I can’t wait to meet/be you …
With love from Bea, You, Me! x
2
BEA
New Year’s Eve 2019
Innisfree, Prospect Avenue, Brooklyn
‘Ten, nine, eight …’
I wasn’t sure I could bear to hear one more number being called out. I reached over to the remote control and considered switching the television off. The temptation to curl up into a ball on my sofa and pretend that time was not ticking on was strong. The ball glowed, purple, gold then pink into the dark sky.
‘Seven, six, five …’
I’ve never been any good at pretending.
‘You wear your heart on your sleeve,’ Grandad always said. Only because I learnt that from him. My kind grandad, who was always the first to suggest we help neighbours, friends and strangers alike. His heart was so big we were forever doing good deeds for all and sundry. One weekend when I was eleven or twelve, we were on our way back from this French guy, Christophe’s, apartment, where we’d just dropped off cups and plates, a saucepan and a blow-up mattress. My grandad didn’t really know him – he’d only met him in Sidetracks restaurant earlier that day. They got chatting and he learned that Christophe had nothing in his apartment but a blanket for the floor. Then when we were on our way back from his apartment, we passed a dumpster on Windsor Place. Grandad stopped and made us all rummage through it on the hunt for more gems we could give to our new French friend. ‘One man’s trash is another man’s treasure,’ he loved to say. But I’d had enough of being a Samaritan, so I refused to get out of the car.
‘I hope you never need a help-out from your neighbours, Bea.’ He looked so disappointed in me, it broke my heart into tiny pieces.
‘People are looking at us. Don’t you care what they think?’ Shame made me belligerent.
‘I couldn’t care less what people think. But I do care about that poor wee lad Christophe. He doesn’t know anyone. He’s in a strange country, away from family and friends.’ Grandad pulled out a mirror, the frame a little battered, but otherwise perfect. ‘This will look grand over that mantelpiece for him. Care more about what you think about yourself Bea, less about what others think. Remember that.’
I’ve never forgotten that lesson.
On the TV screen in front of me, the countdown continued. Every second marched me closer to a new year and an uncertain future. A pain sharpened inside my head.
‘Four, three, two, one … Happy New Year!’
Fireworks exploded into the sky on either side of the tower. Confetti streamed over the revellers who cheered and screamed with joy in Times Square. I smiled, despite my dark mood, as the camera zoomed in on a couple who were dressed in matching plastic see-through anoraks. They wore funny hats with the year 2020 emblazoned across them. And then they snogged, as if it were their last kiss. Good for them.
Journalists and TV presenters, dressed in their best overcoats and scarves, smiled for the camera as they danced awkwardly with each other. Mayor Bill de Blasio waltzed with a brightly dressed pretty blonde. Without warning another pain pierced me, so sharp this time it made me jump up and cry out.
I should have been out there, dancing with Dan.
Cheek to cheek, slow, slow, quick, quick, slow.
Instead I shouted ‘Happy New Year’ to my empty studio apartment. The haunting melody of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ echoed around the room.
‘We’ll take a cup of kindness yet …’ I sang in a whisper. I couldn’t finish the line. It would be the end of me.
The ghost of my mom seemed to be everywhere. She was never far from my head and heart, even though she’d been gone for twenty-three years. Holidays made me feel her loss more acutely, although I missed her every day in some way. Only yesterday I had seen a mom wipe a child’s face with a handkerchief, and the gesture, the caress, had been a déjà vu moment for me. A forgotten memory, buried deep, of my mom doing the same for me – or was it just me wishing for a memory like that? Either way, it hurt.
My phone had been going non-stop. When I looked at the screen, it was Dan again. I opened his text.
Happy New Year. I can’t stop thinking about this time last year. Do you remember? Please, Bea – don’t keep shutting me out. We can talk it through. I know you are upset and scared. But we have something special. I can’t believe I imagined all of that. I’d give anything to see those blue eyes of yours right now. Please call me. Or text. Just don’t ignore me.
With tears blurring my vision, I typed a response.
