Landing (23 page)

"Oh, I wish," said Síle, relaxing into her arms. "I just don't buy this."

Jude frowned in puzzlement.

"The notion that Marcus and Pedro will stay together a day longer because they've exchanged garlands and vows. It's bollocks, the whole till-death-do-us-part thing."

Jude shrugged. "The Petersons next door to me have been happily married for nearly sixty years."

"Of course it sometimes happens to happen," conceded Síle, "though who can tell from the outside who's
really
happy? But what I mean is, it's not the wedding that glues you together."

"That's true. It sure didn't work for me and Rizla," Jude admitted.

Síle grinned at her. "I'd rather a lover than a wife."

"Why, because the word has a better ring to it?"

"Because then it's a choice, not a promise.
One day at a time,
as the alcos say," she added drily.

The afternoon had that end-of-summer tint, and the ceremony was oddly moving, despite the fact that men in robes always made Síle think of
Monty Python's Life of Brian.
Pedro and Marcus looked stunning in matching white linen as they jumped the broom together. Síle got to throw a basket of mint leaves and rose petals over their heads.

"What are Quaker weddings like?" she whispered to Jude.

"Guess."

"Silent?" Somehow they started giggling and couldn't stop; Síle blamed the mead, which had quite a kick to it.

By the time the banquet was served—by girls in garlands, on unsteady trestles set up in the meadow—the guests were raucous. A small black sheep wandered past, bleating. Síle and Jude got talking to the neighbours who ran an organic farm; Síle couldn't for the life of her remember their names. They had a daughter who was studying economics in Galway.

"Is she one of these lovely damsels in daisy chains?"

"Oh no, they're from an agency," Mr. Organic assured her. "We're the only locals here. No, Marcus gets on grand in this community, but nothing's spelled out, you know?"

"You mean—"

Mrs. Organic's laugh had a drunken edge to it. "Everyone knows he and Pedro are bent as forks, and that's no bother, but they'd rather not receive a wedding invitation!"

Jude was nodding. "Some bits of rural Canada can be like that."

The husband talked about two men he knew who'd been holding hands on a beach in Sligo when some teenagers threw stones at them. "Like something out of Leviticus!"

Síle gave a theatrical shudder. "It all goes to show that queers should head for the biggest city they know and stay there."

"Oh come on, that's such a cliché. Bad things happen in cities too." Jude spoke sharply. "To me it's more important to be able to see the sun rise without a hundred skyscrapers in the way than to be able to buy a skim-double-latte from some tattooed transman."

"Different strokes," said Síle with a little laugh that sounded affected even to her.

"What's a transman?" Mrs. Organic wanted to know.

Marcus had been hovering on the edge of the group, and now he stepped in. "Dublin should suit you, then, Jude. Nary a skyscraper and very few tattooed transmen, either."

"Ah, but could she afford the skim-double-lattes, at Dublin prices?" asked Mr. Organic.

"Who can!" said Síle pleasantly, her eyes searching for her lover's. Why had she been so stupid as to bring up their perpetual argument?

Mrs. Organic was congratulating the bridegroom.

"Apart from a slight mead headache, I'm having a ball," Marcus assured her.

Later on there was dancing under the full moon: to Latin rhythms, rather than pan pipes, which was a relief to most of the guests. Jude insisted Síle dance one slow number with her, holding her very tight and moving Síle's hips on the beat. Jael drove her lot off to stay in the most luxurious B&B in County Leitrim, but Síle and Jude ended up on a single mattress in Pedro's office, a barely renovated hen house. Saying good night, he kept kissing Jude on both cheeks and exclaiming over the present she'd brought them, a photo of two bachelor farmers in Waterloo County, Ontario, in a frame she'd made herself out of a cedar shake. "Circa 1873, maybe as late as '76," she said scrupulously. "I liked the way they're leaning on the same pitchfork."

"Which shoved my overpriced glass fruit bowl rather into the shade," complained Síle as they were going to sleep.

Jude set her teeth against Síle's nape and breathed hotly.

