The Longest Way Home

by Andrew McCarthy

  “I’ll be right back,” I say, and head to the door. D is calling after me as I go, but I keep going. I need some air—and razor blades.

  Outside, it is a bright, cool morning. I feel a thin breeze blowing from the east, while above, rolling white clouds race across the sky from the west. I walk over Leeson Street Bridge and see two swans down beside the canal. The canal used to be the far reaches of town a few centuries ago and it’s more residential here than in the center. D used to live around the corner—going for a late-night quart of milk or an early morning, jet-lag-induced walk, these are the first streets of Dublin I got to know intimately. As I walk, aware of my personal history here, I realize how much I have invested in this relationship. I’m conscious of the rhythm of my steps, the swing of my arms, the fall of my feet. I’m grateful for the few minutes alone. Suddenly I’m singing a Bruce Springsteen song: May your strength give us strength / May your faith give us faith . . .

  My prayer for the day.

  When I return with the plastic razors, D and my daughter are gone. My son is in the breakfast room. In an unspoken agreement that I not see D before the wedding, a series of accidentally well-choreographed things are happening. The girls have gone off to get their hair done. While they are gone, my son and I will dress; my best man, Seve—who arrived yesterday—will pick us up; and we will walk over to the Civil Registration Office. After we leave, D will return and get dressed, her father will collect her, and we will all rendezvous at 10:25, in time to get married.

  While I’m shaving I have a clear memory of doing this same thing on the morning of my first wedding. I picture the light coming in from my left and the old bathroom mirror, its chipped corner. I distinctly remember the care and ease with which I shaved and the closeness I achieved. While I’m reliving this, I cut myself badly by my right ear. Blood flows and it is difficult to stop.

  “Well at least I’m not repeating the past,” I say aloud, trying not to see any kind of metaphorical meaning in this insistent bloodletting.

  “What did you say, Dad?” my son shouts from outside the bathroom.

  Seve arrives and hustles us out the door. We walk along the Grand Canal, past a half dozen mallard ducks. My son is prancing, skipping, running, up and back along the path. Seve strides beside me; his is a walk I’ve known so well for so long. There are no two people I would rather be with on my way to get married today. I ask Seve to take a photo of my son and me as we walk. My son isn’t interested, and Seve isn’t fast enough. My feelings are suddenly hurt. I keep it to myself—I am not nearly as relaxed as I thought I was.

  We leave the serenity of the canal and turn onto Fitzwilliam Place. Buses and motorcycles roar past, racing into the heart of Dublin. In the sudden cacophony I feel as if a layer of my skin has been removed; the chaos and noise grate on my now-jangling nerves, my shoulders hunch against the onslaught. Then we can’t find the registrar’s office.

  “Wasn’t this your job, Seve?”

  We go into a Spar market to ask for help. “Can I get a Coke and some potato chips, Dad?” my son asks.

  “It’s ten in the morning,” I say.

  “So?”

  “Fine.”

  “Yes!” He pumps his fist. “Seve, I haven’t gotten to have a Coke in months!”

  The building we’re looking for is just across the street. We’re the first to arrive. Suddenly I wonder if anyone will show up.

  I know my father won’t be here; I never heard from him again—but I didn’t expect that I would. My mother and eldest brother, Stephen, won’t get in until Friday. Neither of my other two brothers could make it. Peter, a college professor, began his semester this week and couldn’t get away, and Justin is absorbed in work of his own. I wish they were here. But the casually affectionate distance that has come to define our relationships prevented me from letting them know just how much their presence would have meant to me.

  The glass entry of the Civil Registration Office is at the end of an elegant internal courtyard. There is a small lobby area, and beyond, a blue-carpeted room with six rows of ten chairs each, fixed into the ground, inclining toward the front of the room, where there is a half-moon-shaped desk, with one chair behind it and four chairs around the semicircle. Improbably, the room has an air of hopefulness about it, yet I’m disappointed that the ceremony will apparently take place sitting down. The back wall is covered in wood paneling.

