"You're kidding," Julia had said, astonished. This mundane fact made Ireland seem closer. Getting to an airport and boarding a plane was a project, an event to be planned, coordinated, arrived for in the correct socks and shoes. But a bus was a different story. A bus never left the ground. People hopped on buses without thinking twice. She'd passed Victoria Station almost every day she'd been in London.
"Ever been?" Francis had asked.
"My parents are Irish," Julia said. "From the west. Galway."
"Oh," Francis had said. "So you know."
The next morning, a Friday, Julia had walked over to Victoria Station to see if it was true, how long the journey took, how much it cost. Twenty-two pounds sterling, the board said. She had more than a hundred in her wallet. I could do this, she thought. I could go. I could roll right into Galway City and take a local bus to a place named Conch. From there I could ask people to point me in the direction of Ballyroan. Maybe I wouldn't even have to ask. Maybe someone passing by the bus stop—coming out of a pub, perhaps, or on the way home from Mass—would recognize me as a Cahill. Maybe that person would offer me a lift, or at least lend me a bicycle. In Ballyroan they'd know me before I even reached the front door. "It's Julia come home," they'd shout. Johanna would take one look at her and know that Julia knew everything and had come anyway.
Standing in the middle of Victoria Station, Julia had looked down at herself: a dark gray gabardine suit with a pencil skirt that just hit her knees, bare legs, pointy-toed slingbacks that had pressed her toes into a single throbbing unit by the time she'd crossed the lobby of her hotel.
She'd waited until the bus passengers boarded. Men, women, and children with their backpacks slung over their shoulders. I could get on that bus, Julia told herself, but she stayed rooted to her spot. She stayed long enough to watch the bus pull away, the exhaust pipe billowing dark smoke that hung in the air long after the bus disappeared.
After a third vodka tonic, the three untouched hunks of cheese before her shiny with oil, Julia reminded herself that she had the advantage: Johanna and Tom didn't know about the night she'd feasted on the bundle of letters until Greta returned with a pizza box in her hands and a grocery bag dangling from her middle finger. In all the writing back and forth they'd done over these past weeks, no one had come anywhere near mentioning daughters and mothers, and who belonged to whom.
It would be kind of funny, Julia thought, if we died together today. If there was an accident and we died. And then when they examined the bodies and had to draw their conclusions, the doctors would discover that the driver of the 2001 Honda Accord and the female passenger were daughter and mother. Julia saw them sailing over the guardrail on the George Washington Bridge. She saw the nose of the car hitting the water. If they survived the impact, she saw them struggling with the doors, the windows, not immediately realizing that the electricity in the car had shorted out. That's the trouble with power windows, Julia might say, sighing, as the car sank to the bottom of the river.
The thought was the opposite of funny, Julia knew very well as she pushed her glass to the other side of the small table. It was just that an accident, a death, would represent very neat bookends in Julia's life. That's all. Johanna there when Julia began her life, and there again when she died. And no day in between.
Then Julia said to herself what Donald MacEwan used to say to her all the time: Julia, you are a very strange person sometimes.
Julia signaled her waitress. "Excuse me? Can I please get a burger and fries? And a very large glass of water?"
As Julia watched the stream of people coming out of customs and through the doors, she was sure she'd spotted them half a dozen times. In some instances the woman convinced her, in others the man. Each time, Julia either heard them address each other by name or watched as they were claimed by another person. Just once she went as far as saying "Johanna Rafferty?" to a woman in brown tweed, steel gray hair coiled at the back of her head.
"Sorry," the woman said, an American, shaking her head and turning away from Julia as she scanned the crowd.
After twenty minutes of standing on her tiptoes, keeping her eyes fixed on the double doors that all passengers had to pass through, Julia began to worry. The stream had been reduced to a trickle. A customs officer closed one of the doors.
"Is that you, Julia?" a woman's voice came from somewhere to Julia's left. For a split second she thought it was Greta. Eavan and James had spilled the beans, and Greta had come to the airport to put a stop to it somehow. But the accent was the slightest bit thicker, and there was a certain quality in the pronunciation of her name that made Julia turn around.
