Seven Letters

by J. P. Monninger

  And what did that make me? That was part of the reason I felt reluctant to get involved again. Even with a broody Irishman.

  After a little while, I pulled out a recent narrative I had come across at a home in Springfield. It was an account written by a daughter of her mother’s final years in a nursing home. The mother had grown up on the Blaskets, had reached the age of seventeen before emigrating to America. In her final senility, the old woman had begun speaking in Irish again, returning to her childhood tongue as if the memory of it could no longer be suppressed. The daughter had transcribed as much as she could, but she hadn’t known where or whom to contact about it. Through a string of connections, the narrative had surfaced into my hands. I could not read it fast enough, or deeply enough, or with anything but unbridled sympathy. It was the kind of academic gold that made careers.

  Ozzie did not show up. After a half hour, I leaned back to get the bedside light to fall more easily onto the page of my printout. After forty-five minutes, I closed my eyes. I woke with a jolt fifteen minutes later, temporarily confused at my whereabouts. When my head cleared slightly, I rose one last time to look around, to check my phone, but I had no messages from him. Part of me felt relief. That settled it. It had not been a date, and I had not been stood up, and now I could go to bed and fall asleep without worry. I did not need to end my sabbatical from men. I could concentrate on what had brought me to Ireland in the first place.

  I tucked myself deep into the bed and finally closed my eyes. The house smelled of lemon cleaning soap. I had read once that Hemingway used to recall streams he had fished just before falling asleep. He would re-fish them, casting in his near dream as he had casted in life. It was a way to fall asleep, to enter the dream-world, and I found that I could trace my steps on the Great Blasket Island in the same way. I walked the center avenue and looked at the schoolhouse and church, and the wind came off the sea, and sleep rose up the chimneys that sang in the village and carried me away.

  9

  I admit it: I expected Ozzie to show up at breakfast with some sort of apology, a lot of nonsense about mistaken understandings, but he didn’t. Neither did Nora send Seamus to take me off on another adventure. I was on my own. I needed to get back to the University of Limerick to move into my apartment and give myself some semblance of order, but I felt, absurdly, slightly abandoned by my guides of the day before.

  At breakfast, Mrs. Fox fed me a hole-in-one egg and toast plate with Irish bacon on the side. The bacon tasted like ham. I ate and drank tea and studied the map of Ireland I had saved on my phone. I had already visited the Blaskets, I reminded myself. I hadn’t expected to make it out there until spring, honestly, and so I felt a bit ahead of the game. Over a second cup of tea, I had a lovely scone with currant jam. When Mrs. Fox looked in to check on me, I asked her if she had any messages for me.

  “None, dear,” she said. “Were you expecting something?”

  “No, not really. I just wondered.”

  “Did you meet Ozzie?” she asked, lingering in the doorway, a tea towel draped over her shoulder.

  “Yes, he took us out to the Blaskets on his boat.”

  “That’s what I heard.”

  She didn’t say anything else, but I had the sense that she wanted to. Our eyes met.

  “He’s an interesting man, isn’t he?” I asked, trying to stay noncommittal. It was impossible to know who was related to whom, how the trees of such a small town forest were arranged.

  “He’s a gallant lad,” she said, her eyes remaining on mine, “even if he hops a fence now and then.”

  “How does he hop a fence?”

  I sipped my tea. My background as an interviewer stood me in good stead. Two ears and one mouth was a rule I lived by. Listen more than talk.

  “The usual way of young men, I suppose. Do you know the story of Androcles and the Lion? The one where the lion has a thorn in its paw? Well, Ozzie is a lion who never had the good fortune to meet his Androcles.”

  “And the thorn…?”

  “It’s the war, of course. He went with you Yanks to Afghanistan. If you don’t mind a bit of political talk, that war was a fool’s errand from the start. That’s my view of it, anyway. It’s one thing to fight for your own country if it’s under attack, but to go halfway around the world to engage in military action against a bunch of primitive societies, well. Forgive me if I’ve spoken out of turn.”

