Shannon O'Clery
39—28 61st Street
Apt. 3D
Woodside, New York 11377
Shannon,
I have a favor to ask and I'm sure you wonder will these favors ever end. You know how Johanna has been as you've seen it yourself at the clinic. She is no better at home and looks at Julia sometimes like she forgets whether they've met. Johanna's milk dried up early on so Michael and I take turns feeding Julia with a bottle. When she cries Johanna looks at me or Michael and never gets up herself. Johanna is not a lazy person and so I feel it in my heart that something is wrong. The drunk woman upstairs is moving to Chicago to live with a man and has been turning Johanna's head with dreams of other cities. We've just got our feet under us here so I don't know what I'll do if she suggests we move.
The favor is whether you would mind coming by for a visit on Sunday 30 August. I have to work a double shift and Michael is working as well and has to go in the truck all the way upstate to Rockland County and won't be back before supper. It only happens once in a while and we can't turn it down. Neither of us like leaving Johanna and Julia together so long alone. Julia is a good baby but once she starts wailing she doesn't stop until she's picked up and I'd be afraid Johanna wouldn't go to her straight away and next thing the whole block would know we have a baby in here. It's bad enough the tenants know and them totally confused about the baby's father since we said at first we're Michael's sisters. Now we say I'm Johanna's sister and Johanna Michael's wife and act like they just misheard us the first time. I don't know if they believe it or not or if they care. If you came for a visit she'd be better about getting up and tending to the child.
I'll call from work on Friday evening to see if it works for you and if not, no problem, we'll figure it out. If you can't come I'll just call in sick from a payphone. We thought you might like to see the baby again anyway.
Love,
Greta
August 25, 1964
Michael Ward
222 East 84th Street
Apartment 1A
New York, NY 10028
Michael,
Bitty is in Ennis. Paul the butcher is putting this down. You had your girl and named her Julia. The brother with the lip came to tell us in Clonbur. He wanted no part of a place by the fire or a cup of tea. Our fire is as warm as any other and our tea as strong and I regretted offering. But he came and that was good. I was the first one he came upon and he tried to talk to me alone. Its a puzzle understanding him the way he swallows up his words poor crathur but he has his own way using his hands and going slow about it. He made like he was rocking a baby in his arms and we knew yours had come. Bitty was there and gave him a board to scratch the name so she could read it out. He's a good writer. Da called our men off and explained he doesn't know our ways. The brother is called Tom.
Da wont write again as he said his goodbye in his last and wishes you well. I wish you well too Michael tho I dont understand. You are an outsider now but we would want to see you if you return one day. The carravan has got very big so we are splitting in two. Catherine Donavan married a cousin too close and Da said at least there was no danger of that with Michael. The cousin she married is a drinker of the worst kind and shames her every day and night.
You are my twin Michael which is a thing I try to understand when I think how different we are. I hope your girl Julia grows big and strong and has a good head on her shoulders. Here is a length of lace from Mary Ward. Don't send another letter as it only makes us want to be always checking.
Your sister,
Maeve Ward
August 30, 1964
Greta,
I tried to wake you twice last night with no luck. Then Julia woke and you were up like a shot. Then Michael came knocking at the bedroom door asking if you needed a hand and I knew my chance was gone. You say I'm bad but when you left for work this morning you left the milk out on the counter and you know how fast it will turn in this heat. You have to pay more attention. You will be seventeen before you know it.
You must imagine I'm very thick if you think I don't know you've asked Shannon to come over later today. You and Michael aren't quiet when you talk, and the door of this room is as flimsy as an old sheet. I hear everything. You think I'm a bad mother and I won't argue. I wasn't meant to be a mother yet, but here I am. You had no intention of leaving Ballyroan but here you are in New York City and getting on better than I ever thought you would. Sometimes you hardly seem like the same Greta.
Before I tell you anything else, I want to apologize about the bank account. You will think it's the least of what I've done, but I feel it's the worst. It's the only thing I feel truly bad about because I know how hard you work for it and how you hate making nice to the women who treat you like some at home treat the tinkers. And me with a tinker child sleeping at the end of my bed. Life is strange. I feel most bad because I know it means you won't be able to go home, or at least not until you've saved it all up again which will take a long time, especially now that Julia is here. The God's honest truth is that I don't think you should go home anyway. Yes, there's Mam at home to help you but think of what you can have here that you can't have there. Think of what it would be like for Julia. The poster in the clinic said nothing is greater than a mother's love, but from the moment I had to switch to the big skirts and loose blouses I think you've loved her more than I do.
