenched and the waves are sweeping onto us from every side. Ennis has tied us both to the helm, and we do our best to stay upright, exposed and vulnerable.

  If they have all died, all the terns, this will have been for nothing. But how on earth could the delicate weight of a little bird, an exhausted little bird who has flown across the entire world with hardly a thing to eat, who has already done so much, survive this?

  It’s asking too much.

  I understand, finally. So in my heart I let them go. Nothing should have to struggle so much. If the animals have died it will not have been quietly. It will not have been without a desperate fight. If they’ve died, all of them, it’s because we made the world impossible for them. So—for my own sanity—I release the Arctic terns from the burden of surviving what they shouldn’t have to, and I bid them goodbye.

  Then I crawl into the bathroom to vomit.

  * * *

  I dream of moths dancing in the beams of car headlights. Maybe it’s the nearness of the end that sends me back. Maybe it’s my failure.

  LIMERICK PRISON, IRELAND TWELVE MONTHS AGO

  The shrink’s name is Kate Buckley. She is very small and very intense. I’ve spent an hour a week with her for over three years.

  Today she starts our session with: “I’m not recommending you for parole.”

  “Why the hell not?” Apart from a few early incidents I’ve been on good behavior, and she knows it. The self-destructive desire that led me to plead guilty and landed me in this place, and the self-loathing that saw me try to kill myself and then kept me catatonic for the first six months have both been redirected. Now I want out.

  “I can’t say you’ve been cooperating in your emotional rehabilitation, can I?”

  “Sure you can.”

  “And how would I do that?”

  “You could lie.”

  She pauses, and then laughs. Lights us both an illicit cigarette. Along with a “more defined sense of ego” she’s also cultivated my nicotine habit. Every time I lift one to my lips I can taste Niall.

  “I don’t get it,” I say more calmly. “You said I’ve been doing well.”

  “You have been. But you still won’t talk about what happened. And the first thing the parole board is going to ask me is whether you’ve been able to express true remorse.”

  My eyes drift automatically to the window, my mind turns away from the words and to the slivers of wispy clouds I can make out. Oh, to be on a pocket of air, floating, listless …

  “Franny.”

  I force my gaze back to Kate.

  “Concentrate,” she says. “Use your tools.”

  Reluctantly I take a deep, slow breath and feel the chair beneath my butt, the floor beneath my feet, focus my eyes on her eyes, then on her mouth, narrowing the world to my physical senses, to this room, to her.

  “Willful detachment is a very dangerous state of mind. I want you to stay present.”

  I nod. I know this; she says it every week.

  “Have you agreed to speak with Penny yet?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “She hated me even before all of this.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because I’m fickle.”

  “Is that what she said?”

  “In a roundabout way. And she’s a shrink, so she should know.”

  “How does that make you feel?”

  I shrug. “Transparent.”

  “You don’t strike me as fickle, Franny. Quite the opposite.”

  “How’s that?”

  “What have you ever changed your mind about?” Kate asks. “I’d call that willful and stubborn,” she mutters, making me snort. “Why does it bother you so much? Penny’s regard for you. The thought of seeing her.”

  I look toward the window—

  “Focus, please.”

  And back to her face.

  “Do you think it might be because she’s going to say things that make it hard for you to maintain your delusion?”

  “I don’t have a delusion. I told you I let it go.”

  “And we talked about how they can re-form as a coping method for spikes in emotional distress.”

  I close my eyes. “I’m fine. I just need to get out of here. I’ve had enough.”

  “You were sentenced to nine years.”

  “Three non-parole. Let me serve the rest outside. I’ll do the community service. I’ll stay put. Be a model citizen. I can’t stand the walls any longer.”

  “Have you been doing your exercises?”

  “They don’t work, they don’t get me out.”

  “Take a breath.”

  My teeth clench but I force myself to breathe. Losing my shit in these sessions doesn’t help my case.

  Kate waits until she deems me calm enough to continue. But she’s giving me a funny look now. The one that usually precedes something particularly unpleasant. “Have you heard from Niall?” she asks.

  “Since the last time we spoke? No.”

  “I’m asking if you’ve heard from him since you’ve been in here. Any phone calls? Letters? Has he written to you, Franny?”

  I don’t reply.

  “Why not?” Kate asks pointedly.

  And she should be proud of me because this time when I lift my eyes to the sky it’s with a focus so singular I no longer hear the rest of her words, instead I am weightless and drifting.

  * * *

  “Mrs. Lynch,” the judge addresses me at the parole hearing. “It says in your psychiatrist’s statement that the only reason you pleaded guilty to the counts of murder was your traumatized state, and that you should have been given proper psychiatric care at the time. This reads to me like your time in prison has offered you some perspective and that you are regretting your honesty at the time of trial. Let me make it clear for you: we do not offer retrials to women who change their minds.”

  I let my gaze fix on him, despite having been warned not to do this. There is something unsettling about my stare, apparently. “I haven’t asked for a retrial,” I say clearly. “This is a parole hearing. I’ve applied for parole.”

