"In Conch?" Greta said, and looked over at Johanna, who ignored her.
"Well, actually, in a little place called Ballyroan. It's a few miles outside of Conch, right on the ocean. About ten miles up the coast from here. That's if the bus driver had it right." She described the place she was talking about, and the strange quality of the whole afternoon was made stranger hearing local words coming out of Shannon's mouth: O'Hara's Bridge, Boreen Thomas, Gavin's creek.
"Pardon?" Greta said again. She stopped herself from kicking Johanna under the table.
"Do you know it?" Shannon asked. She put her fork down and leaned back. "You two should get into poker, you know that? With those faces?"
"What age are you, if you don't mind my asking," Johanna said.
Shannon sat up tall and pretended to be grave, "I am twenty-eight years old. And you?"
Greta watched Johanna consider her answer and could tell by the set of Johanna's mouth that she'd decided on the truth. "Seventeen," Johanna said.
"I'm fifteen," Greta said. "We're sisters."
"And who do you know in Ballyroan?" Johanna asked as she propped her elbows on the table and leaned forward.
"I don't know anyone," Shannon said. She drummed her fingers on the table, pretended for a few seconds that that was as much as she was going to tell. "I can see I'm not going to get away without divulging everything. It's not so interesting. My mother and father were from there, and I was born there, and now my mother has died and she wanted to be buried there. Anyway, so here I am. No, please, it's okay. Really. She was sick for a long time. You know how people say sometimes it's a blessing? Well this was one of those times. The arrangements have been made, and she'll be buried the day after tomorrow."
"I'm sorry," said Johanna, breathless.
Greta stopped herself from asking where they put the dead body on the plane.
Lily remembered the O'Clery family well, particularly Shannon's mother, who was expecting Shannon around the same time Lily was expecting Jack. They were one of the first families to leave, and after that the departures kept up at such a heavy rate that at the time, Lily felt she could really miss only the ones who'd left most recently. To miss everyone at once, to look up and down the road at the boarded-up houses nearly swallowed by grass, and to think of every single person who used to live in Ballyroan would be too much.
"What are they to us, Mammy?" Greta wanted to know. "Relations?" Johanna wanted to know too, from the look on her face. Shannon O'Clery must have made an impression. Yes, Lily told them, the O'Clerys were related to the Cahills, just as all of Ballyroan was related, with the exception of Mr. Grady. Not first cousins, of course, not second or third. Not once removed, twice removed, or however the sequence worked. Just related, which meant that their parents and grandparents had lived in the same place and had helped each other.
It was understood between Johanna and Greta from the moment they left the guest to her room and mounted their bicycles to start for home that Shannon would end up staying with them. She had no bicycle, the bus went only twice a week, and those navy blue heels proved that this was not a person who was going to walk ten miles to a funeral. It was a shame, taking Mr. Breen's one and only overnight paying guest away from him, but when the time came, he actually seemed to feel that a burden had been lifted. "Go on," he urged, not knowing Shannon had already accepted the invitation. There was a man in Conch with a Ford, who would come fetch her and drive her out to Ballyroan for a small fee. Mr. Breen arranged it.
The girls arrived at the inn just after dawn, served Shannon breakfast, and sent her off. She was hesitant when she realized they wouldn't be with her, but they assured her that they'd be along later and that their mother had been looking forward to it all the night before.
Lily kept lookout from the front window of the cottage, and when she heard an engine, she made her way up to the coast road so the Ford wouldn't have to turn down the Cahills' narrow lane to be scraped by brambles. Little Tom had already moved his few things to the hay shed, where he'd sleep probably more comfortably than he did in his own stuffy room. The girls would move to his room, and Shannon would take their room, which was the driest and brightest in the cottage.
"Well, welcome home," Lily said as the car door opened, embracing Shannon the moment she stepped out. Shannon returned the embrace and felt in danger of tears for the first time since stepping on the tarmac of Shannon Airport and smelling turf and manure and all the things her mother had told her smelled so good, although Shannon had never believed her. She'd not known where to wait for the coffin, so she stayed by the plane and ignored the drizzle until finally a teenage boy approached to say that they'd received the shipment that had accompanied her and it would arrive in Conch by airline lorry in two days' time.
