Good Eggs

by Rebecca Hardiman

  Back at the Castaways, Aideen had fetched two Gatorades and a Baby Ruth and they sat on the viscous bedcover brainstorming next moves. It was late; they were jet-lagged. Both conceded that the only remaining option was to track down and confront Sylvia themselves. Millie had fantasized plenty about this course of action, but now that the possibility was at hand, it felt far scarier. Sylvia was no longer Sylvia. She was a criminal, after all. Aideen, for her part, was in full support of Gran’s quest, but had very mixed feelings about the possibility of seeing Sean Gilmore again. He had hurt her, yes, but Aideen was fairly certain that Sean was not privy to his guardian’s crimes. She felt she knew his heart a little, she said, and that there wasn’t cruelty in it. There just wasn’t.

  The Gogartys’ belongings overwhelmed the cramped room—bulging suitcases, maps and glossy brochures Aideen had collected from the lobby pitching dolphin excursions and chartered yachts. Maybe, Millie suggested, they should just enjoy a few days’ vacation and then head home, or take a coach to Miami, the city her mythical Golden Girls made famous. Or try the miniature golf in St. Pete?

  Aideen stepped into the other room to brush her teeth. When she returned, she clicked off the bedside lamp, climbed under the duvet, and said, “We didn’t come here to play golf.”

  * * *

  The presence of a tricycle outside the door of Unit 208 of Victory Towers—a massive, three-story complex on a traffic-filled avenue—is an unhopeful sign. If the Phennings lived here, Millie suspects, they no longer do. Indeed, the current tenant swiftly refers them to the manager’s apartment downstairs.

  Gus Sparks, according to the nameplate beside his screen door, greets the Gogartys in conservative attire, as if he’s about to tee off—beige pressed khakis, freshly laundered, glaringly white polo, two out of its three buttons primly closed. He’s sporting a pair of leather sandals, which reveal tidy, trimmed toenails. At Rossdale, Millie’d nearly be sick at the sight of some of the old fellas’ feet—gnarled with patches the color and texture of steamed cauliflower, or, worse, a grotesque ombre of purple-black, the nails a dull yellow as if nicotine-stained.

  “Well hi there,” Sparks says.

  Millie clears her throat but is suddenly overtaken by a violent onslaught of sneezes.

  “Goodness,” says Sparks, followed by a dutiful “Bless you” and then three more.

  “I beg your pardon,” says Millie, fishing in her bag for a long rip of wrinkled toilet paper, like a crepe party streamer, and pressing it to her old watering eyes. “Terrible! I blame the American air-conditioning.”

  “Well then,” he says, “on behalf of America, I apologize.”

  Sparks smiles. His is a face of warmth, the shape of it narrow, no jowls, remarkably, and yet open as a plain, some lonely tenderness in it, as if he’s suffered but blames no one.

  “Where are you ladies from?”

  Despite his years—at least three or four further down the road than she—Sparks’s eyes are bright, clear, verdant. Millie dabs at her nose, hoping there’s nothing extraneous dangling from it, and introduces herself and Aideen as tourists from Ireland.

  “We thought you might be able to tell us about someone who used to live here.”

  “I’m happy to be of assistance.” Then, as if worried he might fail them, Sparks adds, “If I can, that is. Come in, why don’t you? Come on in.” He holds the door open for the Gogartys and proceeds immediately to the wall-mounted air-conditioning unit and turns it off. As its hum peters out and dies, the three of them stand in awkward silence.

  Gus Sparks’s home is a neat and sparse, open-style studio condominium kitted out in the basics of bachelorhood: two corporate, wood-framed club chairs, a clunky, colonial-style coffee table piled with little towers of books—military and presidential biographies from a brief glance—a small TV at low volume, as if for the company more than the local news that’s currently chattering out of it. Millie can relate, though she’s reminded that Sylvia Phenning relieved her of this small pleasure as well.

