Crooked Branch (9781101615072)

by Cummins, Jeanine

  She stares at me without answering.

  “So hey, can I get you a drink?” I ask. “Seltzer, Diet Coke, coffee? I might make lemonade.”

  “Coffee’s good,” she says. “Thanks.”

  She holds Max on her hip and examines the kitchen with naked admiration. She bends to gaze into the glass doors of the Sub-Zero. “That is one fancy fridge,” she says.

  “Yeah, we’re into food,” I say. “My husband’s a chef.”

  “You said that.”

  I remember telling her that I was a food writer, but I guess I was bragging about Leo, too. I can’t remember. My brain is so slushy these days. I fit a filter into the coffeemaker and dump the grounds in on top, fill up the tank with water. I can do all of it with one hand, because Madeline clings on to me like a monkey. Her limbs are lithe and strong, and I barely have to hold her. She’s so easy. The coffeemaker begins to gurgle at once, and Madeline laughs at it. She claps her hands. Jade steps to the living room door and peers in.

  “We’re renovating,” I explain. “We’ve really only finished the kitchen, so far.”

  “Yeah,” she says, stepping through to the living room. “Is this whole place yours? The whole house? Or it’s a two-family?”

  “No, it’s all ours.”

  “Cool. Nice to have so much space.” I feel like she’s casing the joint. I’ve never seen anybody so unself-conscious about checking out someone else’s stuff. Oh. I left the empty Fritos bag and the peanut butter on the desk in plain view, just through the open doors to the office.

  “Yeah, it needs a lot of work, but we’ll get there,” I say, sweeping into the room and closing the office doors, hiding my paraphernalia inside. “It’s got great bones, this house. I grew up here, actually.”

  “What, like in this actual house?”

  “Yeah, it was my parents’ house. Leo and I bought it from them last year, when we found out I was expecting. They were moving to Florida anyway, so we moved in.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  I flick the yoga mat out on the floor, lay one of Emma’s blankets on top of it for the babies. We really have to get the wood floor installed, and an area rug.

  “Living in the childhood home,” Jade says ominously.

  “Yeah.”

  “Cool,” she says, but that is definitely not what she means.

  I am so relieved to hear Emma cry out on the monitor.

  “She’s up!” I say. “Back in a minute.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  IRELAND, JUNE 1847

  When Michael was two years of age, before Maggie and Poppy came along, Ginny gave birth to a little boy who was unwell from the very start. He just wasn’t right. He came a few weeks early, and was quite small, had trouble getting a proper breath into him. Raymond and his brother, Kevin, took the baby straightaway to the church, when he was only a few hours old, where Father Brennan christened him in great haste. They called him Thomas, and they expected he wouldn’t live to see the light of his first dawn. But he did, he survived. He ate little, but he fought so doggedly that Ginny allowed herself the terrible comfort of hope. And with each morning that she awakened to find him squirming and struggling—growing stronger, she thought—beside her, that crazy hope flourished. Until the morning of his ninth day, when he finally grew still in her arms. And he died.

  Ginny remembered the howling depth of her grief and despair. Her rage was such that not even young Michael could comfort her. He, who’d been her baby only two weeks before, seemed suddenly garish after the death of his tiny brother, a big and clumsy boor of a child who squealed and crashed around the cottage, oblivious to his mother’s anguish.

  They waked Thomas in the house, as was their custom. Raymond brought in enough poitín for the whole of the parish, and it was a good thing, too, because they all came. Every man, woman, and child in Knockbooley came to the Doyles’ door to console them. But it was difficult all the same, to manage the festive mood of a proper wake, because there was so little of Tommy’s life to celebrate. Nine days. There was no one, really, to grieve the loss of him, only Ginny, and then Raymond. The women of the parish did their best, though. They keened for him. And when they brought in the tiny coffin, Ginny was horror-struck by the sight of it.

  She went down on her knees and begged God to take the pain away from her, to take her along with her child into the grave. She remembered thinking that no matter what life held in store for her after that, she would never see a day worse than that one. She was wrong.

