We bowed our heads and were quiet while an American priest said a short prayer.
Someone gave me his seat at the bar. I waved to Brendan and the Corkman at the other end. They were chatting with two women I often saw in there. Beautiful American women who thought Irishmen were cute. People kept coming over to say how sorry they were that I had to witness that. I said I wished there was something I could have done, but it happened in a flash. They all said the same thing—nothing to be done, that was life.
The other painter was sitting at a table behind me. He wore a gray suit. His eyes were red. His friends sat around him, rows of pints lined up on the table and the ashtrays brimming. His girlfriend sat next to him. She wore a short denim jacket with wide lapels. She minded the two children of a wealthy couple and did their housework. She drank and smoked too much. But that’s what most of us did.
The other painter and Eamon grew up on the same street in Malahide. They went to the same schools. It was Eamon’s idea to come to Boston and start a painting company. They had saved money at home. Their families helped. But the other painter said he and his girlfriend were going back. Never should have left Malahide in the first place. Should have stuck it out. Waited till the day when things improved. That afternoon, I told him he should stay. But he said it wouldn’t be the same. Eamon got the jobs. He could talk to Americans.
On my way to the toilet I ran into Allison. She was a Catholic from Derry, and was studying American literature at University College Dublin. She wore t-shirts with images of Lou Reed, Dylan, Sinéad O’Connor, Che Guevara—people like that. We used to talk about books, the Troubles, apartheid, and The Smiths. I often slept on the single mattress on the floor of her tiny apartment at the top of a tall house on Inman Square, where I pressed the tiny dark freckles that dotted her belly and thighs. Pressed each one like a doorbell. She was in the States for the summer only, and she’d just come back from Texas, where she’d gone to rodeos and met real cowboys. She was telling me about the cowboys when she grabbed my hand and led me into the women’s toilet. In a stall we kissed and did something else. Then she fingered a joint from her jeans pocket. Thirty or forty minutes later we were back in the bar. She waved at someone. We kissed and agreed to meet up later. I watched until her black hair disappeared in the crowd. Musicians were tuning up in the corner: an acoustic guitar player with a hungry beard, a beautiful-looking American woman with a fiddle, and a heavyset gray-haired American woman with a mandolin, whose t-shirt said Ronald Reagan was a war criminal and an asshole. The Corkman stood next to them. He was ready to sing. People egged him on. His voice was lovely and lonesome.
Our story’s so old, again has been told
On the past let’s close the door
When the song ended I got the urge to escape, and so I nudged my way through the crowd. Laughing people swayed into me and asked where the fuck did I think I was off to. I laughed and swayed and said I was heading outside for a breath of fresh air. I’d be back in in a few minutes. No worries.
The bar door shut behind me. Sounds faded like when you sink underwater. I raised my face and squinted in the hot bright sunlight. Loud laughter exploded from inside an Indian restaurant a few doors down. People and lovers went by. Shorts and t-shirts and sandals and backpacks and Red Sox caps and sunglasses went by. Cameras dangling from necks. People holding the hands of their tanned children.
Behind me the bar door opened. Laughter, smoke, and music leaked out.
Of all the stars that ever shone
Not one does twinkle like your pale blue eyes
I turned to find Tina. She looked younger out of that postal uniform. The tight knots in her hair made me see the thorns on the barbed wire behind the house I grew up in. Tina smiled when she said it was getting to be too much for her in there. I said I knew what she meant, and I bent and kissed her damp forehead and thanked her for coming. She reached her arms around my neck and kissed my sunburned cheek and said she needed to get on home. Kids needing dinner. Husband working the graveyard shift. I said Eamon used to look forward to seeing her walk up that driveway every morning.
—A neat guy. We gotta go on, she said.
—Nothing else to do, I said.
—You gonna be all right? she asked.
—Fine, Tina. Thanks, I said.
