Made With Love: I Love You Forever

by M. K. Shaddix

  ‘You’ll come to visit first chance? There’s a train runs twice a day from Midtown to Jersey City.’

  ‘Yeah, I know, Mum.’

  ‘She’ll be grand, sure,’ Dad had said.

  I’d squinted out the window, my body wracked suddenly by the upwelling of emotion that was me leaving them, leaving home. I remember carefully, consciously swallowing that feeling and replacing it with a stony impatience.

  The first signs of the city had begun to appear at the margins of the highway; squat rows of indistinct apartment blocks, strip malls, cheap chain stores with oversized parking lots. I closed my eyes and breathed in the city air.

  I’d spent the last five years staring across the Hudson from my parents’ Jersey apartment, superimposing myself into the high-flung scene uptown, one among eight million perfect strangers. I wanted to stand in the middle of the sidewalk, stock still, eyes squeezed shut, with the rush-hour mob sweeping past, filling me with the bizarre sense of being nobody and anybody at the same time. In New York, I could do anything--be anything! Every street held its own jewel-hard promise.

  The highway was greasy and steaming in the early sun. When, out of the flat haze, I saw the semi’s tire explode upward in a ragged arc, I’d thought for an instant that it was some trick of light. But then the entire hulking rig slid crossways and huge across the median, and my head was filled with the high screeching of wet asphalt, the sharp in breath of my mother’s gasp, my own screams.

  Time didn’t slow to half pace like people say it does. I couldn’t see myself hurtling, impossibly small, as if from a distance. What I did see were my parents, the look that passed between them of helplessness and terror and apology. I saw my own hands reaching out to them, saw my body compressed and fetal against the door frame.

  Time didn’t slow down. It stopped, imploded upon itself in a sharp twisting metallic flash. When the man in the off green mask came to tell me, his eyes downcast, that he was sorry, I thought it would never start ticking over again. But it did and, after a while, so did I.

  That was twelve years ago. The more time that passes between that day and the present one, the older I get, the more I feel a stranger to their memory, someone they never knew and so could never love. If I went to Mum’s home town on the Aran Islands, would my memory change? Would I lose her and Dad all over again? I don’t think I could bear that. My relatives in Ireland hadn’t cared enough about my parents to pay their last respects (or even write), so I sure as hell wasn’t going to go running to them because my long lost granny had died.

  Still, I can’t help wondering why Josephine would reach out to me now. What is it that she wanted to give me? She didn’t know the first thing about me! My memory of her is two dimensional and grainy. The photos would materialize on the mantel just before Christmas, and I used to think that these must be members of the family who had died and who Mum and Dad were missing. But they weren’t dead at all.

  Unlike Dad’s side of family, my mother’s nearest kin, her sister Clare and her husband Dermot, are very much alive on Inishmore--that’s what Mum used to tell me, anyway. I had waited for them to come in the hospital room, then the morgue, holding fast to Mum’s hand. I wished for them to take us across the sea to somewhere green and magical and older than my memories. They never came, and neither had my grandmother.

  I’ve tried to forgive them. Every Christmas Eve, I light a candle for them alongside Mum and Dad’s, but when I think on them at any length, I’m stricken with the same sorrowing realization. No one came for me; I had to suffer the loss of my parents alone. They’d never even sent a card, and now I’m supposed to show up on their doorstep to pay my respects? Mum and Dad had always gone on and on about the importance of family, but they had picked up and left their families and had apparently never looked back.

  I take up my necklace, thumbing the interlacing rings of the pendant. What was it that had ripped the Tullys apart? I ask myself and run a hand over the gravestone. A fine grit of orange lichen is blooming into the names Ronan and Maeve.

  ‘You’ll never tell, will you?’ I say out loud.

  Out of nowhere, Brad’s face, two days unshaven, grinning like an idiot, moons into my head. A twinge of mad love strikes me right between the eyes.

  Don’t look at me like that.

  He grins all the wider.

