This Irish House

by Jeanette Baker

  He hated other things, too, more and more with every passing week, things that had nothing to do with his mother. He hated the quiet of the house in Donegal, the boring drone of his instructors at school, the tight, disapproving look on his sister’s face when he walked through the door long past dinner hour and, most of all, he hated the empty, too-large rooms that screamed out for the laughing, playful, complete family that had once been his.

  Kevin missed his father. Six years had passed but his memories were as vital and whole and detailed as if they had taken place the day before. Patrick Nolan was the kind of man lesser mortals created legends around. Strong and competent, brilliant and charismatic, he was fair to adults and children alike. The very thought of him and what he’d lost closed the air passages in Kevin’s throat and brought on the despised asthma inherited from his mother.

  “Kevin,” his mother’s voice intruded again. “I need an answer from you. The charge was a serious one.”

  He stared out the window.

  “For God’s sake, Kevin.” Her voice broke. “This isn’t a game. Please, talk to me.”

  He couldn’t look at her, couldn’t manage the hurt in her eyes.

  “I’m all right, Mum,” he mumbled. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

  “What were you doing miles away from home, with those people?”

  He kept his eyes fixed on the bogs framed by the car window. Hacked open like a newly exposed wound, half the marsh lay dark, rich and wet. The paler half was home to stacks of dun-colored turf drying in the open air. Ireland’s energy source, his father had told him.

  “Kevin?”

  He remembered his mother’s question. “They’re not so bad.” Out of the corner of his eye Kevin saw her hands clench around the steering wheel, her bones white beneath her skin. “I’m tired,” he said, hoping to ward off further questions. “They didn’t let me sleep all night.”

  “I’m tired too, Kevin,” she said, showing an unexpected flash of impatience, “and I never want this to happen again. I drove four hours through the dead of night to pick you up. You owe me some answers.”

  “I said I was all right,” he said sullenly. “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “You tested positive for an illegal drug. For—” she stumbled over the word “—for cocaine, for God’s sake. How can you tell me that isn’t wrong?”

  He clenched his fists, but he didn’t answer. There was no answer to such a question. By whose standards was it wrong? Was anyone worse off because he’d snorted a line? Or was it two? He couldn’t remember.

  She wasn’t leaving it alone. “Who were the people you were with?”

  He felt the blood rise in his throat. Leave me alone. Please, just leave me alone. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you really expect me to believe that?”

  His fists slammed down on the dashboard. “I don’t fuckin’ care what you believe,” he shouted. “Leave me alone.”

  Kate slammed on the brakes. Kevin felt the back end of the car fishtail across the road. It leveled out again and rolled to a jarring stop. Two red spots of color stained his mother’s cheeks. He watched as she carefully, without speaking, set the emergency brake, pulled out the keys, opened the door and began to walk back down the road.

  A bevy of emotions rolled through Kevin’s chest, anger, fear, shock, horror. In his mind the breach he’d just committed was nearly as great as the one that had landed him in a jail cell. Never had he used bold language with an adult. That it was his mother upon whom he’d inflicted such a perversion was more than he could bear. She had probably never heard such a word in her entire life. He was a misfit, in far too deeply to reverse himself. What was to become of him? If only he could turn back time. If only he could have stepped in front of the bullet that had taken his father’s life. Patrick would be alive and his mother would be happy. Moaning, Kevin dropped his head into his hands and wept.

  Kate looked at her watch. Ten minutes. Ten minutes had passed since she’d left the car and still the rage consumed her. I will not retaliate, she promised herself. I will not scream nor swear nor verbally shred this child I’ve created.

  Her own mother had given her a deep-rooted terror of irrational anger. Eileen Connelly had none of Kate’s scruples regarding corporal punishment. Without exception, she’d raised her seven children as she’d been raised, with an acerbic tongue and the back of a hairbrush. Kate, the oldest, had felt the sting of that brush more often than the others, more likely because of her birth order than her level of defiance. Even Eileen, short-tempered and filled with displaced anger over the disappointing sameness of her life, had balked at raising welts on the legs of a child younger than five. Kate’s recollection of her home life was of an unhappy woman who had screamed and slapped her way through the lives of her children.