"Are we all right, then? I really must stop being rude about rural life."

"You never will," said Jude, kissing each vertebra in her neck. "I guess it's good that we can quarrel; it shows we're not on best behaviour anymore."

"Oh, great. Next we'll be cutting our toenails in bed and farting in the bath."

They shook with laughter.

The next morning, Síle asked Jael if they could take the N4 because Jude wanted to see the bit of Roscommon that Síle's branch of the O'Shaughnessys were from. Jael and family stayed in the car, which pleased Síle. She and Jude walked up to the small lake and stared at its glassy darkness. Clouds scuttled off, and the sky was suddenly the blue of a baby's vein. The clover smelled sweet where their feet had bruised it. "My great-granda used to earn his living rowing Yanks round this lake," Síle told her, "till one night he took a big boatful out and they all drowned."

"No!"

"Apparently he was stocious—drunk," she glossed. "That's the house where Da grew up, the one behind that big granite erratic," she said, pointing down toward the village.

"So he's a hick like me, then."

Síle laughed. "We came down to see Granny and Granda every month or so. We were here the weekend our Amma died."

Jude slid her hand into Síle's. "I was telling Gwen about it, she wanted to know: Was it hypo or hyper?"

"Hypo," Síle told her. "They never found out why she slipped into a coma, but low blood sugar can come on really fast—confusion, tremors, convulsions ... I found one site that said sometimes if you've had diabetes for years you stop noticing the danger signs. That's the real tragedy of it—if she'd drunk a glass of orange juice it would have saved her. Or an injection of glucose might have, if we'd even got home a bit earlier that Sunday and rung an ambulance in time."

"Oh, lord. I hope your dad doesn't blame himself?" Jude added after a minute.

Síle shrugged. "No idea. He's happy to talk about her, but not about the death. I think it took ten days till he switched off her lifesupport. Anyway!" She pointed down the hill again. "The rock's known as Diarmaid and Gráinne's Bed, but I should warn you, so is every flat-topped stone or dolmen from here to Kerry."

"Who are Diarmaid—"

"Oh, this is a good story for a wedding weekend! Remember Fionn Mac Cumhaill?"

"Oisín's dad?" said Jude.

"Very good. Well, Gráinne the High King's daughter was supposed to marry old Fionn, but during the bridal feast at the Hill of Tara she ran away with one of his young followers, Diarmaid. So he rounded up the Fianna, and they hunted the pair all over Ireland. Diarmaid and Gráinne could never sleep two nights in the same place."

Jude smiled. "Rechabites! So did it end in disaster?"

"Ah, they had a good run of it—sixteen years," Síle told her, "then Diarmaid got gored by a wild boar and she had to marry Fionn after all."

They turned down the hill toward the car.

"Come for a fortnight, next time, and we can do a proper Magical History Tour."

"I'd love that."

Síle's pulse was thumping in her throat. "Better yet, come for good."

Jude didn't answer. She turned her light eyes on Síle's.

Síle forced a smile. "I know you imagine it'd choke you to move townships, let alone continents."

"It's not that," said Jude carefully. "But I don't think I'd know myself in Dublin."

"Stoneybatter's a sort of village—"

"Inside a city. And I'd be an unemployed, disoriented foreigner, waiting four days at a stretch for you to come home."

No you wouldn't,
Síle protested in her head, but what was the point?

"I'm flattered. And touched."

This didn't mollify Síle.
Damn, damn,
why couldn't she have kept her mouth shut till she had a strong case prepared? Now there was a big, raw crack in the ground that they'd have to edge around for the rest of the visit.

Yseult was lying down on the backseat. "I'm bored, is there anything to eat?" she asked, rising with a yawn as they climbed in.

"Did you know snails sleep for up to three years?" Jude asked her.

A cold look. "You can't fool me, I'm eight now."

The heart may think it knows better: the
senses know that absence blots people
out. We have really no absent friends.

—ELIZABETH BOWEN

Re: Diarmaid and Gráinne

Only early October, and all the leaves have fallen off the cherry tree in front of my house.

