by K. A. Tucker
And then the day he got released, he skipped the supper that Ma had been preparing for two days and went to meet Jimmy. The metaphorical straw that broke our father’s back and severed all ties. Ma will still call him occasionally and mail him a birthday card, like she did every year while he was behind bars, but she’ll have to sign Da’s name for him.
“Is he around the house much?”
“He isn’t.”
“Any prospective buyers?”
“Not yet, but it’s only been on the market for two weeks. We should get an offer soon.”
Da nods slowly, a mixture of resolution and sadness in his eyes. He grew up in that house. Even after he and Ma married and they moved to Dundalk in County Louth, he spent a lot of nights there, avoiding the commute home while running the pub with Granddad and Uncle Samuel, God rest their souls. “It’s about time you and Rowen cut all ties to him. He’ll never be anything but trouble to this family. I wish Ma never put his name on the deed. The bastard doesn’t deserve any of me family’s money.”
It’s unsettling, seeing the two of them so deeply at odds. It didn’t used to be like that. Aengus is a mini Seamus Delaney in so many ways. They even share the same copper-top hair. When Da and granddad would sit around the woodstove and go off about all the years of persecution our people suffered at the hands of the English, how those bloody Protestants should have just packed up their things and left Ireland the hell alone, it was Aengus who’d sit cross-legged on the floor in front of them. Sure, Rowen and I were there, too, but Aengus lapped up every word. Da and Granddad had a way of telling a story that made you want to listen. By the age of ten, I knew more about our country’s history than many grown people know today.
I wasn’t even alive when my dad got hurt. Aengus was only two. Da figured he’d bring him to the funeral of the three IRA volunteers who died in what the media later dubbed the Gibraltar killings. Da had known one of them from childhood and wanted to pay his respects. When the Ulster Defense Association bomber showed up with grenades, Da managed to cover Aengus, protecting him from harm and taking the brunt of it. Sixty people were injured that day, and three died.
I can’t say how much that experience impacted Aengus, if at all, given that he was so young. He certainly heard about it in later years, and just the knowledge that he was almost blown up by the UDA nurtured his resentment of all things English, Protestant, and police. Which is why I’m still shocked that he would have anything to do with what happened at the Green.
It sure put a fire in Da, though. Ma said that his hatred flared in the early days, likely fueled by the incessant pain in his leg. But that fire and the desire for vengeance that he spoke of dulled quickly. By the time the Provisional IRA declared a ceasefire in the late ’90s, he fully supported the end of the violence. He’d been living with his injuries for almost a decade, running the pub when most days he’d rather drink until the pain went away. “The people of Northern Ireland have spoken,” he had said. “It’s what they want, so let them be.”
The dissident republican groups that cropped up after the ceasefire? He abhors them, and lets it be known every chance he gets.
“This here? These so-called IRA?” He waves the paper and then tosses it. “Something needs to be done about this. These terrorists calling themselves republicans fighting for the good of Ireland! That’s absolute shite! They don’t even understand what those words mean. They’re about extortion and drugs. They’re tainting the memory of noble, strong men. They’re tainting the name of what those men fought for. They don’t know a bleeding thing about real suffering, and real purpose.”
“Don’t get all worked up, Seamus, or I’m going to stop bringing the papers home to you. It’s not good for your blood pressure,” Ma scolds. Aengus isn’t good for his blood pressure, either. That’s another reason I’m skirting the issue now. If he knew what really happened, he’d hunt Aengus down and beat him over the head with his cane. If he didn’t die of a heart attack first.
Ma starts rambling, “Did you know I had to go to Limericks and drag your Da out by the ear yesterday when he didn’t arrive for supper? All those old fellas going on about that mess down in Dublin.”
I know exactly what she means. Dundalk, County Louth is known for an abundance of staunch Irish republican supporters, many of whom marched with the Provisional IRA back in its day. Now Da and his friends mainly sit around the pub with their pints, bitching about England and government and the policing system. Some of them have gotten into the political side of it, and occasionally they’ll load up into a van and join a protest that the 32CSM is supporting. Not Da, though. He’s had enough of all of that.