We were holding hands. She lowered her head and dropped my hand then turned and headed up toward Harvard Square. I knew I’d never again see Tina, and I watched until she vanished among all the other people. Next I was sitting on an empty bus stop seat a few doors up from the Indian restaurant. I was mesmerized by the ads and the huge smiling faces plastered on the sides of passing buses. I was beautifully stoned and the hot sun felt so comforting and I thought those faces were it. Students were sitting outside a café two doors up from the Indian restaurant. Newspapers, books, notebooks, cups, and sunglasses atop round iron tables. From the restaurant the consoling smell of cooking rice and Indian bread. I folded my arms, stretched my legs, and shut my eyes. Moments later I opened them because someone was sitting too close. I moved and looked in the other direction. The sky behind the vain and delicate downtown skyscrapers was a painful blue.
—Jimmy.
Someone touched my arm. I turned.
—Kevin, I said.
We shook hands.
—I’ve been in there a good while, he said. —I played hurling with Eamon in Dorchester a few times. I saw you in there earlier and wanted to say hello, but people were talking to you. Then I was asking around and someone said you’d gone outside—
—I don’t remember you ever playing hurling at home, I said.
—I stopped after the father passed. Eamon is a nice fella, he said.
—He is. He gave me a job, I said.
—People were very fond of him, Kevin said.
—They say he’ll spend the rest of his days in a wheelchair, I said.
—Never walk or talk again, Kevin said. —I heard you saw it. How are you?
—I’m okay, fine, and you?
—Fine, he said. —My mother ran into Hannah in Tipp town not so long ago. Hannah said they hadn’t heard from you in a while. She gave your phone number and your address to the mother, so I have them now.
—How are they? I asked.
—You know how they are, he said.
—You’re out here a while now, I said.
—Nearly two years, he said.
—You’re liking it, I said.
—I’m a new man. It’s like everything that happened before this never happened. You know what I mean, Jimmy? he said.
—I think I do, I said.
There was that glint in the eyes, the same as in Una’s—their father’s eyes.
He wore a blue button-down shirt, polished loafers, and a creased pair of khakis. The hair was thick like the father’s. If he kept his mouth shut you’d think Boston was always his home.
He said he had good news for me.
—Good news is good on a day like this, I said.
—I’m getting married, he said. —She’s a lawyer. Born and raised not far from here. Blonde. And not from a bottle. The green card. The works.
He laughed then slapped his right thigh.
—Good luck to you. Happy to hear it, I said.
We shook hands again.
• • •
I remembered him in the creamery yard. I was standing with my father and another farmer in the doorway of the store. The men were waiting to pick up bags of fertilizer and talking about how awful it was that those men in Mitchelstown were closing down the creamery but how could you stop men like that from doing whatever it was they took a whim to do.
Kevin whipped his shirt around his head and made loud yelps. The bike had been taken apart and rebuilt. It had no mudguards, no brakes, and the back wheel was smaller than the front. The frame was painted a bright red. It would hav
e been the bike his mother once cycled. Tall, sturdy, the frame thick like a shovel handle. Bikes long ago abandoned to dairy houses. Covered in the dusty heavy topcoats that dead grandfathers once wore.
He cycled very fast, in perfect circles, each circle wider, each yelp louder, and the farmer said to my father that young Lyons had been caught robbing more than one shop in Tipperary town that past week, and but for the priest and Nora going in to beg the shop owners not to prosecute, the young fellow would have been in massive trouble.
—No one can control him. Come to no good, that lad will, the farmer said.
The farmer lit a cigarette then held the pack out to my father. He took one and said nothing. We kept staring. My father must have been thinking about his best friend, who was buried not so long ago.
• • •
—You have to come to the wedding, he said. —We’ll have it on the harbor. Great food, great band. Una and the husband, the mother, the twins will all be there. You’ll be there, you will.
—How could I miss it, I said.
—So no job for you now, he said.
—I’ll find something, I said.
—I heard in there Eamon’s friend is going back—
—After we finish the last of these jobs—
—I have work for you, he said. —I have a few properties. The fiancée invested in them. I fix them up into nice flats with a crew of lads, all from home, all illegal and mad for work. They’re great gas, and we could do with another painter—
—After these jobs are done I’m never again getting on a fucking ladder, I said.
—Work in the office then, he said. —You look like you might be good with figures.
