“Try valerian tea,” Bernie suggested. “I heard that helps.”
“Probably causes cancer.”
“These days nearly everything causes cancer, or so they think, for at least five minutes. Try to enjoy life and not worry so much. You only live once.” That had been her mantra since John died, especially in the beginning, whenever the inertia descended and she sat at the table in the morning and found that hours had passed as she stared out the window, the cup of tea by her elbow gone cold, her Labrador, Fergus, whimpering at her feet, his brow wrinkled with worry.
“I’m not programmed that way—especially when I can’t get any damned rest. I’d kill for a good night’s sleep. I used to be such a good sleeper—”
“Yes, I remember,” Bernie replied. Aileen had slept like the dead when they were girls. “You snored something awful.”
“It was the adenoids. Been better since I got them out, though now I think I’m getting a nose whistle.”
“Maybe you should form a band.” Bernie smiled. They were forever teasing each other about the good and the bad. Bernadette Anne Cullen and Aileen Mary Flanagan had been friends for forty-four years. They couldn’t believe how quickly the decades had gone by, the loves and disappointments and fights and marriages and deaths they had witnessed. And there they were, sitting at that collapsible table with the stiff little legs that could be snapped up or down—an exact replica of the one at which they’d sold lemon ices on the road during the summers when they were girls—together, after all that time. Nothing could keep them apart for long. They were like family, Aileen said, without the excess baggage.
“Ha. Ha. Should we go, then? Everyone else is throwing in the towel.” Aileen tossed a dish towel, its edge embroidered with lace, into the basket at her feet for emphasis.
Someone let out a whoop down the road that died quickly, not enough voices or enthusiasm to sustain it. When Bernie was a girl, there had been coracle races in the bay and hurling matches in the fields and dancing all night long. Now, the few young people in town hung around the bar. They were the glowering sort of teenagers indigenous to many a sleepy village, seemingly angry about everything. Aileen’s daughter Rosheen, too. Sixteen-year-old Rosheen had recently announced that she was changing her name to Jane, muttering something about Gaelic shite. She’d gotten another tattoo and pierced her nose and was at that very moment smoking cigarettes with her friends nearby. She and Aileen tried to ignore each other.
“Bernie? Did you hear what I said?” Aileen asked.
“Just a little longer.” Bernie was in no hurry to return to the empty cottage. She and John never had children. She only had Fergus, the brown Lab, resting now at her feet, for company. Fergus, who’d been young once, his fur lustrous and thick, who ran through the lanes and over the hills, chasing rabbits and robins and foxes. Fergus, dear boy, aging too.
“Why? Are you expecting a visiting dignitary?” Aileen asked.
“You never know who might come down the road.”
“Nothing interesting has come down that road since Cromwell’s soldiers attacked in the 1600s. And they nearly killed everyone.”
Bernie was about to admit defeat when she saw a young woman cresting the hill. “There,” she said. “What did I tell you? A tourist.”
Aileen squinted in the direction Bernie indicated. “It’s a miracle—though she might have had the decency to bring a friend along. Who travels alone? Do you think she’s a criminal?”
“You can’t be serious. She hardly seems the type.” The girl looked like a sprite, with great dark eyes and pale skin and a tangle of long hair down her back, steam rising from her shoulders like mist.
“They never do.”
“You watch too many crime shows.”
“What else is there to do around here in the evenings except play cards and make lace?” Aileen said. “Don’t get your hopes up. She’s not going to stop here. Why should she? There’s nothing of interest. No clubs, no posh shops, no gourmet restaurants, no Internet cafés. She’ll move on. Everyone does.”
“No, no, no….” Bernie imitated Aileen’s grating voice. “Let’s say yes to everything, just this once. This will be the week of yes. Let’s try it and see what happens.”
“I said yes to Rourke, and look where that got me.” Aileen snorted, adding, “I told you. She’s going.”
The girl glanced back in the direction she’d come. Second thoughts, perhaps? Understandable. They had them every day, or at least Aileen seemed to.
