Seamus, despite his protesting against Gran’s harsh rule, acquitted himself well as a butler. He laid out the food and opened a bottle of wine with admirable ease. The wind blew his hat off and he merely stood on it until he was ready to bend and pick it up. He popped the cork and gave us each a jelly jar full of excellent red wine. Then he sliced cheese and apples, placed them beside a swarm of grapes, and finished by cutting pieces of a baguette into clever rounds. As a final ingredient, he placed wedges of Italian sausage on a pale, bone-colored plate that I guessed he had selected for its beauty.
“Would you like me to cook a leg of lamb as well, Nora?” he asked when he stepped back from the table. “Or will this do for lunch?”
“It’s very nice. Thank you, Seamus.”
He bent to pick up his hat and put it back on his head. Then he sat down across from her and took a swallow of wine. Ozzie sat between them, and that left the fourth seat, directly across from him, for me.
“May I take a picture of you all?” I asked. “I’m horrible with these phones, but it’s such a beautiful setting … and the meal looks so lovely…”
I found myself getting emotional.
“Let me take it,” Ozzie said, standing to take my phone. “You sit here between these two old birds. We’ll take it to commemorate your first meal on the Blaskets.”
“Thank you.”
In giving him my phone, our hands touched. It was such an insignificant contact, so casual and without meaning, that it stunned me to realize I blushed. Absurd, I told myself, but for the tiniest instant we stood close to each other, his body blocking the wind. A part of me realized I wanted a picture of him, too, so that I could send it to Milly to have her analysis. No one had sharper boy-antennae than Milly.
All of that passed in a rush. I handed him the phone. He took it and stepped back a half dozen paces. He bent down to adjust the angle while I sat at the table. Gran leaned to one side and Seamus inched over to make it easier to include him in the shot.
“Take the picture,” Ozzie said into the phone. “Take three.”
“Do you know—?” I asked, but he cut me off.
“Isn’t it Siri who takes the photo?” he asked, looking at me over the phone.
“No, you have to push a button.”
“I thought these phones could do it automatically.”
“Do you have a phone?” I asked.
“I have had phones. I don’t have one this minute.”
“No, I meant, are you familiar with how phones work?”
“You speak to them, I thought.”
“Take the blessed photo,” Seamus said, reaching for his wine.
“Why don’t I take one to show you?” I asked, rising.
“Siri,” Ozzie said, “take a photo.”
“It doesn’t work like that, Ozzie,” Gran said.
“I thought the point of these phones was to get Siri to help you.”
“Sometimes,” I said, hesitantly stepping around Gran’s end of the table to go to him. “It depends.”
The whole thing felt terribly awkward. I held out my hand. He smiled—and he did have a damn good smile—and handed me the phone. Our hands touched again. I took the phone and saw immediately that he had been joking. He had snapped four or five pictures, all of them candid because of his bluffing, and the business about Siri had been a ruse. He knew perfectly well how to take a photo with an iPhone.
Was he mean or merely devilish and playful? I wondered. I couldn’t say for sure.
“I get you now,” I told him, putting the phone away. “I see what you’re about.”
“Do you? It would help me to know what I’m about. Please tell me when you’ve made a full study. You’re the Dartmouth grad student, after all.”
“You Googled me,” I said, finally putting it all together. “You researched me.”
He blushed.
“No, you did!” I said. “You totally did. I’m flattered. And did I meet your expectation?”
“You’re not as tall as I thought you’d be.”
“But otherwise?”
He looked at me. I had the sense that he saw me for the first time. Truly saw me. Our eyes met. They did that ridiculous thing that men and women do with their eyes. Like stirring a can of paint with our vision; like looking for a match in the other’s cornea.
“Come on now,” Gran said mercifully. “Let’s have our lunch.”
“For once we agree, Nora Crean,” Seamus said.
When Ozzie climbed back into his seat, I took a picture of the table. I would put Milly on his case. She would deconstruct his look, his clothes, his body posture. Nothing escaped Milly’s attention once she focused on a subject.
