The Last Bride in Ballymuir

by Dorien Kelly

  “Has nobody remembered to feed you? Come on, then.” He followed the dog, then chuckled as Roger danced around his empty dish. “Hard to believe that Vi was too busy cleaning.” Perhaps his flyabout sister had decided to plunge into domesticity with the same passion she did her art. He laughed at the thought. Not bloody likely.

  Michael first checked the kitchen table for a note—none, of course—then gave the dog food and water. Roger eyed his kibble with utter disdain, then trotted to the refrigerator door and gazed longingly.

  “I’ve spoiled you rotten, haven’t I? Well, you’d best get used to poor food again, for I’ll be moving along soon enough.”

  He’d spoken with Breege a few days ago about the possibility of renting her home, since she was set on moving in with her friend, Edna. Michael’s vision of the future was clear. In that solid farmhouse, he and Kylie would raise as many children as she wished, and love each other to the last moment of time.

  Reality remained a bit cooler about the edges. He still had matters like money and Rourke and acceptance to address. Yet, as Nan used to say, nothing a cup of tea wouldn’t help. Or in this case, a tall glass of whiskey. But since the boys had taken care of that, Michael filled the kettle with water and set it on the burner. He was switching on the stove when he heard the front door close.

  “Michael, that you?” Vi called from the front room.

  Well, at least he’d be to the bottom of this mystery. “Yeah, it’s me.”

  “Can you come here for a sec?”

  He adjusted the flame under the kettle, then joined his sister. She stood in front of the door, looking like she didn’t know whether she wanted to stay or go.

  Her eyes widened as she took in the damage to his face. So much for thinking he looked better this morning.

  “Do I want to know what happened?” Vi asked.

  “Not in any great detail.”

  “Right, then. We’ll leave it for later. What are you doing back so early?” As she spoke, Michael noted that her gaze flitted from his. Unusual, from his direct, never-back-down sister. “I wasn’t expecting you back quite yet.”

  “It might have something to do with the message that said nothing at all slipped under my hotel room door. Or the fact that it would be easier to raise the dead than get you to answer your damned phone.”

  “You were worried, then?” she asked, still leaning against the front door. The knob rattled. She covered it with her hand.

  “Barring the door, Vi?”

  She drew a deep breath, then sent a barrage of words his way. “Michael, Mam got here last night. She’s come to take Pat and Danny home. We can’t keep ‘em, you know. Anyway, I called you, hoping to give you some warning, but...”

  Another storm, Michael thought. A bucketful of troubles on a day that he wanted to be sunny.

  Weeks after the fact, Maeve had made her way from Kilkenny. That, at least, explained the sterile house. She’d probably spent the night putting out every last spark of creativity.

  The door shook within its frame.

  “It would be easier to hold back tomorrow,” he said to his sister.

  “If you need time to adjust—”

  He snorted. “Adjust? I’m not the poor sod having to go home with her. Let her in, and let’s be done with this.”

  Vi let go, then stepped aside. Michael stood there, arms crossed over his chest, watching as his mam— one dried-up old bird of a mother hen—prodded the twins into the house.

  Rourke had been unrecognizable, but his mother was frozen in time. A few more threads of iron gray in her hair, the brackets about her mouth deeper, but for all that, essentially the same. And bearing no more love for him than she ever had. Closing himself off from the pain, Michael turned to his brothers.

  All clean and starched and sullen they were. Only in their eyes could he see that plea, that silent “Help us, somehow” that he had no way of answering. So he went to them and ruffled identical heads of red hair, leaving a random wake of tufts and waves—just enough to make their mam grind her molars.

  “You’re going home, I hear.”

  “She’s making us,” Danny said. Frowning, he added, “Did Kylie hit you with her handbag or somethin’?”

  Now there was a thought far more entertaining than the truth. “She did,” Michael said, working up a wink. “One hell of an arm the woman’s got.”

  “Then we’ll let her take on Mam so we can stay here,” Patrick suggested.

  There was nothing Michael wanted more—with the exception of Kylie at his side to help him lead these nearly-men the last steps to adulthood.