Dan, I can’t stop thinking about you either. I remember everything and I love you …
I paused. Then deleted the message word by word. If only I could erase my feelings with a tap of a button too. There were good reasons why I had to stay away from Dan. Nothing changed just because ‘Auld Lang Syne’ had made me sentimental. I felt another wave of tiredness hit me. Before Grandad died, he used to say his bones ached. I understood that sentiment tonight. I looked at my bed and contemplated falling into it. Why not give in to the tiredness? But I was too stubborn for that. I caught a glimpse of my face in the long, tall mirror that was propped up against the wall. I looked miserable, not a good look for me. Gran’s voice rang in my head. Her childhood warning to me, often given, whenever I made a face. ‘Take that look off your face, Bea O’Connor! You need to buck up, young lady. Because, mark my words, however you feel at midnight on New Year’s Eve is how you’ll be feeling for the rest of the year. That’s a fact known to all.’
I’m not sure what scientific evidence backed up Gran’s old wives’ tale, but when I was a kid I believed everything she told me. Mind you, I often used her advice to my own advantage too. I made it my business to kiss the best-looking fella I could find at midnight every New Year’s Eve. Hoping to ensure that the rest of my year would be spent making out with a good-looking man.
No good-looking man for me this year. No Gran and Grandad.
I raised my bottle of Corona and toasted my image in the mirror. While my reflection looked like a right old killjoy, she was all I had for company. ‘Looks like we’re in for a pretty shit year, Bea.’
The thing is, I chose to be here on my own, so if I was grumpy, sad, morose and talking to myself in a mirror, it was my own fault. Dad practically got down on his knees begging me to go out with him and Uncle Mike. They’d be milling out of Farrell’s about now, onto Prospect Park, with paper cups of beer in hand. Uncle Mike would be leading the conga. In another hour he’d be singing old Irish ballads. I hoped he was having fun tonight. Uncle Mike had worked throughout Christmas, pulling the short straw, holiday shift-wise. The NYPD had unsocial hours. He’d paid a hefty price for that. About six months after he married a woman called Eugenie, she’d found solace from her loneliness with a guy she met at the gym. They divorced before their first anniversary. She got their house and Uncle Mike moved home again. I’m glad he did. It’s good to have him here with Dad and me. I thought about moving out a few years back. The need for privacy was strong. But rent is high in New York, which put paid to my need to be alone. Compromise was reached, and Dad converted the basement into a self-contained studio for me. They had planned on doing the same for him and Mom, one day. But before they got the chance, she died. It had a bathroom, a small kitchenette (that I rarely used), and a sitting room with a Murphy bed you pull out of a wall. It also had its own entrance, albeit one that most ignored. Somehow, it worked.
Katrina was pissed with me too, because I hadn’t gone out with her – the first time in over ten years of New Year’s Eve shenanigans that we were not together. We didn’t always come home together, but that was another story. She’d even promised that we would steer clear of Saints and Sinners bar, so there would be no chance of bumping into Dan.
Bloody Dan Heffernan. It always came back to him. Why couldn’t I forget him? It had been a few weeks now. Surely that was enough time? Adulting was so hard. The irony wasn’t lost on me that when I was a child all I wanted was to be old enough to go out pa
rtying instead of staying at home. And now that the world was my oyster, or at least New York was, I chose to stay in my little studio apartment, in the basement of Innisfree.
The house might have been empty apart from me, but it was full to the brim with memories. The small kitchen at the back of the main house had served hundreds of meals, all from a small stove. A fridge covered in magnets that clung to photographs of three generations of O’Connors, celebrating seven decades. Our living room was spacious – two rooms knocked into one by Grandad when Uncle Mike was born. The O’Connors were a social lot. Neighbours and friends were always welcome. As Grandad said, we’d made our own little village in Brooklyn over the years, with songs and tall tales spun in our living room. Grandad with his bodhran on his knee. Chairs pushed back against the wall so that I had room to perform an Irish jig.
I was the only grandchild and youngest in the house. The adults were all at my beck and call. As Katrina often remarked, I had it sweet.
