What Matters Most

by Luanne Rice

  Outside his window, the city of Dublin was still asleep. He knew he had to get going, to catch the bus to work. Late August was a busy time at the hotel, with lots of people coming over from America on holiday, many of them wanting to see the countryside. Seamus hoped someone would feel like going to the sea today.

  Dressed in his black suit and tie, he buffed his black wing-tip shoes. Glancing in the mirror, he combed his red hair. He wanted to look professional, as if he belonged behind the wheel of a fine car, driving wealthy people.

  He headed out the door and locked it behind him, paper tucked under his arm. The subscription cost him, but it was worth it. He liked to be informed so he could sound intelligent to the people he drove. Besides, if he was going to become a barrister someday, he had to be up on law cases, both Irish and international.

  He caught the bus, took a seat halfway back, and opened the paper. He always read the front page and looked at the football scores. But there was another reason he subscribed to the Times, as well. Even more since Kevin and Eileen had gotten engaged, he’d found himself scanning the news, running his eyes over every story in each section, whether it interested him or not, looking for her name.

  Over the years, he’d seen “Kathleen” plenty of times, and “Murphy” as well. But he’d only seen the two names together three times; the Kathleen Murphys in question had once been a high school student from Meath, the winner of her school’s science prize; once a banker at an international summit in Geneva; and once a grandmother of twenty, dead at ninety-two.

  Seamus wasn’t even sure his Kathleen Murphy still had the same name. Perhaps her parents had christened her something different after they took her home. Murphy might not have been their name after all, just something she was called at St. Augustine’s. Names were a strange commodity in foster care. Seamus’s birth certificate had him down as “Thomas James Sullivan,” but he’d been called James at St. Augustine’s—there were already two Toms there.

  Now he was called Seamus, Irish for James. He wanted no part of his birth name, or of the people who had given it to him. Who would bother to take the time naming a baby, then shove him into the system? It made no sense to him.

  Taking the bus to work, he scanned the paper—never giving up hope. She had to be out there somewhere. What would he do if he actually saw Kathleen’s name? The idea of it gave him energy, kept him moving forward through his days.

  Seeing Kevin and Eileen, so happy and about to make a life together, had gotten him thinking. Sometimes, when he felt discouraged about ever seeing Kathleen again, he told himself that looking for Kathleen’s name was just a pastime. It was a game he played, the way other people did the crossword puzzle. But that was just a lie he told himself, biding time until he saw her again.

  He needed to know that she was happy and well. He imagined that her parents had given her a pretty good life, after all. At least, she’d never returned to live at St. Augustine’s. He knew, because he’d gone back to look for her.

  When he was fourteen, one year after running away during that trip to the beach, he’d walked right back through the door. Sister Anastasia had nearly fallen on the floor with shock, weeping and hugging him.

  “Oh, James, sweetheart, we thought you were gone forever.”

  “I’m here, Sister.”

  “Thanks be to God, James. Where have you been living? Tell me it’s not on the street….”

  He couldn’t lie to her, so he didn’t answer. She hugged him again, fed him a hot meal, held his hand, and brushed his long, dirty red hair back from his eyes. He sensed her wanting to throw him into the shower. He was shaking with the reason he had come in the first place.

  “Sister, I need Kathleen’s address,” he said.

  “I can’t, James,” she’d said, looking shocked and pained by his question. “You know that it’s a private matter.”

  “She might need me,” James had said, not wanting to spill the truth about some bad dreams he’d been having lately, of Kathleen standing at a window crying, locked in a room and unable to get out.

  “Well, she’s with her family now,” Sister had said kindly. “I know how close you both were, how you looked after each other here. I love Kathleen, too, and miss her very much—just as I miss you. But we have to let her go, James. Let her be with her parents, make a life with her family.”

  I’m her family, James had wanted to say, emotions boiling over.

  “I can’t stand it, Sister,” he’d said. “Not for another day, not even for another minute. I promise I won’t bother her, or get in the way of her new life. I just have to see her, make sure she’s all right. Won’t you give me her address? I swear I won’t cause problems….” He’d broken down, ashamed of himself for it. Trying to be tough, living on his own, he never cried. But here at his old home, with the nun who’d raised him, he couldn’t hold it together.

  Sister Anastasia held his hand. He didn’t pull away. She was obviously affected by what he’d said. When he was calm again, he saw the disturbance in her eyes.

  “Her parents were adamant,” Sister said. “They wanted her to sever ties with this place.”

  “What do you mean? How do you know?”

  “When she came back,” Sister Anastasia said quietly, “they were very angry.”

  “Came back?” James asked, his heart skipping. “Why did she do that?”

  “To look for you,” Sister Anastasia said.

  James’s body could hardly contain his feelings. His blood was wild, pounding so hard in his veins he thought it would kill him. “What did she say?” he asked.

  “She wanted to know what had happened to you, after that day when you left; if you’d returned here to live. Or if I’d heard from you.”

  James nodded, waiting.

  “You hadn’t come back, of course. Come home now, James. Please—I worry about you so terribly.”

  “Sister, what else did she say?”