"Johanna?"
Johanna released the handle of her small suitcase, grabbed Julia, and pulled her toward the warm softness of her wool cardigan. Julia could feel Johanna's heart beating against her ear as the woman clutched her. Then Johanna pushed her away as abruptly as she'd pulled her close, pushed her as far as possible without letting go. She looked at Julia's face. She let her glance skitter quickly up and down Julia's body, and then land, again, at her face. As Julia let herself be examined, she noted that Johanna was taller than Greta. She wasn't fat, but she didn't have Greta's airy lightness, that impression Greta gave sometimes of being a collection of bones arranged and attached so precariously that a strong wind could blow them apart. If Johanna had two feet planted on the ground, it would take a lot to knock her down. Her coloring was the same as Greta's, and both women had stayed away from dyes when their hair began to turn gray. She looked, Julia supposed, exactly as she expected Johanna to look. She was wearing navy pants, very well cut, and a long, belted tunic-style blouse under her cardigan. Her earrings matched her necklace, and her nails were painted a muted pink. She is an attractive woman, Julia thought, and she is perfectly aware of her appearance. Without meaning to, Julia conjured up Greta and placed her beside her sister. Greta, who just a few weeks ago, after walking through Prospect Park with Julia, plopped down on a bench, looked at her feet, and said, "Are these the shoes I'm wearing? Well then, it's no wonder."
"You look like yourself," Johanna announced. "No one else but yourself. Doesn't she, Tom?"
Tom stepped forward, held his hand out for Julia to shake.
"Good God, Tom, will you not hug her?" Johanna asked, giving him a small shove. "All this time, and you put out your hand like she's a neighbor from up the road?"
Julia stepped up and hugged him as he blushed, patted her back, squeezed her shoulder, and then let her go. Unlike Greta and Johanna, who still had large sections of dark hair, his hair was completely white. Julia had forgotten how much older he was than his sisters. Ten years, at least. Maybe more, she couldn't remember. His face was windburned and shadowed with stubble except for one pale line extending from his top lip to his nose. A scar, Julia realized, wanting to reach up and run her finger along it. She remembered something about a cleft palate, telling Greta the proper name for when, as Greta put it, a person's mouth was twisted up toward his nose.
"Were you waiting very long?" Tom asked, pronouncing each word slowly and carefully, as if he were unused to the sound of his own voice. "They stopped me because I checked the box to say I work with farm animals. I was thinking of you out here wondering where we could be, and everyone else out before us." As he spoke, Julia noticed that he was careful about the placement of his tongue, the shape of his lips, the rhythm of his breathing as he exhaled through his nostrils. How difficult it must be, Julia thought, to teach an adult man to speak with a new mouth. How difficult it must have been to learn.
"They thought you had that mad cow disease, Tom," Johanna said. She turned to Julia. "You get wise to them, I suppose, after a while, going back and forth to America. They give no such trouble going to Australia."
To Australia, Julia noted. To visit the other brothers, she supposed. She almost laughed at the lengths Greta had gone to in explaining why Johanna and Tom couldn't travel. What a good job she'd done when Julia, at forty-two years old, even after
knowing all the other lies Greta had told, found herself surprised to learn that they could manage to leave Ireland at all. So it was only America they avoided. She pictured them at home, a generic seaside scene, waiting for the post and for their invitation.
"We can't have been the only country people on that flight," Johanna said. "The only ones who came into contact with a cow in the past month—or however they put it. It's still Ireland, for God's sake. It hasn't changed that much. You should have seen the cut of the boots on the man sitting next to me."
And then, before Julia could comment, Johanna asked, "How's your mother and father?"
"Oh, fine," Julia said, reaching to help with the bags, surprised to see that her hands were shaking. The pleasant buzz she'd had in the Euro Café had worn off mostly, but she could still feel the heat of the alcohol in her blood.
"Fine," Tom repeated. "That's an American word. I suppose Greta speaks American now too."