Now though, I returned my attention to the television. The camera paused on the face of a woman. She was in her sixties, I guessed, standing on her own and crying. She dabbed her tears with a handkerchief. Her face, like something out of an Edvard Munch painting, was twisted and pierced with pain. I felt angry at the camera for zooming in on her personal grief.
‘Move on!’ I shouted at the TV screen. And as if the camera person heard me through the airwaves, it did. I hoped this year would be kinder to that woman. For many, this time of year came with the black dog nipping at their heels, their hearts and their heads. People often did crazy things over the holidays. I never understood what that was like until recently. But when the black dog came by to visit, it was hard to shake him off. Persistent bugger. I’d never suffered with depression before. In fact I’d always been one of those irritating people that were happy and optimistic. Dan used to say that’s why I was forever ten minutes late: I assumed I’d have time to get from A to B in less time than it took. He was right too. Since he told me this, I’d noticed that the majority of optimists were the worst timekeepers.
And there I was again, bringing it back to Dan. No matter how hard I tried not to think about him, he was there. And no matter how many times I told myself that no good comes from looking back, it seemed impossible to stop my mind drifting to the same time last year.
It took me twenty-six years to find Dan.
That night one year ago was the happiest I’d ever been in my life.
But a lot can happen in a year.
I decided to go upstairs to the main house, hoping a change of scenery would knock this mood I was in. I picked up a bundle of post that sat on the hall table. Rifling through the bills, late Christmas cards and junk mail, I was surprised to see a letter addressed to me. A pretty pink envelope with neat handwriting. It was thick too. A memory nipped at me but then it went, before I had time to grasp it. I brought the letter with me into the kitchen.
3
LUCY
April 1992
The Three Amigos apartment, Maynooth, Dublin
Three letters sat on the small square pine table in our kitchenette, my eyes focused on the one addressed to me, Ms Lucy Mernagh.
I looked at my sister Maeve and best friend Michelle. Their faces mirrored mine. We knew that the contents of these letters could be life-changing.
Only a couple of months ago Maeve had told us about Bruce Morrison, an American congressman, who’d allotted 48,000 American visas to the Irish.
‘Visas for America! Imagine,’ Maeve had screamed. She bounced around our flat in excitement at the mere possibility. ‘All we have to do is apply and, if we’re chosen, we get a green card. We can follow our dreams! We can go live in the States, like we used to talk about when we were kids.’
I looked at her eyes, bright with excitement and enthusiasm, and couldn’t help but get carried away with her. In her mind’s eye, her bags were already packed and the flight booked. She was always the same when she got an idea in her head.
‘We’ve as much chance of winning one of those as getting into the audience of The Late Late Toy Show,’ Michelle said, topping up each of our glasses with Blue Nun wine, our drink of choice. It was cheap and gave us a decent buzz. Michelle was our neighbour from home in Wexford. We’d shared this same flat in Dublin for the past three years while we went to college. We called ourselves the Three Amigos, a nickname we gave ourselves one night when we were kids and Michelle came for a sleepover. We’d rented the Steve Martin, Chevy Chase and Martin Short movie from Blockbuster’s and we laughed so much as we watched it that we missed half of the one-liners. So we immediately watched it a second time and that still didn’t feel enough. I think we ended up owing about twenty pounds in overdue fines for that movie. When Mam and Dad went to Blockbusters to rent My Left Foot, they had to settle our fine before they got out of the store and there was hell to pay! But Mam calmed down eventually and even bought us a copy of The Three Amigos for Christmas that year. Since then it’s been our go-to feel-good movie to watch. We knew all the catchphrases and thought we were hilarious when we quoted them in random situations. I dated a guy a few months back who ‘forgot’ to disclose that he was also dating another girl from college. When Maeve found out, she walked up to him and shouted, ‘You dirt-eating piece of slime. You scum-sucking pig. You son of a motherless goat.’ He had no clue that she was doing her best Lucky Day line. And instead of feeling upset that I’d been dumped, I laughed for hours, picturing his face as Maeve shouted at him.
‘Right, let’s open them,’ Michelle said.
