The Carnival at Bray

by Jessie Ann Foley

  She grinned. “Expensive.”

  “Did ya hear that, everybody?” Eoin yelled to the startled strangers on the street. “Nobody fucks with Maggie Lynch!” Then he stopped right there in the middle of Grafton Street, whirled around, and kissed her in the rain.

  It was late by the time they got back to Nora Barnacle’s. Even Grazyna had gone home for the night, and a sleepy redheaded boy who looked practically prepubescent had to unlock the dormitory for them. They crept past the rows of sleeping forms, the cavernous room filled with the ambient sounds of breathing and rustling people. Maggie took off Kevin’s flannel and handed it up to Eoin.

  “You’ll be freezing without sheets,” she said.

  “I’m no wimp,” he protested, but he took the shirt and put it on. He helped her to make up her bed, then climbed up the ladder to the top bunk. Maggie crawled under the thin fabric and tucked herself up into a ball. She was freezing, and she could barely stand to think about Eoin above her, curled defenseless on a bare mattress. The springs creaked as he moved around, trying to warm himself. Ten minutes or so passed by. Then, he whispered,

  “You still awake?”

  “Yeah,” she whispered back. The bed creaked loudly, his white feet hung momentarily above her, and he jumped down, landing with a soft thud on the tiles.

  “You cold?”

  “These sheets are pretty thin.”

  “Move in, then,” he said. He raised his hands. “I promise to keep ’em to myself.”

  She lifted the sheet and he crawled under, close enough for her to smell his deodorant and the sweaty tang of his armpits. In the darkness, Maggie’s eyes were wide open. She could see the deep grooves in the wall, the messages scrawled by travelers of the past: names and dates, hearts and crosses, song lyrics. The accumulated totem scratches of the ever-moving world.

  Eoin reached over and pulled Maggie toward him, his arm a quiet promise around her waist, the heat of his body a radiant line down her spine. The want, the desire, crackled between them. But he didn’t try anything and she didn’t want him to; it was good enough, more than good, that he only lay beside her. Was it only two days ago that she’d wondered whether he would ever kiss her again? She remembered now the vial of perfume she’d bought at the drugstore next to the hostel, still unopened and unused in her duffel bag. Sometimes, even Dan Sean could be wrong about things. She drifted off to sleep with the Nirvana tickets pressed against her beating heart and Eoin’s breath, warm and guileless, against her neck.

  In a dorm with forty travelers, it was impossible to sleep in. They rose in the early morning to the zipping sleeping bags and gravelly voices of a Monday morning hostel, where travelers packed up to return to their real lives or their next guidebook destination. Eoin still had his arm around Maggie’s waist.

  “Good morning,” he mumbled into her neck. His face, puffy from sleep, made him look younger than his seventeen years. A red pattern from the mattress was imprinted on his cheek. She reached, with her fingers, and touched the puckered skin.

  “Sleep in for a bit,” he whispered. “I’m going to catch the early train back home and get my money.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I most certainly am.” He pushed a strand of hair behind her ear.

  “What about your aunt?”

  “She works at the pub Sunday nights. She probably didn’t get home until one or two last night. She’ll think I was sleeping. I’ll just sneak back in through my bedroom window, get my money, and put on my school clothes. She’ll probably even make me breakfast.”

  He pushed away the sheet, climbed out of the bed, handed her Kevin’s flannel, and pulled on his shoes.

  “You sure you’ll come back?” Already, she could feel how much she needed him.

  “Maggie.” He leaned his arms on the metal rails of the top bunk. “Don’t you trust me by now?”

  “I do,” she whispered.

  He scratched at the rusting springs of the bunk bed with his index finger. “I can be your person, you know,” he finally said. “I can be the person who won’t hurt you.”

  She lifted the sheet.

  “Come back under for a minute?”

  He smiled, kicked off his shoes, and climbed back into the bed. Maggie pulled the sheet over their heads. The sun filtered through the thin fabric, illuminating a faint line of stubble along Eoin’s jaw. It stirred Maggie in some primal way as yet unknown to her. He brushed the hair from her eyes, kissed her forehead, her neck, her lips, then eased out of bed again, winked down at her, and left for the train station.