  Beside me, Mara winces. “Your Honor, the application is simple,” she says. “Mrs. Lynch hasn’t had a single behavioral warning in her entire time in custody. She has been an impeccable inmate, despite multiple attacks on her person for which she was hospitalized. And as I said repeatedly at the time of her trial, this was her first offense. Multiple psychiatrists have deemed her psychiatric state at the time of the incident unstable, carrying on through the trial period. On the basis of the evidence presented against her I strongly recommended to her that she plead not guilty for the counts of murder, but guilty to the lesser charges of manslaughter. She was in no fit state to take my advice, so riddled with guilt and regret for what she had caused that she was intent on seeing herself punished beyond what the crimes deserved.”

  “You don’t consider taking the lives of two people to be an offense worthy of punishment, Miss Gupta?”

  “Not when they’re accidental, Your Honor. Not to the degree of nine years.”

  “When asked at the trial about her intent, the accused said she meant to cause both the deaths. I remember specifically because she was quite adamant about it.”

  “I refer you again to her state of shock.”

  “And the forensic evidence?” he asks. But before my lawyer can respond, the judge tires. He closes his folder of forms. “We’re not here to debate old cases. The issue at hand is whether Mrs. Lynch is a danger to her fellow citizens, or likely to reoffend.”

  “I’m not,” I say. “I’m no danger to anyone.”

  He considers me. I wonder what it is that he sees standing before him. Eventually he sighs. “Despite what your very assured representation insists, a jury of your peers judged you guilty. But I have here a letter of support from your mother-in-law, Mrs
. Penny Lynch. She states that she’s willing to accommodate you for the period of your parole, and I’m sure I don’t need to express how much of an endorsement this is, given the circumstances. So for this reason alone I’m going to grant your parole. But bear in mind, Mrs. Lynch, that this country has no tolerance for broken paroles and even the slightest misstep will carry with it the weight of your full sentence, and additional time. So I strongly advise you to pay careful attention to the rules laid down by your parole officer.”

  With that it’s finished, I’m free. I feel like giving him the finger and telling him of my plan to skip straight out of this fucking country, this country that has caused me nothing but grief. Instead I thank him politely and hug Mara, and then I’m on my way.

  Niall’s mother is waiting for me outside the prison. I feel a bit like I’m in a movie, the way she’s leaning on her car. Except that she’s not the type of woman who leans on cars—that would be far too casual a stance for someone of her stature—so then why. I am wary as I approach her. I see it instantly: the toughness has gone out of her edges. The car might be the only thing keeping her upright.

  “Hello, Franny,” she says.

  “Hi, Penny.”

  There is a long silence. It’s sunny for a change, and almost too glaring for us to properly make each other out.

  “Why did you do this?” I ask her.

  She rounds the car to the driver’s side. “It’s not for you. It’s for my son.”

  “Can you take me to him?”

  Penny nods once.

  I get in the car.

  27

  Sterna Paradisaea, SOUTH ATLANTIC OCEAN MATING SEASON

  Ennis finds me sleeping among the letters, exhausted from throwing up for most of the night. He is much wearier than I am, though—he’s been steering us over waves all night, performing miracles. It feels calm now, so he must have laid anchor.

  I move over so he can slump onto the hard mattress. It’s claustrophobic down here with its low ceiling and narrow walls, but it’s nice to have him beside me.

  “Where are we?” I ask.

  “Think we’re about a day or so out. Go take a look.”

  “You did so well last night. I’m very lucky to have met you, Ennis Malone.”

  He smiles without opening his eyes. “I’m just looking for the Golden Catch, kid. What are you doing out here?”

  I don’t answer.

  Ennis opens one eye a crack and squints at the letters I’m sprawled atop. “I wonder if your husband knows how deeply you long for him.”

  My heart flounders. If he doesn’t know, then that is my fault and mine alone.

  “That’s the longing of a parting,” Ennis observes.

  “Experience?”

  He smiles a little. “Yes.”

  I have never hated you more.

  “With your wife…” I say, not sure what I’m asking but needing something.

  “It was sweet for a long time,” he answers. “Simple.”

  “So then why?”

  Ennis rolls onto his back and looks at the ceiling. “Her name’s Saoirse,” he says. “Thirty-six when she got diagnosed with Huntington’s.”

  Ennis looks at me and something in him reaches out to comfort the shock I feel, the sadness, and I’m aware of the generosity of this.

  “It was a wasting thing. She deteriorated quickly, and decided I must leave her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because in her mind we existed somewhere sacred and she couldn’t let that be ruined. She didn’t want me to see her … lessen. It was about dignity, I think. About allowing the thing we had to remain intact. She wanted me to go back to the sea, so at least one of us could live.”

  “And you left?”

  “Not for a long time.” I watch him struggle, not wanting to speak. He shakes his head. “I didn’t want to go. I fought it. But I had to, I think. It was the only thing she wanted from me. I couldn’t fix her and I didn’t have anything else to give her … She didn’t trust me with the children, to be constant for them, she thought it best that I was free and they went to her parents.”