The visitor turned toward them again, and Bernie exclaimed. “Ha. See? She’s staying, of course she will.”
“Only because there’s nowhere else to go at this hour.”
Bernie nodded with satisfaction. “Here she comes. Don’t scare her away.”
Chapter 4
The American Girl
Along the main street, if you could call it that, tents sprouted like white-capped mushrooms. There was a bar, naturally, and a hodgepodge of squat buildings, none higher than a single story, that braced each other up for a block or two before the boulder-and heather-strewn fields took over, tumbling down to the sea, a single cottage here and there among the barrens. Some structures had been given a fresh coat of whitewash in honor of the occasion, the smell of lime lingering, and doors had been brightened with an application of red, blue, or green lacquer, the peeling, faded parts painted over. In the distance, atop a gentle rise, stood the parish church, spire pointing heavenward, whiteness so bleached and pure it hurt the eyes.
The wind blew off the sea, bending blades of grass, snapping the canvas tents. One tore clean away, a man swearing in pursuit as it flapped down the narrow street like a great bird.
“Look! It’s the holy host!” a pair of tottering men, caps askew, cried out. They fell on their knees—prostrated by religious fervor or the effects of Guinness or mirth—as it careened past. “Praise the Lord. Someone get the priest.”
The fugitive tent continued its merry rampage, knocking over a bicycle and snagging on an aerial before taking flight again. The kids hanging around the pub in a cloud of smoke jeered at the scene, which passed all too soon, the long, dull evening returning. Soon night would fall, only the glowing ends of their pilfered cigarettes visible in the failing light, darkness sending them into the fields where someone had hidden a cache of ale, so that those who desired oblivion could find it again. There was little to do in Glenmara, few livings to be made, no matter how much praying to the saints anyone did. “Fecking saints,” one of them said, too young to know better, too belligerent to care. Their faces hadn’t lost their softness yet, though the teens made a show of hardening their edges with black makeup and clothes, indulgence in the bad, denial of the good. They wouldn’t miss their innocence until it was gone.
Kate shivered from the chill, a hint of a smile on her lips, seeing an old version of herself in the kids (though never so rough as that), entertained by the shenanigans of the man and the tarp, entranced by the beauty of the landscape. She wondered if her ancestors had stood on a spot very like this, miles north, in Donegal, looking down on their abandoned crofts. Her mother’s family had few stories of those early days. They were too busy becoming American, forgetting the past. The tale they chose to tell began with laboring in the coalfields of Pennsylvania, then boarding the trains west, to Montana, to wield pickaxes in the copper mines of Butte, Montana, because they were run by an Irishman named Daley, one of their own, who would give them a fair chance, or so they thought. They came in waves, the Irish, the dusty streets ringing with Gaelic, the bars blaring the music of the pipe bands and fiddles, ale flowing freely, the inhabitants drinking disappointment away. As the years passed, their accents weakened to a mere hint of a lilt. Day after day, they disappeared into the earth—some said it was like going into the grave; others, the gates of hell—and, eventually, for good.
What came before, in Ireland, Kate didn’t know. There were gravestones somewhere, she supposed, imprinted with her ancestors’ names, perhaps ano
ther headstone that read “Tallulah ‘Lu’ Robinson,” like her mother’s, the letters worn away by the passage of time. Or, more likely, a simple wooden cross, decayed long ago, since there’d probably been no money for formal burials, only a series of small mounds, overgrown with brambles and grass. Kate sifted through what might or might not have been, seeking a reference point, a place to say: This is the beginning. A spot on the map: You are here. Or were here. Or might be here. You belong.
She reached for the golden thimble on the chain around her neck, the only tangible link to her mother she’d brought along, because she treasured the notion, remembered playing with it as a little girl. How precious it had seemed then—now, more than ever.
Her neck was bare. She searched the road, frantically at first, then more slowly, in growing resignation. It would have gleamed, caught the light, if it were there.
Like her mother, the thimble was gone. No amount of searching would bring it back.
