25 Years

by Tara Taylor Quinn

  The moon—he’d ordered a full one—shone down on the lot of them, highlighting the backdrop of bare trees. The few wisps of gray clouds that blew across the moon’s face, like bits of torn gauze, were a nice touch, he thought. Waving at everyone to stay back, he ran across the field, touched a match and a dozen or so small fireworks he’d set in the ground earlier fused and rose, exploding like a burst of chrysanthemums. The crowds began to applaud.

  On cue, the musicians broke into “The Cliffs of Doneen,” a piece he’d chosen especially for Eileen.

  “You may travel far far from your own native land,” a lad from the village sang softly. “Far away o’er the mountains, far away o’er the foam. But of all the fine places that I’ve ever been, sure there’s none can compare with the cliffs of Doneen…”

  Kieran glanced back at the crowd. Amid all the upturned faces, lit by the colored lights, he finally spotted Eileen’s, tears pouring down her cheeks.

  With a quick prayer that the gardai would turn a blind eye, he struck a match to light the bonfire, then sprinted back to where she stood—momentarily, and miraculously, alone—watching the flames leap into the night. In an instant she was in his arms sobbing into his shoulder.

  “Ah, come on now,” he whispered, suddenly unsure of himself. The tears he’d expected, but not the violent sobs that were shaking her body. He hugged her closer, patted her back. “I was just trying to show you what you’ve been missing all these years.”

  “You have, trust me,” she said, the words muffled because her mouth was still half buried in his shoulder. “Oh, Kieran.” She pulled away to look at him, sniffing, eyes damp. “God, I wasn’t prepared for that.”

  Kieran went on holding her, aware that none of this was going unnoticed. As the fire sent crackling flames leaping ever higher, the eyes that weren’t following the embers as they rose in the air like a second fireworks display, were fixed on the sight of Eileen Doyle back in his arms after all these years. Everyone wondering no doubt what her fancy gentleman friend would have to say about all of this.

  Other than a passing thought that perhaps he should round up a bucket of water just to be on the safe side—for the fire that would be—Kieran could hardly have cared less about what any of them thought. The party had gone off very, very well and at this moment, with Eileen, smiling now through the tears, he was a happy man.

  “Welcome home, Eilie,” he said.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “YEAH, SURE YOU LOOK like a million dollars,” Mr. Schwartz said to Eileen in her dream. “And everyone thinks you’re a big deal and the boyfriend’s back and it’s all hunky dory. But you’re a fraud, kid. A fraud. Fraud. Fraud.”

  “Okay!” Eileen shouted, waking herself up. “I get it.”

  Her eyes were swollen and burning as if she’d been crying all night and the song the kid had sung at the party was still playing over and over in her brain. You can travel far far, from your own native home… Welcome home, Eilie, she heard Kieran say. “But there’s none can compare…” The song again. God. She wiped her nose with the back of her arm. She had the shaky feeling that whatever she set her eyes on, listened to, thought about, anything at all, would have her bawling uncontrollably.

  Oh what a tangled web we weave…

  Shut up. She pulled the pillow over her head.

  You can travel far, far…

  Shut up. She tossed the pillow to the floor, went down the hall to the bathroom, which looked nothing like the one she remembered. “Ah, well it needed a little spruce-up,” her mother had said while she’d been giving Eileen a tour that first day. “Kieran did the work himself. He’s good like that.”

  Judging by all the other changes and modifications she’d noticed in the house, Kieran must have been quite busy over the years. Just quietly helping out her mother. No big deal, no expectations of anything, just there to give a hand when needed. And Deirdre, plain solid Deirdre, working away to preserve the bogs and birds. And you, Eileen? Twenty-five years of building a stupid, phony facade. You must be so proud.

  At the sink, careful to avoid her reflection in the chrome-framed mirror, Eileen removed toothbrush and toothpaste from her silver toiletry bag. When she’d set the bag out on the little shelf arrangement over the toilet, even that had prompted her mother to whisper, “Oooh, expensive,” in the kind of reverential tone you’d hear in church.