  On the far side of the room stands a twin-sized bed with no frame or headboard, but already precisely made. She thinks of her Peter, who never did up a bed a day in his life. Gus, though, has tucked sheet and cover tightly round the mattress, barracks-like, as if prepping for morning inspection. From the open, galley-style kitchen, Millie now hears the violent spitting of a coffee machine in brew.

  “Here, have a seat. Please.” Gus swats away a folded newspaper from one of the chairs. “I was just making some coffee. Can I get you a cup?”

  “Oh no, we wouldn’t want to be a bother, sure we wouldn’t?” Millie looks at Aideen, whose expression betrays no feeling either way.

  “It’s definitely not a bother. Seeing as you’re not a tenant with a clogged-up sink, this is a real treat.”

  Millie feels herself blushing and wonders if it’s obvious, like during one of her more hideous menopause flashes back in the day, when her body, from within, would, with no warning, spontaneously combust, the opening of windows and removal of cardigans frustratingly futile. She had learned, in time, that you had to just let the fire burn.

  “I don’t want to toot my own horn, but I do make a decent cup of coffee.”

  “Well, that’d be absolutely lovely, then, wouldn’t it, Duckie? It’s high time you tried coffee.”

  “I’ve tried coffee.” This is said with high-voltage animus. “I’m not a child.”

  Gus jumps in. “How old are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “She’s wonderful,” says Millie.

  “She sure is,” he says. “And lucky too.” He directs this, there is no mistaking it, at Millie Gogarty.

  * * *

  Over coffee, Gus tells them he’s “career military,” and has led something of a transient life—Germany, central New Jersey, Okinawa, Camp Pendleton—before ending up here, more or less where he began. He does not mention a wife or kids, though one brother, a retired cop lives “next door, in St. Pete.” This biography spans the time it takes Millie and Aideen to add milk and sugar to their mugs and stir, and it’s relayed choppily, as if he’s reading bullet points off a list, efficient if slightly embarrassed. Still, there is a charm in his sparse delivery, a sense of modest withholding. When he’s finished, he turns his gentle gaze on Millie Gogarty, who is, of course, constitutionally incapable of brevity, especially when it comes to a story, and specifically, her own.

  Millie takes it far back, to the day she met her Peter in town when she was a woman of thirty at a bus stop and how, once aboard, they were so engrossed in conversation that Peter missed his street entirely. Oh, they’d later laughed at that! She learned he was a widower and, on their second outing, he showed her a photo of his son, a deliciously plump, wide-eyed little boy, a motherless boy. After Peter and Millie married, they bought the house in Dún Laoghaire with the idea of having more children. Here she hesitates, the ghost of pain from her dead infant paying an inconvenient visit, and does something she never has before: she tells Gus Sparks, a perfect stranger, about Baby Maureen. She isn’t exactly sure why, other than an intuition about his goodness.

  “Those were very dark days,” says Millie. “The darkest.”

  “Ah, Gran, I never knew that,” Aideen says. “That’s awful.”

  “It was.” To Gus, Millie says, “Anyway, I must be boring the pants off you, gabbing away.”

  “No,” says Gus. “Never. Stay and talk all day.”

  Millie brings the mug of coffee to her mouth to mask the color she feels rising, for a second time, to her face.

  “Well we do have something to ask you,” says Aideen. “Shouldn’t we tell him why we’re here, Gran?”

  “Oh yes,” says Gus. “You know someone in the building?”

  “Used to be in the building. A woman called Sylvia Phenning,” says Millie, and watches his face closely for a sign of recognition.

  “Huh.” Gus closes his eyes and then opens them. “Nope. Name doesn’t ring a bell. Do you have a photo?�
�

  “We don’t,” says Millie.

  “But you think she lived here?”

  “Yes, but we’re not exactly sure when,” says Millie, realizing, not for the first time, how little she knows about the woman she spent so many hours with. She should have listened more; she is a woman who ought to pay more heed. “She said she’d traveled for a bit, you know the way, before she arrived in Dublin. So six months ago? Ten? A year?”

  “I do have our lease agreements pretty squared away.” He flashes an abashed smile, then stops. “She’s a friend of yours?”

