Viv had stopped crying and was staring into the fire again. ‘Then the baby was born and I brought her home. I’d had two weeks off work before I delivered and had to be back at work in another two. I don’t know why I didn’t tell them about the baby. There just never seemed to be a right time. I didn’t even tell them about Marco. It just sort of became obvious that he was staying in Paris and I was staying in New York. No-one even asked me about it. So how could I tell them I was pregnant?
‘I brought the baby home and for two weeks I just fed her and slept. I couldn’t stay awake. I slept more than she did. It was only her crying that woke me up half the time. I never left the apartment. Not once. I didn’t think I ever would again. I felt like I was in hell. I couldn’t tell if it was day or night, the phone had been disconnected so I couldn’t call anyone — not that I would have known who to call. I had no-one.’
She stopped.
‘What happened to the baby?’ Molly whispered.
‘I looked at her one day and realised I didn’t feel a thing. She was crying, she seemed to have been crying for days, and I imagined holding a pillow up to her little face and smothering her. I could have done it, too. I was in some kind of feelingless stupor.’
‘You had postnatal depression!’ Molly said. ‘Did you know about postnatal depression?’
‘Molly, I didn’t know anything. I just knew that I had to get that little girl away from me or it would end in disaster, real disaster, for both of us. I went next door to Mrs Bacinkas and phoned Social Services and they came and took her away. I signed the papers to have her adopted and that was that.’
‘That was that?’
‘Yes. I went back to work two days later and got over it, as they say.’
‘Got over it?’
‘Well, I never thought about it. About her. Not for years. I was too busy working and getting married and working and getting married. It wasn’t really until I got to know you when you came over that summer when you were — what, 17? Just out of school. I remember looking at you and thinking what I would give to be that age and starting out again and I started to dream about Bernadette.’
‘You called her Bernadette? After Mum?’
Viv smiled and nodded.
‘And so did you start looking for her then?’
‘God, no. I started therapy then. I didn’t start looking for her until a couple of years ago which is when I found out that she doesn’t want any contact with her birth mother. At all. Ever. That’s what the file says and I got a private detective on the case as well but he turned up exactly zip on Bernadette de Bortolli. So I don’t know anything about her. I don’t even know what colour her hair turned out to be. Or her eyes. Or if her skin is dark like Marco’s or fair like mine.’
The two sat silently listening to the crackle and hiss of the fire.
‘That is such a sad story,’ Molly said finally. ‘Um, I mean, I know it’s more than a story, Viv, that it’s real, that it’s your life. I just can’t believe that you didn’t tell Mum. She would have helped you. You could have brought the baby to New Zealand. You could have—’
‘I could have done a lot of things, Molly, but I didn’t, and I live with the consequences every day of my goddamned life. But I’m telling you because I want you to understand me. To understand why I’m here.’
‘Well, I think I do,’ said Molly, standing up, brushing the crumbs off her dress and moving towards her aunt. She sat on the arm of Viv’s chair and slowly wrapped her arms around her aunt, who at first stiffened and then relaxed as much as she could into the hug.
‘Of course, the singing and dancing in the pub still has me wondering,’ Molly said into her aunt’s beautiful-smelling hair.
‘Oh that,’ said Viv, drawing back from Molly’s embrace to smile awkwardly up at her. ‘Well, that’s an entirely different story.’
The door flew open and Nell burst into the room, drying her hands on a hand-towel tucked into the waistband of her skirt.
‘Will you look at that, will you? What a lovely sight. Molly, dear, your bath is ready and I wonder, could we take that beautiful dress and clean it up a bit for you?’
Molly stood up and looked between Nell and her aunt, who was studying her cuticles in an overly casual fashion. Nell was sweating slightly and looking nervously at Viv. What had they been cooking up?
‘All right,’ Molly finally said, because her head was reeling and, in truth, the dress was getting a little high. ‘But I want it back. Now, what’s the plan for later on?’