  Eileen faced her mirrored self, looked away. She squirted toothpaste onto the brush and scrubbed her teeth. Back in the bedroom, she sat on the edge of the bed. She wanted to call Mr. Schwartz for advice. She practiced the conversation in her head.

  “This isn’t going quite the way I thought it would. I thought I could just put on this act, play the part and not really feel anything. But being back is, well, I didn’t know I was going to feel like this, like a part of me is back where it was always supposed to be. In one way it feels so right…”

  “So what’s the problem?” Mr. Schwartz would say.

  “Well, duh. I’m not really who people think I am. I’m not this rich, successful woman, I’m just me, Eileen, and I want to tell them that.”

  “So tell them.”

  Eileen started crying. Mr. Schwartz wasn’t helping, not like this. She lay down again, pulled the covers up to her face and studied the dolls. Her mother had dolls all over the house—china dolls in crinoline skirts with elaborate hats and curls, dumpy cloth dolls with yarn hair. Inexplicably, one wore a little name badge that said, “Hello, I’m Deanna.” There were dolls that stood several feet high, a set of tiny dolls that lived in mismatched teacups on the mantelpiece in the parlor, Barbie dolls in crocheted dresses. On the shelf opposite the bed a gray-haired granny doll seemed to be looking directly at her—disapprovingly.

  “Go to hell,” Eileen said.

  “Eilie.” It was her mother’s voice outside the door. “Cup of tea?”

  “Thanks.” Eileen sat up, wiped her eyes and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “I’ll be right down.”

  “Stay where you are. I’ve brought a tray. I thought we’d have a cozy little breakfast up here, just the two of us. There now.” She set the tray down across Eileen’s knees. “A full Irish breakfast. Looks lovely, doesn’t it?”

  “It does,” Eileen agreed. Fried eggs with yolks the color of oranges, thick rashers of bacon, slice of brown bread. Full Irish breakfast for a half-Irish fraud. She watched as her mother settled herself in the armchair next to the bed and poured the tea.

  “To having you home again, Eilie.” Her mother clinked her teacup against Eileen’s.

  “To being here,” Eileen said and started to cry. “I’m sorry.” She sniffed. “I’ll be all right, it’s just everything’s kind of overwhelming…last night—”

  “Kieran did a lovely job, didn’t he? I was surprised myself, what with the fireworks and the food! Deirdre said it must have cost him a fortune. To her way of thinking he’d gone a bit overboard, but I said to her, that’s Kieran’s business.” She paused to sprinkle pepper over her eggs. “I told Kieran…” she said in a hushed voice as though he might be on the other side of the door “…and I’m just saying this so…well anyway, I told him not to get his hopes up.”

  “Mom.” Eileen set her fork down. “Kieran’s a grown man. I don’t think he needs you telling him…anyway, what if I…what if—”

  “What if you what?”

  “What if I still…if Kieran and I…”

  “You’re not saying that you and Kieran—”

  “I’m not saying anything, Mammy.” God she was starting to cry again. “I don’t know, I mean everything’s fine…great, it’s just that, well, it feels so good to be back.”

  “It’s lovely to have you back.”

  “But, you know, I just think sometimes, what if I just came back for good?”

  “What?”

  “Just came back,” she said in a small voice.

  “You can’t be serious,” her mother said, clearly horrified. “Why would you throw up everything
you’ve worked all these years for, just to—”

  “Maybe it’s not that big of a deal. Maybe I don’t care.”

  “But Eilie—” her mother leaned closer “—what about your gentleman friend?”

  “Maybe he’s no big deal, either.”

  “Ah, come on.” She peered into Eileen’s cup, poured some more tea. “It’s the jet lag is all. ’Twas the same with Mrs. Donovan’s son when he came back from Canada. He’d hardly walked through the front door, she said, before he was saying that’s it, he never wanted to leave Ireland again. But, sure enough by the end of two weeks, he was ready to leave and I don’t think he’s been back since.”

  She started to clear away the dishes. “Now, speaking of Mrs. Donovan, she’s laid up with a bad back and I promised I’d look in on her this morning. Would you want to go with me? Or maybe you’d like to stay here and rest a bit.”