As they left the terminal and strode out into the sunshine, Julia excused herself for a moment and dialed James on his cell phone.
"All set," she said when he answered.
"Good for you," he said, "because we're up shit creek on this end."
"What?" Julia asked, trying to keep the alarm out of her voice as Johanna and Tom ambled along beside her. They stopped at the crosswalk. Julia overheard Johanna remind Tom to always look left first and then right when crossing a street in America, and then she watched as Johanna reached over and fixed his collar. She did not look nervous, Julia noted. Or guilty. Or ashamed. Or the least bit worried about what Julia would think of her. They were well dressed for a seven-hour flight, and at first Julia chalked this up to being old-fashioned. Then she remembered that they'd come prepared to go straight to the party. They'd gotten ready for the reunion three thousand miles ago.
"Little Miss Hormonal told Mom about the extra surprise, and she's not happy."
"Okay, well, what do we do? Do we still come?"
Tom and Johanna both looked over at her and then at each other. "I guess," James said. "I don't know. Your call."
Julia turned and took a few steps back toward the terminal. She smiled at Johanna and Tom, holding up a finger to show it would just be a minute. Johanna was watching her, saying something to Tom that made him shrug. As James waited for her decision, Julia watched Johanna take off her sweater, fold it, unzip her suitcase to place it on top. She watched Johanna undo the brown suede belt cinching her long blouse. She watched Johanna try to smooth out the wrinkles of her blouse with her hands. She watched her redo the belt. She watched her say something else to Tom, and she kept watching as they walked off a few paces to look at something in the distance. Maybe I should tell her that I know, Julia thought. Just to see her face.
"We're coming," Julia said. "Unless we hit serious traffic, we'll be there in less than an hour." She flipped her phone closed and rejoined Johanna and Tom.
"Anything wrong?" Johanna asked, again letting her eyes search Julia's body from head to toe. Julia was glad she'd gone out and bought a new outfit for the day, something more flattering than the conservative suits hanging in her closet.
"Not a thing," Julia said. She scanned the rows of cars and tried to remember where she'd parked.
"You're very tall," Johanna said. "Very good-looking. You have a lovely face, like your father. I'm sure he's still handsome."
Julia was prepared to be protective of Greta, but she had forgotten that Michael would need protecting too. Not from insult—it was already clear that Johanna would be careful not to hurt them—but from claim. Earlier, when Johanna first asked for her parents, Julia imagined herself standing in front of Greta in a defensive stance, feet apart, hands on hips. Now she saw herself reach forward and pull her father back to stand beside her mother, to huddle together behind the boundary Julia had drawn, a limit that would not be passable.
"I thought we just decided she looks like herself," Tom said.
"Greta knows, doesn't she?" Johanna asked abruptly. "About us coming?" She looked intently into Julia's face.
"Of course," Julia said. "She can't stop talking about it."
"Can she not?" Johanna asked softly. It was a gentle admonishment, but one Julia did not miss. The message was clear. Johanna would do this—walk into a party where she was not invited—but she would not be spoken to like a fool. Julia felt as if she'd been slapped on the wrist. Don't tell me about my sister, Johanna's tone said. I know her better than you think.
But then, as soon as the moment began to feel too awkward to slip by without acknowledgment, Johanna nodded, resumed her story about the movie they'd watched on the plane. It was not indifference to the enormity of the day, Julia realized. It was determination to keep the moment light. If this woman ever cried, Julia concluded, she did so privately and made sure the tear tracks were gone before she saw another soul. "The main woman is just recently divorced and puts a notice in the paper advertising herself..." Julia watched as the woman who gave birth to her chattered on, ran her hand through her thick hair, tried to puff it up a bit, switched the pull handle of her case from left hand to right.