Mostly, they’re devising plots to deliver righteous punishment to all these bleeding gangs who they blame the gardai for having allowed to thrive in recent years. Quick and justified punishment. Of course, it’s all just chatter. But when that chatter turns to the splinter cells that have cropped up—terrorists and gangs using the notoriety and fear of the IRA name to extort money and deal drugs—the shouting starts.
“A bullet in the head, that’s what these bastards need!” Da slams his fist on the table, rattling the dishes.
“Seamus,” Ma warns, her voice sharp.
He takes a moment to calm down and then finally sighs. “At least no one got hurt.”
A twinge of discomfort tugs at my back. I beg to differ.
Ma clasps her hand together and begins clucking like a hen. “And that poor American girl. Imagine visiting Dublin and almost dying over something so foolish!”
I wonder what Ma would say if she knew that American girl’s last name is Welles? As a woman who lost many ancestors in the Great Famine, and whose own family was terrorized by the UDA as a Catholic girl visiting her relatives near Belfast, Ma has never had a lot of love or sympathy for anyone bearing ties to England, even though a few of her distant cousins now live in Bath. She’ll die before she visits them there, on principle.
Probably nothing cruel. Ma may be singularly focused and a master at holding a grudge, but she’s not hateful toward innocent people.
“That would have been bad,” I agree, keeping my eyes on my bowl, still thinking about those few minutes with Amber today, by the memorial. She didn’t notice me coming up from behind, as she peered so intently into the face of one of the statues. So I hung back, studying her for a good, long minute. Taking in those legs, bared in a pair of jean shorts that hugged her body just right. Her thighs are strong and sculpted like an athlete’s, her skin tanned and smooth. She was wearing a simple white T-shirt today, but she filled it out with a perfect pair of tits. And that hair . . . I wanted to weave my fingers through it.
She’s a smart one, her eyes zeroing in on the knuckles I used to get the money back from Benoit and putting the pieces together. I saw the recognition in them, and I was sure I saw disappointment follow. She glimpsed the true me, while I glimpsed how she felt about that.
And it bothered me. For a moment there I regretted my actions and wondered if maybe I shouldn’t have pummeled him, especially after he emptied his wallet of all the money he stole. Not because I think he didn’t deserve it.
But because the way she looked at me today, and yesterday at the bar, as if I can do no wrong . . . She obviously sees me in a better light than I actually warrant, and I like the feel of that light.
I was so surprised—and relieved—when she threw her arms around me. I lost a few breaths, just appreciating the feel and smell of her, in a way I definitely didn’t in the Green. I almost kissed her. I was so close to her neck, so close to just turning in farther. But I held back because, while she may look at me like I’m some sort of angel, I don’t want to assume that it’s more. Worse, I don’t want her to think I expect anything in exchange for what I did.
So I stopped myself. And I cursed myself for not growing a pair the entire drive here.
“Her family must be worried sick about her.” Ma’s prattling voice cuts into my thoughts.
“Proba
bly.” Good question. I never even asked. I was too busy trying not to stare at those legs of hers. She must know they’re something to look at. She keeps wearing those little shorts.
“What’s that smile about now?” Ma chirps, the heavy creases in her face folding with her frown.
“The stew. It’s delicious,” I lie, soaking a crust of bread in the gravy and taking a bite.
It was a split-second decision, as I was climbing out of my car to go meet her, to keep the list. And another split-second decision to hint to her that I’ve seen it. I figure it gives her an excuse to come back to Delaney’s, if she wants one. And if she does, then she’s definitely chasing me.
A prospect that has me beaming inside.
“You’re such a good son, River.” Ma musses my hair up. “When are you going to find a nice Irish Catholic girl to marry?”
I wonder if Amber’s Protestant.