  A surge of feeling crests into me and presses against my ribcage. I’m overwhelmed by a sense of dead endedness, as well as a very slight underwelling of shame. I’ve been so stupid--imagining Brad could become a family to me. His idea of taking care of someone involves a couple of French toast breakfasts and lots of over early sex. Good luck with that, Miss Thang(s).

  I fish a secret cigarette out of my bag. Brad’d guilted me into quitting.

  ‘In your face, Brad.’

  My phone bleeps. It’s Kate. I answer the phone.

  ‘Jules?’

  ‘Hey,’ I say and flick at the lighter.

  ‘Guess who just signed up with Quinn and Foster on the DL,’ she rasps.

  ‘Are you calling from work?’

  ‘Are you smoking?’

  ‘Noooo,’ I say through a sputter of smoke.

  ‘Right. Anyway--the Chavez brothers are in. As in THE Chavez brothers.’

  I flick the cigarette aside. ‘Get out!’

  ‘I know, right?!’

  The Chavez brothers operate the city’s first and fastest-growing fair trade coffee roasters, Chévere. They’re minted and notoriously picky.

  ‘Kate, that’s--I don’t even know what that is! How did you pull them?’

  ‘I gave them first dibs on the concessions at all my clubs downtown. And I’m awesome.’ I can hear her smiling. ‘Got to run, Jules.’

  ‘Call me later!’ I hang up and beam skyward. ‘We just might pull this off,’ I laugh to myself. Somewhere far off a school bell rings and the laughing shrieks of children gather against the stilled air. I walk home, head up, held on the lightness of the sound.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The first thing I see when I open the door to my apartment is an arc of backward flung plaid shirts and holey Levi’s. Then I see Brad, hair cropped ultra short, jeans a tad too skinny. For a split second, I wonder if the new do is in some way about me--Brad’s metro attempt at getting over Julie Quinn--but Miss Thang (et al.) has very likely got that base covered. I freeze midstep in the hall, one half of my brain saying ‘Turn around: Springer episode is not what you need right now’, the other one yowling, ‘Bullshit! This is my apartment!’

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ I growl at Brad. He flinches upright and slams his head on the inside of the wardrobe.

  ‘Jesus, Julie. For God’s sake,’ he says, rubbing at the back of his head.

  ‘Get out.’

  ‘I’m just getting my things. Just…’ His eyes dart from me to the stack of ratty boxes on the floor. ‘I’ll only be a second.’

  ‘GET OUT!’ I screech at him.

  ‘Look, I didn’t know you’d be home,’ he huffs.

  ‘Yeah? That’s twice,’ I snipe at him.

  ‘What was I supposed to do? You never called me back.’

  ‘Take the hint.’

  I can feel my limbs going numb, but I shore myself up against the wall and stare him down impassively.

  ‘Come on, Julie. This is stupid, right? I said I was sorry. And I am. Can’t we at least talk to each other?’

  ‘I have nothing to say to you,’ I wince. He takes a step toward me, and I step aside, my back flush against the kitchen door. The smell of his skin is at once maddening and enthralling.

  He hefts up the two boxes. ‘I’m going,’ he says, but he doesn’t move. ‘Listen, Jules…’ I look away and suck in a sharp breath. ‘I know I’m the last person you want to hear this from right now, but I love you. I want you to be happy. What I did, it wasn’t fair on you. I know that. But it’s you I want, Jules. It’s always been you.’

  Even if I did believe him, there’s no way my pride
’s caving on this one.

  I jut a hand out. ‘The key?’

  ‘Right.’ Brad dumps the boxes on the floor and digs the key out of his pocket. He sets it on the sideboard beside the photograph of Mum and Dad and pauses. I can feel him looking me over and brace myself.

  Here it comes--hated final thought of the boy who ‘loved you.’

  Brad breathes out through his nose and shifts his weight onto his back leg. ‘What happened to your folks,’ he says, ‘that was awful. And now, I don’t know, it’s like you’re hell bent on playing it safe. But you can’t control everything. And you can’t go on living life from the inside out.’