‘Well, Charlie rang from O’Rellys in Dublin to say that Gerry O’Reilly is co-ordinating a meeting at the pub with a couple who may be able to tell us about Tom. He suggested we get down there around six, does that sound okay?’
‘That sounds brilliant,’ Molly yawned. ‘A bath, a nap, clean knickers and a pint is about as good as it gets these days.’
‘Molly Brown, I don’t know what has gotten into you,’ her aunt said, looking at her in amazement.
Chapter 28
Early 1990
Patty Patinkin tugged at her surf-babe singlet to cover her bulging belly and yelled up at her husband from the letterbox.
‘Hey, Laurie, look,’ she called, waving a letter around in her hand as he poked his half-shaved face out of the upstairs bathroom window. ‘We got a letter from Ireland!’
Waddling inside at speed, she picked her Bermuda shorts out of her butt for the fifth time that morning and headed directly for the coffee machine. She poured the weak brew into her favourite Mickey Mouse cup and settled at the breakfast counter.
‘What’s it say?’ Laurie yelled from upstairs as he crashed around looking for his lucky T-shirt, the one his fishing pal Lenny had bought for him in Austin, Texas, from some unpronounceable bar that hosted the only Elvis Presley memorial taco stand in existence.
Patty shook her frizzy bleached curls in frustration and rolled her eyes heavenward.
‘Well, I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, honey. I’m only just sitting down.’
She turned the letter over in her hand. The return address was a B. Byrne in Ballymahoe. She racked her brains trying to remember which of the many Ballysomethings they’d visited during their two-week trip three years ago had been a mahoe.
Her eyes rested on the picture of the sacred bleeding heart of Jesus above the bureau in the dining alcove.
‘Rangiy?’ she yelled towards the ceiling. ‘That place in Ireland where we nearly saw the Virgin Mary? Remember? Was that Ballymahoe? Or Ballymaloe?’
Her husband’s heavy footsteps came thundering down the stairs and he came up behind her, then reached for the coffee pot.
‘Why don’t you try just opening the goddamned letter, Patty Ann? That way you won’t have to deafen me with your caterwauling.’ He added cream to his cup and three teaspoons of sugar, never mind what the doctor said about the strain on his heart.
The hurt look on Patty’s face annoyed the hell out of him but only because it reminded him what an asshole he could be.
‘I’m sorry, baby,’ he said in a softer voice, moving towards her and rubbing one shoulder with his free hand. ‘Darn leg’s giving me hell again and I can’t raise Lenny on the phone.’
Patty knew how much her husband had been looking forward to today’s fishing trip and instantly forgave him his oafish behaviour, returning, instead, to excitement at the unexpected correspondence in her hands.
Truth was, the Patinkins didn’t get a whole lot of mail that had handwritten addresses on it these days. Well, who did? Mostly they got bills and junk mail like everybody else. Now and then they got something from Laurie’s Auntie Jean who was in a home up in Washington State but even that address was printed out on a sticker. And of course she didn’t write the letter herself— some nurse probably, or nurse aide.
‘Well, are you going to read it?’ Laurie asked, looking over Patty’s shoulder and then reaching around her and suggestively fondling the letter. ‘Or are you going to sculpt it into somethi
ng?’ He thrust his hips crudely into her rump.
Patty had made him take her to see the movie Ghost the weekend before and he’d driven her crazy with his Patrick Swayze impersonations ever since.
‘Oh, you!’ she said crossly, but she knew it was just his way of making up for being mean to her.
Using her perfectly painted index finger she carefully ripped open the envelope and shook open the letter, handwritten on lined onion skin paper.
Dear Patty Patinkin,
How are you? How is California? I hope it is fine. Ireland is fine, in case you were wondering.
Records that have been passed on to me show that in 1987 you visited Ballymahoe, scene of a number of visitations of Our Lady, the blessed Virgin Mary, between 1969 and the present day, although not so often just recently.