“When I’m thirty and she’s old enough to work in the pub and get knocked up.” I wink at Da and he roars with laughter. He and Ma are twelve years apart in age. She applied for a waitressing job at Delaney’s on her eighteenth birthday and he married her four months later. Aengus was born seven months after that.
“Six more years for grandbabies! Oh, River . . .” She clucks her disapproval.
I just grin wider at her and shrug my shoulders.
“These boys exasperate me some days.”
TEN
AMBER
“Are you an art student?” an old man asks, parking his walker next to me, his white-knuckled grip of the handles telling me he’d fall flat without that support. The age spots all over his arms put him somewhere in his nineties, likely.
“No.” I chuckle. “I finished school already. I’m just doing a little traveling and a friend told me I needed to come to the museums and experience some real Irish history.”
“You’re an American! Well, there’s surely a lot to learn about here.”
You’re telling me. I just spent four hours investigating the Collins Barracks Museum and the National Museum of Ireland, my head swimming in information on the famine, the many rebellions and civil wars fought, the animosity between English and Irish, Protestant and Catholic. The Irish Republic Army. It’s a lot to process, and all I really got out of it is that River was right and I am, indeed, an ignorant tourist.
“One of our most famous artists, Burton was,” the old man muses, jutting his chin toward the painting. “But The Meeting on the Turret Stairs is arguably his best. Such a beautiful image of such an ill-fated couple.”
I study the haunting watercolor painting that hangs before me in the long, narrow hallway of the National Gallery, and I immediately see what he means. The couple depicted is meeting secretly in a narrow stone staircase. The woman—royalty, in her vibrant blue dress, her long braid running down her back—both reaching for and pulling away from the knight who cradles her arm with a kiss. The description says that it’s a story of a princess and her bodyguard, whom the king does not approve of and orders to be killed. This painting is of their final goodbye.
“It’s tragically romantic,” I agree. “I mean, why would the king kill a man whose sole job was to protect his daughter, and whom she obviously loved?”
He chuckles, a soft sound that reminds me of my grandpa. “I was on me knees on the cobblestone streets of Galway in the early thirties, shining shoes like I did every day, when I found me princess. She traipsed past me, on her way to school. It took me two years to work up the courage to talk to her and when I did,” his face erupts into a mass of wrinkles as he smiles, “it was magic between us.” The smile slides off. “Of course her da didn’t think so. When I asked his permission to propose, he said he’d kill me with his bare hands if I didn’t leave her be. No shoe shiner could ever be good enough for his daughter.” He snorts. “How’s that for a God-fearing Catholic.”
Obviously the man didn’t kill him. “So what happened?” I ask, intrigued. I’m a sucker for stories like this.
“Well, I broke it off.” When he sees the disappointment settle on my face he quickly adds, “I liked me skin! But Darcy was stubborn and she refused to give me up. So we jumped on a boat headed for Scotland, settled in a small coastal village where I had friends, and eloped. Didn’t come back for years, with three wee ones in tow. What was her father going to do? Kill her daughter’s husband and the father of his grandchildren? Besides, I had me a good job by then. Could provide well for me family.”
I smile at the man. “I’m glad that story has a happy ending.”
“It does. God rest her soul, Darcy and I were together for sixty-four years before she left me,” he says wistfully, his eye wandering over the many paintings that line the wall. “She used to love it here. Sometimes I can feel her still roaming the halls . . .”
I’m guessing he spends a lot of time here.
There’s a long pause. “Why was I . . . oh, right! I was telling that story to prove a point. Her father was a doctor. He could have been a king, and he could have been a pauper, and he’d still be right about one thing: that I was never good enough for her. But luckily I was smart enough to realize that, and never stop trying to be the man she deserved.” He lets go of his walker long enough to pat my shoulder gently. “Ya remember that, pretty lass. And maybe give the shoe shiner a second look.”
I imagine what he must have been like, a young Irishman crouched on the streets so long ago, and what life was like back then. Even though times have changed, if I were to bring home a guy who shines shoes to meet my parents, I can’t say they’d be thrilled either.