Kate set off down the half-cobbled lane again, over stones that had been there since the road’s birth over three hundred years before. She felt the vendors’ eyes on her, the coming attraction. First, she bought fish and chips from a man who greeted her in Gaelic, Dia duit, Hello. She’d learned some of the language when she took Irish dancing lessons as a child, but she’d forgotten all but a few of the steps. Her mother had kept one of the costumes—the green jumper with the Celtic knot embroidered in gold thread on the bodice. Kate took first place at the feis that year. She didn’t know where the garment was now—shoved away in a box in the storage facility, most likely. The sum of her mother’s life contained in that dark rectangular space, a vault filled with echoes. (Lu insisted on packing her things before she went into the hospital for the last time, knowing she wouldn’t return. She hired someone to do it to spare her friends and Kate the trouble. She did it without telling them. That was her way.) Kate couldn’t face opening the cardboard cartons and trunks, letting the memories escape. She had left the key with Ella, saying she would be in touch to tell her what to do.
“Mind the grease. It adds to the flavor but can stain your clothes.” The seller wrapped the fish—so fresh it still had fins and tail, though thankfully, not the head—in a page from a newsletter written in the local dialect.
Kate took a bite, closing her eyes as she savored the morsel. She hadn’t eaten since that morning, and then only a biscuit and tea.
“Good, eh?” he asked.
“The best.” She pressed on, studied claddagh rings and jasper bracelets at another stall, slipping them on her finger, then off.
As the wind skirled up from the sea and down the lanes of Glenmara, Kate stopped at the next stand. She considered lengths of linen and lace, perfect for a hope chest. She took a deep breath. She’d traveled this far with her perseverance and sanity relatively intact. She would not, under any circumstances, have a nervous breakdown over a towel embroidered with shamrocks.
“May we interest you in some lace, miss?” asked a lilting voice, a voice that soothed and calmed and drew her away from the edge of wherever it was she’d been going.
Miss. The perfect form of address, as if she’d lost something—which, of course, she had.
“Miss?”
Kate nearly thanked the women and walked away. She’d never gone for frills or ruffles, but the quality of the work made her reconsider. She’d never seen such intricate stitches. Some pieces were adorned with crocheted lace, others bobbined, or with appliqués applied to net. They were extraordinary: flowers, Celtic dragons, nymphs, fish, saints, king and queens, come to life, rendered with almost painterly skill.
“I’m Bernie Cullen,” the sweet-faced woman with curly dark hair said, trying to put her at ease. “And this is Aileen Flanagan.”
“Nice to meet you,” Kate said. “Did you make these yourselves?”
“No, we imported them from China. The boat left the dock a moment ago,” the woman called Aileen said, everything about her, even her voice, angular, sharp.
“Aileen has a fine skill with a needle, doesn’t she?” Bernie said, giving her friend a nudge with her elbow. “No, these are local. We’re part of a guild, you see. Most of us learned from our mams and grans.”
The lace would have delighted Kate’s mother. She’d been a costume designer for the theater—she made eighteenth-century ball gowns, 1950s circle skirts, tentacled sea monsters, futuristic space suits; nothing was beyond her skill or imagination—and a devoted craftswoman during her time off, a string of beads or needle and thread at hand. She’d taught Kate to draw and sew. “You have a gift,” she often said, believing in her dreams, the Singer sewing machine bobbing its head in agreement as they stitched lengths of black and orange cloth, attaching rickrack to sleeves, joining bodices and skirts: mother-and-daughter witch costumes with capes and pointed hats and brooms. Kate was four, her mother twenty-seven that year. Kate carried a plastic pumpkin bucket for the candy. Her mother held Kate’s hand, taking her from house to house. That Halloween, it had been a clear night, the moon bright as they traversed the shadowed streets with the other ghosts and goblins.
What would her mother say now? Take up the thread and start again. You can always start again.
If only it were that easy.
“You’re one of those artsy types, aren’t you?” Bernie asked. “You’ve got style, even in that mac.”
“That’s kind of you to say—especially when I’m such a mess,” Kate said.
