Crooked Branch (9781101615072)

by Cummins, Jeanine

  The message cuts off, and I turn my phone up as loud as it will go so I can play it again, listening for clues like a twenty-first-century Nancy Drew. What is going on in that apartment? The chaos that is Jade’s life makes me feel comparatively sane and balanced. I’m halfway through playing the message for the third time when the pharmacist startles me by calling my name. I pocket the phone and approach the counter.

  “You’re all set,” she says, and she tries to make eye contact with me, but I lower the brim of my hat to intercept her curiosity. “Just sign here.” She points to a line in her notebook with a square, tangerine fingernail. A fingernail that has clearly never known the dark misfortune of baby poop.

  I scribble my name and I’m outta there. On the sidewalk, I stuff the prescription into my diaper bag and check the phone again. There’s the text from Leo: Take your time. Don’t have to be at work till four. Pick up lunch? And butt paste. I text him back: Sounds delicious. See u soon. And then I go back to Jade’s message, and hit call back.

  Maybe her life is even more chaotic than mine. And maybe we have nothing in common except that we both cry all the time and we’re terrible mothers. Spending time with Jade might be awkward, even potentially unpleasant. But anything is better than the prospect of spending a sunny Saturday afternoon alone in our half-renovated house with my crying baby and a bottle of stigmatic pills.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, Jade! It’s Majella.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  IRELAND, JUNE 1847

  Ginny didn’t remember Roisin coming into the room, but there her friend was, sat at the long worktable with baby Raymond in her arms. There were two more lamps lit, and the kitchen was in brightness, like it was daytime. Ginny’s tea had gone cold in front of her, and she was standing, then sitting, then standing again. She didn’t know what to do with herself. Her arms and legs felt loose from her body, and she had a mad compulsion to run.

  “I figured it was you,” Roisin was saying to Seán. “I knew someone was taking the food to her children, but our Ginny here was very discreet. Didn’t want to get you in trouble, I reckon. Still, who else could it have been?”

  “Well, I’m not sorry, even if it does cost me the job,” he answered.

  “Nobody’s asking you to be sorry.”

  Ginny sat down again beside Roisin, and lifted the baby into her arms. He still hadn’t finished his feed.

  “He’s hungry,” Ginny said. “I’ll have to feed him before I go.”

  “Go where?” Roisin asked.

  Ginny looked at her. “Home, of course.”

  Roisin took a deep breath, and nodded her head. “It’s true that you need to go home.”

  “Don’t bother trying to talk me out of it,” Ginny answered.

  Roisin raised a hand. “I won’t. But just think carefully. Let’s plan it through before you fly off and do something you’ll regret in a few days’ time. Let us help you. It’s so easy to act rash when you’re in a fluster.”

  Ginny tried to slow down in her brain, but Roisin was right. She was in an awful panic. She couldn’t think straight. Seán set a fresh cup of tea down in front of her, and this time, she tried sipping at it. It was hot and bitter going down.

  “I just need to get home, I have to get home.” Ginny shook her head.

  “And you will,” Roisin said. “But listen, if you leave now, this morning, you’ll have to tell Mrs. Spring everything, including how you found out that your son is ill.”

  Ginny glanced at Seán, but he made no eye contact. He only arranged himself on his own stool.

  “It’s not only your own position you’d be jeopardizing,” Roisin said, with sacrosanct reason. “You’d have to tell her that Seán was the one who brought you the news.”

  “Never mind about that, Ginny,” Seán put in, waving his hand. “I’ll take you home. You should get home. I’ll be grand. If she gives me the boot, so be it.”

  But Roisin answered him back, “And if she does give you the boot, then what? You can take your savings and nip off to America, and what will become of poor Ginny and her children then? If you’re no longer here to supply for them?”

  Seán drew his mouth into an irritable line, folded his arms in front of him. Raymond fussed and wriggled in his mother’s arms. Ginny took another swig of the tea.

  “There’s a bit of the spice cake left in the larder,” Roisin said, rising to her feet. “I’m peckish.”