  “So you think he carries the war with him?”

  “Yes, I do. It’s hard to put such a thing down when you spent so much time carrying it.”

  “That’s a big thorn.”

  “You’ll not have to say that twice. Well, I am certain I’ve said more than I should. Ozzie is a nice young man, but troubled like many are. And handsome as the devil, which makes him irresistible to the girls about.”

  “Does he have a girlfriend, then?”

  I felt myself blush as I asked the question. What in the world was I doing? What did I care if Ozzie had a girlfriend? I needed to have my head examined. I pushed at the last of my breakfast with my fork. Mrs. Fox switched the towel from her right shoulder to her left and brushed at the lint left behind.

  “Girlfriend or acquaintance? In an earlier day, it was easier to know what a person meant to another person. Nowadays, I’m not sure what girlfriend even means. But he has an eye for the ladies, as he would. And with his good looks, he doesn’t lack for opportunities.”

  “I’ll keep a watch on him, then.”

  “With a good heart, though. Ozzie, I mean. He’s done no end of charitable work in these parts. He’s keen on dogs, too, you know? He’s adopted a dozen dogs over the years. He tries to place them with families. No one would speak against that. Have you seen his place?”

  “No, we just spent the day on the boat. With Gran and Seamus.”

  “Oh, you must see it. It’s the grandest view hereabouts. You can sit and wear the sea as a tablecloth from where he lives.”

  I smiled at her use of tablecloth. She hung about for a moment longer, doubtless wondering what else she could tell me, then she bustled back into the kitchen. I imagined what Milly would say about the dog rescues. She would flip over that. She would say it promised a good heart, which might have been a fair assessment. In any case, it didn’t matter. Ozzie was not on the menu. I did not need fried Ozzie or baked Ozzie or fricasseed Ozzie. I finished breakfast, thanked Mrs. Fox, and carried a cup of tea back to my room. I still felt sleepy and slightly jet-lagged.

  I sat on the bed and spent a few minutes checking bus schedules. I needed to get to Limerick. I needed to check in with the administration at the university, and I needed to set up my apartment. The weight of travel, and my temporary dislocation, had begun to catch up with me. I wanted to set up a base of operations and work from there. I would feel better, I knew, when I could put my head down on a familiar bed.

  I was still checking the bus schedule when my phone buzzed. My mother’s picture appeared on the screen. I wondered at the simple proposition telephones gave us about the people in our lives: green: accept, red: reject. Two rings passed and fluttered before I could decide. At the three and a half rings, I punched green. Accept. Her voice sounded surprised, as if it had expected to leave a message and now had to deal with a live person.

  “Kate? Can you hear me?” she asked.

  “I can hear you, Mom.”

  “Are you already in Ireland? I didn’t know your schedule.”

  “I am in Ireland,” I said.

  I was aware of giving flat answers to her questions, but that was an old story between us. Usually my mom had more to say than to hear.

  “Well, good for you. That’s wonderful. Ben sends his love, too. He’s right here with me. We’re going to Italy on Thursday. It’s raining like anything there, but Ben loves Rome. He can’t get enough of it. Even with the sun. There’s much more sun in Italy than there is in Ireland, I suspect.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Now, listen, we gave some thought to
visiting you in Ireland. Everything is close once you’re over in Europe. Don’t you find that to be true? We’re looking at a boat, a sailboat, that Ben has his eye on. Really a gorgeous ship. It’s owned by a group of investors, well, a corporation, really. They keep it for outings and such, to close deals, I guess, and they staff it with some Eastern Europeans. Anyway, Ben spotted it on one of his sailing newsletters…”

  I heard Ben speak up. He had been listening. He always listened. He spoke loudly and Mom covered the phone with her hand, I guessed. Then she came back on.

  “… oh, he says it’s a website. The sailing website. Not a newsletter at all. Yes, that’s right, dear. Okay, yes. A Spirit C 65. Not a vintage boat, but a modern classic.”

