Daughter of Australia (11 page)

F
ather McIntyre slept through the first bell, then through the second. When the mid-morning toll hollered from the church eaves, he buried his head into the pillow before using every will to rise. He was already late for his meeting with Deacon Johnson.

His pants were wrinkled from sleep, but he did not change them and lifted his soutane from the floor, slid his arms through the sleeves, the fabric thin and coarse. Sluggishly, he buttoned the long row until his fingers fell to open loops. Two buttons were missing. He rubbed the gaps and wondered how long they had been absent, wondered if they had ever been there.

In the office, Deacon Johnson sat behind the desk, situated his glasses upon his nose. He didn't look at the priest and his face contracted. “You met with Mrs. Fairfield.”

“Yes.”

“How's the new tutor working out?”

“She's not drawing blood from the child,” he said. “That's all I care about.”

“You understand the terms of the contract?”

“Yes.”

The man leafed through the pages, thick as a book, fanning them through his fingers. “The Fairfields have generously donated thirty thousand dollars to the church.”

Father McIntyre shook his head in disgust.

Deacon Johnson grew quiet, his neck splotching pink. He pushed the contract to the priest. The Bishop's signature slanted low and sleek, the Deacon's squat and illegible. Father McIntyre dipped the pen in ink. He scribbled on the empty line and slid the papers back.

“Where are her files?”

“First drawer.” Father McIntyre offered no more assistance, watched indolently as the Deacon rifled through his personal files.

Deacon Johnson played his fingers over the tabs and pulled out the gray folder, flipped through the few pages within its cover, closed it, then dropped it into the metal wastebasket. He lit a match from a small cardboard box, placed it to the papers like a kiss. Flames wrapped the corners, curling and blackening. The name
Leonora
twisted for an instant before engulfing in blue fire, reducing her small history to smoldering ashes.

Father McIntyre's body stiffened, his mouth hard. “A little dramatic, don't you think?”

White smoke clouded, but neither man pushed it away, just let it linger and spread until diffused. Only the burnt smell remained. Father McIntyre remembered Eleanor Fairfield's words:
Like she never existed at all.
Poof!

The Deacon turned his gaze from the ashes to his hands without moving a muscle in his face. “There are to be changes, Colin. The need in this country continues to burden our resources. If we are to have any impact, real spiritual impact, we need missions and priests to run them. It shouldn't come as a surprise to you that the Bishop envisions this site as a seminary.” The Deacon rubbed his temples. “The Fairfield money will be used for that purpose. Two new buildings will be constructed, the rectory expanded. The road will be widened from Geraldton.”

The room was stale, moistureless. Father McIntyre's throat parched. “And the children?”

“Some will stay; the rest will be placed elsewhere.”

The words were hanging, their meaning indigestible, simply lodged somewhere between his head and chest. “Why keep any of the children here?” he asked bitterly. “Why not move them all, send them to work the fishing lines, send them to tuck dynamite in the mine shafts?”

“It was one of Mrs. Fairfield's conditions.” The Deacon sighed, his face crimson. “As long as Leonora's anonymity is maintained, the orphanage remains in some capacity.”

Father McIntyre laughed then. Sick, choked laughter that erupted and teared his eyes.

“She's brilliant. Simply brilliant.”

Deacon Johnson shrank from the priest's gaiety as one avoids the ill of mind.

“She twists the knife, then makes me grateful she hasn't pushed it through my heart. Brilliant.” He saw her mind clicking and he was awed by his opponent. He laughed absurdly. “You see,” he spouted, “she had no guarantee that I would keep my silence about Leonora. She knew I could sign a contract—knew we could burn any physical trace of her, but there were too many gaps for a loose tongue. So, she cut it off, you see? Ah, her brilliance shines like a hot pitchfork, doesn't it? If she dangles the children, just enough, it alone guarantees my silence.”

“You're overanalyzing, Colin. She just wants what's best for the church and her new daughter.”

“Her niece,” he corrected sourly. “Her long-lost, dear niece.”

Deacon Johnson's cheeks sagged, the skin flaccid. “You don't look well, Colin.”

“I'm not.” He stood to go, spent. “I'm not well at all.”

“Colin.” The Deacon's voice rose. “Sit down. There's more.”

Father McIntyre crushed his nose against the door, turned and sank back into the chair. “Of course, there's more!” he cheered.

The Deacon's face was soft now, tired as his own, and his heavy cheeks drooped farther next to his receding chin. “Do you know Father Brennan?” he asked quietly.