  She tottered off, and Seán and Ginny looked at each other. He bit his thumb.

  “Ochón!” Ginny said. And a tear sprang up in her eyes. She blinked hard to chase even the notion of crying away. There was no time for that sort of luxury. Her heart was racketing around in her breast. “I’m awful sorry, Seán,” she said. “I never meant to drag you into this.”

  “You didn’t, I was happy to do it. I’d do it again.” But she could sense that his bravado was hollow.

  Roisin was coming back from the larder now, the wrapped chunk of spice cake in her hand. She had a bit of a nighttime limp, a slow crookedness about her body when she longed to be still tucked up in her bed. She set the cake on the table, and broke off a piece for Ginny and then one for herself.

  “I’ll make up a story,” Ginny said without touching the cake. “Or I won’t even tell her. I’ll be gone before she wakens. Then, when Michael is on the mend, maybe I can come back. I can tell her there was an awful emergency. Something with the baby.”

  “That might work,” Seán said. “And then I could still bring you provisions, as you need them.”

  “It might work,” Roisin conceded. “But why would you risk it? Mrs. Spring is an unpredictable woman. Just because you’re in her good graces now doesn’t mean you’ll stay that way after a stunt like this. And God forbid she gets it into her head that you had anything to do with the fever! She would never let you back into this house, neither of you.”

  Ginny cradled Raymond in one arm, and scraped her free hand up over her face, through her loosened black hair.

  “Listen, Michael has only been ill for one day, right?” Roisin asked, looking at Seán.

  “Yeah, that’s what Maire said, that he was grand yesterday.”

  “So”—she reached over and placed her hand on Ginny’s—“what about this? What about you stay here today . . .”

  Ginny was already shaking her head.

  “Just hear me out,” Roisin said. “Just stay here today, only for the day. We’ll work. I’ll be here with you, and everything will appear like normal to Mrs. Spring. She can visit with yourself and Raymond in the morning, after breakfast as she always does, and then she can take him out in the afternoon as well. Just stick to the regular routine so she won’t suspect anything. We’ll wait until nightfall then, until she goes to bed. And then you can go off, and Seán, you can take Ginny on horseback, right, and I’ll keep Raymond with me for the night, after you give him his last feed in the evening, Ginny. You can go out to Knockbooley then, and be with Michael until the baby needs his next feed in the morning.”

  Seán was studying Ginny, waiting for her reaction. Roisin kept on with her plan.

  “If he’s well, if he’s turned the corner by tonight, you can just spend a few hours there, and comfort him. Mother him. Doctor him. And you could still be back before daybreak, before anyone even misses you. Nobody would ever be the wiser.”

  “And if he’s not? If he doesn’t . . .” Ginny couldn’t bring herself to finish the thought. All she could think about was that baby who’d died in her arms, that tiny coffin. She didn’t think she could bear that kind of loss again.

  “Well, if he’s as bad as all that,” Roisin said, “then I’ll send baby Raymond along home to you. Seán can come back and collect him, and you’ll be home with your children, and we’ll figure out the rest of it then, what to tell Mrs. Spring.”

  Ginny looked at Seán, but
he was giving nothing away. He only stared at her.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Ginny whispered.

  In all her weeks and months of wishing for Ray, she had never longed for him as much as she did at that moment. Please God, tell me what to do, she thought. She closed her eyes. Squeezed them shut.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” Seán said. “I’d say it’s an hour at least until dawn.”

  Ginny opened her eyes and looked at them both. She looked at baby Raymond, who was sucking on her finger.

  “Maybe you’re right,” she said. “Maybe I should wait until nightfall.” But even as she said it, she felt it was not possible, to stay parted from Michael for the length of this day that was stretching out in front of her. She felt a wicked horror in her bones.

  Seán started nodding his head. “I think it’s a good plan. We can leave this evening, as soon as the house is quiet. You meet me beyond the south pasture, by that stand of trees. If we get out in good time, we’ll have six hours at least, before we’ll have to be back in the morning.”