"The shipment?" Shannon had asked. "You mean my mother?" She had not meant to embarrass the boy.
"Yes," the boy said as his ears grew inflamed. "The body. Your mother."
"Now," Lily said as they made their way up the path, "I wasn't much of a writer, but I thought of your mother often over the years. You're a good girl to bring her home. Did she ever mention me?"
"Oh, yes," Shannon said. It wasn't a lie, exactly. Whenever her mother mentioned Ballyroan, she meant the people there as much as the landscape, and though Shannon couldn't remember her mother mentioning Lily Cahill by name, she did talk about the cottage closest to the ocean, with the river cutting through the back field. It was like an island, in a way, her mother had said, with the ocean in front and the river curving around behind. Shannon smoothed her skirt across her lap and for the second time in two days drew from the local words her parents had braided into their lives in Queens. Words that, oddly, made sense in that crowded place, where everyone, every single day, talked about home, and where home always meant somewhere else.
***
Greta came to two conclusions after sorting through Shannon's bag. First, Shannon would be leaving fairly soon after the funeral. She hadn't brought enough clothes to stay longer, and everyone knew that Yanks wore different clothes every day. The second was that there must be nice shops in Queens. Shannon had a few scarves that felt slippery and cool when Greta reached them at the bottom of her case. She had lipsticks, creams, powders, silk stockings. She had a bag that said BAMBERGER'S across the front, and inside that bag Greta found two necklaces, one of round wooden beads painted black, the other a thick silver chain. She had a silver cuff bracelet. She had a clear plastic case that held a pair of black eyelashes—two half-moons next to each other, the same distance apart as real eyes would be, making the box look as if it were sleeping. She had two bottles of nail polish, one clear, one cherry red.
Sitting on her own bed with Shannon's things spread in a half circle around her, Greta listened once more to make sure no one had come back to the house early. She thought she heard a knock at the front door, but she dismissed it. A few seconds later she thought she heard a man call out, but she decided it was her imagination: Little Tom was out driving the cattle from an upper field to a lower field, staying close to the herd in case one of the cows began calving and needed him to wrap his strong arms around the calf's legs and pull it out of her. Lily had announced at breakfast that she was taking Shannon to town to introduce her to people who'd known her parents, and the three younger Cahills had looked up from their bread and butter and tried not to look too surprised. Greta only half believed it until she saw Lily take her change purse from the box over the fire and wrap her shawl around her shoulders. Soon after they left, Johanna had gone down to the ocean for a swim.
Greta began lining Shannon's things up in the order they would reenter the case. The balls of the wood necklace clacked against each other, the glass bottles of the nail polishes clinked. She shouldn't have done it, opened Shannon's case to look at everything, but there it was, and the house was empty, and what harm was it? Shannon had so many pretty things Greta wondered if she'd miss something small. Maybe one of the scarves; she left it to the side. Shannon would think s
he took only two from America. She'd think, Did I take all three, or did I leave that royal blue one on my bed at home?
"No!" Greta said out loud, and quickly pushed everything back into the suitcase, including the blue scarf, making a sloppy job of it at first but then willing herself to calm down, go slower, do it right. Shannon was a guest, here for her mother's funeral, and for all Greta knew, she might have saved for months for those scarves. Might have gotten them as a gift from her mother right before she died. Might have borrowed them for the trip and then have to explain herself when she got back to America. Greta shut the suitcase, fastened it, stood it on its side under the window, where she'd found it. As she stepped back, glad she'd come to the right decision, she thought she heard something again. She froze, tried to think of a reason she could give for being in Shannon's room. As she looked around, she noticed that she'd forgotten to return a small hairbrush to the case. She cursed silently and tried to stay still. Yes, there were footsteps along the side of the house, and then the singular sound of the back door brushing against the gritty floor as it was pushed open. Greta waited, listened for a clue that would tell her which one of them had come back, but whoever it was was being very quiet. Just as she began to doubt that she'd heard anything at all, she heard a man's voice again, not Tom's, calling out as if to announce himself. As quietly as she could, Greta reopened Shannon's case, dropped the brush inside, and moved as far away from it as the small room would allow. She opened the bedroom door and slipped into the hall. Just as she was about to call out, hopeful that it was just Johanna back from her swim—ravenous, cold to the bone, moody that the temperature had dropped—but at the same time sure that it was not, she heard the sweep of the door again and footsteps running fast around the side of the house.