“No. Should I?”

“He's a Roman Catholic. One of the priests at Saint Rose. He does a lot of work with the poor, immigrants. He's a good man.”

Father McIntyre waited, distracted, not understanding the Deacon's point.

“A couple came to see him,” the Deacon went on. “Newly arrived from Ireland. They had your name with them.” He paused for a moment. “Said they had written you but never heard back . . . about James.”

His body grew brittle as glass, and had there been a breeze, he might have shattered.

The Deacon continued cautiously, “Name was O'Reilly. The wife's maiden name is O'Connell. Like James's.” The man raised his eyebrows, joined his hands together on the desk and swirled his thumbs atop and under each other. “I know how you feel about the boy.”

It was all breaking now. Shards ripped across his chest. His mouth opened and closed like a fish in open air, but not a word leaked out.

“It's his family, Colin.” Pity hung in every crease of the Deacon's face. “It's where he belongs.”

“You don't understand.” Father McIntyre's voice cracked. “James is not like the others. He's kind. He's smart. He's . . .” His eyes searched wildly to say something sensible. “He's better.” Father McIntyre beseeched his friend for understanding. “James could be a doctor, a lawyer. This isn't his destiny, Robert. Please. He's better than that, better than those people.”

“They're blood.” The Deacon reached out as he would in a sermon. “Colin, you've given everything to these children, saved nothing for yourself. You're only a man. Do you understand? Only a man. You can't change what's out of your hands.”

Father McIntyre blinked, his eyes dry. It was done. The decision had already been made.

Deacon Johnson rose slowly from behind the desk, leaned his spread fingers on the edge. “I'll be taking James to them myself, if that helps any. They're setting up the home now, not far from the Southern Cross. I've been called to do a funeral out that way, so the timing works.” He tapped a knuckle on the wood. “We leave in two days.”

Father McIntyre lowered his head into his hands, let the world go black. He listened to the Deacon's footsteps, felt the hand pat him lightly on the shoulder, heard the creak of the door.

“Do you want me to tell the boy?” the man asked before he left.

“No.” Father McIntyre's voice was hollow and dead. “I'll tell him.”

J
ames knelt next to a row of saddles and rubbed the lanolin into the darkened leather, his hand soft as a baby's from the oiled cloth. The sound of boots drew his attention to the path and his brows pulled. Father McIntyre's form was tall and dark against the blue sky. This was a man he did not know. The priest who used to laugh and smile at the wind had disappeared. James pushed the cloth faster against the saddle.

Father McIntyre stooped and inspected the work. “Isn't this Hugh's job?”

James stopped and bit his cheek, his brow tightening further. Hugh had been adopted three months ago. “I don't mind,” he answered coldly.

Father McIntyre touched his shoulder. “I need to talk to you, son.”

Son.
He wasn't his son. He wanted to smack the hand off. “Yes, Father.”

Father McIntyre sat upon the ground, clutched knees against his chest, his face gray and drawn like a lamb soaked in the rain. “I just want you to know,” the Father began. “I just want you to know that I've always tried to make the right decisions for you and the children.” He looked far away, his lips pale pink, nearly white. “Especially for you, James.” The priest paused, held up his neck, blinked past grass and sky. “I lied about the letter.”

James didn't understand.
The letter? The
letter. Recognition finally entered.

“You have an aunt, James,” Father McIntyre sighed. “Your father's sister.”

Sweat beaded down James's neck and along his forehead. He was too shocked to be angry, too shocked to feel anything except the pounding of his heart.

“They've come to take you home.”

“To Ireland?” The question fell out.

“No. Australia. They moved here for you.”

James's skin was live and pulsing. Hope and relief expanded his rib cage. The windows opened, the doors thrown wide, and only one thought formed in the breeze—
I'm going home
.

“James,” Father McIntyre interrupted. “There are things you should know.” The priest tried to look past the hope in the boy to the part that needed to think clearly. “They are poor people.” And then he whispered, “It may be a hard life, James.”

James didn't care about money. He didn't mind work. He didn't understand any of the tone in the Father's voice.

“You don't have to go, James,” the priest pleaded.

“I want to go.” His voice was unwavering. “I want to go home.”

Father McIntyre bowed his head. “You leave tomorrow.”

At this, a hand seemed to grab James's throat; his heart sped again and did not leave lightness in his chest. Without thinking, he pulled at a goldenrod bloom, the bright pollen falling between his fingers, staining them yellow.
Yellow. Gold. Sun. Light.
His stomach went inside out.
Leo.