  Ginny breathed deep. She tried.

  “That’s loads of time for you to heal young Michael.” Seán smiled. “If he’s anything like his mammy, he’s a fighter. He’ll be back on his feet this time tomorrow, tearing round the place.”

  God, how she wanted to believe him. And she knew it was possible, anything was possible, with the fever. Just as many survived it as not, she reckoned. Or nearly. She tried not to picture that spreading rash along Michael’s soft and prickled skin. She could still see his pale, bony knees sticking out beneath his red petticoat. She wanted so much just to tear out of that madhouse and run to him. Her baby boy.

  “All right,” she breathed.

  “Grand.” Roisin nodded, patting the table in front of her. “So that’s settled. You’d better feed that baby of yours before he eats your finger. I’m going to do my best to get another hour’s sleep, and I suggest you do the same. Close your eyes, at least. It’ll be a long day ahead of us.”

  “Yeah, I’m off for a kip myself,” Seán said, pushing back from the table to stand up. “You right, Ginny?”

  She forced herself to nod. “Grand.”

  • • •

  There are no words to describe the torture that day was to Ginny Doyle. The hollow endlessness of it. After breakfast, Mrs. Spring sat with her as usual, while she breast-fed the baby. Ginny wasn’t capable of conversation, and she felt uncomfortable, exposed, sitting in the quiet with the baby at her breast. But Mrs. Spring didn’t seem to mind. She didn’t even seem to notice. Ginny spent most of the rest of the day working in the kitchen, by Roisin’s side, but all she could see was Michael’s pained and frightened face. Every hour, she questioned herself. She put the knife or the rag or the brush down where she stood, and she turned in circles, ready to bolt. She had nearly convinced her brain that it was best, to wait until nightfall, but her body was having none of it. Her legs were twitchy and slack. She felt unfastened from the ground, her head floaty and detached. The hours of that single day were longer than the months since Ray had left. They were longer than the years of her marriage, the decades of her life. In the afternoon, when they heard Mrs. Spring’s footstep on the stair, Roisin hurried Ginny into the larder.

  “It’s best if she doesn’t see you, the way you’re looking now. You’re awful peaky,” Roisin said, as she shooed her friend away.

  Ginny stood inside, wrapped her arms around herself, and shivered. She leaned her head against one of the cold shelves, and waited. She could smell the sharp, heady tang of cheese all around, and it was too much. She held her breath. Outside, she could hear Mrs. Spring talking.

  “Here’s Auntie Alice,” she said, in the singsong voice she only ever used with the baby. “Where’s your mammy now? Are you ready to come out for your fresh air with Auntie Alice?”

  “She’s just in the back of the larder there, doing some clearing out,” Roisin was saying. “She said it was fine for you to take Raymond out, whenever you came down.”

  “Ah, lovely,” Mrs. Spring said. “And aren’t you looking dapper today, my little man? Oh, you’re getting so big!” Her voice changed with the weight of him in her arms.

  In the larder, Ginny leaned her elbows onto a lower shelf, and turned into it, let the wood dig a mark into her forehead. She picked at a loose splinter, and listened until she couldn’t hear footsteps anymore. She tried closing her eyes, but all that was there was Michael’s face, the damp brown hair sticking to his feverish forehead. She opened her eyes, shook the image out of her head. Roisin’s face appeared instead then, around the doorjamb.

  “She’s gone, dear.”

  Ginny nodded, and made to step out of the larder, but Roisin came toward her instead, put a hand against Ginny’s forehead. Ginny let her.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m not ill.”

  “No,” Roisin agreed, “you’re just shook-looking. You’re awful pale altogether.”

  “I suppose . . .” Ginny trailed off insensibly.

  “Sit down and have a cup of tea, dear. You do need to keep your strength up, for tonight. You look as if you could fall right down.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t sit. I need to keep going, keep working.”

  “Right so,” Roisin said.

  That was what they did.