  “I might go for a walk,” Eileen said. “Leave the dishes, I’ll do them.”

  “Wouldn’t hear of it.” Her mother eased herself out of the chair, picked up the tray. “What you could do while you’re here, Eilie, if you wouldn’t mind, is help Deirdre smarten up a bit. I think it would do an awful lot for her self-esteem.”

  Eileen waited until she heard her mother leave the house, then pulled on jeans—another designer pair she viewed with the same loathing she suddenly felt for everything else in her ridiculous and expensive luggage that she’d be paying off for the rest of her life—added a sweater and the jeans jacket, pulled on the boots, ran a brush through her hair and headed out.

  Immediately, the cold zeroed straight to her bones. By the time she reached the bottom of her mother’s street, her teeth were chattering uncontrollably. Serves you right. That’s what you get for showing off. About to turn the corner, she stopped, ran back to the house, grabbed one of the sturdy coats her mother had hanging on the hallstand—this one black cloth with a little fur collar, rabbit probably—yanked off the boots that Kieran said his daughter would admire and stuffed her feet into a pair of her mother’s faux leather ankle boots with little ruffs of gray curly wool. When she looked down at herself, despite her fragile mood, she wanted to laugh. All she needed was a headscarf and a shopping basket over one arm.

  The hell with it. She opened the front door again, stood in the entrance looking out at the street, then ran back into the kitchen, found a plastic shopping bag and dropped the fancy boots inside.

  THE CONNEMARA REGION of Ireland was known for wild sweeping landscapes of towering mountain peaks, bogs and lakes. It was not known for its warm sunny weather, particularly in mid December. As Kieran tried to explain this to a couple of guests who’d arrived early that morning and were now complaining that the horseback ride along the beach he’d just suggested would be fine, except it was too cold and damp, he felt a surge of irritation. Go to Spain then, he wanted to say.

  By the time he’d got them sorted out, sending them off to Galway for an afternoon of gallery hopping—not how he’d choose to spend his afternoon, but he’d seen the woman’s eyes light up when he’d brought out the brochure—Tara, who was filling in for Deirdre who was off on a save-the-corncrake mission, clattered down the uncarpeted wooden stairs to tell him one of the bedroom ceilings was leaking.

  “Leaking.” He was standing at the lectern that held the guest register. Propping his face in his hands, elbows on the wooden ledge, he stared at her. “A big leak?”

  “I didn’t measure it, Daddy.” She had an edge in her voice because she really didn’t want to be there, yet he clearly needed some help. “But enough that you’d better have a look at it. Haven’t we a full house tomorrow?”

  “We have.” He started for the stairs, then stopped. “The afternoon tea?”

  She saluted. “Under control. Six, no, seven old birds chomping down on cucumber sandwiches. Scones warming in the oven.”

  “Good,” he said. “Thank you.”

  “Right.”

  A few minutes later, he’d rounded up a large soup pot from the kitchen, and was carrying it upstairs to place under the drip until he could get someone in to take care of it, when Tara burst into the room.

  “Daddy. She’s here.”

  “She?” As if he didn’t know.

  “Eileen. Just ordered the cream tea.”

  “Oh.” The pot still in his hand, Kieran gawked at her.

  Tara started laughing. “You should see your face, Da. Go.” She took the pot from him. “Close your mouth first though and run a comb through your hair.”

  He did both, but as he clambered down the stairs, his heart thumping to beat the band, he kept in mind the gentleman friend.

  In the lobby, a couple of guests—middle-aged Americans back from a shopping spree—provided him with an additional moment or so to work on his composure while they trotted out, for his approval, their purchases of Irish linen tea cloths, Aran sweaters and shamrock-patterned tea things. All the while he had half an eye on Eileen, visible through the open door of the small library that, every afternoon, became the tearoom.

  “Very nice…ah yes, very warm,” he said as he dutifully felt the wool of the sweater, wondering how many Aran sweaters he’d fingered, so to speak, over the years. If Eileen hadn’t been there, he’d have given the guests a bit of history about how each sweater was knitted in a different, distinguishing way so that if the fisherman who wore it was unfortunate enough to drown, the sweater would be his identity.

