I pull a letter out of the middle of the stack and wedge a thumb under the tab. My heart drums hard and fast in my chest.
March 3, 1990.
Dear Mum,
It’s gone very cold here, a gusty spring snap, and all of the daffodils are doubled over, heads burnt by the frost. I wonder have they come up yet in the garden, and does Clare still keep a fresh bunch on her nightstand? There is a woman at the office that is very like her. Michelle she’s called. She thinks I’m half cracked because she’s all the time catching me staring. I said, ‘You remind me of my sister. I haven’t seen her in years now,’ and she only blinked at me, just like Clare would do, as if I was a silly woman and impractically sentimental.
Ronan has found a new job at an insurance company in New York. He likes it well enough, even though he has to drive three hours every day to get there. But they’ve given him a company car, which he only loves. ‘Does exactly what I tell it to,’ he says and then rants about that old piebald mare of his that was all the time throwing him into the hedge. He wants to move to the city, but we can hardly afford that.
Julie’s shot up a good inch since Christmas! She’ll be seven this summer, would you believe? I asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, and she said ‘Taller’. Every bit your granddaughter, that one. She asked Ronan the other day why we don’t sound like Mr. and Mrs. Frank next door. ‘Why do you talk funny?’ she says. ‘Because we’re from Ireland. You know that!’ he says. ‘And someday we’ll take you there, and you’ll be the one who talks funny.’ She thought that’d be a great laugh.
I hope this finds you all very well. Please give our love to Clare and Bridie and all the girls at St. Enda’s. Do you still do the parade for the feast day? I hope so. Bridie makes a very good patron saint.
Yours, Maeve.
I slide the letter back into the envelope, my heart swollen. They had wanted to come home. They just hadn’t made it. A dark furrow in my gut pulses cold as I pick up the foremost letter in the stack.
13 August 2001--the day Dad had packed up the car to drive me up to Columbia. I’d forgotten about the letter, the way Mum had scribbled it on the dash as we turned out of the driveway, the way I’d whined from the backseat when she’d touched Dad’s shoulder and asked him to pull into the post office.
‘I just have this one letter to post,’ she’d said. ‘It’ll only take two seconds.’
I turn the envelope over in my hands and peel it open slowly.
Dear Mum,
I can’t keep on like this--it’s madness. We’ve waited far too long to put all of this behind us, and all because of Clare. I’ve the tickets booked. Please God, we’ll see you at the end of the year.
Yours, Maeve.
The blood in my belly runs cold. They were going home, and then the accident. A dark, seeping thought settles in my bones. Had it been my fault? I’d nagged them into ferrying me up on that day, first thing that morning. I’d been indifferent, even annoyed, at the secret life that wound its way from our Jersey apartment to the west of Ireland. I read through the letter again, and my eyes catch on Clare. ‘All because of Clare.’ It was her fault! If it hadn’t been for Clare, they’d have come home sooner. They might still be alive!
I grab up the letters and my laptop and bolt out of the door before Aoife, Orla, or any one of the girls can catch me up in chatter or see the splotches of heat on my face. I careen down the rocky laneway to the cottage, dead set on settling an old score.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
My brain has seized upon the name CLARE, imprinting it like a ghastly memory behind my eyes. I don’t know how I manage to make my way up the road and back to the cottage; all I can see are those five letters, the way they’d looked in my mother’s left slanting hand.
‘It was Clare. Clare had driven them away. Clare had kept them away. Clare and not my grandmother,’ I grumble as I crest the hill. I don’t care what Mum had done. She hadn’t deserved to be exiled!
I stomp up the drive and onto the front stoop, ready to charge in, guns blazing. My body feels charged with a bitter feeling, three decades’ worth, as I blast into the kitchen.
‘Julie, hello,’ Dermot says, his hand flying to his heart. ‘Cup of tea?’
I fix my eyes hard on Clare’s. ‘It was you,’ I snarl.
‘Sorry?’ Dermot says.
I keep my eyes on Clare’s, and she stares back at me blankly. ‘They wanted to come home.’
Clare turns to Dermot, eyebrows arched. ‘What is she on about?’
Oh, like you don’t know what I’m talking about!
‘Mum and Dad!’ I growl. ‘They wanted to come back, but they couldn’t. Because of you!’
An ugly red blotch creeps up Clare’s neck and into her cheeks. She takes the three steps toward me, fuming.
‘How dare you come into my house and accuse me of fouling Maeve’s life! SHE was the one who left!’
‘I don’t blame her!’
‘You know where the door is! Don’t let it hit you on the way out,’ Clare sneers.
‘Now, ladies!’ Dermot wriggles between us, hands raised like a rooky cop. ‘This is no way to be talking.’ He pulls out a chair for each of us. ‘Let’s have a nice sit down and get this aired once and for all.’
Clare glances at the chair, then back at me.
You want a stand-off, I can do this all night.
‘C’mon now,’ Dermot says, placing a hand on his wife’s shoulder.
The doorbell rings.