  “Not exactly,” says Aideen and, after getting the nod of consent from Millie, tells Gus an edited version of the saga, ending at their doomed trip to the police station.

  Gus listens intently, shifting his still strong jaw now and then. When Aideen’s finished, he sets his mug down on a dark coaster emblazoned with an anchor and a globe and the words “United States Marine Corps.”

  “Let me see if I can dig up those agreements. Would you ladies care for more coffee?”

  Both shake their heads—in fact, Millie is shocked at the appalling size of the mug—madness!—though she wouldn’t like to say. When Gus turns toward his desk, she and Aideen exchange a look of suppressed excitement. He reaches into his shirt pocket and unfolds a little metal square that turns out to be a pair of reading glasses. Slowly, he flicks through a great many hanging files.

  “That’s funny. No trace of any Phennings here.”

  “Fuck,” says Aideen.

  “Aideen!” says Gran.

  “Sorry, Gran.” To Gus, she says, “Sorry. It’s a very Irish thing, to say that word.”

  “Oh, well I guess if it’s cultural…” He winks at Aideen. “Maybe this woman was using her maiden name or an alias?”

  “She would’ve been with her nephew,” says Aideen. “He’s a bit older than me. He’s—oh wait! I have a photo of him! Hang on, hang on.”

  She scrolls through her phone and stops: there’s Sean at the river squinting up at her from the pavement like a total bang, a can of Fanta tipped over beside him.

  Gus peers at the photo.

  “Oh! I do know him, yes.”

  “Do you?” says Millie, standing up.

  “I’d forgotten about him. He was here, a good ways back though. Let me see… quiet kid. Used to see him in the laundry room. That would’ve been… over a year ago, maybe.”

  Aideen says, “Did Sean—the boy—ever say anything, like any clue like where they’re from or…?”

  “Honestly, I can’t remember. He was polite, I do remember that. Some tenants, they’ll dump people’s clothes on the ground if you haven’t put them in the dryer fast enough. It’s a real problem here. But he wasn’t like that. He would just come back until the machine was free. Nice kid.”

  “He is,” says Aideen.

  Gus says, “Mrs. Gogarty?”

  “Millie.”

  “Millie,” Gus repeats, with a slight tremor. “There is one other thing. Remember I told you my brother is a retired cop? They have access to all kinds of information, you know. Maybe he could help you.” Gus looks away shyly. “Us.”

  54

  Kevin works his way through his mother’s ancient address book, which all his life has sat more or less on the wobbly telephone table in her kitchen. Francesca O’Brien, Netty Jones, Gretel Sheehy. My God, he thinks, they’re all dead. He hadn’t quite absorbed the sheer volume of death in her orbit—how many funerals she’s attended (she who famously dislikes mass), the melancholy hymns, the mournful finality of burials.

  He flicks to the final page and sees Jessica Walsh’s name. Jessica, bless her, is alive. He dials and hurries his way through asking after her family.

  “You haven’t heard from Mum at’all recently?”

  “I haven’t, Kevin. Not in weeks now I’d say. I was going to ring you because I’d heard—I’ve been thinking about her. We’ve had a bit of—I suppose you’d call it a falling out. After she had to postpone our trip, this is going back a ways now, she stopped returning my calls. It just went silent. I thought she was upset with me for some reason.”

  “Did she tell you why she canceled the trip?”

  “She said it was related to her health and that—”

  “You know that’s not true, right? You heard about the—”

  “I did. Donnelly’s cousin’s son lives just up the way, he does the odd job for me, and so I knew Millie had gotten into a spot of trouble in the shop. Sure, if you ask me, Kevin, she’s just lonely and looking for a bit of attention, you know how your mum is. That’s how I thought of it. I just wish she’d have told me.”

  “I think she was probably a bit mortified.”

  “Yes, but we’ve been friends since school.”

  “I know you have, Jessica. It’s—but look, you haven’t seen or heard from her since?”

  “Not at’all. I called in over the Christmas—I always bring her a fruit cake, you see—but she didn’t answer. I left it at the door but never heard back. Then someone told me there’d been a fire in the kitchen and she was recovering in Rossdale Home.”