  I turn back and look up through the glass doors and see D’s three brothers arrive; they’re laughing. Then her parents are there, our daughter in her granddad’s arms, and three of D’s friends—her witness, Jackie, and two bridesmaids, Louise and Karen, D’s oldest friends. And then I see D. She is in an elegant silver-blue, form-hugging dress.

  I wait where I am, down by the desk. The others come in and there are hugs and nervous laughter. I kiss D on the cheek.

  “You look very beautiful,” I tell her.

  She smiles broadly; she is excited, nervous, self-possessed, and appears to me both very strong and very vulnerable. My son has been jumping around the room, but when the others arrive he becomes quiet and goes to sit in the last row, in the farthest seat on the end. D’s parents try to hug him and he resists them. His sister goes to him, but he waves her away. I ask him to come down front, with the others. He refuses.

  Much of my son’s anxiety about being left out of the family has been addressed again and again over the past months, and he’s been in bright spirits since we arrived in Dublin—until this moment. Suddenly, his fears seem to have returned, as I worried they might.

  I go to him and whisper, with urgency, “I need you to come down front, now.”

  “No,” he says. His eyes are burning.

  I am very close to letting my nerves fuel a lash of anger.

  “Please,” I hiss. I turn and ask one of D’s brothers, Colm Jr., whom my son is very fond of, to sit with him down front.

  “Come on,” Colm Jr. shouts, waving to my son.

  By an act of grace my son rises, shuffles down to the front row, and plops himself beside D’s brother.

  Patricia appears from behind the wood-paneled wall. She instructs us to sit. Seve flanks me on my right, D is on my left, and Jackie is beside her. Patricia sits behind the desk, and without a formal beginning, the ceremony begins.

  Patricia goes through some of the legal protocol. I feel a sense of calm about the proceedings that proves to be false when Patricia asks us to sign the binding document, and I begin to sign the wrong line. Seve stops me and points out the correct spot.

  Then Patricia asks us all to stand. D and I turn toward each other and hold hands. Suddenly the room is filled with an intensity and gravity that until then hadn’t been much more than a vaguely implied possibility but now galvanizes and gathers around us with force. My body begins to heat up. No false calm now; I’m here, and there’s a lot going on. D’s gaze is filled with purpose; she anchors the room. I look back at Patricia when she addresses me and begins to recite the vows.

  I, Andrew McCarthy, do solemnly and sincerely declare . . .

  I look back at D and begin to smile in embarrassment, but the gravity in D’s face settles me. I begin to repeat after Patricia.

  “I, Andrew McCarthy, do solemnly and sincerely declare . . .” I’m somehow surprised that this is what I am actually saying. I don’t know what I expected to say, since the specifics of traditional vows were never mentioned in our meeting yesterday, but in speaking these words, without anticipating their pronouncement, I hear them and contemplate their meaning in a way I might not have otherwise. As I echo Patricia, our voices take on a rhythm and I gather confidence.

  . . . love her, and comfort her . . .

  “. . . love her, and comfort her . . .”

  . . . in sickness and in health . . .

  “. . . in sickness and in health . . .”

  . . . for so long as we both shall live . . .

  “. . . for so long as we both shall live . . .”

  When I’ve
completed my vows Patricia turns to D, whose gaze on me never wavers. I can’t help but grin at her when she begins to recite her vows. The corners of her lips turn up and then she gathers herself again.

  When D has finished her vows, we share a look that seems to say, “Yes, we just said all that to each other.” It feels as if we are huge and growing—like that night when I was a child, in the snow under the stars in my front yard, and then again in Spain, by the side of the barn while walking the camino. I can sense the others around us. Without looking, I know where each one is standing. The room seems to be pulsing. The look in D’s eyes lets me know that she feels it too. She exhales deeply, calling on more of the swelling energy, riding the wave. And then she has the largest smile on her face, and then we’re kissing.

  When we emerge from our embrace, D shrugs, and everyone laughs. Perspective returns to normal and the hugging begins. The laughter is more relaxed now.