  “I’m not sure you can have a modern classic, Mom. Classic connotes age.”

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Nothing. Just a quibble about words.”

  “Well, that’s your field, darling. Anyway, it doesn’t look like we can make it after all. We have to be back for the Adlars’ dinner dance. The white dance. You know, they throw it every year, and that has become a classic.”

  “Absolutely.”

  She had heard my quibble about the oxymoron of modern classic. And she had rolled over it. My mom could be deaf or blind whenever it suited her.

  “You laugh, but it is an event. And they raise a lot of money for needy causes. We have a table for ten we are hosting. I have to arrange the centerpieces. We give those away to funeral homes afterward. They reuse the flowers. I just learned that. Imagine that? All this time going to the white dinner dance, and I never knew the flowers were recycled in that way. It’s made me proud of our little group.”

  I sipped my tea to steady my tongue. I wanted to bite the ceramic cup in half, to take a half-moon bite out of it like a great white snapping a chunk out of a surfboard. Our little group meant our little group of filthy rich old bastards. It meant a bunch of men—yes, the men were the breadwinners, corporate pirates all, some barely legal, some legacy brats who were handed reams of opportunity from their families, while the gals (yes, they were called gals) arranged social functions and put together centerpieces and consulted each other about outfits, and sweater swatches, and wallpapers and designers and gardeners and kitchen renovators and yoga instructors and dog trainers and security companies and golf coaches. Our little group. It was the group that my mother invaded and conquered after the death of my workaday, Irish firefighter father. It was the group she had joined before the death of my father, so that his last days flickered by with the knowledge that she had already gone to another man, leaving him behind to die as a cuckold. She couldn’t wait. She saw an opportunity for a bigger, fuller life, she said when I confronted her about it in the wake of my father’s death, and she took it. Like Sauron in The Lord of the Rings, she had sought the one ring to rule them all, a wedding ring from Ben Applegate, one of the best pirates to ply the corporate seas of central Massachusetts, one of the richest pirates, one of the catchiest catches to swim in her waters. Whatever our life had been, whatever my father’s contribution had meant to her, had been eclipsed by the 173 acres of the Maxwell Country Club, by dinner dances and charity balls, by Ben of the bushy eyebrows and whale-printed trousers, tasseled loafers, argyle socks, and trips to Italy to look at classic, but new, wooden yachts.

  That was my mom. And that was why we didn’t do the daughter-mom thing very well.

  “That’s great, Mom,” I said, because it was my turn to say something.

  “Well, I thought I should keep you apprised of my whereabouts. In case.”

  “In case of what, Mom?”

  “In case of anything, dear. In case something important comes up and you need to contact me. Or, for that matter, if I need to contact you.”

  “That’s why cell phones were invented, Mom. It doesn’t matter where we are.”

  “Please don’t be snippy, Kate. We’re all doing our best.”

  “You’re right, Mom.”

  “This is just your bourgeois mother doing her bourgeois best, Kate.”

  “I know, Mom. Sorry. I’m just tired from travel.”

  She took a breath. We often took time-outs for breaths when we had a mother-daughter talk.

  “It is exhausting, isn’t it? Travel, I mean,” she said after a moment. “And they’ve only made it worse. All the crowds milling and the suspicion. I really believe it’s the suspicion that tires one out. People look at you as if you’re carrying a bomb, for goodness’ sakes.”

  I heard some quick talking in the background. Ben’s voice spoke a little louder. My mom murmured something that I couldn’t quite make out.

  “Have to go, sweetheart,” she said, coming back to speak directly into the phone so I could hear again. “Ben can’t find his club covers. He took them off so he could clean his woods and now he can’t find them.”

  I bit my tongue to keep from saying anything smart-assed. Golf clubs. Woods. Leaving a call to your daughter so that you could search for something insignificant for your semi-new husband. That summed up more than I could ever make her understand. And I felt like a whiny baby for thinking it.

  “Love you, Mom,” I said, to bring some warmth to her from my side of the ocean.