  Eileen wasn’t unusual. Only a handful of mothers in the Ireland of previous generations concerned themselves with what Kate considered rampant child abuse. The blatant use of the rod on her generation of children resulted in Kate’s rabid desire to do differently. She would, she resolved, apologize to her children. She wouldn’t raise her voice, refuse to listen or randomly dole out punishment that bore no logical relationship to the crime. She would, however, say no when necessary. She would establish boundaries and she would let her children suffer the consequences of inappropriate behavior. But how far and in what direction was a mother to allow those consequences to lead? Kevin was a child. Could any sensible mother allow her child’s life to be endangered?

  Keeping to the side of the road, she walked rapidly, her back stiff, her eyes straight ahead, missing the igloos of golden wheat, the stacks of drying turf, the boiling clouds, shaping and reshaping themselves, the pale yellow of a reluctant sun.

  Damn, damn, damn. Who did he bloody well think he was? Had there ever been a child so indulged, so spoiled by parents and grandparents? How dare he speak to her so?

  Five more minutes passed. Clouds lined with light broke away and floated across a sky that would soon be blue. Kate’s stride slowed, faltered. She felt better. Exercise always helped. Her rage began to dissipate. She was in control once again. Control was essential. Control was the way she lived her life. Control was power. She breathed, felt the sting of cold air deep in her parched lungs, coughed, and turned around. She’d forgotten her inhaler. Praying that she would make it back to the car before she fell into the throes of a full-scale asthma attack, she measured her pace. How could she have been so stupid?

  Don’t panic, mustn’t panic. Forcing herself to remain calm, Kate concentrated on the road, on the air flowing into and out of her lungs, on the rise in the road, on the herbal smell of wet turf. Gradually her tension eased, her air passages cleared and her mind found a focus outside of the physical.

  Kate thought back to the day she decided to have a second baby. She’d debated for a long time before coming to the decision. Children were a serious matter and she was naturally cautious, an observer rather than a participant. She took her lessons seriously, relegating firsthand experience to intrepid risk-takers like Patrick. Not for her the casual, take-it-for-granted notion that a married couple should automatically procreate. Children were investments in emotion that one couldn’t begin to imagine before becoming a parent.

  Until Deirdre was born, the words pain and pleasure conjured up dreamlike, surreal, polite images. From the day she’d given birth, terror, joy and heartbreak had been her constant companions. The color and heat of her love for her children consumed her, thrusting her forward, forcing her to grab on to life, to wade through the pain, to soar with pride, to be stronger, wiser, deeper than she really was.

  Would she do it all again, knowing what she knew? Guiltily she pushed aside the thought. Hindsight was absurd. She would never deny her children. They enriched her, lifted her to heights she would never have reached. Where would she have been without them, after Patrick? Who would have kept her sane and given her life back to her? Kevin needed her. To be needed was balm t
o her spirit.

  Even with the promise of sun, the morning was cold. Shivering, she shoved her hands into her pockets and increased her pace. She wasn’t a trailblazer, not now, not ever. That had been Patrick’s role. How often had she harangued him, begging him to step back, to allow someone else to lead, to be the martyr, the hero? He’d laughed at her. Where would Ireland be? he’d admonished her, without the likes of Eamon de Valera or Michael Collins? What if they’d stepped back?

  Kate never answered, but she’d wondered about Michael Collins’s fiancée, Kitty, the one who had never become his wife. What were her sentiments when they told her an assassin’s bullet had found its way to the heart of her beloved? Was she grateful he’d died a hero’s death or would she rather he’d been an ordinary man who came home at night and contented himself with telling his children stories beside a warm peat fire?

  Her steps were slower now, her anger completely gone. It was safe to go back, to sit beside her son on the long drive home, to try to reach him somehow, this child she loved unconditionally and yet had lost somewhere along the way. If only she could pinpoint the exact moment he’d looked around for direction and in the looking found her wanting.