  I can feel my gaze soften a touch and, as much as it grates me to admit (even to myself), I know that Brad’s right. He kicks the boxes aside and tries to reach out to me, and I sidestep him. Just because he’s right doesn’t unmake the gaping hole in his moral logic. It’s only cheating if I catch you? Well, you done been caught.

  ‘Don’t talk about my parents,’ I whisper.

  Brad puts a hand up as if in surrender. He kicks at one of the boxes and stares at the toe of his boot.

  ‘My best friend at St. Vincent’s,’ he began, ‘one day some woman told him not to come into her shop anymore. He was trash and so was his family. I was standing right there and didn’t make much of it. I would’ve said something, but I couldn’t have known.’

  Don’t want to hear it. Don’t care. Not at all.

  I can feel the tears building in the back of my throat, and I curse Brad and myself silently.

  ‘He went home and got his dad’s pistol down out of crawl space. Walked down to the river so his mom wouldn’t come on him first. He was fifteen, sixteen.’

  ‘Why would you tell me that?’ I ask, a single hot tear staining my cheek. Brad tries to smile but can’t.

  ‘Good things, bad things, they’re going to happen,’ he says. ‘That white-knuckle grip you’ve got on your life? Doesn’t make one bit of difference.’

  I sniff back the tear and fold my arms across my chest. ‘So I should just “let go”? Is that it?’

  Brad nods yes.

  ‘No deadlines, no ambitions,’ I count off, ‘and not one consideration for anyone else.’ I swing open the door. ‘Grow up, Brad.’

  He blinks at me, his eyes mirroring the pain in my gut, and shoulders the boxes. I watch as he retreats down the hall, his entire self somewhat diminished. I am sorry for his trouble, but that’s all I am. I don’t call out to him as he waits with tense shoulders for the elevator to come. I close the door and lock it tight behind me before he’s disappeared.

  The bedroom’s a mess--drawers riffled, a pile of dirty clothes kicked out of the hamper. One of Brad’s undershirts peeps out from under the bed. I toe it out of sight and slam the drawers shut, sucking it up, willing myself not to break down and ball up on the bed.

  Think about the future. Think about Quinn and Foster! I tell myself and march into the sitting room. I click on my laptop and draw up a spreadsheet of all the things Kate and I will need day one at the firm. It’s a long list, a lot longer than I’d thought it would be. I scale it against our projected budget. The numbers are less than encouraging. We’d have to nix those ergonomic chairs, maybe the printer/copier.

  I click onto Craigslist and scroll through a list of second-hand office furniture. All rubbish. The letter from the Irish solicitor glares up at me from the desktop. A cash inheritance would sort out a lot of things… My hands waver over the keyboard. It wouldn’t hurt to look, would it? I google the ‘Aran Islands’ and a flood of pastoral images, squat stone cottages, craggy shorelines and green, sheep studded fields fills the screen.

  ‘Inishmore,’ I read. ‘Largest of the Aran Islands… stronghold of Irish culture. Population 900.’ Oh dear God.

  I slide the plane ticket out of the envelope and tap it on the desktop. It’d only be a few days. I’d be back at the weekend. The photograph of Mum and Dad winks at me from the hall. I grab my phone and text Kate: ‘Have to take a rain check on lunch Wednesday. I’ll be in Ireland.’ I hit send and smile to myself.

  Before I lose my nerve, I bolt out of the chair and pull a fusty suitcase from the wardrobe. What the hell do you pack for a non-holiday on a rock in the middle of the North Atlantic? I frown at the row of high heels on the bottom shelf, the silk shirts and pencil skirts. The phone buzzes in my pocket.

  ‘Bring me back a brogue! (Or a man with one)!’ Kate texts.

  Eyeballing the men folk--that’ll be the last thing I do. ‘You snag the keys to that office!’ I ping her back.

  A thumbs-up icon bleeps onto the screen.

  Very carefully, I slip Mum and Dad’s photo out of the smashed frame and tuck it into my wallet. I dig my passport out of the desk drawer and flick it open. My God, look at that hair! I glance at the mirror, then back at the photograph. I can see my mother around my eyes, in the soft fall of my cheeks. Would Aunt Clare know me to see me? Would she, by some miraculous turn of heart, welcome me into her life? Or would she stand back, tight-lipped and brooding, and let me come and go a stranger?