* * *
A bit of a sea came up for our return journey. It was not threatening, but it lifted the bow of the boat and slammed it back down with many good, solid thwacks. Gran slept, her cheek on Seamus’s shoulder. For his part, Seamus stared straight ahead, occasionally closing his eyes. I wondered about their relationship, but I thought it impolite to ask. I had never encountered a couple, if they were a couple at all, whose flow back and forth held such quick wind changes. I knew they shared a deep affection for one another; that shined through everything they did together.
I stood beside Ozzie, my hand out to steady myself as the boat went from crown to trough in each wave. I was grateful for the waves; they gave me a sense of what the islanders had experienced and how the sea had kept them isolated. I could not imagine taking to the rough passage in the traditional canoes they employed, with nothing to propel them except oars. At the same time, the motion of the boat made me slightly seasick. I had tried to remain seated, but somehow standing made the sickness more endurable. Looking through the window ahead, I gauged how long the passage might take and what the strength of each wave might be. It helped to occupy my mind.
For half the passage at least, we didn’t speak. It was loud in the boat; the waves tossed foam at us and the wind pulled from the west. I had no feeling for Ozzie in those moments, good, bad, or indifferent. I was too intent on the condition of my stomach to give him much thought. But when we gained Dingle Bay the waves calmed and we moved forward in the lea created by Ireland herself. The Ferriter seemed to feel her work had been accomplished, and Ozzie moved the throttle back so that we might not be as jarred by the swells.
“There we are,” he said, turning to face me in three-quarter fashion, his attention still keeping the waves in mind, “the great adventure is nearly done. It looks like you’ll survive.”
“Thank you. Thank you for taking me out to see the islands.”
“It was just a hello. To get to know the islands, it takes a great deal more than that.”
“Yes, I know that. I take the research seriously, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
He looked at me full-faced and smiled.
“Sorry,” he said. “I’m protective of the heritage around here.”
“It must be terrible to have your American half at war with your Irish half.”
“Oh, it’s a great battle inside, believe me. If you put your ear against my chest, you’ll hear gunfire.”
“Are you sure it wouldn’t be harps? How is it that you don’t wear a tweed cap and have a bottle of whiskey somewhere easy to hand?”
“I have one,” he said and reached forward to pull a bottle of Bushmills from a pile of greasy rags stored behind the wheel. The bottle was half full. “Would you like a drink? This is Irish water. You might as well get used to it.”
“Sure, give me a drink,” I said, although it was the last thing I wanted.
But I didn’t want him to think of me as the prissy sort, an academic who lived on tea and overstuffed chairs. He handed me the bottle. I wasn’t sure of the protocol, so I twisted off the cap, rubbed the mouth of the bottle, and took a drink. I had intended merely to sip, but a wave caught me in the middle of it and forced the bottle higher. I drank, my eyes burning.
“Do you know,” he said when I pas
sed the bottle back to him, “that if a man or woman drinks from the same bottle without wiping it first, it means they are going to make love? It’s an old Irish custom.”
“I thought it meant a man couldn’t keep a set of glasses clean.”
“That, too, of course.”
He took a solid drink. He didn’t wipe the neck of the bottle. His Adam’s apple bobbed twice.
“And the tweed cap?” I asked.
“I have one somewhere, but I can’t put my hands on it. Do you like Irish whiskey?”
“I do.”
“Well, that’s a point in your favor.”
“Am I trying to win points? I didn’t know we were playing a game.”
“I think Gran wants us to play a game. She was born with a caul, you know? She’s said to have second sight.”
“Cauls were sold to sailors to keep them from drowning,” I said, calling up what I knew about the subject. “They were talismans to defend against witchcraft.”
“I’d need one on both counts, then.”
“And they bring good luck. Are you lucky, Ozzie?”
“I met you, didn’t I?”
“Are you sure that’s luck?”
“That’s to be determined, isn’t it?” he asked. “You’re different than I thought you’d be.”
“And how did you think I’d be?”
“Oh, a rather stuffy American. An American who came to Ireland hoping to find a more authentic version of herself.”