‘Wait. I’ll get us a drink first,’ I replied. I grabbed a bottle of Blue Nun and poured three glasses. I grabbed the ice tray from our small freezer. I tapped it upside down until the dozen cubes fell onto the table, then I added a couple into each glass.
‘Just think,’ Maeve said, holding her glass up, ‘this time next year, we could be drinking wine in a New York loft apartment. It will overlook Central Park, naturally, where we’ll go jogging every day. ’Cos over there, we’ll have to be more mindful of our bodies.’
I grabbed a cheese Dorito and dipped it into the tomato salsa. ‘Er, you’re not selling New York to me, Sis.’
‘OK, we don’t have to jog. But think of all the cute guys we’ll meet in Cheers Bar.’
‘That’s not a real place, you know. It’s just on the TV show. Tadgh told me so,’ Michelle said. She’d started to date him a few weeks previously and was at the stage where she was so loved up, she had to mention his name in every single sentence she uttered. I giggled as Maeve threw her eyes up to the heavens.
‘But there will be places just like it. Full of cool people like Sam, Woody and Fraiser,’ Maeve insisted.
‘What about Diane, Carla and Rebecca?’ I asked.
Maeve ignored that. She wasn’t a girls’ girl, preferring the company of boys always. She reckoned they were less bitchy. ‘Do you remember Karen?’
Michelle and I shook our heads.
‘Karen with all the spots. You do know her. She went to Maynooth with me.’
We continued shaking our heads.
‘She got so pissed at the Christmas party in Flynn’s that she started to strip as she sang “Patricia the Stripper”,’ Maeve said.
‘That Karen!’ I said, laughing at the memory.
‘I was mortified for her,’ Michelle said.
‘She’s some set of lungs,’ I agreed. ‘What about her?’
‘Well, Karen’s first cousin went to New York last summer. On a student visa. And she was mobbed by the men. Mobbed! The American men love Irish women. It’s the accent. It drives them wild.’
The idea of being mobbed by men did have an attraction, but I still wasn’t convinced.
‘Don’t you think it’s a bit drastic to move to the other side of the world, just to get more dates?’ I asked. ‘Besides, you get loads of attention over here anyhow.’
This was true. While the two of us were almost identical, often mistaken for twins, Maeve had on
e thing that I didn’t have. Sex appeal. I don’t know what it was, but men would walk by me and head for her every single time.
‘Boys. That’s what I get over here. I want a man. A New York man. Someone like … Kevin Costner.’
‘I always preferred Tom Cruise. Do you think Tadgh has a look of Brad about him? I do. Around the mouth,’ Michelle said, topping our glasses up again. ‘Actually, your Karen story just reminded me. I was sitting beside this young wan on the bus going home the other week. And she was telling me about her sister who went to America. She met this couple on the flight who were second-generation Irish. They had been home to find their ancestors.’
‘Wearing Foster and Allen knitted jumpers, I bet,’ Maeve said, making me laugh. Our dad loved the Irish singing duo, who were partial to an Aran knitted sweater.
‘Yes. The very ones,’ Michelle agreed. ‘Anyhow, they were mad rich. And they took a shine to this girl. And invited her and her friends to move in with them.’
‘That’s a bit odd. And potentially dangerous,’ I said. ‘Were they ever heard of again?’
‘The couple were lovely. Loaded, by all accounts. The girls had their own suite in the house. And all they had to do was a few jobs to pay for their keep. They got jobs in the local golf club. They had the best summer ever.’
‘I don’t like golf,’ I said, knowing that I sounded like a misery guts.
‘Me either,’ Michelle agreed. ‘Too much walking. And the clothes are awful. Nobody can pull off those plaid trousers. You’d have to be a size six or something.’
‘You are missing the point!’ Maeve said, standing up to illustrate how frustrated she was with the pair of us.
We both looked at her expectantly. ‘Come on then. Enlighten us.’
‘The point is that America is so full of opportunity that even when you are on an aeroplane minding your own business, trying to drink your vodka coke in peace, people are doing stuff for you! Can you imagine the craic the three of us would have living over there? Dating all the hot men. Working in fashion or advertising.’
The Moon Over Kilmore Quay Page 2