  Our daughter jumps up into both our arms, D’s brothers slap my back, her parents kiss and hug me. Seve shakes my hand with sincerity.

  “Congratulations, my friend. Nice work.”

  My son has moved and sits up against a wall, behind a partition, partially hidden from view. As the others begin to organize toward the door, I go to him, and there are tears in his eyes. I hug him.

  “That was a lot, huh?”

  “I guess.”

  “I love you so much,” I say.

  “Don’t say that, Dad, you don’t.” And the tears roll down his cheeks.

  “More than you can ever understand.” We sit in silence for a minute, with only the sound of his sniffling. “Come on,” I say after a while, “let’s go.” Seve comes to join us and my son wipes his eyes and we’re on the street.

  The girls take a cab to the Merrion Hotel, where we have reserved a room in Patrick Guilbaud’s restaurant. The boys decide to walk in the blustery midday through Merrion Square. The park is in full bloom. We pass the playful statue of Oscar Wilde reclining on a large stone.

  We spend a long and lazy afternoon eating rich food around a large, elegant table, then return to our hotel and all fall into bed. The next morning we maneuver a dozen bags into a taxi and head home.

  Everyone silently goes off to engage in their own form of nesting. My daughter is on her bed, changing the dresses on her dolls. My son is up in his loft space, playing with his knights and trolls. D is taking a long bath and I lie on the bed, watching the breeze blow through the tall cypress tree outside the window. It’s my favorite view and the first image that comes to mind when I think of our home in Dublin. For the first time this view reminds me of the cypress trees down in Patagonia, the ones at Estancia Cristina, the trees that had been planted to break the incessant winds. It seems a long time ago, my standing by the Catherine River, watching a salmon struggle upstream.

  Then, apparently, I laugh out loud.

  “What’s so funny?” D asks as she comes into the room, wrapped in a towel.

  “I was just thinking of Patagonia,” I say.

  “Wishing you were there?”

  “Just the opposite.” I reach out for my wife and kiss her properly for the first time since we married. “Feel married?” I ask.

  “Half. You?”

  “Completely,” I say. “I’m done.”

  “Oh, no you’re not, mister.”

  “Didn’t you see him scratching his head all week?”

  “I . . . I . . . ,” is my only response.

  “Call Karen, tell her to stop by the drugstore on her way over,” D orders. “We need to be at Dartmouth Square in an hour. The guys are meeting us to go through everything for tomorrow.” D shakes her head. “I mean really, luv.”

  My son was recently away, staying on a farm, and apparently brought home a head full of lice. Maybe in the stress of the week dealing with his arm I didn’t notice his incessant scratching, or maybe it’s just now that they are suddenly in full bloom.

  Karen arrives with something called Clearlice, Pantene conditioner, baking soda, and a fine-toothed comb. I watch D’s gentle and affectionate patience with my son as she drops everything and spends an hour tending to him. They laugh when she shows him the comb covered with the bugs that were in his hair.

  “Aw, cool,” my son exclaims.

  “Eew, gross,” my daughter squeals.

  We’re half an hour late when we arrive at Dartmouth Square, where the second ceremony will take place. The square is a hedge-bound, tree-lined green with an open field bisected by a trestle-covered path with an ivy-laced gazebo in the center. It’s a simple and elegant neighborhood square encircled by redbrick, Georgian row houses. It could only be in Dublin. We gather under the gazebo. Shelly is there. She is a complex lady, small, redheaded, sarcastic, vulnerable, by turns defensive and loving. She was one of the first of D’s friends whom I connected with years ago. I like her a lot. When D suggested that Shelly preside over the ceremony, the idea was greeted with both confusion and a rolling of eyes by nearly everyone. “She’ll be perfect,” D has maintained from the start. Shelly holds no license to perform weddings, but since the legalities were taken care of with Patricia at the Civil Registration Office, her job is to “bring the spirit into the marriage.”