  “Nothing, James. She was very discouraged to know that you hadn’t been back.”

  “Did she leave a note, or a message for me?”

  “She did. But then her father came to see me and demanded it back.”

  James’s heart tore in his chest. Tears burned his eyes again—to think that she had written words intended only for him, that he would never read.

  “What did it say?” he whispered.

  “I didn’t read it.”

  “Then tell me where she is, Sister. I swear I won’t make trouble. You know how much I care about her. I would never do anything to bother her….”

  James watched the nun as she closed her eyes, trying to make up her mind. He understood that in the eyes of the church and the institution and even the world, he had no right to know Kathleen’s whereabouts. But he had appealed to Sister Anastasia in a different way: through her enormous heart. She knew about life here at St. Augustine’s; she had seen James and Kathleen together over the years.

  “I’ll give it to you,” she said. “If you’ll come back here to live. Until you’re eighteen.”

  James’s hands had started to shake. He thought of the hardships he had faced, the bridges he had slept under, the bad people he had fought off. He thought of the sleepless nights, the pit in his empty stomach, the horrible loneliness. He knew that returning to St. Augustine’s without Kathleen would make the loneliness ten times worse, but he was so tired of being cold and hungry, of trying to stay alive. He nodded.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Here it is,” Sister Anastasia said, writing the address on a piece of paper, sliding it across the desk.

  James had grabbed it, tucked the paper in his pocket. He vowed to Sister that he’d be back that night, after he found Kathleen.

  Now, on the bus moving through Dublin, he looked up from the paper and stared out the window. Dawn was breaking in the east, just a thin line of gold at the bottom of the darkness over Dublin Bay.

  He’d gone to the address Sister Anastasia had given him. It was just outside Black
rock, a place of bungalow blitz just south of Dublin, where the developers had come in and mowed down the countryside. One house after another, all looking alike. James had felt so excited, knowing he was about to see Kathleen, he didn’t care what her neighborhood looked like.

  He’d walked up the steps, rung the doorbell. A woman came to the door—tall, thin, no resemblance to Kathleen. James cleared his throat.

  “I’m looking for Kathleen Murphy,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Um, Kathleen…” he said, in case they’d changed her last name.

  “Oh, would she be about your age?” the woman asked.

  “Yes,” he said. “Fourteen.”

  “She must have been part of the family that lived here before—they had a teenaged girl. They moved out months ago,” the woman said.

  “But this is the address I have,” James said, holding up the paper as if it were a stone tablet decreeing the house as Kathleen’s residence.

  “I see that, dear,” the woman said. “But as I said, they’ve gone.”

  “Where?” James asked, his voice rising to a wail, his fists clenching. “Where is she?”

  “They left no forwarding address,” the woman said, drawing back in alarm. “Which is a shame, because we keep getting their catalogues and bills.”

  James had turned and run. He’d made a promise to Sister Anastasia, and he kept it, returning to St. Augustine’s. When she asked him if he’d found Kathleen, he just shook his head. He didn’t have to speak; she could read the despair in his eyes. She was kind to him, giving him a job helping out with the younger kids and working part-time in the office. He had to answer the phones some mornings, and he never stopped hoping that it would be Kathleen on the line, asking if she could come back.

  She never did. And he only lasted there a few more months. Without Kathleen, it had felt like an institution—not a home.

  Now, the bus dropped him off at the foot of Bannondale Road, and he strode up the street to the Greencastle. He went inside, checked his orders for the day, and went down to the garage to get the spanking-clean silver Mercedes.

  When he drove into the courtyard, he met up with Kevin—standing by a different Mercedes, also just washed, wiping a few stray water spots with a chamois. The two friends grinned, shook hands.

  “Where’re you off to today?” Seamus asked.

  “Driving two Belfast businesspeople around town,” he said. “As directed. You?”

  “I’ve got a couple on holiday,” Seamus said, glancing at his dispatch form. “They want to see Powerscourt.”

  “Nice,” Kevin said. “Eileen loves it there. The Japanese gardens, and the pet cemetery. She likes that old cow who died after giving one hundred thousand gallons of milk.”

  “Who wouldn’t like such a grand cow?” Seamus asked, smiling. It was always fun to start the day joking around with Kevin. “So, what’s the weather for today?”

  “A bit iffy, I’d say,” Kevin said, peering up at the gray sky. “We’ll have to wait till noon to know for sure. My grandfather is a firm believer that if the weather is unsettled coming into midday, that’s when it decides what it’s going to do for the rest of the day.”

  Seamus nodded, wondering what it would be like to have such a wise grandfather. As it was, Seamus had to rely on weather reports and his own best guesses, and he filed away bits of borrowed wisdom—like the ones passed on from Kevin—to use with his own children someday. He shook his friend’s hand and turned to greet Mr. and Mrs. Whelan, the couple he was to drive.

  Even before they hit Dalkey, they’d told him that they were from Waterford, and this four-day trip to Dublin was a twenty-fifth wedding anniversary present from their children. Seamus looked at them in the rearview mirror. They looked to be in their early fifties and were sitting close to each other, holding hands. He saw tired affection in their faces. His heart constricted as he looked back at the road.

