The house was by us, and I turned quickly in my seat to look out the rear window, but the Delaceys’ courtyard was empty, the kitchen windows dark; only a small black thread of smoke from their chimney suggested that Cait might be there somewhere in that house where both her parents died.
A flock of greylag undulated low upon the horizon, a sinuous scattering of parts like oars beating fast in a current that was carrying them swiftly away. Men and dogs and geese heading home through the snow. I wished I could take everything back, I wished I had the words to make everything right between Cait and me. Now that it was too late, all I felt was regret.
And then, I saw her. She was making her way toward the courtyard from a far gate, a coal bucket in her hands, a large overcoat bundled tight about her and her face pressed into the collar of it. I caught her eye, saw her face perfectly, and we held each other’s stare for a moment. I clung to the rear window to hold onto that gaze for as long as I could. But then Cait lowered her head against the wind and snow and trudged toward the house and the car was quickly down the lane as if we’d never slowed and I’d never seen her at all.
I turned back in my seat and I was startled to see Mother staring after her as well. When she looked at me I assumed she saw only my father, but then she spoke and surprised me.
Cait’s growing up to be a fine girl. She sighed, her eyes moist and shimmering. I suppose you’ll miss her.
She reached for my hand and touched it with her glove. You’re becoming a fine man yourself, she said. I don’t tell you that too often, do I?
I looked at her but could think of nothing to say.
I’m sorry, she said.
Sorry? I whispered.
For us leaving, for the way things are —. She shook her head. I’m sorry.
Mother’s words held the silence of the car. The snow came down hard and fast and everything turned dark and dim. I lay my head against the cold glass again, watching the countryside darkening, and only the sense of still-falling snow in that darkness.
By the time we reached Wexford Harbor, the snow had stopped. It was barely noon and yet a strange partial moon shimmered weakly through trailing silver clouds hurtling out over the water to the east. Gulls swept low over harsh-looking whitecaps, rose up and wheeled above the docks, their sleek edges sharp against the boat’s snow-crusted gunwale. The wind was gone, darkness closing in from the sea. A single star flickered in the east. The dock lights shimmered and seemed to grow brighter now that the light of the storm was gone. The snow, already sullied and tainted by lorries and tractors, sat silent and mute. Open flats of salted stockfish, gutted and now hardened, lay ribbed with snow. The ship’s stacks belched smoke. Dockworkers pushed trolleys, or shoveled and swept the snow from walkways.
I pulled my jacket tighter about myself, glanced at Mother bent in pain over the luggage like a slant of twisted metal. I saw the bight of land opening out into the wide channel of the Irish Sea, expanding like a great maw to take the whole of the world in. I stared at the starboard gunwale and thought of the way shipmen or fishermen like my uncles looked at the stars. And then, somehow, I could no longer look at the ship. I didn’t want to take in its immensity, the hard resolute lines that suggested nothing but churning passage through deep water—one straight unerring line to a destination, plotted, mapped, coordinated.
Instead, I watched the sea, the distant scattering of clouds, tried to smell the far-off cow pastures, the wheat and barley. It was almost turnip season, and soon it would be beets. I imagined the last of the potatoes being picked in the country, pulled up by the roots from the rich moist seam. And I thought of Cait. How one last time, I wanted to feel the brush of her lips against mine, how I wanted the wetness of her mouth, the taste and the heat of it.
I looked out over the water, spilling vast and endless over the horizon, and tried to imagine what England might be like, but nothing would come to me. This, then, was the sea: unchanging, vast, and unperturbed—nothing could affect it, certainly not this ship’s passing. A strake of light moved across the whitecaps, sharp as a shattering of bone. Una helped Mother, and Molly and I reached for the bags and we moved forward. Gulls called from their jerry-rigged nests amongst the pitons, and the ship’s whistle blew. People left the ticket office or the heated lounge and the embrace of families, and together we began the long, slow climb up the swaying, snow-crusted gantry.
acknowledgments
Thanks to the eloquent heart that is Roger Skillings, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
To some of the finest teachers I’ve ever known, whose passion for the form is a constant source of inspiration: Jim McPherson, Marilynne Robinson, Elizabeth McCracken; and to Chris Offutt, my friend and my teacher. Thank you for your faith.
And to Martha Collins, Tom O’Grady, Chet Frederick, Lee Grove, Professor John Tobin, and the English Department at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, for all the ways in which they guided and nurtured me many years ago.
To those who aided in the publication of this book, Richard Abate, Zainab Zakari, and, most especially, to my wonderful editor, Asya Muchnick, who took this novel on with incredible passion and engaged it as wholly and as completely as any writer could wish for.
For support, both moral and otherwise: to my sister, Máire, and Colm O’Brien, my nieces, Caitlin and Meaghan, and my nephew, Cormac; to Victoria Häggblom, Megan Carnes, Joshua Furst, Nick Arvin, Jeremy Mullem, David Ferry, Claudia Mackey, Janice Zenisek, Christa Lyons, Dan Darling, Jen Purdy, and Aran Michael Parillo. To the man who saved my manuscript from a Manhattan taxicab. I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name. Thank you!
To Michael Altobello, who drove me there and brought me home again. To Douglas Purdy, who was there from this novel’s very beginning, thousands of pages ago, and who has been there ever since.
To Jennifer Haigh, whose wisdom and insight are without compare. Thank you, my friend.
To Caroline Crumpacker for your love and grace, your patience and tolerance, your incredible intellect and diligence in reading the sentences of this novel again and again and again. And to our daughter, Colette Gráinne, who has illuminated my life in more ways than I can say and for whose presence in this world I am so grateful.
Thank you, and bless you all.
about the author
THOMAS O’MALLEY grew up in Ireland and England. A graduate of the University of Massachusetts at Boston and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he has also been a Returning Writing Fellow and recipient of the Grace Paley Endowed Fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts.
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