This is my mother, Julia thought as she tried not to stare. This woman with impeccable posture who keeps looking down at her pants as if to make sure the crease is still sharp carried me in her belly and pushed me out through the birth canal. She pushed and pushed and tore and bled until I landed in Greta's lap. And then she went away. Greta, who was only sixteen. Greta, who once told Julia that having a baby so young felt a little like playing pretend and how impressed she was with herself when she realized that she could buy Julia's clothes at the secondhand stores on the Upper East Side, where the quality was better than buying new clothes at the cheap stores. Figuring that out, she once told Julia, gave her courage. Not because of the clothes, but because it was a good idea and she'd thought of it. Greta, who'd laughed as she recalled how she used to mash up whatever she and Michael were eating for dinner and try to feed it to Julia, until Mrs. Kline down the hall told Greta the baby was too young, far too young. That child needs breast milk for another four months, the old woman had said, and then frowned when Greta explained to her—and later explained to Julia—that her milk had dried up early on. How on Sundays she and Michael used to take Julia on walks around the neighborhood and fold back the hood of the carriage so anyone who wanted to could have a look.
"How long has it been, exactly?" Julia asked as she opened the trunk and Tom stacked their cases one on top of the other. While sitting at the café, Julia had calculated the years almost to the day.
"A long time," Johanna said, and daintily held the belt of her tunic as she climbed into the backseat of the car.
"But how long?" Julia pressed. "Have you added it up? You must have. All those hours on the plane. Forty years? A little more than forty years?"
"You know..." Tom said as he climbed into the backseat beside his sister. He was most of the way in before Julia saw where he was going, and she decided not to point out that he should sit in the front. "A farmer once found a pig in the bogs of Ballyroan that had been there for more than five hundred years. At first he thought it must be one of his own, sunk down the season before, that he'd never noticed missing, and the people who saw it said it looked no worse off than a pig who might've died the day before. Scientists came to look at it and everything."
"And?" Julia said as she turned the ignition of the car. In the rearview mirror she saw him give Johanna two quick pats on the knee before clasping his hands in his own lap.
"And that's it. End of story. Time is a funny thing."
17
THE PLANE HAD been delayed. There was traffic on the bridge. Johanna called James to say that they might make it before the end of the party, and they might not. Greta dreaded the thought of them walking in like everyone else, having to see each other for the first time in front of so many people who had no idea what it meant. She also dreaded having them walk into a near-empty house, with no one there for her to hide behind
. She stopped herself from looking out the window every minute. She tried to keep busy. Once in a while she walked down the hall to her bedroom, shut the door, and looked again at the constellations Johanna had drawn on the back of the envelope Greta still had not opened. The envelope was light in her palm, and Greta doubted it was more than one page. There's nothing in here that won't be said in person this weekend, she thought each time she replaced it on her nightstand. Nothing here that won't be said a hundred times.
As far as Greta could tell, everyone who'd been invited to the party had come. The sandhogs were all freshly scrubbed, shaved, tucked into slacks and dress shirts. Some were wearing sport jackets despite the warm day. The wives kept sizing up their husbands, as if searching for that last unsightly gash across the knuckles he'd forgotten to bandage, that patch of dried mud he hadn't gotten out of his hair. The rest of the party was made up of people they'd known from Eighty-fourth Street and people they'd met at socials at various Irish cultural centers over the years. They'd made friends in Recess—mostly the parents of James's and Eavan's classmates—but those friendships had faded as soon as the children grew up and moved away. None were so close that Greta felt she should invite them to the party, and none of them would have fit in. As James once pointed out, all anyone talked about at these parties was Ireland. When they'd last been home. When they were going home next. They bragged about how much home had pulled itself up and dusted itself off since they left. Paul McCartney had gotten married at home. Some famous actor had been looking to buy a derelict castle in Connemara. All the Hollywood types went golfing at home now. Best golf courses in the world. No need to leave home nowadays, these exiles said. No way. No better place in the world. No more Irish pouring into New York without two pennies to rub against each other. The ones who come now go straight to Wall Street or to some other job in downtown Manhattan.
"I have a job in downtown Manhattan," one of the older sandhogs pointed out. Most of the men had partial hearing loss, so they turned and asked each other, "What? What did he say?" The joke was repeated, louder.
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