The younger sandhogs, and the grown children of the older sandhogs, and the friends from Eighty-fourth Street who'd all emigrated from somewhere else, if not Ireland, listened closely to the talk of home, watched as the men and women who'd lost very few notes of their accents seemed to swagger as they regaled each other with stories of million-dollar condos at Salt Hill, an article that said Dublin restaurants were now as good as those in New York or London. Not as good, Mrs. Quinn corrected. Better. Far better.
It was the kind of talk Greta didn't always understand. She thought of home too, but not in the America versus Ireland way the rest of them seemed to. Greta had never been to Dublin, had never been to Cork City, had never even left Connaught before she placed her bag on the berth she'd stayed curled up in until the ship docked in New York City. She didn't follow Irish politics except to send fifty dollars a year to help the children orphaned by the troubles in the north. She'd lived in Ireland for sixteen years. She'd been living in New York now for almost forty-four. When she thought of home, it wasn't a country she thought of, but a cottage, a turf fire, the sea, tea leaves at the bottom of the cup, the flowers of the hawthorn bush that looked so pretty but smelled not unlike a piece of meat left to rot in the sun. Every spring they bloomed like a nasty trick. She thought of that tin box she used to keep under her bed. Her box of treasures. Bits and pieces she'd hoarded just to have a collection of something, of anything. And Johanna, of course, in the foreground of every single memory. Johanna in bed beside her, Johanna striding ahead of her to school, Johanna naked on the beach, the brine turning to salt on her skin, which she always licked once before dusting off. At home, time had stopped in 1963. Greta couldn't picture new construction, paved roads with lines painted down the middle, the Catholic Church without its power. She saw only the cottage, still trying to keep from being swallowed up by the sea.
And now, she supposed, she should erase the cottage too and replace it with a big modern house. Maybe a two-story house. Maybe a built-on section for Little Tom to find peace and quiet. Maybe they'd left the cottage where it was, turned it into a stable. Maybe Johanna's two boys had the run of the place. She wondered if the two Rafferty boys had walked all the way to Conch to go to school, if they'd heard of their aunt in America, if, when they were growing up, they'd ever heard Julia's name whispered after they'd been sent to bed. She wondered if people passed through Ballyroan now and said to each other, "That's the Rafferty place."
Greta didn't think of herself as an American, but America had been good to her. It bothered the others, Greta had realized a few years earlier, that Ireland ended up doing so well. They were proud, of course, but also taken completely by surprise. They'd worked so hard to bring Ireland to America as an intact place that they could live inside, and they had succeeded, keeping their customs the same as they were in the year they'd left, making the preservation of the old ways a new kind of religion. They didn't realize until it was too late that home had moved on, grown up, left the old customs behind. It was as if these exiles had used every last dollar to bet on a horse they didn't own, didn't love, weren't interested in loving, but one that had promised to give them the best return. It was as if that horse had been winning, as expected, for the entire race. Winning by yards, in fact. A seemingly untouchable distance. And just as they bent their heads to calculate their earnings, that horse was left behind by the wild card, the underdog, the one they'd have preferred to lay their bet down for in the first place.
The questions they put to one another were always the same. If you'd known, would you have left? If you had to wait thirty years for the boom to arrive, for the Celtic Tiger to stride across your land, would you have stuck it out? Or would you have still gotten on that ship or that airplane and headed for New York City?
And if you did leave for America, would you have stayed? Knowing about the boom to come? Or would you have worked for a few years and then taken your American dollars and gone back home to stretch those dollars out until prosperity arrived?
I would have gone back, almost all of them said, shaking their heads, describing to one another what they would have done instead. How they would have waited out the hard years. The kind of patience they would have been capable of had they known there was an eventual end.
I would have stayed here, Greta always said. Michael too.
Even if you could have gone back to a good job in Ireland?
Yes.
Even if it meant you would have been able to build a house in Ireland like the ones in America? Could have sent the children to university?