  Michael was laid out on his parents’ bed in the sleeping room. He was the only one of Ginny’s children who seemed not to have grown while she was away. He looked pale and tiny on the bed. His skin had an awful grayish hue to it, and his lips were blue and parted. His eyes were still open because Maire had no copper farthings to place on his eyelids for to close them. Ginny fell down on the bed beside him and swept him up in her arms. His frail body was not yet cold. His limbs were still loose, his little fingers soft and pliable. She could nearly breathe life back into him, that’s how recent he was. Ginny’s child.

  Maggie stood beside the bed and watched her mother weep. Ginny tried to do her crying quietly, so’s not to frighten Poppy in the next room. But the tears came up from her rib cage, from her bones. And soon all her face was wet with them, and they were running through Michael’s hair and down his fragile white arms. Maggie stepped in to her mother quite forcefully then, and took her hand. And Ginny was suddenly overcome by the sense that she had come very close to floating away, that she’d been in danger of actually disappearing until Maggie took her hand and saved her. Tethered her. Maggie gripped her little hand around Ginny’s knuckles and she squeezed. So that after some time, after some awful storm of dark and bottomless minutes, Ginny was able to lay Michael’s lifeless body back onto the bed. She was able to arrange him tenderly, reverently, the way Maire had done before her. And then she was able to gather up Maggie and hold her instead. Gorgeous little Maggie, all grave and warm and full of suffering. Sweet Maggie of the cairns.

  Ginny heard Seán and Father Brennan coming in by the outside door, and without setting Maggie down, she rose to greet them. Maggie was nearly too big for it, but she clung her legs round Ginny’s hips, her little arms knotted tightly around her mother’s neck. Ginny wanted never to let go of her again. She didn’t bother wiping the tears from her face. Why should she? She didn’t look back at Michael on the bed as she stepped into the main room of the cottage, but she didn’t have to, because she had memorized him—the sight of him, the way he looked there, laid out on the bed. The smell of him gone, faintly sweet and sick. The soft rumple of his hair beneath her fingers. Those memories would never leave Ginny, not for a moment, not for the rest of her days.

  Maire was standing with baby Raymond in her arms, and the room was cast in the cheerful glow of the turf fire. Poppy was hanging round her big sister’s skirts, and Ginny was struck then, by how tall Maire had got, the high grace of her, her long neck. The way Poppy hid beneath her skirts, Maire could nearly be her mother. If Ginny hadn’t been so laden with misery, she might have gasped.

  “Poppy, come here, sit down by the fire,” Maire was saying, and Poppy obeyed, crossed her little legs beneath her, and waited faithfully for Maire to place baby Raymond in her arms.

  Poppy took the weight of her brother happily, and rocked him on her knee like he was a baby doll. Maire dipped a cup into the water pail for to offer the guests a drink.

  “We’ll need to make arrangements for the burial,” Father Brennan was saying.

  But Ginny’s child was still warm in the bed beyond. Her hand flew uselessly to her breast. Of course, the burial.

  “Tomorrow?” he asked.

  So soon. She wasn’t ready. Her eyes flashed to Maire, who spoke up.

  “We’ll need one more day at least, Father,” Maire said. “For to wake him pro
perly.”

  “You needn’t go to all that ritual in these times, Maire,” he said softly. “You know that no one will come.”

  Maire threw another sod of turf on the fire. “Move back a small bit, Poppy,” she said, and then to Father Brennan, “All the same, Father, the custom might be a comfort. For my mam.”

  And Ginny felt that they had traded places for a moment. Maire was mothering her. How entirely had Ginny failed her daughter, that she felt the need to do this, that Maire knew her mother was incapable?

  Ginny found her voice, and with tremendous effort and the help of God, it sounded strong, deliberate. “She’s right, Father. Give us a day to wake him. What day is it, today? Tuesday?”

  “Wednesday,” Seán said.

  Ginny crossed the room and set Maggie down on the floor beside Poppy and their baby brother. Maggie leaned over the two of them, reached out and touched Raymond’s head. “So we’ll bring him Friday morning, Father,” Ginny said.

  “Grand.”

  “I suppose we’ll need to arrange for a coffin,” Ginny said, and she remembered the horror of that other small coffin in years gone by.

  “I’ll take care of that for ye,” Seán said.

  Ginny nodded.