  “Did she…?”

  “She’s still alive.”

  I breathe out slowly, unbalanced. “I don’t understand.”

  Ennis stands up. It feels aggressive in its suddenness. “She begged me. Begged me to leave.”

  It’s unbearable, abruptly. The heart of me is cleaved in two. “What are you doing here, Ennis?” I demand. “You left your dying wife and your children to come on some fucking fool’s errand!”

  He looks away. “They’re better off without me, those kids. A madman for a father.”

  “Bullshit. You have to go back,” I say. “You have to go back to your family. You don’t understand how important it is to be with her when she dies, to be holding her. And when she goes, your children will need you.”

  “Franny—”

  I walk from the cabin. Trying to keep out what has begun to creep back in.

  Moths dancing in the headlights.

  To the helm and then the stern and oh. There are icebergs floating around me, and a crystal sea of blue glass, and an infinite sky of snow. How is it that such beauty still exists? How could it have survived our destruction?

  I have never tasted air as clean as this.

  Still:

  A bag of football uniforms in my hands.

  Bare feet in the snow.

  The scent of blood in my nose.

  GALWAY, IRELAND FOUR YEARS AGO

  It’s predictable that I would make this decision tonight, after spending the afternoon at a child’s second birthday party. I’ve watched my husband play with the kids all evening, watched him clean smears of cake off their mouths, watched him kiss them good night as their parents took them off to bed at sundown and the adults’ party began. Niall’s old colleague, Shannon from NUI, has put on the do for her toddler, which is more like what I’d imagine post-Oscars parties are like, with champagne fountains and floating lights and black-tie formal wear. I have no idea where her money comes from, because an academic’s salary is definitely not this lush. Maybe it’s family money, like Niall’s. Either way, the waste of it all feels gross.

  Now that the children are gone I feel tired, and I think Niall does, too, for we find ourselves sitting out back despite the freezing weather, passing between us a bottle of Dom we pinched from the kitchen. Shannon would be horrified if she caught us drinking it without flutes.

  “Remember our first Christmas?” he asks.

  I smile. “In the cottage.”

  “You said you wanted to buy it and live there.”

  “I still do.”

  “Don’t you think we’d go barking, just the two of us out there on our own?”

  “No,” I say, and he smiles like I answered right.

  “Would you like to go home?” Niall asks. “Only interesting humans at this party have been put forcibly to bed.”

  What I’d like is to have another child, I almost say, but catch myself. “Yeah. Probably. Before Shan brings out the cocaine and goes insane.”

  “Don’t think she’s doing it anymore,” Niall says after a swig. “Not since having the wee one.”

  “Oh, right.” Of course not. “She’s in fine form, anyway. Offending everyone and their dogs.”

  “Ben told me he has nightmares about her swallowing him whole.”

  We laugh because it’s too easy to picture: Shannon’s husband Ben seems utterly terrified of her. Then I notice what Niall’s doing and my mouth falls open. “Are you lighting a cigarette?”

  Niall grins and nods.

  “Why?”

  “’Cause it’s cold.”

  “What’s temperature got to do with anything?”

  “Nothing. Except that it’s the reason.”

  I look at him in the golden light of the outdoor heater.

  “I’m tired of fighting,” he says, then takes a long drag. “Nothing seems to make any difference.”

  I
exhale. “Don’t do that, darling. Don’t give up.”

  There is a lot, right now, for him to be sad about. He’s decided to leave MER because his heart is broken and he can’t stand it anymore—I know he achieved not half of what he wanted to. Our savings have run out, which means we both have to take paid jobs. And we saw his mother earlier today, who was cold enough to me to rival the snow-covered backyard we sit within. I’m used to it after so many years, but Niall loathes her endless condescension and her refusal to admit she was wrong when she said our marriage wouldn’t last a year. I don’t know why it means so much to him to be right, but it does. Plus. There’s Iris. We never stop being sad about her.

  “Smoke if you must,” I say. “But don’t give up, and don’t expect a kiss from me.”

  He smirks. “I’ll give that an hour.”

  My eyebrows arch.

  A gust of cold wind blows in and through me, taking the heater’s flame with it. It’s darker and colder, suddenly. I reach for Niall’s hand and hold it, taken by some unease, some foreboding.

  “All right, darlin’?” he murmurs as he stubs out his cigarette and then rises to deal with the heater. I hold on to him, though, staying him, and he sinks back onto the chair to grip my hand. “Franny?”

  “Nothing.” I shake my head. “Just … stay a moment.”

  So he does, and we sit still and quiet until it passes through me, unknowable and unshakable.

  * * *

  Niall’s had about five whiskeys on top of the champagne, so it looks like I’m driving, despite my three drinks. He throws me the keys and I drop them, laughing at his exasperated expression.

  “I never promised you I could catch.”

  “No, you did not, my love.”