  “That’s right.”

  “I sent a card there but again, nothing. Is she alright, Kevin?”

  “I don’t know. I’m sure she is, but no one’s seen or heard from her in a few days. She left Rossdale in the middle of the night.”

  “She didn’t!”

  “And I think she’s got Aideen with her as well.”

  “Your Aideen? No, she wouldn’t! Why would she?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know. Where do you think—do you have any idea where Mum would go if she were leaving town?”

  There is a silence while Jessica presumably runs through the possibilities.

  “I’ve got a text message buzzing in here,” Kevin says. “Sure look it, if you think of anything…”

  Kevin cannot remember how the call ends for the message that arrives on his phone is an alert notifying him that his data usage has reached epic proportions. His current bill is a breathtaking €753. This is hardly the time for bureaucratic fuckups and further debt accumulation, the type of nonsense that will surely test the sanity to which he is already struggling mightily to cling. Yet it’s the sort of thing that must be cleared up at once. Cursing technology and longing for the simpler, less fraught, predigital days of yore, Kevin rings up the mobile company.

  “Whoa,” says the young lad on the other end after incessant tapping of a keyboard. “Looks like you’ve been using data like it’s going out of fashion.”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Let me just have a look… I’m showing seven hours of data at… let me scroll here… er… two oh seven this morning.”

  “Not possible!” Kevin blurts. “There’s clearly been some kind of mistake. Or my account’s been compromised. I must have been hacked.”

  “Would you like to open an investigation?”

  “Could you just check again?”

  “Hang on. Are there other numbers linked to this account?”

  Why, yes there are. There are four. Grace. Gerard. Nuala. Aideen.

  “Holy fuck.”

  “Sorry, sir?”

  “My wife and son and daughters.”

  “Have you checked with them? Because it looks like someone on… let’s see, the number we’re dealing with here with the excessive usage, it’s comin’ up now… ends in 098.”

  Hallelujah! Kevin immediately rescinds his disavowal of technology. He loves technology! Technology will lead him to his missing daughter.

  “Why is it so expensive?”

  “Hang on. Need to put you on hold for that one.” A jazzy ragtime number clangs directly into Kevin’s ear, but he’s not listening, he barely registers it.

  “Sir? You still there?”

  “I’m going nowhere.”

  “Those are actually international charges. Which would explain why they’re so high.”

  “She’s ringing someone in another country?
”

  “The person with the 098 number?”

  “Yes, the person with the 098 number.” Fuck’s sake. Does no one under the age of twenty-five possess a critical mass of gray matter?

  “No, the 098 number shows data from use in another country.”

  “In another country?” Kevin says. “What are you saying? She’s not in Ireland?”

  “I don’t even know who we’re talking about.”

  “My daughter.”

  “Is it possible the phone was lost or stolen? I don’t know—I’m just saying that this number, ending in 098, is using data not in Ireland.”

  “Ah for Christ’s sake.” His spirits plummet. He’s back on the familiar terrain of panic and stress. “Where is the roaming data happening? Can you tell me that?”

  “That I can tell you… let’s see here… The roaming data is happening in Clearwater.”

  “What? Where is that? Is that in England?”

  “No, it’s in Florida. Clearwater, Florida. In America.”

  55

  There is a cooker at the Castaways. Well, more like a single burner, but Aideen can’t figure out how to turn the thing on, which is a pity since soup at Dollar General is only a dollar, as was the small saucepan in which to warm it. Aideen is mystified by this country, how a saucepan can cost the same as a tin of soup.

  Gran’s a bit under the weather, which casts Aideen in the dubious role of nurse, fetching tissues and glasses of water from the bathroom tap. Her illness, which mightn’t incapacitate someone of Aideen’s age, seems to take a firm hold, and after a miserable night, Gran awakes shivering. What, Aideen worries, constitutes fever and how even to measure it? They’ve no thermometer. Channeling her mum, she puts the back of her hand to Gran’s small forehead. The heat burning off her grandmother’s skin scares her. Zero experience in this and yet she is certain: fever.