  • • •

  After the dinner was served and the kitchen was cleaned and cleared, Ginny retired early to her room with Raymond. Her nerves were too shattered to feed him properly, but she had to try. He was too young yet, for cow’s milk, and if Ginny was thinking of leaving him with Roisin for the night, he would have to be full up before his mother went. She lay down on the bed, on her side, and unbuttoned her shirtwaist. She tucked him in along her body where he could lie beside his mammy and suckle, and then she propped a pillow under her head.

  She closed her eyes, and the tears came at once. She had held them in check all day, she was so close now. Another hour, perhaps, until Mrs. Spring retired for the night. Until Ginny could steal out into the dark, and down to the moonlit stand of trees beyond the south pasture. Seán would be waiting for her. With a good, fleet horse, they would be in Knockbooley in a quarter of an hour. She bit her lips. Raymond sucked sweetly and noisily at her breast.

  “Eat up, little man,” she said. “Or you’ll be hungry till morning.”

  He was just finished eating, and she was walking him round the room, rubbing his back and squeezing him gently to bring up his wind, when there was a rapid knock at the door. Ginny opened it at once, and Katie stood in the corridor. She wouldn’t look at Ginny.

  “You have a visitor in the parlor.” The girl turned on her heel. A visitor?

  “Who is it, Katie?” Ginny called after her, but she was gone, scampering down the corridor into the dark.

  Ginny slammed the door and set Raymond on the bed, and then went mad buttoning up and tucking in her shirtwaist as quick as she could. Her hands were shaking, but her mind was mercifully blank. No catalog of harrowing possibilities presented itself to her. No image of a tiny coffin impressed itself upon her vision. Before today, her mind would have gone directly to Ray. News from New York. Something dreadful. But now, there was nothing, only a petrified and hurtling urgency. To get to the parlor. Her hands shook violently as she lifted Raymond from the bed and onto her shoulder.

  “Please God, keep my legs beneath me,” she said, as she took to the grand central staircase in a terror for the second time today. Outside the parlor door she paused, just for an instant, she paused. And she wished that she could suspend that moment, that she could stop her life right there, that she could remain the person she was before she had to turn the knob and open that door. Before she had to walk into that room and face whoever, whatever, was waiting for her.

  Ginny clung her face into Raymond and brea
thed. When she opened the door and stepped into the room, Katie was already fussing around a tea tray at the sideboard. Father Brennan was standing in front of the fireplace. Father Brennan. He turned toward Ginny as she entered the room, and when she caught sight of the grim pallor of his face, she knew at once. She felt her legs wilting beneath her.

  She cried out because she knew she was going to drop, and she was in terror for the baby. Katie’s head snapped up and she saw Ginny tilt; she lurched fast across the room to lift Raymond out of his mother’s arms. Ginny gripped the back of a chair, and then Father Brennan was beside her, his arm around her waist, holding her up. He helped her to the settee, and she crumbled into it.

  He sat down on a chair across from her, and leaned forward. He started to speak, but Ginny waved her hands to stop him. Whatever he had to say, if he didn’t say it, then she wouldn’t know.

  “No,” she said.

  “Ginny . . .”

  “No! No.”

  He shook his head, folded his hands in his lap. His face was awful stern, but his eyes were wet.

  “No no no.”

  “I’m sorry, Ginny.”

  She folded her body down over her knees, and wrapped her arms over her head.

  “Michael is gone, Ginny. He’s gone. He went quick and peaceful.”

  Everything fell out of her then, every good thing that had ever been. It all came up into her throat and stopped beating. Her breath wouldn’t move in her lungs. The keen that came in at her breast was too big to unleash. It was trapped. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. There was a violent stillness in her.

  “He didn’t even know you weren’t there,” Father Brennan was saying. “He slept into his death. It was peaceful.”

  She rocked. Something elemental rocked her. Back and over, on the settee, back and over. Like a baby in a cradle she rocked. And then that same something elemental breathed for her, it kicked in at her lungs, and she gasped loudly for air. She rocked.