  A shudder of dread runs the length of my spine and settles in the pit of my stomach. What would I say to her? What could I say? Clare is the one person on the planet whose blood I share, the only true link I have with my past, yet I’ve never been in the same room with her. I’ve never heard her voice, and now I’m trekking halfway around the world! For what? A handout from my dead grandmother? No. I don’t need anything from the Tullys. Not one thing except an answer.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The last time I got on a plane was for Kate’s 29th birthday, a stand by roller coaster of a flight to Vegas. I’d started raving when the mondo drops kicked in.

  ‘Oh GOD! Did you hear that?! Was that something falling off? Oh my holy Jesus hell, I’m gonna die. I’m gonna… I’m…gonna be sick.’ I’d hammered away on the call button--‘I just want to ask if they can let me off’--and Kate had back handed me. I’d stared at her, shocked still, rubbing at my face, and then I’d spewed in her lap.

  I am, Kate told the entire office when we got home, a ‘bad flyer’. What does that even mean? We’re not supposed to fly! How is flipping-out on a plane not the most logical thing you can do?

  ‘Two Dramamine, two glasses of wine,’ Kate advises when I call her from JFK. ‘You won’t wake up. Even if the plane crashes.’

  That sounds like a plan.

  I’m only three sips into my skunky Merlot when I conk and, before I know it, the plane punches through a low hanging cloud bank and jolts downward into a pocket of hollow air. I blink awake at a weak sun that hangs on the verge of the sea. The Clare coastline humps up beneath me, crisscrossed with irregular stone fences and clusters of houses, all of them bigger than I’d imagined. Their slate roofs glint dully in the damp morning air.

  The plane banks hard over a curving motorway and touches down with a shuddering thwack into Shannon. I unclench my hands from the armrests and lean toward the window. I can just make out the narrow terminal in the lashing rain.

  ‘Brilliant,’ I grumble to myself, and the hairy handed old boy in the aisle seat chuckles.

  ‘First time in Ireland, is it?’ He eyes up the ‘weather resistant’ trench on my lap.

  I nod yes and rub at my eyes. ‘Is it always like this?’

  ‘Only when it isn’t,’ he laughs. ‘It’s promised fine for the weekend. You’re lucky!’

  I breeze through the near empty terminal, my overnight bag clacking on its little wheels behind me, and line up at Immigration.

  ‘Quinn,’ the officer says as he scans my passport. ‘My brother married a Quinn. Pure wagon of a woman.’

  Is that a compliment?

  ‘You wouldn’t have relations up round Ennis, would ya?’

  ‘Inishmore.’

  ‘Now. Going to see them are you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Bit of a holiday?’

  ‘…Business.’

  He cocks his head at me sli
ghtly. ‘Good woman you are,’ he says and smacks the clearance stamp down.

  Now to catch my connecting flight. I scan the departures board. London, Heathrow at noon, Dublin at quarter after. Kilronan…there it is! Cancelled?! That can’t be right. I tromp over to the information desk. A pair of tubby lads stare into a portable television.

  ‘Go on, ya bitch ya!’ one of them spurts.

  A fine-boned greyhound tears around the track in grizzled black and white.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, and the man grunts. ‘I have a flight booked to Inishmore--the one o’clock?’

  ‘It’s cancelled,’ he says, waving to the departures board.

  ‘Yes, I saw that, but I need to get another flight.’

  ‘There’s only the one,’ the second coughs. ‘Aer Arann. And they’re not flying.’

  ‘What do mean “not” flying?’ I bark at him.

  ‘They’re on strike.’

  Strike? For what? Half a flight a day?! This is ridiculous!

  The dogs are off again, and the two old lads inch closer to the television.

  ‘Right. So how do I get to Inishmore?’

  ‘You get a bus, then the boat,’ the nearer man says.

  Bus?! Oh no.

  ‘It has to be a flight,’ I stammer. ‘I have a ticket!’ I yank it out of my pocket and wave it in his face.