Half an hour later, Johanna did come back; she burst through the back door in her damp clothes, her lips blue and trembling. "Guess what?" she said as she pulled off her shoes and socks and dropped her long wool cardigan to the floor. She hung her sopping underwear in front of the stove. She peeled off her skirt, her blouse, her undershirt, until she was completely naked. Greta was not used to seeing her sister's body in the light of the kitchen's north-facing window, and the sight of the gooseflesh on Johanna's skin made Greta shiver. "We have a Peeping Tom."
"You're making it very easy for him," Greta said.
"Not here. Down at the water. Someone standing there watching me. A man. I only wanted a quick dip but I couldn't get out of the water until I was sure he was well gone." She picked up the afghan from its place on the back of Big Tom's chair and wrapped it around her shoulders. "They haven't come back yet, have they?" she asked. Greta shook her head, rolled her eyes. A little late for that question, now that they would have seen all there was to be seen.
"Did anyone come round here? Any strangers?"
Greta hesitated and then chose the easiest route. "No," she said.
The coffin arrived in Conch just as the airline promised it would, and from there it was transferred to the hearse that brought it to Ballyroan. They all went to the funeral, plus five of the old ones from Conch. It was quieter than most funerals, and all Greta could think about as she stared at the gleaming wooden box was how far it had come. First the place inside New York City called Queens, and inside Queens a place called Woodside, then the hospital, then a memorial service in America, then a trip to Idlewild Airport, then thousands of miles across the Atlantic, then Shannon Airport, then the long ride to Ballyroan.
Johanna, Greta, Lily, and Little Tom all noted to themselves that Mrs. O'Clery was buried next to Julia Ward. They also noted that on Julia's grave was a bundle of fresh wildflowers, but of the four Cahills, only Greta and Johanna looked at the bundle—it was dewy, as if the flowers were still rooted in the ground, not a wilted one in the bunch—and thought of the strange man standing on the shore. Privately, Greta also thought about the sounds she had heard from their own back room. On the other end of the graveyard, up at the highest point of the sloping land, where a single tree had grown bent in the wind, lay Big Tom.
As they walked back to the house, Johanna fell into step beside Shannon and looped her arm through the older woman's arm. Shannon found all this attention from Johanna flattering and thought it was funny that the girl seemed to have the impression that Queens was an exotic place. After days of Johanna's questions and requests for more stories, Shannon realized how little her mother must have known about America before leaving Ireland. Many days, at home in Woodside, it was all Shannon could do to get up in the morning, press her uniform, get herself to work at the medical clinic on time, and get out to the bars and the community center once in a while to catch up with her girlfriends and meet a few guys. All of that, plus classes at the community college, had seemed like a lot, yet her mother had done all of that and more in a place that must have felt totally foreign to her. Thinking of Queens, now that her mother was buried, made Shannon eager to get back. What would she be like now, she wondered, if her parents had decided to stay? She couldn't imagine mustering up Johanna's energy in this lonely place, but she didn't see herself much like Greta either. Poor Greta, who, most days, didn't quite seem to know where she was.
"Will we walk up to the sea ledge?" Johanna asked. "The wind is calm, and you must go once before you go home."
Shannon followed Johanna's lead as she powered her way to the top. Greta tried to catch up to them, but Lily took her wrist and leaned on her all the way back to the cottage.
"What do you think they're talking about?" Greta asked as Johanna's and Shannon's silhouettes got smaller and smaller.
"Not the price of eggs," Lily said as she eyed the backs of the two girls. "Not the weather either."