You will wonder how I can be sorry about the bank account but not about leaving, but it's the truth. I'm going to Chicago with Linda upstairs. She has a car that will bring us and a room at her boyfriend's place where I can stay. She's going to teach me how to drive on the quieter roads. After a few months I want to go to California and see what kind of a life I can make for myself. I left home because I wanted something else but every night looking at you and Michael and now Julia I think I might as well be in Ballyroan. You left because Mam made you and so it's different for you. And don't think I haven't noticed what's happening between you and Michael. I don't mind, believe me. Can you believe it never even crossed my mind to teach him his letters? I never imagined he'd be with us this long, but then again I never imagined being in the position I'm in. I hear the two of you in there every night turning sounds into words, and laughing, and you congratulating him, and him thanking you in that way he has, and it reminds me of how we used to listen to Mammy and Pop talking on the other side of the wall. Unlike me he will never ever leave you stranded. I see him look around for you whenever it's the two of us home and we hear the locks turning in the door and I thought to myself the other week that he is in love with you. And every night lately when you walk in from work, smoothing down your hair and already starting in with the stories from your day I see how much you've changed, and what good leaving home has done you, and also that you might love him too. And then I thought you would make a nice family. Him and you and Julia.
I believe Shannon is due to drop by and surprise me around 11: 00 this morning and I will chat with her for an hour then ask her to watch Julia for a minute while I run out to get more milk. Linda will be ready with the car packed. Apologize to Shannon for me. I hope she didn't have big plans for the rest of her day. I figure you'll be home around 4: 00 and she'll be in a panic about why I never returned. Then you'll find this letter. Then you'll give it to Shannon to read for herself. Shannon, I'm sorry. To Michael you'll have to read it out loud unless he's gotten further than I thought so please tell him how sorry I am. He is going to be the best father. He already is.
I will get in touch with you when I'm settled, and I'll understand if you are angry, believe me. With Julia, I trust any decision you make. If you want her to call you Mam or Mammy—or MOM—then by all means. Just don't give her away, Greta. I didn't go through all this to have her brought up by strangers and never hear of Ballyroan. I love you and despite everything I've said and done, I know I will miss you very much.
Leaving you is a million times harder than leaving Julia, or Michael, or even home.
&nbs
p; Your sister,
Johanna
Part IV: 1977
9
ON A WET FEBRUARY morning in 1977 Greta readied herself for work for the first time since giving birth to Eavan twelve weeks earlier. Julia had soothed her baby sister while Greta showered, and now, as Greta hurried to dry off and change the child's diaper before she started wailing again, she thought of how foolish it had been to expect a baby to be easy now, just because she'd raised one already at a time when she knew so much less. Knowing more might make it harder, not easier, Michael had said when they discovered that Greta was finally pregnant. And though he hadn't been totally serious, there were moments over the past twelve weeks when Greta had wondered if he might be right.
A half hour later she boarded the 6 train headed downtown and realized with a start that she'd been working at Bloomingdale's for more than thirteen years. She calculated the years again as she tugged at the bottom of her coat, which had gotten caught between the closing doors of the subway car. "Excuse me, please," she said to the man who had planted himself just inside the door, a massive backpack strapped to his back, and he shifted slightly to let her pass. Yes, she would be twenty-nine soon, and since she started at Bloomie's in December of 1963, this year would be her fourteenth. With her bag zipped tight and tucked securely under her arm, she fought her way to the middle of the car and found a seat between a sleeping woman and a man holding a pair of dress shoes on his lap. She had stepped in a puddle of slush on the corner of Eighty-sixth and Lexington, and as she stared straight ahead at an advertisement for business classes at Lehman College, she tried to move her numb toes inside her soaked sock. As she did so, she also realized that she'd worked in almost every department at Bloomingdale's at one time or another. With her hands warm inside thick wool mittens, she tried to name them all on her fingers while the stops raced by in a blur, and as often happened when Greta was tired and her glasses fogged with the steam of so many damp bodies pressed together, it seemed as though the stops were on a moving track and the train were standing still.
Women's sportswear. Women's formalwear. Women's intimates and hosiery. Men's sportswear. Men's suiting. Outerwear. Beauty. Home. Children's. Ten minutes later Greta stepped off the subway at Fifty-ninth Street and was swept toward the stairs like a piece of driftwood caught in a current. What's left? she asked herself as she passed the display windows along Third Avenue. Shoes? Accessories? The displays had changed more than once in twelve weeks, and the windows were lined with black velvet and featured different scenes starring Cupid with his bag of arrows. The mannequins were set up so that their backs were to Cupid, completely unaware that one among them was about to get shot and wounded. She noticed that one of the female mannequins was wearing a pale pink casual suit, and when she stepped up to the glass to inspect the outfit, she sighed and felt sadness in her throat, as if someone high up in the Bloomingdale's corporate office had made a specific decision to ruin her first day back. Linen. The suit had a single-button jacket and wide pant legs with two-inch cuffs.
"Jesus. And pleats too, I bet," Greta said as pedestrian traffic rushed behind her. She squinted up at the top of the pants. Her fears confirmed, she turned and pushed through the first of four heavy glass doors at the main entrance. She gave quick waves to each of the women in cosmetics and called over to Lorraine that she'd catch up with her later. Lorraine had once given Greta a collection of hair products to help her tame the frizz and get the curls to sit, as Lorraine put it, where they're supposed to sit. She'd also shown Greta how to powder the end of her nose so that it appeared softer, less sharp, but when she held the mirror in front of Greta's face, all Greta noticed was her same old nose looking back at her with a smudge at the tip, as if she'd spent the day baking.