“You thought all that, did you? I’m impressed. Here I thought you were a fisherman, plain and simple. But now that you’re speaking, I could imagine you might have even read a book once or twice in your life.”
“I am a fisherman, that’s right enough. As to books, they’re the headstones of dead thoughts.”
“Where did you get that phrase?”
“I read it on a bottle cap.”
“And here I was thinking you weren’t a reader.”
He took another drink. Then he tilted the bottle neck toward me. I took a drink, too.
“Sure, I’ll go out with you,” he said.
“Out with me?”
The Bushmills burned down to my knees.
“It’s what you’ve been wondering since we met,” he said. “Whether I might fancy you. And whether you would go out with me if I asked. So I’m asking. Why don’t I take you to dinner tonight?”
I looked at him. There it was. Milly called it the moment of entanglement. You could either say yes and lose all hope, or say no and lose the same hope. I couldn’t say what I wanted to do in that instant. He was deadly handsome, and cocky, and obnoxiously sure of himself. But he was also a man who lifted his grandmother tenderly onto the beach of her childhood, and who skipped a day’s fishing to take a stranger to see an island he had visited countless times before. Nevertheless, I didn’t want the complication. It was all too new, all too foreign to me. I had work to accomplish. I had to set up my apartment, buy paper towels, put a grocery in a refrigerator somewhere. I didn’t need the complication that he inevitably represented.
“Only if I can buy you dinner,” I said. “And if it’s on a friendly basis.”
That sounded ridiculous even to me. I looked down, and when I looked up, he had broken into a full smile.
“I prefer to eat with enemies,” he said. “I’d hate for us to be friendly.”
Then he turned to Seamus and called for the old man to take the wheel. We had returned to Dingle and I had not thrown up on Ozzie’s shoes. I counted it an accomplishment. But I had no idea if we had set a date or not. The whiskey burned in my mouth and I felt a little dizzy. Gran woke and seemed momentarily unsure of where she was. Seamus slipped away from her carefully and relieved Ozzie at the wheel. Ozzie climbed out by the bow and readied the mooring lines.
“And that’s the Blasket Islands,” Seamus said with his wonderful lilt, his hands and eyes lively on the docking process. “And your hair has turned red as a morning sunrise, Kate Moreton. If you’re not all Irish, I’ll eat a crow.”
“You’re chipper when you wake, Seamus.”
“I wasn’t sleeping, Kate. I was communing with the fairy people. You have to close your eyes to do it.”
Then we bumped fairly hard against the fenders, and through the window I watched Ozzie jump onto the dock and tie his line off. He shouted something back over his shoulder to another boat. Seamus backed the engine for a second, and the boat swung its stern to rest. I turned to see Ozzie set the line there, but instead I caught Gran’s eyes. She smiled at me and I smiled back, and I had no idea what we had just communicated.
8
“Of course it’s a date!” Milly said over Skype, her image oddly bulging forward in her camera. “Are you kidding me right now? It’s a date and he’s hot as anything. You’ve been there one day and you’ve already snagged an Irishman.”
“I’ve hardly snagged anything. I don’t want to snag anything. I’m here to work, not to snag people. I’ve sworn off men forever.”
“But there you are. And you have a date. Biology wins every time.”
“I’m not some schoolgirl with a schoolgirl crush, Milly. I’m here to work on my dissertation.”
“Yes, you are.”
“Yes, I am what?”
“Yes, you are there to work on your dissertation. And yes, you are a schoolgirl. We’re all schoolgirls, honey. It’s the fates playing with us. You can’t help it. No one can help it. You don’t have to be giddy about it, but you don’t have to lock yourself away, either. Think of it as a chance to reach greater cultural understanding.”
She made an obscene gesture, a gross pantomime of a sex act. I laughed. I leaned forward and tried to see behind her into the interior of her atelier. She had been working on a painting, an enormous mural of horses and motorcycles and boys in tighty whities. It was a low-level commission from a mysterious woman she called her benefactress; she had combined the commission with a five-thousand-dollar grant from the New Hampshire Council on the Arts to keep her above water.