Anyway, while you were in Ballymahoe you inquired via the famous Book of Relations as to the whereabouts of your mother’s great-aunt, Cecilia Corrigan, whom you believed may have originated from this part of West Cork.
I am pleased to announce that all inquiries of this kind are now being referred to a new agency that has opened for the purposes of reuniting loved ones from across the oceans with one another.
You can register with this agency by sending a postal order or bank cheque for £10, or US$20, to O’Rellys, PO Box 498, Dublin, Republic of Ireland.
As chief executive of O’Rellys, I am happy to inform you that we have already made significant headway in the tracing of your ascendants but need permission from yourself to proceed further.
You’ll be pleased to know, Mrs Patinkin, that in the two years O’Rellys has been in operation, it has managed an 80 per cent success rate. That means you have an 8 in 10 chance of finding your Irish roots.
I wish you all the luck in the world and hope to see you sometime back in our beautiful Emerald Isles.
Regards
Charlie Ahern
O’Rellys
Patty put the letter on the counter and raised her hand to her lips. ‘Oh, my Lord,’ she said, turning to her husband. ‘It looks like I might have found my Great-great-aunt Cecilia!’
‘Give me that,’ said Laurie, wiping cookie crumbs off his face and snatching the letter from his wife. ‘Looks like you might have found a way to relieve yourself of 20 bucks, don’t you mean, Patty Ann?’
Patty looked her husband up and down and wondered not for the first time what she saw in him.
He was fat, he combed his hair across his bald spot and he had a mean streak a mile wide.
‘That’s right, Laurie Patinkin. Just you go right ahead and make fun of every single little thing I do. I guess it’s that leg of yours again, huh? Well, let me tell you this, Mr Nasty Pants. If I want to spend $20 investigating my Irish forefathers and fore-aunts, I will, and there’s not a darn thing you can do about it.’
With that she picked the letter up off the counter and flounced past her unrepentant husband, headed for the study to draft a reply.
Well if she thinks I am going away with the Bible Club again she has another think coming, thought Laurie as he picked up the phone and tried Lenny’s number yet again. There were only so many Sites of Great Significance to the Blessed Virgin Mary that a man could stomach.
Mind you, a man could do worse than drink that black Irish stout of theirs.
Patty sat in the cool quiet of her study and re-read the letter. This was her favourite room in the house these days, even though she didn’t really need a study. Well, she hadn’t worked since she was married 29 years ago and a housewife with no children didn’t really need a study.
But it was really the only space in the spotless Marina Del Ray home which she felt was hers. Of course she had decorated and redecorated, twice now, the whole house from top to bottom, every single room, most recently in the prettiest pastels.
In every other room but this one, though, Laurie had put his stamp, whether it was some stuffed fish or other stuck on the wall, or the athletic trophies from his college days for which he built a special shelf in the living room, or his gun cabinet which he insisted on putting in the dining room.
He’d built a special rack for his fishing rods and hats inside their front door and even their barbecue pit on the patio had a specially installed slab for gutting his haul.
Patty had made the study out of bounds, though, and it showed no homage at all to her husband.
She had bought the writing desk brand new in Santa Monica and covered an old kitchen chair in a pretty pastel floral skirt. She’d covered a little round table in the same fabric and always had a vase of similarly coloured flowers sitting on it. Then she had painted an old bookcase that Laurie had sifted out from the garage a beautiful shade of peppermint blue and kept all her magazines and books neatly displayed in alphabetical order.
The little window that looked out onto her scrupulously maintained patio was dressed with homemade drapes in a peppermint blue and pale pink stripe.
‘Gives me a goddamned headache just looking at it,’ Laurie had complained, but then Patty didn’t want him to look at it anyway, so what did she care?
Looking around it now, her eye fell on her 1987 photo album and she pulled it out of the bookcase and opened it on her writing desk.