Yes. Yes.
Once in a while Greta turned the question around. Why not go back now? she asked. There's nothing stopping you. Go build yourself a house in the old country. You can get your American pension and the dole on top of that.
And this was another thing she noticed. The moment Ireland became possible again was the very same moment most of them accepted the fact that they'd never move back for good.
"Do you love America as much as you love Ireland?" Ned Powers asked her once. They were sitting on the deck, and before answering, Greta glanced down at the foot of his chair and counted five amber bottles. Michael had gone up to the store to buy a piece of meat for the grill.
"Love?" Greta had asked, smirking, hoping to tease him out of this seriousness Ned had about him lately. Sometimes he and Michael would sit out on the deck for hours, not saying a word.
"I don't know America any more than I know Ireland," she said. "New York, New Jersey, yes. But the rest might as well be another country altogether."
"Yes, but if you had to choose."
"What do you mean if I had to choose? I did have to choose. So did Michael. So did you."
"I don't understand you," Ned had said. "Neither of you."
"Come here to me now," Oran Quinn said to Eavan, putting a heavy arm around her shoulders. "Will you take that gasúr home to see where she's from, or will you do like your mam and da and only tell stories?" He stood back and sized her up. "You have, let's see now, four months left? Five? She's due in—no, let me guess—September? Your mam's people are from the west, aren't they? Plenty of room to run around."
"Oh," Eavan said, looking first at Greta and then at James. "I—"
"Eh?" Oran Quinn said, leaning in to hear her better. "Didn't they ever bring you home at all? I suppose when you have the map on your face like your mam does, you don't need to go home too much. I've gone home every year for the past twenty years. Did you know that?"
Eavan shook her head, looked at James, closed her eyes, and hoped that Gary would hurry up with the extra bags of ice he was emptying into the coolers outside so he could come in and stand beside her.
"Don't you young people want to go see where you're from?"
"We're from New York," James piped up from across the room. "The Big Apple."
"That's where you live," Oran Quinn corrected. "Only where you live, boy. My Frank thought the same as you, and then he brought his little boy over to Donegal last summer. Do you know what they said to him in the shop right there in Killybegs? They said 'Welcome home.' Now look, Frank had only been over a few times, and it was the boy's first time, but that's what they said to him. Welcome home. They knew by his face and his name that that's the only place he could be from. Four hundred years the Quinns were in Killybegs. Four hundred years of being reared and married and raising a family in Killybegs. Until July tenth, 1968. The day myself and Maude left for America. You think four hundred years can be erased in forty?"
"No," Eavan said, as if she were ten years old again, being lectured by an adult for some childish indiscretion.
Maude Quinn turned to the woman next to her and said in a loud voice, "It's a new thing with him. He likes to give long speeches at parties. Must be old age."
Oran wagged a finger at his wife, but stepped back, smiled, freed Eavan from the iron trap of his arm.
"Now tell me this, Oran," Greta said, circling the group, a glass of white wine in her han
d. As Gary once pointed out to Eavan, Greta didn't walk, she crept. Careful, deliberate, like an animal trying not to make a noise. She glided through the small dining room, around the clusters of people gathered in the living room, her drink held out in front of her so she could be sure not to tip it onto the carpet, her other arm raised slightly, as if she was trying to make a space for herself, the stem of a ship leading the body through water. Though it was too soon to be possible, Eavan could almost swear she felt the baby move in her stomach as her mother cleared her throat. Outside, the street was quiet. The cars had stopped arriving. James was holding his cell phone in his hand, waiting, glancing at it now and again to make sure there was a signal.
"Tell me just one thing," Greta said, walking up to Oran Quinn, setting her drink down on a side table, and putting her hands on her hips. "You tell me how you know it's a girl. Have you been consulting the cards?" she asked. "Because I think it's a boy."
Everyone looked at Eavan's belly.