“Indeed,” Aileen said, giving Kate the once-over. “See anything you like?”
Kate tucked a damp strand of hair behind her ear and pretended she hadn’t heard Aileen’s critical aside. “My mother would have loved these things,” she said. She and Kate should have been taking the trip together, but instead of traipsing along the Cliffs of Moher last fall, Lu had been in a hospital bed. Kate visited daily, the nurses exclaiming over the resemblance—they had the same hair and eyes, gestures and laugh.
The same bad luck with men.
“She’s artistic too?” Bernie asked.
Was. Kate didn’t correct her, didn’t want to deal with sad-eyed looks and murmurs of sympathy.
“She must miss you, being so far away,” Bernie said.
Farther than they knew.
Bernie whipped a hook in and out of the crocheted lace. “Would you like to learn?” she asked.
“It doesn’t seem like something that can be mastered in a few minutes,” Kate demurred, “though it’s kind of you to offer—if I had more time…” Even now, her fingers itched for a needle, old habits dying hard.
“Surely, you’ll be stopping awhile,” Bernie said. “You’ve been on the road too long, haven’t you?”
Yes, she had. “I only planned on staying the night,” Kate said, thinking of Killarney and the Ring of Kerry to the south; all the places she and her mother intended to go, so much left to see. “Is there a B&B in town?”
“Whatever you do, don’t go to Dooley’s,” Aileen warned. “The place suffers from the damp something awful. The last person who lodged there wore all the clothes in his suitcase fighting to stay warm and he still got the hypothermia, didn’t he, Bernie?”
“He did indeed, poor fellow. He almost had to go to hospital. I could have sworn his skin looked blue.”
“Weren’t the owners bothered by the cold too?” Kate asked.
“Lord, no. They’re used to it. It would take a blizzard to kill them. They’d probably wear bathing suits in Antarctica, though it might scare the penguins,” Aileen said.
A Labrador emerged from under the table and nudged Kate’s hand with his nose.
Kate bent down and scratched his ears. “I didn’t see you there. What a handsome fellow you are.”
The dog woofed and looked at Bernie expectantly, as if he had something to tell her.
Bernie patted his head. “It’s his way of saying he wants you to stay with us,” she told Kate. “He’s a good judge of character, my Fergus.”
Aileen rolled her
eyes.
Bernie ignored her. “Your timing couldn’t be better,” she told Kate. “I was just thinking about renting out the guest room—and then you came along. It’s nothing fancy, mind. But we have plenty of space. And I can promise you we keep the windows closed and the blankets dry, so you won’t catch pneumonia.” She had the sort of laugh, deep and full, from the belly, that made others smile to hear it.
“I don’t want to put you to any trouble.” Kate considered the empty road, twilight settling over the landscape, another day almost gone. Clearly, she couldn’t keep going that night. She had her trusty sleeping bag with its 10-degree rating. She could have slept under the stars again. She’d done it before, under bushes, among the weeds, in empty barns, abandoned buildings, when she was trying to save money (she still had enough, though it wouldn’t last forever), but the idea held little appeal, what with the state of the ground, the weather, and her clothes. She should have brought a tent. As it was, she needed to dry out, and the thought of a roof over her head, a hot shower, and a clean, warm bed was irresistible. She’d stop for the night, then the next day, she’d be off.
“It’s no trouble at all.” Bernie pressed her hand and smiled, the night full of sighs and murmurs, as the vendors collapsed their awnings and loaded their cars, like a circus leaving town.
Chapter 5
Absences and Visitations
At home, the same scene greeted Bernie day after day, a place of echoes and loss: John’s suits in the closet, his shoes lined up below, his underwear in the drawer. Bernie would slip his socks over her fingers, hands knit into stumps, smooth, digitless, then bend fingers to thumb, making a toothless mouth. “Hello,” she said, “fancy a show?”—a puppet without an audience. She pressed the navy cashmere to her cheek, hard, against the bone, and wept.
The Lace Makers of Glenmara Page 3