  “You’ve got school to be thinking of,” he said to his brothers, watching from the corner of his eye as Vi dragged Mam off to the kitchen. He found himself wishing for a bigger kettle on that stove. Big enough to stew her in. “You knew she’d be coming for you. Sooner or later, Da was bound to notice that you’re missing. And before you ask, we’ll not be fighting this, or I’ll have no chance of getting you for summer holidays.”

  “You want us back?”

  Michael blinked at the moisture burning in his eyes. “Want you back? Now who else do you think I want working with me? Business’ll be too much for one pair of hands, come summer. Of course I want you!”

  He looped one arm over each set of gangly shoulders, and drew the boys close. God, how he loved them. And how he loved Kylie for showing him the way to these riches.

  “And if Mam gives you too much trouble before then,” he said, “I suggest you try some more chickens in the loo. Seemed to do the trick last time.”

  Their grudging smiles were as good as Michael knew he’d be getting. “Now let me fix you a grand supper before you leave.”

  He ushered them into the kitchen, where Vi sat at the table with Mam. Since it would never occur to his mother to comfort the boys by showing some manners, Michael did the unthinkable.

  “Good to see you, Mam. You’re looking well.”

  “Michael.” His name was squashed flat as it came through her pinched lips. “Still fighting, I see.”

  He had no saving response, so he forged ahead. “I thought I’d make a family supper, roast a chicken,” he said, amusing himself with the mental image of Mam all trussed and squawking. “And maybe make the boys their favorite trifle.”

  “We have to be on our way,” she said, bracing her hands on the table as though she meant to push off and be gone that very moment.

  “Michael’s a brilliant cook,” Vi said in an unnaturally cheery voice. “Stay, Mam. A few more hours won’t hurt anybody.”

  “No. We’re—”

  “We’re staying, Mam,” Patrick interrupted. “You haven’t seen Michael in years, and now you’re trying to leave after saying nothing more than his name. It’s not right what you’re doing. You go, and you go alone. Right, Dan?”

  Dan planted himself in a chair. “Right.”

  Their mam stood. “I’ll have none of this disrespect. Patrick and Daniel, you get—”

  Seeing Vi wasn’t going to be any more help, Michael stepped in front of his mother. “Don’t do it. Don’t make these boys turn from you.” As you did to me, he didn’t bother to add aloud.

  “They’re asking for a meal, just a damned meal,” he said, his voice amazingly devoid of the intense hurt slicing through him. All he had ever wanted was one unconditional mother’s embrace, one small nod of understanding. “For the sake of the family, you owe it to them. And if seeing me bothers you this bloody much, I promise as soon as the bird is roasting, I’ll leave you ‘til supper.”

  That jaw she held so tightly clenched finally came loose.

  “You want the truth, do you? I hate seeing you. I’d hoped to go to my grave without seeing you again. Oh, I might have loved you when you were a baby, but that loving is so far in the past that for the life of me, I can’t remember it.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and her hands closed into tight fists. “You’ve brought us shame. Nothing but shame, dragged our name so deep int
o the dirt that it will never come clean. And now you want me to chat with you? And tell you what? How you made it so I couldn’t step out of the house without catching somebody whispering behind their hand? How your father blames me—me—for not bringing you up properly?”

  It tore at him, the way he’d become fixed in her mind, a creature of equal parts ugly truths and uglier myths. And it tore at him—a man who could mend just about anything—that he couldn’t fix this. She would never see him for what he was today. Now. She would never love him.

  “I think you’ve told me enough.”

  She looked past him and said to the boys, “Four o’clock. No later.”

  After she swept from the room, taking the twins with her, Michael pulled out a chair and sat. His sister, he saw, was crying. What he’d give for the same luxury.

  It had been a fine idea, to catch a few of Galway’s sights before heading home. A fine idea, but a lonely one. Once Kylie had realized that nothing was as interesting without Michael, she’d packed up and readied to head home. Unfortunately, her car wasn’t nearly as anxious to arrive as she was.