  The wind came from the west, a cold stinging wind that reddened her cheeks and brought tears to her eyes. Her shortness of breath had completely disappeared. She began to run. She hadn’t the shoes for it, but she ran anyway, the balls of her feet finding the grade of the road as they always did. She found her stride and her hands left her pockets, her arms swinging smoothly, alternating with the bend of her knees and the steady pound of her feet on the pavement.

  Running was her drug. She’d taken it up after Patrick’s death, her anger and pain diminishing in direct proportion to the miles she ran every day in the soft beauty of an Irish dawn. She’d kept at it over the years, challenging herself, five miles, seven, ten, until the euphoria peaked and her body toughened and she was able to manage one day and then the next and the one after that. Years passed, holidays, holy days, birthdays, she and Deirdre and Kevin, the three of them in a world without Patrick. It was bearable now, not easy, never easy. The sharpness had muted, the awful throat-closing tears that rose unexpectedly at the sound of his name or the accidental uncovering of a family photo were gone now, leaving instead a dullness, a hollow ache that nothing was quite able to fill.

  She made it back to the car in half the time. Kevin’s eyes were closed, his head thrown back against the headrest, his mouth slightly open. Kate opened the door carefully so as not to wake him and slid into the driver’s seat. Then she looked, really looked at her son and her heart broke. All that was left of her chubby-cheeked baby was gone. In his place was a beautiful, too-thin, sharp-cheeked, square-jawed boy, a boy who would soon be a man. Where had the years gone and how had she managed to do such a dreadful job of raising Patrick’s son?

  She felt a burst of irrational anger. This would never have happened if Patrick had lived. And Patrick would still be alive if only he’d been more careful, if he’d cared for his family as much as he cared for his country. Instantly she was ashamed of herself. Patrick Nolan hadn’t a selfish bone in his body. He was a barrister, not a henchman privy to the secret plans of the opposition. How could he have known terrorists would seek him out in his own home and murder him in front of his wife and children?

  Kate turned the key and maneuvered the car out on to the road toward Donegal, Ireland’s most beautiful county. Kevin slept on. She slowed the car at the Strabane checkpoint. The guard looked in the window, saw her sleeping child and waved her on. Grateful for the reprieve, she negotiated the roundabout and turned northwest toward Ardara.

  Her spirits lifted. To the right pink-tinged clouds settled on the peaks of the Twelve Bens. To her left the River Eske, silver under the gray sky, wound its way to the sea. On both sides of the road green hills dotted with longhaired sheep dipped and rose against the horizon. She was nearly home. She would put her son to bed, turn off the ringer on the phone and catch a few hours of much needed rest for herself. Patrick’s Ireland could wait. It would still be here tomorrow. Today she would take care of her son.

  Four

  Deirdre pushed the rack of dishes inside the dishwasher, added detergent and closed the door. She looked at the clock. It was past noon and her mother still wasn’t home, nor had she called.

  Biting her lip, Deirdre reached for the telephone, hesitated, changed her mind and pulled her coat out of the hall closet. She would walk down the street to her grandfather’s house. He would know what to do.

  The wind stung her eyelids and the sensitive skin inside her nose. Bending her head, she crossed High Street and waved to a stout woman sweeping the street in front of the tearoom.

  “Good afternoon, Mrs. O’Hara.”

  “Good afternoon, Deirdre, love,” the woman replied cheerfully. “I thought you’d be gone by now. When is it that you’ll be returnin’ to school?”

  Deirdre stopped. “Not for a bit. I’m still on holiday.”

  “Lucky girl.” Una O’Hara smiled. “An education’s a grand thing, lass. Don’t be forgettin’ that.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You always were a clever lass. Your mam was, too, if I recall.” She leaned on her broom. “Learnin’ comes more easily to some.”

  Deirdre nodded politely, shifting from one foot to the other. Mrs. O’Hara would talk all day if she wasn’t diverted.