  “Did he get the last rites?” Ginny asked.

  “He did,” Father said. “Just.”

  They had managed to get Father Brennan here in time, but not his mother, not his father. Dear God, why had Ginny listened to Roisin, instead of her own instinct? She would never forgive herself for that, for not being here.

  “Were you here in the end?” The strength in Ginny’s voice was faltering, and a strangled note of hysteria was creeping in. She swallowed it.

  “I was, Ginny,” Father said.

  “Did he . . .” She blinked. She tried to breathe, but her lungs were immovable, concrete. Father Brennan was shaking his head.

  “It was very peaceful,” he reassured her. “He slept into it.” He’d said that already. She wanted more. She turned to Maire.

  “Did he ask for me?” she said.

  “He did before,” Maire said. “In the night, last night, when Seán was here. But he was all right, Mammy.”

  Ginny couldn’t stop the tears then. Maire crossed the room to her mother, and she spoke quietly into her ear.

  “He thought you were here, Mammy, in the end,” Maire said. “With the fever, when it got bad . . . he thought I was you. I held him in the bed. Until he slept.”

  Ginny took Maire’s face in her hands then, and they leaned their foreheads together—Maire was tall enough Ginny could do that now. She leaned down to her daughter, and she closed her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered. Maire took her mother’s hands in her own and held them tight, but she did not cry.

  After a moment, baby Raymond grew fussy, and Poppy started singing loudly to him. Maggie was stone-faced beside them. Ginny went over and lifted Raymond from Poppy’s knee.

  “He’s all right, Mammy!” she said. “I have him.”

  “It’s all right, love. He’s hungry,” Ginny said. “I think Mammy needs to feed him.”

  Her face fell. “Why can’t I feed him?” Poppy said, and she lifted her shirtwaist to try and locate her breast. She poked uncertainly at her belly button instead.

  Ginny pulled the shirt back down over Poppy’s tummy. “We’ll talk about that later,” she said, kissing the top of her daughter’s head. “Only mammies can feed their babies.”

  Ginny bounced Raymond on her shoulder, tried to comfort him with movement until Seán and Father Brennan left. They were already moving toward the door, and Ginny went out with them, into the yard. There was still plenty of light in the sky, the hopeful, lingering yellow of a summer sunset. She had one more question for Father, but she didn’t know if her voice would manage it, if her body would permit the words to come.

  She stopped him with her hand, and he waited, patient. She blinked carefully. Raymond wriggled on her shoulder, and she felt as if her whole body might break open, as if the words might cleave a fatal wound all through her. She heaved them out.

  “Do you think . . . can we bury him in beside Tommy?”

  Father Brennan nodded, and squeezed her hand. “We can of course,” he said, and then he placed a warm hand on Ginny’s forehead, and one on the back of Raymond’s little head, and he whispered an ardent prayer over them, a balm and a shield.

  Michael’s wake was pitiable, wretched. In the morning, Seán brought Ginny a Belfast linen cloth, a gift from Alice Spring for the burial. Maire helped her mother spread the cloth out beside the fire in the main room, and they laid Michael out there, so that the firelight could warm the lovely contours of his face. But they had no money to provide food or drink; there was little to offer the mourners. And anyway, there were no mourners. What few neighbors were left were afraid to come into the Doyle house now, for fear of the fever.

  Mrs. Fallon came, God bless her, and she looked as beleaguered as a standing-up body could be. Her hair had turned peak-white, and her skin was washed out, too, so that the only color left in her was the mournful brown of her gaping eyes. She had shriveled from her shoulders to the ground, so that you’d nearly be afraid to touch her, for fear she might crack and shatter in front of you. She keened with Ginny, she kept vigil. God, Ginny was grateful for her, for the recognition between them. What a terrible thing they had in common now: the attendant ghosts of their children.

  Maire stayed with the grieving mothers while they keened, but Maggie and Poppy spent most of that day out of doors, away from the sorrowful rituals they didn’t understand. Baby Raymond’s needy rhythm kept his mother going. He needed feeding, he needed changing and mothering; that didn’t stop just because Ginny had lost her son. She had to keep going. They all did.