  The old Renault chugged and heaved, protesting the uphill grade. She’d been nursing the auto along, growing more frustrated as each mile crept by. The roads were rougher now, and the land emptier, too, as she wound through the mountains toward Ballymuir.

  “C’mon, you rusting piece of blight. Just a little farther.”

  It answered by sending a belch of oily smoke from the front, then giving out altogether.

  “Well now, that’s just bloody wonderful.” She coasted downhill, supposing she should be thankful that at least she’d made the top of the rise. She drew as close as she could to the jagged stone fence marking the road’s edge, then switched off the already dead vehicle.

  “No point in waiting for someone to happen along,” she said to herself, then wrenched the parking brake into place.

  Kylie slipped from the car, pocketed the keys, and pointed her feet toward home. Her heels were soon blistered and stinging from the silly little city shoes she’d worn to Galway. She’d been walking half an hour when she passed a white signpost reading, “Ballymuir 20 Miles.” It might as well have been two thousand.

  The bird was roasting, and Mam had come damn close, herself. All the time he’d been working in the kitchen, Michael could hear her in the next room sawing away at Vi’s self-esteem and treating the boys as though they didn’t own a brain between them. Through it all, he’d kept his mouth firmly shut, and the largest pot in the kitchen stowed. The best he could have hoped, anyway, was to have deflected her anger. But since she refused to acknowledge him, there was little chance of that.

  When, as promised, he’d left the house, Vi was beginning to come back to life. The twin blazes of crimson on her cheeks were not-so-subtle warnings of the storm soon to blow. Bless Vi, not even Mam could keep her down for long. He wished he could be there to witness the end result.

  It felt odd, walking when for once he didn’t want to. The sky overhead shone a crystalline blue that didn’t often visit these parts. With nowhere else to go, he decided to have a peek at the Village Hall. Though the exhibition didn’t open until Monday evening, he knew his sister well enough to be sure that it was already perfect.

  He rounded the corner. Evie Nolan stood in front of her father’s shop, smoking a cigarette. He nodded a polite greeting, but didn’t slow his pace. Evie gave no answering greeting.

  Michael closed the distance to the Village Hall, then climbed the three steps to its entry. He cupped his hands and peered through a narrow window cut into the door. From what he could see, the exhibition looked grand. Vi had hung great sweeps of fabric from the ceiling, and the walls were alive with art. He leaned nearer, trying for a better view. The door creaked open.

  He chuckled. “An invitation, I’d be saying.” He closed the door after himself and switched on the lights.

  “Not half bad, sweet Vi,” he murmured. Knowing how bloody thrilled Kylie would be when she saw this made him all the more pleased. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been strolling around, looking at the students’ art, when the door opened again. A young couple walked in.

  “We saw the lights on and thought we’d have a look about, if you don’t mind,” said the woman. “Una, our eldest, has a bit or two on display.”

  “Welcome in,” Michael said. “And why don’t you show me your daughter’s work?”

  And so it went as one person after another arrived. Michael milled about, greeting those he knew, smiling at the good-natured jokes about his bruised appearance, and feeling just a touch chagrined for having started the party rolling.

  A friendly hand settled on his shoulder. “And you didn’t invite your own sister?” Vi teased. “Here I expected to find you sulking about, and you’ve thrown a hooley.”

  “The door was unlocked,” he said with an embarrassed shrug. “And then, well, I can’t explain the rest.”

  “News travels fast in Ballymuir. Mam and the twins are with me. I wanted to show her what Kilbrides can accomplish when they stick together.”

  He landed a kiss on her cheek. “Grand things, Violet. Grand things.”

  Kylie waved good-bye to the elderly couple who had dropped her home. It had seemed almost divine intervention when they’d appeared on the empty road, then slowed and offered her a ride. She wouldn’t have made it home without them. Her heels were a blistered mess, and there wasn’t a part on her that didn’t ache. She needed a long shower and then an enormous meal.