  They must have a happy family, he thought. Kids giving them a present like this—a stay at the Greencastle didn’t come cheap. His parents would be about their age, he thought. His and Kathleen’s.

  There were roads not taken in life, Seamus knew. So far, he had missed the turn that led to family life. Listening to the couple in back joking and laughing, deciding to call their kids on the cell phone, tell them about their trip so far, he felt that he was listening to people speaking a foreign language.

  How did people do it? Get together and stay together? From his earliest days, he had thought that he and Kathleen would go through life with each other. Once they’d parted, he had lost his connection to love. In a way, he felt he’d lost his ties to the human race. He was alone in life, kept going by the dream that he would one day find Kathleen again. Listening to the long-married couple in the back seat, he felt like an alien, trying to make sense of something that everyone else had been born knowing about.

  “Seamus,” the man said from the back seat, “are you married?”

  “No, sir,” Seamus replied.

  “Darling, he’s much too young!” the woman said. “But I’ll bet he has a girlfriend, don’t you, Seamus?”

  “Not at the moment, ma’am.”

  “Well, you will,” she said. “And when you decide to get serious, I hope that you’re as happy as Frank and I are. Twenty-five years together…”

  “Congratulations,” Seamus said, smiling politely into the rearview mirror.

  “Where are your people from?” the man asked.

  “Dublin,” Seamus said, although he didn’t know. But Dublin had been his only home.

  “Ah, you’re from the city,” he said. “We’re from a small town, but it doesn’t matter. When you love someone, you hold on to them. That’s what you do. That’s what I did with Sheila here.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  “That’s what I’ve passed on to my boys. Three of them, all married.”

  “We have four grandchildren,” the woman said. “They’re the light of our lives. I’m sure your parents hope that one day you’ll marry a wonderful girl and have little ones of your own, bless them with grandchildren….”

  Seamus nodded, but he didn’t speak. Kevin and Eileen would be getting married, having children, making their parents happy grandparents. He turned his attention to the road. His thoughts flickered to his parents—had they ever really been together, as a couple? Or had his father just gotten a girl pregnant, abandoned her, like so many of the women who’d left their babies at St. Augustine’s?

  Or had they been too young to raise him, given him up, but stayed together? Maybe they had other children that they’d kept. Perhaps Seamus had brothers and sisters. He didn’t know, and he didn’t care. Kathleen and the nuns had been his only family—and he’d never stop believing that Kathleen would be his family again.

  Heading south, concentrating on driving, Seamus half listened to the couple in back. He wanted to hear how they talked, watch how they behaved with each other. When the day came for Seamus to find Kathleen again, he would get engaged, as Kevin and Eileen had done, and he needed to know how to act.

  “You’re a good driver, young man,” the man said from the back seat.

  “Thank you, sir,” Seamus said, glowing with pride.

  The couple in back wouldn’t know—none of them ever did—that their words of praise meant so much to Seamus. He took them as he would a parent’s encouragement, and in some ways, many ways, he felt that he had been raised by the Sisters of Notre Dame des Victoires and the parent-aged people he drove in his silver Mercedes for the Greencastle of Dublin. It meant everything to him, that he know how to act, how to be: for Kathleen.

  When it was over with Pierce, once again Kathleen lay on her back, calming herself with a memory of James. They were almost thirteen. It was winter, nearly Christmas. Everyone had decorated the Home with boughs of pine, red ribbons, and boxes of ornaments donated by one of their benefactors. There was a feeling of cheeriness in the air.

  James was an explorer, and he
’d always had fun climbing into St. Augustine’s attic, into the storerooms, even down into the spooky basement. When they were children, he and Kathleen had turned it into one big adventure—pretending to be spies or treasure hunters.

  That year, James had found a way into the warmest part of St. Augustine’s basement, near the furnace. He’d led Kathleen down the stairs, and her heart had felt clutched by the usual trepidation—whenever they explored, they worried that they’d walk into a spider’s web or surprise a mouse or get caught by one of the nuns. But this time her heart beat fast in a different way.

  “Where are we going?” she’d whispered.

  “To a secret land,” he’d whispered back.

  That wasn’t a new or surprising thing for James to say, but the look in his eyes and the melting feeling in Kathleen’s chest and the way he’d taken her hand were brand new indeed. Her stomach flipped as they inched their way along the dark corridor, pipes clanging overhead from the heat pouring through them, James’s body pressed up against hers as he led her deeper into the basement.

  There was almost no light down there—they didn’t have flashlights, and James didn’t want to turn on the overhead fluorescent lamps. They’d held hands, each step making them move closer to each other. Kathleen had felt his warm breath on her neck, making her tingle all the way down her legs.

  When they got to the last room, James pressed open the heavy door. The furnace roared in the corner; a small flame flickered within, throwing warm orange light into the room. James led Kathleen over to the other side, behind the furnace. The room smelled musty, of oil and dust. She barely noticed, gazing into James’s eyes.

  “Is this the secret land?” she asked.

  “It is.”

  “I thought we were having an adventure,” she said.