  “Have you seen my grandfather?” Deirdre asked. “I really want to talk to him.”

  “You’ll find him at the bookmakers.” The woman pointed to a small shop down the street.

  “Thank you,” said Deirdre. “Goodbye, Mrs. O’Hara.”

  “I’ve never seen such a man for the horses,” Mrs. O’Hara called after her.

  Deirdre waved and hurried down the street.

  She found her grandfather in a friendly argument with the bookmaker. “Seamus, lad, you’ve got rocks in your head,” complained John O’Donnell. “That horse will never make a winner. Better to place your money elsewhere.”

  The bookmaker shook his head. “Since when have you had a winnin’ purse, John O’Donnell?”

  “I’ve had a streak of bad luck lately,” John agreed, “but that doesn’t mean I don’t know horses. I’m tellin’ you that the colt is too short in the withers and too thin in the rump. He’ll never make it past the first pole.”

  “Grandda.” Deirdre tugged at her grandfather’s sleeve. “I need to talk to you.”

  John’s eyebrows rose. “What are you doing here in town at this time of day, Deirdre, love?”

  “I need to talk to you,” she repeated.

  “And so we shall,” he promised, “as soon as I settle with Seamus, here.”

  “I need to talk now.”

  Surprised, John stared at his granddaughter. “What’s gotten into you, Deirdre? It isn’t like you to be so cheeky.”

  Her sleepless night and worry for her brother had taken its toll. She was close to tears. “Please, Grandda.”

  “I’m not goin’ anywhere, John,” the bookmaker said. “See to the lass and we’ll take this up later.”

  Concerned at last, John nodded, tucked Deirdre’s hand inside his arm and led her out the door. “Shall we go home, love, or back to my house?”

  “Home,” Deirdre said immediately. “Maybe Mum and Kevin will be back by now and they’ll worry about me.”

  “Isn’t your mother workin’ today?”

  Deirdre shook her head. “Kevin’s in trouble. The police called last night and Mum drove to Belfast.”

  John groaned. His grip on Deirdre’s hand tightened. “What’s he done?”

  “I’m not sure,” Deirdre hedged.

  “Come now, lass, out with it. There isn’t much I haven’t seen.”

  Deirdre wasn’t sure, but she had no choice. “He’s lost, Grandda,” she confessed. “Kevin doesn’t care about anything. He skips school and takes drugs. I think—” she bit her lip “—he might even be earning
money by selling them. He’s never with any of his old friends. The phone rings all the time and he gets mad if I answer. The voices scare me. They’re old voices, too old for Kevin. Sometimes he doesn’t come home at night.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “He’s so skinny and mean. I don’t even know him anymore.”

  “Does your mam know any of this?”

  Deirdre shrugged. “Mum isn’t stupid. If I can see it when I’m home on holiday, she must know. She lives with Kevin every day.”

  John’s face was grim. “Sometimes people only see what they want to see. Kate refuses to see wrong in those she loves. It’s her most endearing and, at the same time, most infuriating quality.”

  “She’s not home yet and she left at five this morning.” Deirdre’s voice cracked. “I’m worried. They won’t arrest her, will they?”

  “No, love,” John O’Donnell assured her. “Your mother’s done nothing.”

  Tears welled up in her eyes. “Neither did Da and they killed him.”

  John swore under his breath. He took a minute to control himself. “Times have changed, Dee,” he said. “Think of it. It’s only one o’clock now. The drive to Belfast takes four hours on a good day. Your mother isn’t in any danger. If every woman with a delinquent son was arrested, the streets of Belfast would be empty. Lads sow their wild oats. Kevin will come around. A few years from now you’ll laugh about this together. You’ll see.”

  Deirdre was doubtful. They’d rounded the curve of the rise that led to her house. She couldn’t see the driveway. Her heart pounded. Please let her mother’s car be there.

  It was. She broke free of her grandfather’s hand and ran up the steps to open the door. “Mum,” she called out, “where are you?”