In my nephews'
Treasury of Irish Legends
I was checking out the tale of the lovers on the run, Jude, and I'd forgotten this great piece of advice someone gives them:

Never enter a cave that has only one opening; and never land on an island that has only one harbour; and where you cook your food there eat it not; and where you eat, sleep not there; and where you sleep tonight, sleep not there tomorrow night.

Ring me today?

Re: cave

My cave has got several openings, lovely Síle, and you can take your pick.

I think I'm in withdrawal. I can't sleep, not hungry, sit in the museum breathing in dust and talking to you in my head. It seems to get harder after each visit, curiously enough. This is definitely worse than giving up the smokes...

Re: dating

I know, I know, after we say good-bye it's like some awful lurching gear change, and then as the weeks go by the car gradually grinds to a halt. The ground staff coordinator mentioned she'd heard I was "dating some woman in Canada." It struck me not only as one of the many Americanisms sneaking into Hiberno-English (Da would say "doing a line with," I grew up with "going out with"), but what a strange concept, "dating," like something they do to Phoenician ruins...

Re: re: dating

Maybe it's the right word for it, though, Síle, because don't we live by dates these days? I know without having to check my "Black Ontario History" calendar that it's been thirty-four days since you waved at the cab taking me away down Stoneybatter. What I don't know is how long it'll be till your next flying visit to my side of the world.

Hm, that's a glum opener, let's try again...

I guess your sister may be right that we're making--what's that great phrase she used?--"heavy weather" of the distance between us. We're certainly luckier than many couples. Gwen works with a care assistant from Uzbekistan who only gets to see her husband about every two years. I keep reminding myself that in the days before cheap(ish) air travel, you and I would have been sunk. This thing between us depends entirely on those big noisy tin tubes in the sky I so dislike. In the old days, letters were the only lifeline, and they were always going astray. My archive is full of migrant workers who rarely saw their families, wives emigrating to join husbands but dying on the ship, men who went off to the Gold Rush and lost touch...

This was certainly the oddest year of Jude's life. It was hard to pace herself, that was all. She didn't know when she'd be able to climb into Síle's nut-brown arms again, dropping the rock of absence. Between trainings and meetings, chiropractic appointments and kids' birthday parties, the two of them couldn't seem to find three days when their schedules allowed for a visit. Their next reunion shifted like an oasis on the horizon, and Jude couldn't plot her course. She trudged through her days, haunted by the feeling that real life was happening five thousand kilometres away.

Doing the time zone tango, that's what Síle called it,
and you know how awful a dancer I am!
Jude pictured the two of them thumping across a vast ballroom, joined at the shoulders and hands, heads cricked to the side. It was a peculiar dance, the tango; a desperate yoking.

"That must be such fun," people said when Jude told them she was seeing a woman on the other side of the Atlantic, and she never knew what to say: Sort of? Sometimes? Less fun, now the gaiety of the first few months was sobering, but more necessary. What stratagems and devices, what compromises and deals would it take for her and Síle to last? The thought of another year of e-mailing, phoning, and waiting—let alone twenty—made Jude queasy.

Every time she went over it again in her head, she felt bad about the curt way she'd rejected Síle's suggestion on that hillside in Roscommon. Yet what else could she have said, without misleading the woman? Something Jude had always known about herself was that she wasn't the emigrating kind, not like her schoolfriends who'd ended up in Ohio, Amsterdam, or the United Arab Emirates. And for all the good times she'd had in Dublin on both her visits, the noisy capital of a foreign country wasn't somewhere Jude could ever feel at home. Trips were different, she argued in her head; the whole point of a vacation was that it was an exception to the rules. Jude could snort cocaine or Síle could snooze in a porch swing: They were just playing at sharing each other's lifestyles.

Jude had fantasized about Síle moving to Canada, of course she had, though to ask it aloud would only be to embarrass herself. Atleast Dublin had a certain slapdash glamour; what could Ireland, Ontario, hold for Síle Sunita O'Shaughnessy? Jude let herself imagine Síle in the house on Main Street only briefly. Like the way some women dreamed about being pregnant, she supposed. It was just the contrary heart wondering if it could have it both ways, live more lives than one.