As she let the elevator lift her to the upper floors, she tried not to think about the baby, whether she'd woken up again and started crying. Whether Michael had woken up and gone to her or whether he'd slept through it until one of the neighbors knocked on the door. Since starting the night shift, he'd either been unable to sleep at all or he slept like a dead person, with no hope of waking him. Julia had probably gone across the street to 225, where she and Pam Cooke, both in the same seventh-grade class, would spend the day trying to think of ways to convince their parents to let them go to a night movie alone.
Greta stepped off on the fourth floor, passed the sign that announced LINEN IS IN, and once she checked in with the other women who worked the floor, she headed to the dim and musty back room, where she ripped open box after box, tore away the plastic and the tissue paper, pulled out pin after pin after pin. This, she'd been told at multiple annual reviews, was where she really stood out. There was no one better at making the garments look presentable for display. They'd even asked her to train the new hires on how to work the handheld steamer. She had long ago decided to believe that expertise here more than made up for her consistent inability to pronounce all those Italian and French names on the labels, and knowing she'd probably get them wrong made her more reluctant to try. Still, she told herself she mustn't be the worst of the lot, because they'd asked her twice now to be a supervisor. Once when Julia was about three and again when Julia started kindergarten. Although she'd declined—the pay was only a dollar more per hour more, and she didn't want to be the one all the others hated — it felt good to be asked. She'd written Lily about it straightaway, but she must have forgotten to say that she'd ended up declining, because the next letter that came from Ireland said that Lily and Little Tom were having fun picturing Greta as boss.
She got to work with the steamer. If people knew this is how the clothes come, she thought as she worked. If they knew their pleats and their silk linings were once twisted like old washrags. After each garment was transformed, Greta arranged it on a hanger, placing the shoulders of each linen jacket squarely on the plastic arms, clipping each pair of pants so that the pleats were neat and sharp. She had the new shipment pressed by ten o'clock, and when she emerged, blinking, into the white and gleaming light of the floor, the store was busy with the tinny rasp of hangers being pushed briskly aside as women searched the racks for their sizes. Greta felt her head begin to ache as more and more women passed by with their choices thrown haphazardly over their arms. She imagined the clothes dumped on chairs in the dressing rooms, the wrinkles she'd just worked so hard to press away becoming more pronounced every minute.
"Another round with the steamer, Greta," Bonnie, the floor supervisor, said at noon as she approached Greta with an armful of garments.
"I wonder how long will linen be in," Greta said as she opened her arms to accept them. She thought again about the apartment, whether the baby's diaper had leaked, whether Michael had slept enough to go to work again that night. If he had gotten up, he'd likely be chatting away to her as if she could understand and talk back. It's a cold one today, Eavan, he might say as he tied the laces of his boots. Colder than yesterday. Will we warm your milk? Will Daddy have his tea?
"Oh no, Greta," Bonnie said, stopping abruptly and hugging the garments tighter to her body. She half turned, as if the clothes were a child she wanted to protect.
Greta followed the direction of Bonnie's shocked gaze and dropped her chin to look down at her own chest, which was stained with two damp circles.
Greta gasped. "I forgot my pads. I'm breast-feeding. Oh, Christ."
Ignoring her, Bonnie took a quick look over both shoulders to see if any customers had seen. Greta turned and walked quickly toward the employee restroom. "Cross your arms or something," Bonnie whispered after her.
In the bathroom, Greta saw that the circles had burst their boundaries and begun to run down toward the waistband of her slacks. Her blouse was blue, and the wet spots were dark, impossible to miss. Inside her shoe, her sock was still wet and cold, and that coldness, combined with the cold spots of her blouse against her skin, were like points of interest on a map, the map drawn on her body, all to show how her day was going so far.
After a fe
w minutes of useless rubbing at her chest with paper towels, she stopped and took off her blouse. She put the whole thing in the sink, turned the knob for the cold water, and watched the sink fill. When it had filled, she went at it with every bit of energy she had and once in a while looked up to find her own flushed face looking back at her from the mirror, her own two breasts swollen and huge, swinging away from her body despite the wired bra she'd bought to hold them back after Eavan was born.
"I don't know what to do with them," she'd said to Michael just the other morning as she was getting dressed. "I mean, my God. What do women do who have these their whole lives?"
Michael had laughed. "Don't look at me," he'd said, believing she was joking, and then reached out to cup one in his hand. He simply held it, as if testing its new weight, and then let it go.
As Greta was wringing out her blouse and about to walk it over to the hand dryer, Bonnie came in with a sweater set, tags still on, and Greta's bag hanging from her elbow.
"It was in the irregular bin," Bonnie explained, handing her the sweater set. She placed the bag on the floor and eyed Greta's bare stomach below her bra. Greta straightened her shoulders and tried to act as if it were the most natural thing in the world for your supervisor to see you in your bra, but she could feel her skin heat up and the prickly flush travel from her neck to her leaking chest and down to her stomach, which was threaded with faint pink stretch marks.
"Let's call it seventy-five percent off," Bonnie said. "You're not petite, are you? It's a regular small."
The Walking People Page 23