"He has the gift," Mary Monahan called out, and everyone roared laughing. James hushed them, and they tried to laugh more quietly. "Isn't it true, Oran? Wasn't your mam or your grandmammy one of the walking people?"
"You're completely daft, Mary," Oran said, smiling thinly. Everyone laughed harder when they saw that he was offended. "Didn't I just say the Quinns have always been Donegal people?" He raised his glass to toast himself.
"It is a girl," Eavan said, smiling into her cup of ice water. "I found out yesterday." Those within reach clapped Oran on the back as if he had something to do with it. Eavan looked over at Greta and shrugged. "I was going to tell you later."
From the back door, Gary stood on his tiptoes and grinned over at his wife.
"Okay, people," James shouted, snapping his cell phone closed. "Get away from the windows. He's coming. He's two blocks away."
Laughter breeds more laughter, Greta thought. It was something she'd learned in church as a girl when the teacher would march everyone in the schoolhouse across the square, two abreast, for first Friday Mass. Only in church would she giggle at something that wouldn't have even made her smile if she hadn't been stuck in such a solemn situation, if so much hadn't depended on good behavior. Johanna once laughed so hard during the consecration that the priest looked down from the altar and singled her out. It wasn't the laughter that gave her away so much as the loud gasp for breath she had to take after struggling for so long to stay silent. Father kept both Johanna and Greta after and wrote a note for Johanna to show their parents. As he scribbled Johanna's crime on thick cream-colored paper that looked and smelled to Greta like Mass itself, he used the time to point out that even though Lily and Tom Cahill had put themselves in mortal danger by not attending Mass every week and showing a bad example to their children, if they had any sense at all, they'd take Johanna's behavior seriously. Not showing them his note, he warned Johanna, would be a grave sin.
"But not a mortal sin," Johanna had chirped on the way home. Later, after the note had been read aloud, Big Tom demanded to know what she'd found so funny. Johanna couldn't remember exactly. "Nothing," she'd said finally. "Only the bench squealed a little when Sister Agatha sat on it."
Big Tom had taken a big puff from his pipe, leaned back in his chair, and said, "You're a silly sort of a girl, aren't you?" He said it as though he'd diagnosed something fatal, and just like that, as if he'd reached over and flipped a switch, Johanna started giggling again.
Now that the laughter had started, it was impossible to trap and stifle. Hands were clapped over mouths as everyone, old and young, crouched down and squeezed into the back half of the house. "I have to tinkle," one of the women said, and someone snorted. "I always have to tinkle at these parties. As soon as we have to hide."
"Why do only women tinkle?" a male voice whispered. "Men don't tinkle; they only piss."
"Some men tinkle," another man said, and Greta shushed them. The engine of Michael's Toyota drew closer and closer. It turned into the driveway, which they'd made sure to keep clear of cars. Even without seeing him — without seeing much of anything in fact, she was squeezed so tight between two sets of tweed-covered shoulders — Greta could feel him hesitate. She could see him standing in the driveway and surveying the cars lining the curb, listening for the sounds of a party somewhere on the block. Greta had planted a seed a few days earlier, looking up casually from her toast and jam and commenting, "The graduation parties will be starting soon, I suppose."
He'd nodded. "That time of year, isn't it?"
The crowd, with its collective held breath, began to grow impatient. "What's taking him so long?" a woman whispered. "Is he out there having a sleep?"
"I might have a sleep if he doesn't come in soon."
"Hush," another said.
Had he figured it out? Greta wondered. It had been a strange week overall. A strange few months. At first he'd been so happy with his decision to retire, so excited to make plans to rent a car and drive west. But then as the day got closer, he seemed troubled by his decision. People asked him what he'd do with all his free time, and he seemed at a loss. Back in 1970, when he'd first gotten a job in the water tunnels, he'd signed on with the belief that he would stay only six months. It was an in-between kind of job, he told Greta. Not the kind of job a man could do for life.
"Should you go out, Mom?" Eavan whispered from somewhere behind Greta. "Should I?"