"I guess you and I are just rooted kind of people," she said to Gwen as they pushed their way along the forest path through the lush overgrowth of early fall.

Gwen snorted.

"Wouldn't you say?"

"Sometimes it feels more like trapped," said her friend, slapping a leaf off her sweaty cheek. "If I met some god from Paraguay, I might just go there."

"You would not."

"I might."

"The thing about your situation..." Jude didn't know quite what she meant to say.

"It's a trap in itself," Gwen said drolly. "I might as well be on the other side of the planet from Luke, some days. I sit around biting my cuticles, wishing I could call him without his wife picking up."

"Oh, Gwen."

A shrug. "He's a nice guy."

"Nice enough?"

"You take what you can get."

Did this mean Luke Randall, out of all the men available for affairs in this corner of southwestern Ontario, or Gwen's meagre share of him? Jude didn't ask; it was too sad either way.

"My point is, you and Síle should quit bitching and moaning. There's nothing keeping you apart except for an ocean," said Gwen. "You can dial her number and talk to her anytime you like, say whatever comes into your head. You can see each other every month or so without anyone standing in your way."

"I guess so," said Jude grimly. It was like wanting ice cream instead of meat loaf, and being told that children in refugee camps would be grateful for the meat loaf. Yes, of course she had nothing to complain about, compared to so many people, but when had that ever stopped anyone from complaining? Happiness was a balloon that always hovered just out of arm's reach.

Work helped, some. For the next month, Jude would be organizing the third annual 1867 Day, which took place on the second of November, All Souls. She had to wangle loans of period clothing from the costume workshop at the Stratford Festival, argue with the insurance company about covering the children's haystack climb, and track down a replacement for the blacksmith who'd succumbed to carpal tunnel.

"I'll really try to make it down this year," said Estelle, her old boss from the Pioneer Museum, on the phone. "You've done wonderful things with that little schoolhouse."

"I have, haven't I?" said Jude, laughing at her own cockiness. "And now we've got a good shot at substantial funding from the same foundation."

"But you know, if you ever wanted to stretch your wings, there are some interesting opportunities in Toronto—"

"I thought it was all cuts, cuts, cuts?"

"True, but there are two retirements coming up in a special regional collection that just so happens to be run by a good friend of mine..."

"Thanks for thinking of me, Estelle, but I've got big plans for my little museum," Jude told her.

That afternoon she borrowed Rizla's pickup to bring a slightly rusty Dominion Cheese Company churn down to a museum in London, Ontario; it was just too big for her to display. In return, the curator gave her a copy of a clipping from the
London Free Press
of January 9, 1883, headed "Ireland Ont. Farmer Stabbed in Market Day Brawl, Liquor to Blame."

Jude found herself reluctant to start the drive back. In the city's handsome covered market she found a café called The Little Red Roaster, and sipped Fair Trade Organic Sumatran from a tall blue mug. She thought even Síle would call this a good cup of coffee. She was quite enjoying the energy of the surging, chattering shoppers. She shut her eyes and pictured the building in 1883, full of liquored-up, brawling farmers.

At the next table, below a spindly coffee tree in a pot, a young woman with jaw-length brown hair was deep in conversation with a boy of six or seven. Her son, he had to be, he had the same dark-eyed charm; she must have had him very young, thought Jude, watching out of the corner of her eye, pretending to read a pamphlet about Falun Gong. They were talking like friends; there was none of that "now let's wipe our mouth" stuff. Suddenly the woman burst out laughing at something the boy said, and the flash of teeth transformed her face. He dropped his muffin on her folder, glugged his milk, then jumped onto her lap, and she wrapped her arms around him. Jude angled toward them unobtrusively, catching a few lines of a conversation that was either about a bush or George W. Bush, she wasn't sure. She glanced at the pages sliding out of the folder; an essay headed (ah, her radar was working)

Yana Petronis
"
Bad Little Sisters: A Case Study of Cross-Border Censorship
"Women's Studies 253 (Lesbian Issues)

Time to head home. Jude tried to catch the young woman's eye for a quick smile but didn't manage it.