There were she and Laurie and Lenny and Lou at the crystal factory in Waterford, and again eating fish chowder in Kinsale. Oh, and there were she and Lou at Blarney Castle though they hadn’t liked to kiss the famous Blarney stone after the girl in the souvenir shop told them that vandals had climbed up at night and peed on it. But she had bought the most beautiful little ceramic leprechaun that she kept on the kitchen windowsill to talk to when she was doing the washing up.
Patty ran her fingers over the pictures of the happy holidaymakers as though touching the images would transport her back there. She sighed. There was no way Lenny would make that trip again. He had hated the plane ride and even though the Bible Club had chartered a coach to tour the holy grottoes, the narrow winding roads drove him bananas.
‘Did that idiot Louisa say anything to you about what Lenny was doing today?’ Laurie yelled through the closed study door.
‘She is not an idiot, Laurie. Why do you have to be so mean?’ She hated it when her husband was in this mood. His capacity for nastiness was enormous.
‘Just answer the goddamned question for once, Patty Ann!’
Patty put the album back on her desk and turned on her prettily covered chair to face the closed door.
‘Well, now you come to mention it, hon, I think she did say something about how Lenny might be going back to the car yard this morning to continue his extra-marital affair with Rita, you know, the new receptionist.’
There was a silence from the other side of the door.
‘She knows about that?’ Laurie asked incredulously.
‘Oh, you—’ Patty picked up the album she had only minutes ago been fondling so lovingly and hurled it at the door. ‘Go away and leave me alone, you pig,’ she cried.
She could hear Laurie shuffling nervously on the other side of the door, aware that he had put his foot in his mouth and upset his wife by confirming what he had known for months: that Lenny had been cheating on Patty’s best friend with a woman half his age. How had she tricked him into telling her that?
With a half-hearted kick at the study door he turned and headed for the garage to unpack and repack his fishing gear. Lenny would turn up eventually, if that 24-year-old with the 40-inch bust didn’t kill him first, that is. And he didn’t want to be in the house if Patty was throwing things.
Sitting in her study, Patty sniffled as she picked up the photos that had fallen out of the album. Look — there were she and Lou standing beside the Tart with the Cart, one of Dublin’s famous sculptures, at the bottom of Grafton Street.
She sat back in her chair and worryingly chewed on her index fingernail. So it was true about Lenny and that cheap tramp at the yard. And they all thought Louisa was so stupid yet she knew the day that girl started on the recep
tion desk that trouble lay ahead.
Lord knows Lou had already forgiven Lenny three little indiscretions since they were married. But obviously two tiny little unimportant things like his wedding vows and the seventh commandment were not enough to keep him on the straight and narrow.
How was Lou going to cope with this? The last one had nearly been the end of her. Why, she’d only been off the antidepressants for a matter of weeks and there was no way Patty could sit here and know what she now knew and not tell Lou.
Unless … Patty picked up Charlie Ahern’s letter again. Unless she confronted Lenny about the tramp, then took Lou away while he finished the affair and sorted himself out. Maybe her best friend didn’t need to know about her foolish husband’s straying after all.
Patty opened the desk drawer and pulled out her personal account bank statement. She still had enough left of the nest egg her mom had left her to take Lou with her to Ireland to find that little old lady.
What was keeping her here apart from cooking and cleaning for an ungrateful husband, Lord forgive her, who was driving her further around the bend with every day of his retirement?
And her mom would just love to know that she was combining tracing her roots with helping out a friend. That’s what being a Catholic was all about, after all.
Patty pulled out the box of flowery writing paper with matching envelopes that she saved for special occasions and started on a letter to Charlie Ahern.
Chapter 29
Sunday, 21 February 1999
Soaking in a piping hot bath in a pale blue bathroom overlooking the bay, Molly mulled over what had gone on down by the fire.
So Viv had given up a baby for adoption. God, that explained so much. Why she kept people at arm’s length. Why she had perfected the tough, brittle exterior. Why she made such an effort to spend time with Bobs and Molly even though she didn’t seem to like them. Why she tried so hard to make everything look perfect — on the outside anyway.
Finding Tom Connor Page 22