  The next day, on the twenty-sixth of June, 1847, Ginny Doyle buried her son in the church graveyard in Knockbooley, in the same grave his baby brother had gone into eight years before. His father wasn’t there to mark the day. His neighbors and friends didn’t gather to see him off with song and drink and the memory of laughter. It was just his sisters and new brother, and his mother, Ginny, stood lonesome and hollow by the fresh, damp soil of his gaping grave.

  Father Brennan spoke solemnly, but Ginny couldn’t hear the words that came out of his mouth, couldn’t make any sense of them. Maire was courageous and solid. She held Raymond, and her nose was red, her eyes puffy. But she never let go a tear. Maggie held on to her mother’s hand, and she wailed and cried when they threw the dirt in over his coffin, and Ginny did, too, God help her. Poppy stood somber and quiet, clinging on to her mother’s hand. In her innocence, she wanted to know why Michael was in the box, and how he would get out again when he wakened up.

  For her part, Ginny couldn’t believe that no one was there, no one came. Their parish had emptied of its people. They had all starved or fled. Ginny and her children were alone.

  “Be grateful you were able to bury him,” Father Brennan said to her. And those seemed like the emptiest, most abhorrent possible words he could offer a devastated mother.

  “Is that meant to be a comfort, Father?” Ginny said incredulously. She tried to keep the anger out of her voice.

  “I only mean to say that, in times of atrocity like these, a proper Christian burial is a blessing,” Father Brennan said. “James Madigan walked all the way here only last month, so weak from the hunger he could barely stand upright, and he carrying the last two of his children dead in his arms, and he struggling all that way for to see them buried. He died when he reached this gate, Ginny. I had to bury the three of them together, and not a soul left to mourn their passing.”

  Ginny glanced at Maire beside her. Only a few months past, she would’ve shielded her daughter fiercely from a story like that. She would’ve distracted her and hurried away. Now Maire didn’t even blink. She crossed herself.

  �
�God rest them,” Maire said. “I’ll say a prayer for them, Father.”

  “Do.”

  And then Ginny remembered, with a start: walking the road into Westport town all those months ago with Ray and the children, when the blight had first struck, when things already seemed dire and frightening. Little had they known how much worse it would get. They had seen James Madigan that day, met him on the road outside his farm, sitting up on the stile beside his ruined field, wringing his hands in terror. Grieving already for the children he knew he would lose. Ginny had tried to shield Maire, on that other day, from the poor man’s passionate dread.

  In the churchyard now, Ginny crossed herself as well.

  “I don’t expect that to be a comfort to you, no,” Father Brennan said kindly. “Of course not, Ginny. Only God can do that for you, and He will. In time.”

  Ginny didn’t believe him, not in the slightest. The only comfort to her now would be her own death, and even that would mean abandoning her children again. So there was no possibility of comfort, never again. Ginny tried to lift breath into her breast, but she only shuddered.

  “I suppose we should write to Kevin again,” she whispered. She tried not to imagine Raymond, sitting at a table in some faraway New York City tenement room with his brother, Kevin. Some neighbor or priest reading the letter out to them. She tried not to picture Raymond’s face.

  “Let’s give it a few days,” Father Brennan suggested. “With all the upheaval in Ireland now, it’s little wonder we haven’t heard from your Raymond yet. I’d say his letters have gone astray, but you keep faith, and one will find its way to us soon. We can answer him then. We’ll give him the news soon enough.”

  They walked home then, Ginny and her girls and the baby.

  Ginny spent the whole of that day trying not to think of Ray. Hope was a wicked thing, and she knew she’d be better off without it. Ginny had heard stories of men fleeing to America to save their starving Irish families, only to arrive in New York and forget all about them. Some drank away their grief and their earnings. Others spent them on a new wife and children, a fresh start. Ginny knew her Raymond wasn’t capable of that sort of monstrosity. She knew he was a good and honorable man, that he wasn’t temptable or changeable. He loved his family. But then she remembered the willful amnesia of Springhill House, smack in the middle of the famine and wholly oblivious, and she feared that anything was possible. Perhaps New York would be seductive enough to make Raymond forget. Or maybe, even the revulsion of that possibility was just easier for her to imagine than the alternative.