  Ronan, a sandy-haired, always fashionably dressed old friend of D’s who will “stage-manage” the event, and Peter, a rake-thin redhead and former boyfriend of D’s who is handling anything that has to do with our physical presence in the park, are also here, along with D’s bridesmaids, Louise and Karen, and the kids, and Seve. Jackie stops by too—she’ll sing a song to open the ceremony. Everything that will happen at the ceremony tomorrow will be decided now.

  “Okay,” D announces, “Andrew, why don’t you take over, show everyone what we were thinking.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Okay.” We have not discussed this in any way. I look around the obvious staging area. “Well, I think it might be good if Shelly were positioned here.” I point to a center area under the gazebo. “The musicians could be over here”—I indicate to the left—“and that way—”

  “No. Why don’t we put the musicians over here.” D points to where I had just placed Shelly.

  “Okay,” I say, “but if you’re going to come in from there . . .” I point off toward the gated entrance to the park.

  “No, that’s not good, because then people would block her entrance,” Karen chimes in.

  “Why don’t we go back to what we had decided?” Louise suggests.

  I look over at Seve, but he won’t meet my eye. My son and daughter are chasing a pair of magpies around the grass. One for sorrow, two for joy.

  The girls are discussing the binding of the hands and the twelve ribbons that will be used, each one a different color, each representing a different vow.

  “Luv, do we want Shelly to explain what each ribbon means?”

  “Well,” I say, “I think a little education might be a good idea, since not too many people know about the whole tying-the-knot ritual.”

  D considers this. “Um, no,” she says. “It’ll take too long. We don’t need it. Should we have the big cushions for the kids to sit on in the front?”

  “I think kids in front is a bad idea,” I say, “they’ll get bored and start—”

  “Yeah, the cushions will have to go in front,” D says; the girls agree and the discussion turns to flowers.

  I walk over to Seve. “You’re doing great,” he says to me.

  By six o’clock that evening, we are all bathed and dressed and gathering at D’s parents’ home for their intimate dinner for forty. Margot and Colm are in their element—entertaining, serving, and laughing, racing back and forth to the kitchen to get drinks. There are flowers everywhere.

  “The house looks beautiful,” I tell Margot as she zooms past.

  “All smoke and mirrors, Andrew, my love,” she sings out. “Smoke and mirrors.” And she’s gone.

  D’s aunts and uncles are here, her bridesmaids come in and create a fuss, a few of our frien
ds from New York sip drinks and lean against walls. My eldest brother and my mother are here. They arrived yesterday, in time for the welcome drink.

  People are milling about, beginning to enjoy themselves, drinking, and then like clockwork, everyone is sitting down, somehow, around the tables that have been set up in the living room. D’s brothers are serving as waiters. The starters come out and are cleared and then the main course is presented and I watch everything swirl in front of me.

  During dessert, my friend Lawrence, who came over from London, raps on his glass with his knife, silencing the gathering.

  “Speech, Andrew, speech!” he calls out. It’s just like my old friend to embarrass me.

  I rise. “Thank you, Lawrence,” I say, my voice filled with sarcasm that some in the room snicker at. Briefly, I thank my mother and brother for making the long trip, and D’s family for the evening they’ve given us, then I sit back down. It’s not much of a speech. Luckily, none of D’s family are even in the room to hear it.

  A little while later, D rises and makes an emotional toast, thanking her parents and brothers and family, and welcoming all the Americans who made the arduous journey. The love she feels for everyone present on this occasion is evident. Around the room, eyes begin to well up, and when she finishes, the room bursts into warm and loving applause, grateful for the release.

  D will sleep with our daughter at the hotel next door to her parents’ house tonight. I take my son the few blocks home.

  We settle at the kitchen table and share a late-night slice of toast.

  “Can you cut the crust off, Dad?” my son asks beside me at the table.

  “You ate two servings of pâté tonight, for God’s sake. I think you’re old enough to realize that the crust is the best part.”

  He takes a bite. “It’s actually pretty good.”