"No. Just give him a minute."
They gave him a minute, but still nothing.
"Okay," Greta said, pushing her way out of the cluster. "Everyone stay where you are." Greta walked quickly to the living-room window and looked out. She saw his car, saw that it was empty, but she didn't see Michael. She walked down the steps to the screen door. She pushed it open and stepped outside.
"Michael?" she called. "Is that you?" She walked down the front path, taking one glance back at the house and noticing how quiet it seemed, how empty. Maybe he'd be fooled after all. She peered in the passenger's window of his car and saw the plastic bag filled with his dirty work clothes.
"Where are you?" she called.
"Over here," came the answer, closer than she expected. She whirled around, saw him crouched at the side of the house. He was holding a small Phillips-head screwdriver, one of the many tools he kept in his car, and was using it to clean under his fingernails. He held his hands up to her for inspection. She held her palms out flat, and he put his hands on top.
"They're fine," she said, looking at him carefully. She licked her thumb and reached over to smooth down an errant lock of hair at the back of his head. "You're grand," she said. He tucked in his shirt at the back.
"How did you know?" she asked.
"Greta," he said, looking up at the blank face of the side of the house, the single window, their bedroom. He tilted his head up further as if to examine the line of the roof. Greta followed his gaze, searched for whatever he was searching for. They hadn't outgrown the house. When the value of the houses in their town had gone up, other people on the block had cashed out, moved away to bigger places. But the Wards had stayed, year in and year out, and the house always seemed just enough to hold them.
"What will I say?" Michael asked.
"Just smile and say hello to everyone. They'll do the talking. They're keyed up already. It's only people you know. Only people you'd want to see. Trust me. It's only your friends, Michael. They know you."
"Who?"
Greta rattled off the names as they came to her and watched as the worry lines around Michael's eyes relaxed. A few more names, and she wondered if he was paying attention; he seemed preoccupied, distant, as if he'd moved on to thinking of other things.
"So," she said, cutting the list short when she saw that he was no longer paying attention. "Are you right?"
"Right as rain," he said, and took her slim hand in his. "I'll act surprised, will I?"
"They know I'm out here telling you."
"Fair enough. Plan foiled."
"There's one more thing,"
Greta said. "And this is a surprise to both of us, believe me."
Michael looked up, gently dropped her hand, waited. He looked like his father now, Greta noticed once again. Better-looking, but still, his features were becoming an inheritance he had no choice but to accept. Greta remembered Dermot on the day he took his wife's body away from their little cottage. It was shocking to think he was probably twenty years younger on that day than she was right now.
"It's the children. They did something."
"Threw me a party."
"Well, yes, that. But they did something else. They wrote to Ballyroan. To Johanna. Asked her to come today. To the party. Are you following? Johanna wrote back to say yes, and where do you think Julia is right this moment but transporting them from the airport. Tom too. They're on their way, Michael."
"Johanna and Tom?" Michael repeated. He whistled, shook his head. "Well, that is a surprise," he agreed. "There's traffic. A jackknifed tractor-trailer just before the bridge."
Greta put her hands to her head, pressed her first two fingers to her temples. "Is that all you have to say? We don't know what they've been writing back and forth about. Julia too. Julia and Johanna have been writing back and forth. For weeks now. Maybe for longer. I don't know. I've just learned of all this myself."
"So you think she's told Julia? Is that it?"
"What if she did?"
"She wouldn't. Besides, Julia is more than forty years old. No one's going to take her away from you now. No one's going to put a claim on her but herself."
"What does that have to do with anything? I don't know what you're talking about. How can we say what Johanna would or wouldn't do? I haven't spoken to her in nearly thirty years. Jesus, thirty years. Think of Julia, finding out something like this at her age."
"Maybe she forgot. It's possible, isn't it? I never think about it."
Greta looked at him closely, but couldn't tell if he was serious. "No, Michael. It isn't possible."
The Walking People Page 42