  He would have told them, but he saw Eileen glance at her watch so he made his excuses and walked into the tearoom. Without a word, he sat at the table right in front of her.

  Her face, he was pleased to see, lit up immediately. She even blushed a bit. Now what did that say about the state of things?

  “Hi, Kieran.”

  “Hi to you, too.”

  And that pretty much exhausted their conversation. All they seemed able to do was sit there and grin. She looked nice—in her blond new Eileen sort of way. A black coat with a little collar that looked so familiar, after he’d looked at it for a while he could have sworn he’d seen it on Mrs. D.

  “Good scones,” she finally said, breaking their smile-a-thon. “Want a taste?”

  “No. Thanks though. I’ve tasted plenty of them, over the years.” An innocuous, inconsequential thing to say if he’d ever heard one. He found himself wondering what her gentleman friend did for a living. And what did he talk to Eileen about? Theatre? Art? Amusing little wines with pretentious noses?

  “So are you busy?” she asked.

  “Right now?” He laughed. “I look it, don’t I?” He leaned closer, lowered his voice. “It’s an act though. Just trying to convey the impression of a man of leisure. We’ve a full house from now till after Christmas,” he said back in his normal voice. “And unfortunately we’re also short-staffed. One of the maids is off having a baby and a chef just gave in his notice and…” He put the brake on his mouth before he went on about the leaking ceiling and the fence that needed to be mended around the horse pasture. “There, now you have it. The trials and tribulations of an Irish lodge-owner.”

  Eileen looked thoughtful. “You enjoy it though?”

  He tried to look thoughtful, too. “I do,” he said. “On the whole.”

  So much for that, they fell into silence again.

  “That was a lovely party you gave, Kieran,” she said after a while.

  “I’m glad you enjoyed it.” He studied her plate for a bit—scone crumbs on pink china—trying to work out how to get past the fits and starts of small talk which he could see sputtering along until one or both of them, but most likely Eileen, got bored enough to leave. The thing was though, every sentence that came into his brain was along the lines of: “And this gentleman friend of yours…”

  Eileen was still talking about the party. “The fireworks and the music…it was incredible. Do you do that sort of thing very often, have parties like that I mean?”

  “Only when I’m trying to impress women from America.”r />
  She smiled.

  “D’you go to a lot of parties, then?” he asked, ever so casually. “I’d imagine you would, in your line of work that is.” Then a thought struck him and he looked at her. “I say that as though I know what your line of work is. In fact I have no idea.”

  “Oh…” Now she was studying the plate and her face had turned scarlet. “It’s kind of difficult to explain.” She laughed, awkwardly though. “Actually, it’s not all that interesting. I mean it sounds it, but it’s not, if you know what I mean.”

  “I don’t,” he said, “know what you mean.”

  “Kieran.” She paused. “Can we talk about something else?”

  He shrugged, a bit mystified. She seemed on the verge of tears. “We can talk about whatever you want to talk about. Bog preservation. Corncrakes, although that’s really Deirdre’s specialty…hold on.” He nodded to Tara who had just appeared in the doorway, clearly eager to come over. “My daughter.” He looked at Eileen. “She’s been dying to meet you, but you were surrounded at the party and she didn’t want to barge in. You don’t mind if I ask her to join us?”

  “Of course not,” she said, but kind of uneasily as though maybe something was giving her trouble.

  With a nod from him, Tara was over and beaming at Eileen with the look of a dazzled fan meeting a big film star. Kieran watched his daughter, pink-cheeked, the curly black hair around her shoulders. She wore turquoise earrings he hadn’t seen before and a light green shawl tied in some way that he imagined was all the fashion these days—knotted at one shoulder and slipping off the other. She hadn’t been wearing it earlier and he thought she’d probably pulled it over the plain black dress she wore just to impress Eileen.

  “I’ve really been looking forward to meeting you,” she said as she slipped into the chair across from Eileen, “but I’ve yet to catch you by yourself. Can I get you some more scones? Some barmbrak?” Leaning forward, she lifted the lid of the teapot. “More tea?”