  At Dublin airport, they waited in a long line at the Alitalia counter, only to be told that the sole flight from Dublin to Rome was sold out.

  “Sold out?” Maggie dropped her duffel bag at her feet.

  “Yes.” The ticket clerk, in her pert red and green neck scarf, smiled an empty smile. “Both today’s flight and tomorrow’s. I might be able to get you on for Friday morning.”

  “Haven’t you anything else? It’s extremely important that we get there as soon as possible.” Eoin, trying a new tactic, was now affecting an upper-crust Dublin accent. His Saint Brendan’s blazer and neat red tie made it sound almost believable. The ticket clerk clacked on her computer.

  “I’ve one flight to Bologna,” the woman said. “From there, you could take a train to Rome—it’s about three hours. But the seats are not together.” She looked at her watch. “And it leaves in fifteen minutes.”

  “How much?” Eoin pulled his wad of savings from the breast pocket of his blazer.

  “Two hundred ten for the both.”

  “Can we make it in fifteen minutes?” Maggie leaned anxiously over the counter.

  The woman picked up the phone. “I’ll see if they’ll hold the plane.” While she waited for a dial tone, Eoin began counting out the money. The months, even years, of savings accumulated on the counter in small piles.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” Maggie asked.

  “It’s just money,” Eoin shrugged, pushing it toward the clerk. “I’ve got my whole life to make more of it.”

  “You’ve got to hurry,” the clerk said, hanging up her phone. “They’ll only hold the plane a few extra minutes.” She handed them their tickets. “Run.”

  “Let’s go!” Eoin whooped. He grabbed Maggie’s hand and they bolted toward the security gates, bags flying behind them, as Eoin sang out the anthem of the Roma club soccer team at the top of his lungs. Roma Roma Roma! Core de ’sta cittá! Unico grande amore! De tanta e tanta gente! M’hai fatto ‘nammora! As they ran, they dodged the crowds of older travelers who stared after them, a few in sour disapproval, but most with half-nostalgic smiles, perhaps remembering the way they, too, had been when they were young and free and seeing the world for the first time.

  They arrived at the gate, breathless, just in time for the final boarding call.

  “See you in Italy,” Eoin waved, and he went off down the aisle in search of his back-row assignment while Maggie climbed, apologizing, over a middle-aged couple dressed in matching windbreakers, and settled into her window seat. She fished around in her duffel bag for Kevin’s compass and held its cool, calming weight in her palm as the jet engines roared to life. It was only when the plane began to taxi along the runway that Maggie realized the extent of what she and Eoin were doing. This wasn’t a forty-minute train ride into Dublin. There was an ocean involved, and national borders. But as the plane lifted into the air and she watched out the window as Ireland fell away, rocky and impossibly green, giving way to deep blue water and then clouds, white as silence, she felt a sense of calm. She was above punishment now. Whenever it was she decided to return to Colm’s house, she might be lectured or grounded or worse, but at this moment, she just couldn’t get herself to care much about some hypothetical future. Take the boy. Don’t ask permission. Those simple instructions were her only guiding principle now, the only command she felt she had to heed. The flight attendant came around with her cart, offering coffee and
packaged biscotti. Maggie ate gratefully. The food was as good as anything she’d ever tasted.

  It was raining when they landed in Bologna. The small airport stood encased in fog, and the plane had to park far from the terminal gates. Maggie carefully descended a slippery metal staircase and waited for Eoin on the wet tarmac. Around her, airport employees wore reflective gear and walkie-talkies and chatted with each other. Italian sounded like crescendoing, excitable Spanish, and Maggie felt an unexpected wave of homesickness for Chicago, where Mexican grocers and taquerias had peppered Lawrence Avenue down the block from their two-flat.

  By the time they’d cleared customs, bought their train tickets to Rome, and settled into their seats, it was already early afternoon, but the fog did not begin to lift until the train was well out of Bologna. The winter sun whittled away the clouds, and soon, out the window of the train, they could see the outlines of mountains and white farmhouses in the distance as if drawn in with pencil and then erased. She and Eoin sat across from each other, knees touching, and watched the foggy countryside roll along. “I’ve never left Ireland before,” Eoin admitted, his nose nearly pressed against the glass. “Even the cows look different.”

