Landing (29 page)

"These aren't the Celts," Jude warned her. "So Sedna climbed on the fulmar's back and it carried her over the sea. When they finally got there she realized she'd been tricked: Her tent was made of tattered fish skin, and all she got to eat was old fish scraps. So she sang, 'Oh father, come in your little boat and take me home.' After a year her father turned up."

"At last. Hurray!"

"He killed her fulmar lover, and he and Sedna set off in his little boat. But the other birds discovered their dead friend and they started weeping and wailing, and they do to this very day."

"Ah," said Síle, "that's a sad one."

"Wait," said Jude. "They chased after the boat, and stirred up a terrible storm with their wings. So Sedna's father threw her overboard."

"He
what?
"

"But she clung on to the edge, so he took out his knife and cut off her fingers, and she went down. Once the fulmars thought she was drowned, they flew home and the storm died down. Her father pulled Sedna back into the boat—"

"Minus fingers!"

"—but she hated him now," said Jude. "As soon as they landed at their own bay, he lay down to sleep. Sedna called to her dogs, and told them to gnaw off his hands and feet. The father woke up with no hands or feet and started cursing; he cursed himself and his daughter and the dogs and the fulmars, too. And the earth split open and swallowed them all up."

"Jaysus," said Síle, into the Silence. "Celtic myths are cuddly by comparison. All the Wee Folk do is swap their skinny children for ours, or sour the milk." Then she added, "It's about emigration, isn't it?"

Jude laughed.

"The moral is, never fall for a foreigner and let them carry you off to their godforsaken country."

"You think everything's about emigration."

"Everything is! Last week on telly I saw a random selection of old movies—
Casablanca, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Wings of Desire, Castaway
—and every bloody one of them was about swapping one world for another."

Crossing from Trinity College to Dame Street in a hurry, arms full of rolls of wrapping paper, Síle paused on the traffic island and remembered a similar cold day, twenty-seven years earlier, when she and Niamh Ryan had stood and talked on that spot. Her eyes shut and she was back then, watching white specks land and melt in the orange waves of the girl's hair. Feet gone numb, like Lucy after she walked through the wardrobe into Narnian snow. She and Niamh hadn't been particularly close friends after that day, and Síle had no idea what had become of her since school. Síle had been to the reunions ten years after, then twenty, but Niamh Ryan had never been there. Just as well, really; her hair wouldn't have been the colour Síle remembered. Probably rusty brown now, speckled with gray.

These days she felt as if she were living in a film. Every song she heard on the radio, every random choice her headphones threw at her, formed part of the soundtrack of
Síle's Last Weeks in Dublin.
As the shuttle took her home from the airport, she examined every grubby shopfront or littered gutter as if it were precious. She was often on the verge of tears, for no reason; she caught herself laughing wildly at some crass joke about three blondes a taxi driver told her.
We've all got a past,
she'd told Jude scornfully in July,
but to cling to the spot where it happened is a bit pathetic.
Well, now Síle was clinging like a baby. She walked along old Northside streets, in one memory and out of another, and every corner was a touchstone. Would Dublin miss her at all, she caught herself wondering? To think she'd once claimed to be a citizen of the world, with no particular allegiance to this place!
My arbitrary domicile, my grain of sand.

"I never bought that citizen-of-the-world stuff," Jude told her on the phone. "Of course you love Dublin. That's why I can barely believe you'll go through with this."

"It does help that you get it," Síle told her.

"Of course I do.
Respect des fonds,
remember? Context is all, and you're ripping yourself out of yours. I'll just have to spend the rest of my life trying to make it up to you."

Warmth like a flush all over Síle's body.

Emigration may, indeed, generally be
regarded as an act of severe duty,
performed at the expense of personal
enjoyment, and accompanied by the
sacrifice of those local attachments
which stamp the scenes amid which
our childhood grew, in imperishable
characters upon the heart.

—SUSANNA MOODIE
Roughing It in the Bush

December seventh was Síle's last flight, Heathrow to Dublin. The sunrise was particularly lovely. Yellow light slanted in the portholes as in a religious painting, touching heads, shoulders, cheeks. Síle watched the sleepers, the report-readers, the gazers, the chatters. So many strangers she'd shepherded through the skies. They weren't all rude and irascible, she thought now; she'd been forgetting how many of them sat peacefully reading or chatting to their children.

That sense of slow dropping to earth; the ungraceful scrape and rumble as the wheels caught the tarmac, and the engines screamed. Then a lull, a gliding along the runway. A scattering of applause went up. Safe landing.