J
ames was leaving. Leonora saw it in his round eyes, in the talking brows that always spoke his thoughts; she saw it in Father McIntyre's face, in the shadows that he dragged. The priest's light flickered like a candle near a draft and she could not look at him without shrinking from his pain like a slug under salt.

If the sea and the sun and the cliffs were beautiful, they only paled next to James. For she loved him as only a child can love another, with arms stretched so wide and open that the expanse of the world could fit in the embrace and there would still be room to spare. Her heart nearly split in joy for James, to know that his family had come, that he should get the life he deserved, and until the morning that was enough.

Then it came. The dawn. She met him in the hall. Did not have eyes or thoughts to the Deacon or to the Father waiting by the door—only James, his clothes packed in an old work shirt, the sleeves tied as a handle, his knuckles white with clutching. He saw her, too. For a moment, neither moved, only stared, breathed.

“I'll check the carriage over,” said the Deacon. “A few minutes, James. That's all.”

There was panic in James's eyes. Leonora squashed her own as she took his hand. He looked down at her fingers, his nostrils flared. She squeezed his hand, pushed the burn away.

He shook his head then, almost angrily. “I don't have to go.” He looked at her quickly, then away as if she hurt his eyes. “I'll stay, Leo. I'll stay if you want.”

She bled like a bruise below the surface, blue and black pain that spread under her skin while her face remained unchanged. She pulled him by the hand and he followed. The burn grew hot and rough inside, but she would not acknowledge it, sent it to her toes, told it to wait. She walked him into the hazy morning.
Step, step, step.
Absent, dreamed movements; it was all a dream—the thick mist, the gray horses strapped to the carriage, the parsons black as shadows.

Leonora pulled James to Father McIntyre, the man's eyes rimmed red. She let go of her friend's hand but stood close. Father McIntyre reached out blindly, his hands shaking, and hugged James tight. A cry left the priest's throat and then he pulled away, his face, his body twitching.

James glanced at the Deacon already sitting in the carriage with reins in hand, then turned to Leonora. She smiled through the fire, held him steady with her eyes, held him up by the arms with only her will. His voice cracked. “I can stay, Leo.”

“Go.” Her pitch was high, nearly too thin to hear. James blinked in a daze and turned to the carriage. He was stuck in the dream, too.

His back had only just turned when the first tear dripped from her eye, trickled down her cheek and landed on her lips still poised in a smile.

James sat in the beaten leather seat. The Deacon smacked the reins and the horses found their rhythm. James's back swayed with the carriage. He did not look back and for this she was thankful, for the burn threatened to take over if he met her eyes.

The carriage crept through the haze, turned gray. James's brown hair muted but was still visible against the back of his neck. Then the white took over and he disappeared in the mist.

Leonora turned to Father McIntyre, a granite statue. The priest was gone, swallowed up in black instead of white. In his place stood cloth and skin and eyes, all stone, blank and flat.

The darkness came for her now and something far and deep shrieked in terror. The burn from a life not so long ago, from an early-morning dawn, returned. She knew those lost eyes, that tremor in bony fingers, the drawn face of a broken man. She remembered another broken man, another father who had dropped her hand and vanished into the very air. The tears released. Tears that flowed thickly around her eyes, blinding them and soaking her cheeks and the collar of her dress. She wanted to scream, wanted to shake his arms:
Don't break! Don't leave me!
But the man did not hear her sobs, did not see her, and turned blindly to the church as a ghost.

Alone in the silence, again. The waves hushed, the birds absent. The trees did not wobble a leaf and there Leonora stood with the panic circling about her chest. She could break and she felt the cracks and she shook her head plaintively. Leonora squeezed her eyes tight, knew how easy it would be to just give in, to crumble in the dust until it all disappeared, but part of her fought hysterically, the fear of vanishing worse than the pain.

She pulled through the despair to the one face that was not broken—James. She focused every thought and feeling on him. He was going home. She pictured him in the arms of his new family, in a life where his brows were never knit, and she smiled through the tears. If his life was happy, then she would not break.

Leonora's body opened again, the grief still whole, but she was still there. She reached for every beam of goodness James had brought her and she clutched it to her ribs and scratched through every other memory to collect the crumbs and remnants of him and she tucked them secretly and hoarded them in case they tried to escape.

Leonora stood tiny and straight against the expanse of the seaside land and did not break. But the lesson had been taught well and she would not forget. It joined the threads and pulled tight and knit hard into the fabric of her being.

They all left her in the end.