  Somewhere in northern Tuscany, the train went into a long stone tunnel, and when it came blasting out again the fog had finally burned off. The world was dazzling and clear, and they were there, she and Eoin, throttling through its magnificence. Unlike Ireland, the country of her ancestors, Maggie had never read about Italy, except during a boring seventh grade history project about Roman aqueducts. She was totally unprepared for its beauty. Crumbling farmhouses stood between the crevasses of hills painted with endless lines of spindly winter grapevines. Bare persimmon trees lined the dusty roads near the train tracks. Cypresses, the mythical trees of the afterlife, reached in clusters into the wide sky, as black and streamlined as arrows. Maggie and Eoin sat and gaped, chins resting on the windowsill of their train compartment. It went on like that for hours: Arezzo. Cortona. Montepulciano. Hills, pale dirt, stone walls, rows and rows of mute cypress and tangled, regimented vineyards. Outside the train was all of this, and inside was Eoin, his knee warm against hers, and the reclaimed concert tickets, nestled against her heart in the cup of her bra.

  By late afternoon the hills and farmland had given way to concrete buildings, the multiplication of human settlement. They were approaching the ancient city at last. It did not look the way Maggie had imagined it. As the train slowed, approaching Termini Station, they passed high concrete walls scrawled with colorful graffiti. On the other side of these walls stood tall apartment complexes with iron balconies where faded laundry hung to dry and old women lazed over the railings, smoking cigarettes and folding sheets. Through a haze of train exhaust, the women looked down at the people coming and going, flicking their cigarettes down into wilting vines.

  Eoin had torn the Roman subway map from a Fodor’s travel guide on sale at the airport book shop, a petty crime which had mildly scandalized Maggie, but in the dark stink of the station, with strangers jostling them and gypsies swaying by in flowered skirts shaking cans full of change, she was grateful for it. They found an open bench and sat down, gathering their bags under their legs.

  “There are two subway lines here,” he said, tracing the map with his finger. “The A and the B. It looks like we just need to take the A train and get off at Furio Camillo. The Jesus-feet church and the Casa di Santa Barbara are a short walk from there.”

  The afternoon rush hour had already passed, and the A train was quiet. Maggie and Eoin sat down beside each other, and as the subway jolted forward, they looked out the windows at the dark concrete maze of underground rail, their white, curious faces reflected in the glass. Ever since she’d known Eoin, Maggie had always been the outsider, he, the native. But here in Italy they were both strangers and foreigners. Here, they could hold hands and nobody would gossip. They could laugh through their bungled pronunciations and whisper their excitement in a mutually foreign tongue. They could be lost together, and in their anonymity, they had the freedom to be themselves.

  As they climbed the stairs and emerged from the subway station, Maggie discovered that the Eternal City actually looked pretty ordinary. Bits of trash clogged the gutters, horns honked, and people in office clothes, their faces hooded by helmets, buzzed by on scooters. But what did you expect? she asked herself. Crowds of toga-clad plebeians? This was a real city, after all, not a movie set. The convent hotel was a few blocks from the station, a rambling old building with peeling wooden shutters and sandstone walls. It had a big front door made of frosted glass, decorated with etchings of Saint Barbara. Inside, there was a sleek concierge desk, decorated with bowls of winter jasmine, but the air still smelled nunnish, like boiled meat and old textbooks. A woman in a plain black dress and tight ponytail looked up from the newspaper she was reading when they approached.

  “English?” Eoin asked, setting down their bags.

  “Yes, may I help you?”

  “We need a room for a couple nights.”

  The woman looked at them in silence for long enough to make Maggie squirm. Maybe she didn’t understand English after all?

  “Are you sharing a room?” she finally asked. She appraised Maggie with calculating disapproval from beneath a thick pair of eyebrows.

  “Well, we were planning on it,” Eoin said, looking confused.

  “You are—married, then?”

  “Oh! Of course,” Eoin answered before Maggie even had time to look in his direction. “I’m Eoin Brennan and this is my wife, Maggie. We’re here from Ireland for our honeymoon. We’re neighbors of Dan Sean O’Callaghan. He recommended this place. Are you Marta?”