—Never, I said. —But Brendan is heading to some town in Michigan. He got a printing job near Detroit. The money’s too good for him to turn down. He asked if I’d go with him. I’m thinking I might—
—Why the fuck travel out there? Stay here. I have a job for you.
—I want to see what it’s like. I want to visit Chicago. You get tired of this, I said.
—You don’t know a soul out there. You know me. I’ll pay you well—
—I have to think about it—
—What exactly is there to think about, young Jimmy—
—I need to go back in there, Kevin. There’s someone expecting me—
—Listen to me, Jimmy. I’ll look after you. Will you give me a ring this week—
He opened his wallet and handed me a card. I slipped it into my shirt pocket and said I would give him a ring. Then we stood.
—I’m only trying to help you out, young Jimmy, he said, and he smiled.
—I know you are, Kevin, I said.
He rubbed his hands along the seat of his pants then glanced at his glinting heavy watch.
—I have to go, young Jimmy. An early start. And a few phone calls to make this evening. I’ll be looking out for your ring. And I’ll put the wedding invitation in the post. You look after yourself, won’t you—
—I’ll do my best, I said.
He hurried along the sidewalk. That strut he’d learned in the vocational schoolyard. He looked back when he was opening the door of a new car. Then I was staring through the bar window. They were all singing, arms around each other, window vibrating. Some people moved. Allison stood with her back to the bar. Her right foot tapped the rail. She was touching the forehead of a tall man who was laughing and fingering the hem of her Dylan t-shirt. I’d never laid eyes on the man before. But Allison and I owed each other nothing. Whatever it was we had was only there and then.
I went into the Indian restaurant and asked the host in the starched white shirt and silky black bow tie to please seat me away from the street and the window. When I walked across the wild battle scenes on the carpet I knew I was heading out to Michigan with Brendan. I didn’t want to go to that wedding. Didn’t want to see Una and her engineer. Didn’t want to ring Kevin. But you would have to ring him. Your neighbor from home. Have to. All that. Your fathers the best of friends. All that.
The waiter put the plates of food before me. I thanked him. The buzz from the booze and the pot was fading in its dismal way. I tore into the warm bread. I’d forgotten how hungry I was.
I rang him a few days later. We arranged to meet on Friday of that week at his new offices. He told me the address, and mentioned that the offices were under construction.
—One of them is yours for the taking, Jimmy, he added.
I thanked him.
That Friday I got on the T at Davis and sat across from a group of chipper college students. At Harvard Square they slipped out the opening doors and skipped laughing along the platform. The train picked up speed. I watched them, feeling that dreadful envy, but down in the dark tunnel between Harvard and Central everyone I ever loved and everyone I didn’t give a damn about vanished.
His office building was on a side street not far from the T. On the pavement was a large Dumpster. Two chutes led from it to two fourth-floor windows, where men with Irish accents were shoveling mortar into the chutes. The front door of the building was open. On the phone he’d said for me to come up to the second floor. He’d be there.
I headed up a stairs. On the second floor landing was a new stained glass door. A plaque: O’NEILL AND LYONS. I opened the door. The floor of the large room was covered with drop cloths. Stepladders and tins of paint. The high ceiling and the walls smelled like they had been painted that morning. On the right side of the room was a desk, with a lamp and a phone. Behind the desk, a leather office chair. On the wall behind the chair was a photograph of the Limerick hurling team. I went around the desk and stared at the photograph. I felt sure it was one of the ones I saw on the wall of his father’s shed. I checked my watch. Half-eleven. I was dead on time.
The door to the next room was open. One wall was lined with filing cabinets. A card table and four metal chairs in the middle of the room. On the table the Boston Globe, a tin teapot you’d see in every house at home, mugs, a milk carton, a box of Barry’s teabags, a bag of Irish sugar, and an opened packet of Jacob’s Cream Crackers. I went over and ate one in two bites. A large rattling fan was jammed into the open window. To be heard in that room you’d have to shout.
I wandered down a short, newly painted corridor and stopped before a large framed map of Ireland. Around the map were portraits of famous Irish people. In their time they were mostly hated, or so few had ever really learned about them, but now money was to be made from them. Beside the picture was a small photo of the Lyons family. I only glanced at it. Michael was wearing the trilby.