As the sprawl of new subdivisions gave way to open fields, she found herself imagining another life. A no-distance-at-all relationship. You met your girlfriend at the market, saw her again at dinner, slept a hairsbreadth apart all night. A life measured in minutes and hours, instead of weeks and months; plans wouldn't need to stretch any farther than tomorrow's bike ride or Saturday's music festival. Not necessarily perfect, but made up of one fresh day at a time.

But why had this never happened to Jude, in the years between leaving Rizla and meeting Síle? Why, despite all her
genital encounters,
hadn't she fallen hard for someone local? Look at it pragmatically: There was probably someone in every town whom Jude could love, who could love Jude. What perversity had made her fixate on a foreigner instead? Why was she sweating out her heart for a faraway woman when no doubt there were people just as intriguing, all around her? It was like some sinister fairy tale in which the prince fell into a decline:
I long for the fruit of the tree at the end of the world. Nothing but that fruit will satisfy my thirst: only its juice can save me.

THINK GLOBAL, BUY LOCAL said an ad in the window of the general store as Jude drove into Ireland, and she gritted her teeth.

Re: Keeping Busy

Today I was in London--yup, another place named by lonely emigrants. They have this weird 1826 miniature castle that was the courthouse and jail, it turns out it's a copy of Malahide Castle near Dublin. (Take me next time?) Before anyone had actually settled in London, there was a public execution that folks came from all over Upper Canada to see. The rope broke, so they had to string the guy up again, and the worst thing is that he was Francophone, but his confession's in perfect English, which suggests he was framed...

In the market I saw a woman in a café and thought, why can't I love someone like her instead of you?

On second thought—Jude highlighted that sentence and hit
Delete.
There were things you could chance face to face, but e-mail was a blunt medium.

One day without a call from Síle was okay-ish; two days were lonely; three days of Silence led to paranoid thoughts.
(She's pissed at
me, I've slipped her mind, she's got better things to do
.) Jude was fighting to keep her overdraft the right side of $5,000, and the sight of an envelope with Bell Canada on it made her stomach knot. Síle kept telling her to set up a line of credit backed by the house, but Jude could just picture her mother's pursed lips. "It's not borrowing," Síle insisted, "it's just liquidating a little bit of an asset." For lovers who'd slept together for a grand total of fifteen nights, it occurred to Jude, they spent a ridiculous amount of time discussing money.

"Sounds like marriage," Rizla sniggered, over a hot dog at the Garage.

Jude didn't rise to the bait. "I was thinking of selling the Triumph. The insurance just went up again, they're killing me. I might be better off downsizing to an eight-fifty cc, seven-fifty, even."

Rizla was goggle-eyed. "Man, she's got you by the balls."

"It's not Síle's idea," she snapped.

"The bike's a freaking family heirloom. What would your uncle say if you flogged it to some Toronto lawyer to pay your phone bill? Here's the line in the sand," he went on, his finger scoring in the air. "You're a biker with a vintage Triumph, you don't cash that in. Geez, sell the house first."

Jude was aware of a certain relief. "Dumb idea, I guess. I just ... I really need to see Síle. She's been sounding exhausted; she's on this heavy rotation to New York and L.A. I wish I could be there when she gets home, making her some risotto."

"Why can't she make herself some risotto?"

Jude shook her head. "It's too slow; she always turns up the heat and burns it."

He chewed one broad, leathery thumb. "If gals can't cook, you might as well have stuck with guys."

She fixed him with a look.

"Hush up, now, Richard," he scolded himself, "your little friend's got
luuuuve
problems."

"Love isn't a problem, geography is."

"But geography wouldn't be a problem if you weren't in love, right? I mean, I live thousands of clicks from Céline Dion but that's fine by me."