‘Ah jayzus,’ Dermot huffs and slips out to answer it. Clare watches him go, body racked with a tremorous fury. She lets out an almost silent breath. It’s hard to tell, by the stony look on her face, if it’s a sigh of relief or exasperation.
‘Michael! How ya keeping?’ Dermot’s voice rings cheerily.
Michael!
‘Come in, come in.’
‘Thanks. I’ll only stay a minute.’
‘Did you see the news? Dreadful!’
Dermot ushers Michael into the kitchen. He looks back and forth between Clare and me, registering, I’m sure, the prickly static on the air.
‘Mrs. O’Mahony,’ he says. ‘Lovely to see you.’ Then he turns to me. ‘You ready?’
‘Yes,’ I say a tad too sharply, my eyes trained on Clare.
This isn’t over, Auntie.
I set my laptop on the sideboard and follow Michael outside into a clear, balmy night, making sure to give the door a good slam behind me.
‘Sorry, I’d forgotten you were coming. But thank you.’
He jerks his head toward the cottage. ‘She giving you a hard time?’
I hug my arms around my shoulders. ‘You know, it’s not even worth telling.’
Michael shrugs at me and swings open the door to the jeep. My legs lock, and the sickening taste of fear ekes into my mouth.
‘You okay?’ Michael asks.
‘Yeah. Fine.’ I put on a big, gum flashing smile. ‘Mind if we walk?’
‘Em… no. Think you can make it on that bum ankle?’
I nod.
‘Right. Two seconds.’ He reaches behind the driver’s seat and pulls something round and ghostly white between the gap.
‘Is that a drum?’ The skin stretched over the wooden frame is mottled with tanned flecks.
‘It’s a bodhrán, yeah.’ He snugs a grooved stick into his back pocket. ‘Now, don’t be expecting Ronan O’Snodaigh. I’m only starting out.’
Who’s Ronan O’Snodaigh?
‘We’ve got our first proper gig at the festival in two weeks.’
We set out up the road under a sky so full of stars it’s more light than dark. I had no idea there were so many!
Michael leads the way into the village, and I’m gob smacked to see it full of people. Trios of men in checked shirts throng from one pub front to the next, ladies draped with fluorescent boas and mock veils hooting after them.
‘Not another hen,’ Michael groans.
‘A what?’
‘Bac
helorette party. You’d want to see them at two!’ he laughs and shoulders open a door. ‘It’s just in here.’
I duck past the huddle of teenagers smoking moodily on the stoop and step inside Connor’s. All manner of people are strung about the place--a handful of young ladies, a baby on one of their knees, two sets of loud talking Americans, men in football jerseys, and the trio of rakish farmers from the Arms. If it wasn’t for the stubby bar, you’d think you were in someone’s sitting room. The chairs are low and mismatched and the sideboard is laid with heavy china teapots. There is a sense, in the way people lounge about beside the low turf fires, of the familial, nothing like the stiff, meat market sort of bars back home.
‘What’ll you drink?’ Michael asks over the prattle.
I glance over my shoulder. Pints all around.
‘What you’re having,’ I reply.
‘Right so. We’re just over there in the corner, if you want to grab a seat.’
I look down his arm to where he’s pointing. A man with a banjo twiddles his fingers at me.
Oh boy.
I pick my way through the crowd. Everyone’s so at ease and jammed together. This’d never fly in New York.
‘Set yourself down there. You’re very welcome,’ the man says and toes a stool out to me. I sink down between him and a woman with a long mane of curls tuning a fiddle. ‘You play?’ he asks.
‘No.’ I wave my hands apologetically.
‘You’ll dance so!’ he grins at me and flicks out a reel.
Oh no I won’t.
A tubby man hugging a concertina squeezes in next to me. ‘Sorry there, Tom. Had to see a man about a dog,’ he says. ‘Niamh,’ he nods to the woman, and then stares boldfaced at me. I jut a hand out.
‘Julie Quinn.’
‘Ohhhh, now! Maeve’s little girl!’ He cups my hands into his own. ‘I bet you have the voice of an angel.’
‘Will you stop pawing the poor girl, Finton,’ Niamh winks.
‘She’s a lovely girl--isn’t she a lovely girl?’ He spins round to Michael, who’s standing now at my shoulder, five pints of black stout in his hands.
That is some trick.
‘The finest,’ he says and sets the glasses down, the creamy head puckered just at the rim. I take up my glass, sniff at it. I’ve never had a pint of Guinness in my life, not even the watery American version. I hope it tastes better than it looks.
‘Sláinte!’ Tom bellows, and the rest of them fall in, clinking glasses. I take a wary sip. The taste is musky and full, hinting at bacon and chocolate and cream. I can feel myself smiling, and when I look up, the quartet are smiling back.
‘Heyyyy!’ they cheer. Finton slams his pint down with a lip-smacking ‘Ahhhh’ and takes off into a high, peeling melody. His fingers flit about the buttons, too fast for me to focus on, and then Tom and Michael join in, filling out the base notes as Niamh careens sharply up and into a new air that opens the song into an unexpected texture. It’s not one I’ve heard before, but everyone else in the place has because they’re rolling together now, heads tipped back into the chorus. I look from face to face and, for the first time since I’d arrived, I feel at home in my own skin. I glance at Michael--he’s staring at me, eyes greener than ever. I tip back my beer to hide the rising flush in my cheeks.