At the end of that corridor a door was ajar. I pushed it in gently. This room was smaller than the others. The sunlight was dull, because the big window faced a red-brick alley wall. I liked this room the best. Before the window was another new desk, and on it a bottle of ouzo and two empty plastic tumblers. To my right a man’s jacket and a black cloth bag with strings hung from a coat stand. Mortar rolled along the chutes and plunked into the Dumpster. The boisterous talk and laughter from the workmen above. The noisy fan. And now the happy voices of workers set free for lunch.
I noticed another door to the right of the desk. I hadn’t when I walked in. Maybe because the door was the same shade of white as the walls. I walked around the desk and carefully pushed the door in. This room was like the first. It had the same type of desk as in the others, but this one was bigger. It sat before a huge bay window. A lovely view of treetops and tall Boston buildings.
Kevin was half-sitting on the end of the desk. His hands were flat on top of his head. His shoes were on, his shirt opened, and his pants and boxer shorts were around his ankles. Small American flags were printed on the shorts. Kneeling on the carpeted floor before him was a woman around our age. She wore denim shorts. Her hair was dark and in a ponytail. Her feet were bare. On top of the desk was a pair of jeweled flip-flops, the sort you
’d get at Target. The fan and the noise from the chutes and the voices from the street and the workmen stifled whatever noises they were making. And it was when I was pulling the door carefully after me that I remembered him saying his fiancée was blond.
And that was the second time he saw me. And what he saw was a retreating shadow.
I was down those stairs quickly. At the T’s hot mouth I stepped into a phone booth. Allison had rung three or four times that week. She was heading back earlier than planned, and wanted to meet one last time. I hadn’t rung her back. I was busy working. I stayed up for four nights in a row and painted sets at Bloomingdale’s for their fall furniture collection. And when I wasn’t working I was drinking beer and wandering sidewalks after dark with anyone who would take me. I took every drug that came my way. I did because I wanted to. And I enjoyed all of that in a way I will never again enjoy anything. An electronic voice said Allison’s number was no longer in service. I put the receiver back and pressed my forehead against the burning metal box. Drops of my sweat marked the filthy phone booth floor. My shoes were cheap.
Half an hour later I was standing in the hallway of the flat. Brendan was packing in the kitchen and he asked how the meeting with my old neighbor had gone. Did I like the office he gave me? I said the old neighbor left a note, he had an unexpected meeting, and I added that the sooner we hit the road, the better. Brendan asked what we should do with the heap of unopened mail on the hall table.
—This I can handle, I said.
I took the pile and a trash can out onto the deck. I sat in the armchair with the mail in my lap and riffled through it until I found the thick wedding invitation, which was the first envelope I ripped to bits without opening. And I dropped every piece into the trash can.
9.
A mowed path ran between the cornfield and a wooden fence. On the other side of the fence was the river, which was really a stream. Zoë and I sauntered along the sunlit path then stopped in the shadow of an oak whose roots were knotted up on the bank. Zoë said this was the perfect place. I pulled the striped blanket from the bag and spread it, and after we ate the sandwiches we sat with our back against the oak and talked about books we should be reading, music we should listen to, movies we should watch, the upcoming election, and then we talked about my job at the bakery, the grant-writing gigs Zoë’s dad sent her way, the classes we had to take and teach in the fall, the dissertations we were to start writing in the next year or so, and we laughed, kissed once, and said how boring that talk was. And so we got up and walked farther along the path. I carried the bag, and we were holding hands when we stood at the fence and looked into the water and across the bank at the Friesian cows and the two silos, and after we began walking again Zoë told me she’d mentioned the photograph to her father that morning. She’d never brought it up before, though she thought it was fine to now; the incident had happened years ago. Anyway, her father denied the photograph and the woman existed. He told Zoë he was true to her mother right till the end. When Zoë insisted she did see the woman, the swimsuits, the motorbike and the helmets, her father said she was confused. The man in the photograph was one of his buddies, or her divorced uncle who sometimes took girlfriends up to the cabin.
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