  “Love you, Kate. Enjoy your vacation.”

  Not a vacation, I wanted to say. But then the phone clicked off and my mom went questing for the lost wood covers of Avalon. Whether she gave a single thought to the fact that I had journeyed to her first husband’s homeland, to his heart, really, I couldn’t say.

  10

  Elsa Bunratty showed me to my faculty apartment.

  “We put you on the second floor,” she said as we walked across the University of Limerick campus. It was a dark, overcast day, rainy in the way that Ireland was often pictured in the movies. Windswept, I kept telling myself. Elsa pushed her bike. She took her bike everywhere, she said. In fact, she told me, the women on campus had something of a bike society. I didn’t know what to make of that, so I didn’t say much in response. Her bike was the sort of English bike I always associated with vintage movies from the 1940s. It was black and solid, and a chunky chain-guard covered the center pedal stem.

  She wore a gray skirt, tea length, and a soft cream cashmere sweater that rolled under her chin. A yellow slicker covered everything. She was beautiful in the way of Beatrix Potter, a woman I pictured in a cottage with a liver-shaped garden filled with tall, curious perennials outside her door. Maybe a cat. A fireplace, certainly, and a pot of tea ready whenever it was needed. A garden fence and a circular window that looked out on the River Shannon.

  That’s how I imagined her. In truth, she was a good bit more direct and serious. She was in charge of campus housing, big and little, faculty and otherwise, and it was, I gathered, an enormous job. She had agreed to walk me over—usually she would have sent one of her assistants, she said—but they had just renovated my apartment and she wanted to see for herself if the work had been done satisfactorily. She was my age, more or less, and I was glad to have her company. She put my small backpack in her front bicycle basket.

  “We like to put women on the second floor. A bit more secure,” she said as we passed a large stand of graceful pines. “On the first floor, students can be tempted to peek in and be a bother. That sort of thing. Just mischievous.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Not that there is a big problem. I don’t mean to imply that. It’s a precaution. It’s quieter, too. You won’t hear much noise from where you are, and you can catch a glimpse of the river from your kitchen.”

  “That sounds wonderful. I’m excited to see it. I’ve been dreaming about it from the moment I received my confirmation.”

  “You’ll be comfortable. And if you’re not, don’t hesitate to contact me. I mean it. That’s my job and I take it seriously.”

  “I’m sure it will be perfect for me.”

  And it was. She led me to a two-story building on the banks of the River Shannon. The bui
lding shared a common; a fountain took up the center, where a bronze statue of an archer pointed his bow toward heaven. I assumed this was a faculty common; around me, from what I could tell, other faculty members had set up shop for the academic year. When I asked her if that was the case, she nodded.

  “We have faculty from twenty-seven countries,” she said, shaking out her keys and fitting one of them to the lock on Number 86. “Some on a permanent basis, some on a year-by-year contract. It’s a lovely arrangement. It makes for an interesting campus life. You never know who you might run into.”

  “Do they all teach?”

  “Most do. Some do research as you are doing. We have a pub on campus—well, two, actually. You’ll meet everyone in time. You can get as involved in the social life as you like, of course. Some find it stimulating and some prefer to keep their own company.”

  She opened the door to a flight of carpeted stairs. I followed her up. I didn’t know what to expect; the photos online had been difficult to piece together in any meaningful way. But as soon as we mounted the last step, I felt a knot of pleasure deep in my belly. The apartment, I knew beforehand, was a studio, but it was clean and freshly painted and the windows opened to the river behind the building. The River Shannon, which I couldn’t help recalling the line from James Joyce’s immortal story, “The Dead.” The dark mutinous Shannon waves, he had called it, but from my window, when I pushed back the plain navy curtains, it looked anything but mutinous. Even in my first glance I saw white herons fishing the waters, their legs causing Vs in the rapids as they waded and cast their beaks down to spear a fish. It filled my heart with hope. It was as perfect as I could have dreamed.