She had her hair in a bandana and a smudge of paint on her lip. Milly worked odd hours. She might stay up all night, then stay in bed for two days. It was how she worked. She called the good working periods her Da Vinci phase. She bristled with energy and competency whenever she hit that stride. In her down phase, she could be alarmingly reclusive, hiding out and refusing to answer her phone or messages until someone—usually me—went and ferreted her out and forced her to rejoin the land of the living. I had no concerns about her for the moment. A glance told me she was living on adrenaline and music and art. Seeing her, knowing what fun it would be to be sitting in the room with her, made me the slightest bit homesick.
“Honestly, Milly, you have to come up with another form of distraction than my nonexistent sex life. I couldn’t read him if my life depended on it. I don’t know if he’s going to show up or not. Or what time. Or anything. I’ve decided to undate him. I’m calling it off even if it never was a thing.”
“He’s a broody Irishman. Those are the deadliest of all. You know that show? The one where they go out fishing for Alaskan crabs? That’s you. You’re way out offshore, fishing for Alaskan crab. And the seas are tossing you and you might get killed, but you might come back a rich fisherwoman. Haul those traps, girl. Or are they pots?”
“He’s an American and an ex-serviceman. Don’t build him into a mythical creature.”
“What are you going to wear? You should be a little slutty. He wouldn’t know what to do with a slutty PhD.”
“I have a fleece and jeans, Milly. I’ve got nothing to wear. Even if it were a date, which it is not. Which I have just declared an undate. And I am not a PhD. I am a doctoral candidate.”
“Try on something so I can see.”
“No. Go paint something, Milly.”
“You better. He’s going to show up and you’re going to be going out all grungy. Do you think you’ll sleep with him? You’ll definitely sleep with him. First date, right into bed
.”
“Oh God, Milly.”
“Why not? How long have you been in the convent?”
“Since Abe.”
“Abe, the dour-faced.”
“He wasn’t bad.”
“Honey, you have a hunk of a man over there waiting to take you out. Put on one thing so I can see. Did you take a shower?”
“When I got back I did.”
“Well, doll up a little. You’re allowed to have fun, you know?”
“I’m here to work. What about that don’t you get?”
But I moved away from my computer and changed shirts after she gave me a look. The transformation wasn’t great. I put on some eyeliner and touched up my lips, the whole time talking to Milly about her painting, about news from Dartmouth, about my department. She filled me in on all the gossip and poured herself a drink of Irish whiskey to celebrate with me, and when I finished primping, she made me move the eye of the camera up and down so she could check me out.
“What shoes?” she asked when I finished.
“I have no shoes here. Nothing cute.”
“Just go with what you have. Wear it, sister. He’s just a man! Poor, stupid saps that they are,” she said, and laughed.
She drank some Irish whiskey. I wished I could join her.
We signed off a little later. I spent a few minutes in the bathroom checking my look in the mirror. I thought of Seamus telling me my hair grew redder by being beside the sea. He wasn’t far wrong. I looked sunburned and appropriately wind-swept. I didn’t mind how I looked.
Then for a while I sat on my bed and thought of Abe. Abe was the last visitor to the land of Kate. He was a grad student in Religious Studies at Yale Divinity. He was an atheist who studied religion, specifically the Greek Bible translations, in order to prove to himself over and over again that a belief in god, big or little G, was irrational. Conflicted, you might say. He was not a bad man, but he was what Milly called a raincoat. Practical, suitable, useful, and ultimately replaceable. We had dated sporadically after meeting at a translation conference in Milwaukee, and for a brief month or so I had believed, and so had he, that we might be a perfect couple, two professors at good colleges witnessing the work and times of the other’s life. We played at being together, I realized now; he had been the male figurine in my adult dollhouse dream. Ken and Barbie. Kate and Abe. He wore leather sandals that made saddle sounds when he stretched to reach something off an upper shelf. It had ended like a small, flaming arrow landing point down in a lake. It should have been more of a show, but it slipped beneath the surface and was over. I didn’t regret dating him, but I also didn’t remember much about it. He was a bowl of mac and cheese. He was a shredded carrot on a green salad.
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