  The woman’s iron face broke instantly into a maternal smile. She swiped off her glasses.

  “Ah, yes!” she said. “I am Marta! I know Dan Sean well—Ireland’s oldest pilgrim, we call him. You are very welcome!” She leafed through a large ledger made of leather and wrote down a number. “Signor and Signora Brennan. We will put you in room 19. And many congratulations to you.”

  She handed them an old-fashioned key with ornate edging.

  “May I carry your bag for you, Signora Brennan?” Eoin said, swinging Maggie’s duffel over one shoulder.

  “Oh, by all means, Signor Brennan!” They fell over themselves laughing behind the metal grating of an ancient elevator, which deposited them at the end of a dark, narrow passage lined on either side with plain wooden doors and ending, at the far side, with a large ceramic statue of the Madonna and Child, her robes the same azure color as the shrine in Dan Sean’s bedroom. But while Eoin walked ahead, carrying their bags, Maggie’s giggles gave way to a nervous counting down of room numbers: twenty-five. Twenty-four. I’m staying in a hotel room. Twenty-three. With a boy. Twenty-two. Did I bring pajamas? Twenty-one. What if I snore? Twenty. Are we going to—nineteen. Eoin stopped in front of their room and fiddled with the key. The Virgin Mary stood frozen on her throne adjacent to their door. Her blue eyes said nothing. In her head, Maggie remembered the words of Dan Sean’s rosary: Hail, Holy Queen, mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope. The key clicked in the old lock and the door swung open.

  Their room was as plain and quiet as one would expect of a former nuns’ quarters. A naked lightbulb hung from the ceiling, spotlighting the center of the room in bright white light and leaving the corners in darkness. The only decoration on the whitewashed walls was a simple wooden crucifix above the narrow bed, which was covered in starched white sheets and several layers of faded quilts. Next to it stood a desk with a small reading lamp. On the far wall was a window, shuttered by tight wooden slats. When Eoin went to open it, the cold air flooded in, and it sucked the door shut behind them. We are alone in a hotel room together, Maggie thought. Trying to appear casual, she flopped onto the bed and watched as Eoin unzipped his bag and began putting the small pile of clothes he’d brought into the top drawer of the dresser.

  “So,” she said, “what do you want t
o do tonight?”

  He took two neatly folded pairs of underwear from the bag and Maggie looked away quickly, scrutinizing the buzzing lightbulb in the middle of the ceiling.

  “Well,” he said, closing the dresser drawer, “I’ve heard it mentioned that Italy has some pretty good food. Maybe we should go check out one of these Roman restaurants I’ve been hearing about all my life?”

  “We are newlyweds, after all,” Maggie laughed. “So I guess we do have reason to celebrate. Do I have time to take a shower?”

  “Course,” Eoin said. “I’m going to go downstairs and check out the rest of the lobby. Guidebook said they’ve converted the old convent infirmary into a hotel bar. This, I have to see for myself.”

  “I’ll meet you down there?”

  “Okay, then.” He stepped forward, as if he was thinking about kissing her, but then, changing his mind, he stepped back again. Maggie was left in the middle of the tiny room leaning toward him, waiting to receive his kiss, as he fumbled, blushing, out the door.

  The bathrooms in the hallway were shared by all the guests staying on the floor. When Maggie entered the steamy women’s area, she saw three shower stalls covered in white plastic curtains, and two of them were occupied. The women behind these curtains had youngish voices, and were speaking in a language that Maggie could not identify. It was not Italian, though—Portuguese, maybe. Or even French. She couldn’t tell. Stepping into the shower, she felt the thrill of excitement of an American on the European continent for the first time. She strained to listen over the pelting water to their lilting voices, the unrecognizable trills and drops in language, peppered occasionally by girlish laughter. The hotel had provided a tiny tube of lemony shampoo with Italian wording scrolled across the package, and she squeezed some into her hair, then lathered her body with a seashell-shaped soap that smelled of tangerines. After Dan Sean’s corrugated tub, the little shower stall and the fruity toiletries felt positively luxurious.

  She rinsed off, wrapped herself in a towel, and stepped out into the steamy haze of the white-tiled bathroom. The two women were standing before the sinks. They were both completely naked.