"What then?" Greta asked. But she knew. America. What people did for work and what kind of dinners they ate at night and where they drove in their cars. Johanna had been greedy for stories of Shannon's life since the moment she'd stepped into the inn.
"Come on," Lily said. "I'm dying for a cup of tea."
Just before Shannon left, she dipped into her suitcase of slippery scarves and clacking necklaces like Santa in his sack. She had planned on staying at a hotel the whole time she was in Ireland and had not planned on thank-you gifts. "It's not much," she said as she handed Lily a small bottle of perfume. She doubted Lily would ever use it—a twelve-dollar bottle of Chantilly from Gimbels—and she'd gone back and forth that morning in the room they'd given her over whether Lily would even realize how nice a gift it was. If Lily was anything like Shannon's mother, the bottle would sit on Lily's dresser gathering dust for the next two decades. She gave Johanna and Greta each a scarf, red with small white polka dots for Johanna, solid royal blue for Greta, who, upon accepting, said, "You gave the two prettiest away."
"I have nothing remotely masculine," Shannon said in Tom's direction, and smiled as his windburned neck and cheeks turned a deeper shade of red. "And this," she said, handing a card to Johanna. "It's my address and telephone number in New York should you ever come to visit. Any of you."
She imagined the card propped up on Johanna's dresser like the perfume on Lily's—to be looked at and admired but never used.
Lily swept in and kissed Shannon on the crown of her head. She squeezed the girl's hands together until the knuckles cracked. Greta was about to shoo her mother away, tell her to leave the poor girl alone, when she noticed Johanna still holding the small white card in both hands like the priest holds up the Communion wafer. "Go on," Greta said, nudging her sister with her hip. The rest of them were already outside, walking toward the black Ford that would bring Shannon to the bus. "I'm going," Johanna said, shoving the card into the pocket of her skirt and hurrying outside.
Later that evening, as they sat in a circle of light cast by the sixty-watt bulb, Lily said she'd miss Shannon, that the girl was a breath of fresh air, and wouldn't the girls miss her too? Yes, thought Greta, there was certainly a hole left behind in Shannon's absence—a big hole that had taken a place at the table, pulled
a chair right up to the fire, and was shaped just like America.
5
MICHAEL WARD NOTICED the bicycle on the caravan's first day in the Burren, before they had even set up camp. It had a white frame, which was unusual, and handlebars set wide so a rider could pedal without leaning forward. The chrome fenders were shining and the black rubber tires clean, as if the bicycle had dropped from the sky just to twinkle and catch Michael's eye in the late evening sun. It leaned against the mud-splashed gable of the first pub they'd seen in many miles, and Michael knew that wherever Dermot chose to camp would be within easy distance of this pub. An Bhoireann could not be crossed in a single day. Not by the old ones. Not by the ones who were too small to keep up but too heavy to carry. There were no trees in the Burren, few pastures, no bog, just slabs of limestone as far as the eye could see. Dermot claimed that there were rivers hidden beneath the bald landscape, that they flowed underground through caves and tunnels. As Michael walked, he tried to listen for the water rushing beneath his feet.
The Wards were on their way from Ennis to Kilkee, where one of their women would be married and handed off to her husband's people. Sometimes new husbands or wives joined up with the Wards, sometimes the new couple went to the in-laws. It was all a question of need, and in this case, the husband's people needed more women. The bride-to-be was young, only fifteen, and Dermot said that circumstance alone would be her dowry. Maeve had also gotten married at fifteen and now, three years later, had two girl children. Sometimes Michael watched Maeve and wondered what life would have been like as a girl. They had shared their mother's womb, swam in there together for nine months, split everything fifty-fifty, and then when the cards were revealed, he came out a boy and she a girl. The two little ones roared at her all day and, when the older one could walk, toddled after her as if she were attached by a string. Maeve had gotten fat. She wore her skirts too tight, too short. Their mother would have had plenty to say about it, and about the way Maeve once left the younger baby on the ground, where she rolled off down a slope, under a wooden fence, and could have been stomped by one of the grazing cows if Michael had not seen the empty blanket lying in the grass.
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