I’ve polished off my pint before the first song has finished, or maybe it hadn’t at all. The sounds rang one into the other, distinct, but with such fluid energy that it was impossible to tell where one reel ended and another began. A fine beaded sweat had come out on Finton and Michael’s brows, the two of them bending over their instruments in happy concentration. Sweaty, drum thumping Michael is just about the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen. I shake my head and cast out the thought.
People are on their feet now, looping in tight hopping circles, pulling one another close and then reeling back again. One of the farmers kicks a subdued little dance in the corner, his feet tapping a surprising treble. The light sits different on him, dancing there with his eyes nearly closed. A kind of magic hangs about him.
I feel so uplifted, I order another round of pints for the table, and then a third. Then, before I know what I’m at, Finton has me in the middle of the floor, pulling my arms apart and then flying them together again as if I were a giant squeezebox. I catch snatches of Michael, really going for it now with the drum, on each dizzy revolution. His eyes are locked on the drum, and I find myself wanting them to flash upward and grab hold of me again.
‘Go ON!’ one of the football jerseys hollers.
Finton spins me faster, too fast, but I don’t want him to stop. The feeling of the air rushing about us and the not-knowingness of my feet is terrible in its freedom. The whole of the world is pulsing here with me in the upswing of the song--this one I know--and I want to sing it out, and before I can damp my (far from angelic) voice, I hear it course out of me and join the others. A tremendous smile spreads over Michael’s face, and he joins in the final verse with a voice that is just off key.
‘Give it socks, Michael!’ the barman yells.
And he does. He gives it loads, and it’s shaky and awful, and I love it. I’ve never heard anything so naked and honest.
‘Go on and dance with your one,’ I hear Niamh say when the song breaks. He looks up at me, his smile fading into something else, something deeper set. Is it anticipation or understanding darkening there in his eyes? Niamh strikes softly into the opening bars of ‘Black is the Color’.
I know this song!
Her voice comes cleanly through the crowd, hopeful and a little sad. Mum used to sing it to me, her voice bigger than Niamh’s, and I wonder if she had ever danced here, on these oily planks. Had she waited, like I was waiting, for someone to come across the pitchy floor and change everything?
I watch as Michael moves through the crush toward me, feel the heat of his body, sudden and visceral, his hand closing on mine.
Oh my--
All at once, I feel the beating presence of myself. He clasps his arms around me, and I place my hands on his shoulders. I gulp. This man is so… I don’t know what. We dance out the song and, with every turn, I feel myself more at ease in his arms. At last I rest my head on his shoulder, my heart not wanting to say to my head what I’m feeling, what I can’t possibly be feeling. It’s the song. Or the beer.
‘You okay?’ Michael asks.
‘Mmhm.’
Never (and I mean ever) better.
‘Another pint?’
‘No. Unless you want one. Do you want one?’
‘I’d love a walk, actually.’
Thank Christ for that.
Michael leads me by the hand into the street. The night air feels raw against my skin, and I’m happy for the buzzy heat of the alcohol.
‘Thanks,’ he says when we get to the top of the road. ‘Two, three songs--that’s all I’m good for.’
‘He does have a weakness,’ I joke, kicking at the grass on the verge.
‘Stick around,’ he smiles.
‘Don’t tempt me.’
I mean, really, don’t.
Michael looks over at me through the waning starlight. Our eyes lock, both of us slowing subconsciously. He inches closer and, just as he’s reaching out to me, I stumble into a pothole and jolt away from him.
‘Jesus, Julie!’ Michael grabs my arm and steadies me.
I brush myself off, sheepish as ever. ‘I shouldn’t have had that last pint,’ I laugh weakly.
‘Sure, it was all in good fun,’ Michael says as we hedge the cottage gate. ‘It’s the first time I saw you let go. That’s a good thing.’
‘It is,’ I say flatly. ‘But life isn’t just about having fun.’
‘Is it not?’ Michael smiles.
‘You know what I mean.’
Michael cocks a finger toward the sea. ‘The real world’s back in New York,’ he says.
‘Dead center.’
He sits down on the garden bench. ‘Then why’d you come here?’
; ‘You know why.’
‘Oh right, the will. I thought maybe you got full up of all the good times that do be happening in New York.’
‘Hey, I love my life!’
‘What do you love about it?’
‘I--that’s a stupid question.’
Michael shrugs at me, a sideways grin on his face.
And we’re back to Wonder Boy. He knows everything about everyone.
‘What do you love about yours?’ I ask, on the defensive now.
‘I s’pose feeling like I belong to it. I tried to be someone else, someplace else, and it didn’t suit me.’
Wait, is he talking about London? Or his ex? Brad flares into my head, high-straddling some hot young thang. I squeeze my eyes shut and snap them open. No more Brad.
‘You must feel the same about New York,’ Michael says.
Made With Love: I Love You Forever Page 17