But what about if I were to bring home an Irish bartender . . .?
I stifle the eye roll that those thoughts deserve. Is there anything that won’t make my mind segue into thoughts of River?
“Carpe diem, miss. Foolish youth is a strange and wondrous time that vanishes too quickly.” He shuffles over to the next painting with slow, easy movements, sparking a conversation with a young couple.
Seize the day.
If I wasn’t convinced before, that sweet old man surely helped sway me.
I’ll take the bait.
I’ll chase you, River.
I’m pretty desperate.
That’s the only way I can explain why I’m standing in front of this funky canary-yellow door—edged with chunky white columns and a half-moon window above, an aged brass lion’s-head knocker just begging to be used at eye level. I know I have the right place because the hand-painted sign above the door of this stone house on a narrow side street in northern Dublin says so. Still, it doesn’t look like any tattoo parlor I’ve ever passed by.
With my purse squeezed tight between my arm and my rib cage, I push through the door and step into a reception area, cramped with paisley wing chairs to my left and a counter to my right. The lack of windows only adds to the dingy atmosphere. Even the lights from a multitude of tracks above seem to get swallowed up, creating dark corners wherever I look.
Low murmurs and that irritating buzz of a tattoo machine carry from a narrow hallway lined with sconces made to look like candles. “Hello?” I call out, distracting my own awkwardness by focusing on the colorful canvases decorating the exposed stone walls. Some are of artfully displayed tattoos. Others look like graffiti you find on the sides of buildings—a kaleidoscope of bubbly lines and chaotic images.
Alex did say that this was Ivy’s cousin’s shop. I guess they have more in common than just tattoos.
I hear the shuffle of feet along the sand-colored wood floors—the only modern element of this place besides the lighting, from what I can see. At least it’s clean.
A guy with short jet-black hair styled in spikes appears, tattoos crawling up the back of his neck. “Sorry about that. Can I help you?” He reminds me of Ivy in that he’s obviously a mixture of Asian and something else, his eyes bigger and rounder, his lips fuller, his nose more prominent.
I catch myself staring at him and blurt out, “I’m here to see Ivy.”
&nb
sp; He clicks the computer mouse a few times, checking the screen with a frown. “What time was your appointment?” He sounds American, but with hints of an Irish twang, suggesting he’s been here a while.
“Oh, I’m not here for a tattoo.” I’ve never had any desire to get one. I don’t understand anyone who does. Another way in which Ivy and I are glaringly different. “I just wanted to stop in and say hi. I went to school with her, back in Oregon.” That feels like a lie, even though it’s not. I did go to school with her, but I’m making it sound like we were friends. Something we’ve never been.
He scratches the back of his head in thought. “Well . . . she’ll be working on this guy for another couple hours.”
“Hours?” I check my watch. It’s close to five p.m. already. “Could you just tell her that Amber Welles is here?”
He shrugs and then nods, disappearing back down the hall. I take that time to flip through a binder sitting open on a claw-footed side table, full of pictures of tattoos on body parts, the skin pink and puffy. A hint of nerves touches me. Will dropping my name make Ivy more or less likely to come out here?
A few minutes later, the needle stops buzzing. Clunky footfalls sound in the hallway. I look up in time to see Ivy round the corner, surprise touching her almond-shaped black eyes before she hides it behind the cool mask of indifference that she wears so well. I haven’t seen her since last summer, but there’s been no miraculous transformation. Her long, arrow-straight raven hair has blue streaks running through it instead of pink. The full sleeve of ink up her slender right arm obviously hasn’t disappeared. It’s been added to, if anything. She’s wearing a classic Ivy outfit—Doc Martens, black jeans, a tank top with a flannel shirt tied around her waist—only the boots reach up to her knees, the jeans are more like leggings, and the tank top is made of black lace and has Diva written across it in sequins. That’s definitely something new.