  “Breege, I’m home,” she called as she entered the house, not wanting to startle her friend. She slipped off her shoes, wincing as her heels came free, then gingerly walked to the bedroom doorway.

  There was no wondering whether Breege had been well cared for. She had a box of chocolates on one side of her and a stack of books on the other.

  “And what might you be doing back so early?” Breege asked with affectionate sternness.

  “A bit of trouble with Michael’s brothers,” she said. “Has he called, by any chance?”

  “Sorry, dearie, no call from him.” Breege looked her up and down, and obviously wasn’t impressed by what she saw. “Well, if this is what leaving town does, I’m all for you staying. You’ll be wanting to clean up before you head to the Village Hall.”

  “The Hall? Why?”

  Breege crumpled a chocolate wrapper and made a neat toss into the basket by the nightstand. “It didn’t matter much when you were all the way to Galway, but now that you’re home, you might as well know that Mairead Corrigan called. Seems the art exhibition has opened a wee bit earlier than planned.” She rolled her eyes and added, “You’d think the world was coming to an end. An unholy love of schedules that woman has.”

  Shower and food would have to wait. On the bright side, at least she could corner Mairead and schedule a meeting with the school administration. The sooner she had that part of her future settled, the better.

  “May I borrow your car?” she asked as she dug a pair of paint-spattered clogs from beneath the bed.

  Her friend chuckled. “It’s not as though I’ll be using it.”

  “Good, then. I’ll be back by supper.”

  “Keys are in the ignition,” Breege called as Kylie flew from the room. “And have a grand time.”

  With nothing more threatening than a glare from Vi—which admittedly was ominous enough—Mam had managed to send a few impersonal comments Michael’s way. Like fighters between rounds, they now stood in opposite corners of the room. Vi hovered next to him, uttering hopeful little comments like “It’s grand she’s meeting you halfway” and “I think age is softening her.”

  Michael doubted there would ever be true peace between himself and his mother, but he was willing to give it a go.

  “Don’t push it,” he said to his sister, clasping her hand in his. “Let’s enjoy the day.”

  A regular town event, this had become. Fiddles had been brought out, and a traditional ceili dance begun. Ladies
wearing their Sunday best served cakes and scones. Soon, though, he’d have to go home and check on that bird. The party would go on without him, no doubt for hours yet.

  Michael glanced across the dancers to see the door swing open again. Lips curved into a snotty smile, Evie Nolan entered the room.

  “Oh, marvelous. Miss Congeniality’s here,” Vi muttered.

  “You mean among your many dubious talents, you can’t make her disappear?”

  Apparently not, for Evie stopped in front of him, surveyed him like he was up for purchase, then laughed. “Perfect, just too bloody perfect. I wouldn’t miss this for all the money in the world.”

  Michael squeezed his sister’s hand tighter, then drew her back when she tried to take a step toward nasty Miss Nolan.

  “What do you want, Evie?”

  “It’s not what I want. It’s what you’re getting.”

  The fiddle music died on a discordant moan.

  “He’s right here,” Evie called over the sudden quiet.

  Michael watched as the crowd parted, and Gerry Flynn led two cold-faced Gardai across the dance floor. Straight at him.

  Sick fear engulfed Michael. Then came the awful, all-encompassing guilt for a sin he couldn’t even begin to identify.

  “You made this too easy,” Flynn said as they neared. “No sport to it at all.”

  Just like before... Jesus, it’s happening again.

  “Oh my God, Michael, what’s happening?” he heard his sister say.

  Through the cold terror that sent the sound of his own ragged breathing echoing in his ears, Michael clung to one comfort. Thank God Kylie wasn’t due back ‘til later. At least he could keep her safe.

  Galvanized by that thought, he grabbed his sister by the shoulders. “She was never with me,” he said low and urgent into her ear. “I haven’t seen Kylie in days. Protect her, Vi.”

  They were nearly on him, now, seeming to grow larger with every step. A shoulder nudged close to his. Tearing his gaze from the approaching men, Michael saw that his brothers had lined to his left, and his mother and sister to his right. The sight almost brought him to his knees.