The Canadian wake took place that night in an upstairs room in her local in Stoneybatter. Familiar faces turned up from school and college, from the airline (the small handful she would miss, and a few others she wouldn't), from Pride committees, her Italian course, a night class in early French cinema. Deirdre had brought her husband and half a dozen other neighbours. Síle was touched by this turnout, in a city where everyone was always claiming to be madly booked up for months to come. Orla was there, having left the boys with William; beside her, Shay nursed his pint. No sign of Marcus and Pedro yet.

Her old friend Declan was just home after six years in Stockholm, as it happened, and about to take a short-term contract in Glasgow. "We're ships in the fecking night," he declared to Síle with a sloppy kiss. She remembered now that when she'd come out, he'd kept gallantly offering his services if she ever wanted to "give us lads a try."

"What did you miss, when you left?" Síle asked in his ear.

Declan shook his head. "The sad thing isn't the going."

"Isn't it?"

"The sad thing, Síle, is when you come back for a visit and you find yourself bitching about everything. Maybe not the first visit or the second," he said, "but sooner or later you find Dublin isn't home anymore. But nor is the other place. And then you're sunk."

Jael came to rescue her with another martini. "Ah, stop it," said Síle. "I won't remember a thing about tonight at this rate."

"Jael's forgotten everything about our wedding but the hangover," Anton joked, at Jael's side. "Listen, I wish you luck," he told Síle in a more serious voice. "My year in Japan, I felt like a complete feckin' outsider all the time."

"You're such a mammy's boy," Jael told him. "Running back to suck the withered dugs of the Shan Van Vaun!"

She had her arm slung around his shoulder. Husband and wife looked so good together, you'd never know a thing, thought Síle. Did Anton know anything, guess anything about his wife's affair? Maybe he had secrets of his own, unlit chambers in his heart.

Ching-ching:
Síle's inner circle were clinking their mobiles and pens on their glasses to hush the crowd.

"And now," said Shay, rising to his feet, "if I might say just a
cupla focail
about my beloved daughter—
in whom I am well pleased,
to quote the Man Upstairs—"

A hail of laughter. Orla was recording the whole thing with Síle's digital videocam. Síle couldn't imagine when she'd ever sit down and play it back.

"She's going off, as I'm sure you all know, to throw in her lot with Jude, a remarkable young woman whom we wish was here for this knees-up, and we only hope they'll both zip back over the Atlantic to see us on a regular basis."

Síle grinned at him across the room, willing herself not to cry.

"Now you may think I'm going to blab on and embarrass you all night, Síle, but indeed and I'm not. In honour of your mother, who I'm sure is with us in spirit," he said as matter-of-factly as if Sunita were at home with a bad cold, "I'm going to wind up by quoting a marriage hymn from the
Rig-Veda,
the address to the bride, and in this case I'm addressing it to both lassies. 'Be ye not parted, dwell ye here; reach the full time of human life,'" he intoned. "And now I'll dry up." With that Shay sat down, to cheers and applause. He leapt up again, to say "—so that the lady herself can favour us with a little speech."

"I will not," Síle protested, but eventually the pressure sent her to her feet. Her mind was blank. And then she began, in familiar professional tones, her hands tilting forward and back. "Ladies and gentleman, if I could have your attention for just a few moments while I explain some crucial safety features of this aircraft..."

Raucous laughter.

"Seriously, now, folks. Jude sent me a quote the other day that I think is applicable," Síle said, hoping she'd get it right. "It's by some Frenchwoman called Madame de Boufflers; I never heard of her before. Apparently she said
oui,
she'd be perfectly willing to go to England as ambassadress—
if
she was allowed to take with her twenty or so of her intimate friends, and also sixty or seventy other people who were necessary to her happiness."

More guffaws, though actually Síle found the line more sad than funny.

"So if that's all right with you all, I'm planning to stuff you all into my carry-on at the end of the night, because to be honest, if I could bring my nearests and dearests with me, I could live without the rain, the Guinness, or the Tayto crisps." Wild applause. She caught sight of Marcus's shaved scalp at the back of the room, and gave him a wave. "And now, as none of you love me enough to want to hear me sing, I'm going to call on my friend Marcus to come forward—"

But he shook his head very sharply, and she knew she'd blundered, somehow.

"Go on, boyo!" somebody roared.

"Give us a sad one."

Síle's gaze landed on a musical cousin, who was willing to be persuaded to try out the pub's piano, and her neighbour from two doors down got up and launched into a quavery rendition of "The Parting Glass."

She worked her way through the crowd to Marcus's side.

"Sorry I'm late," he said in a voice so flat it alarmed her.

"No bother," she told him. "Where's Pedro?"

"London."

She did a double-take. "For how long?"

An abrupt shrug.

Síle pulled him out into the corridor for privacy. "He's with James," Marcus told her.

"Who's—"

"Our neighbour, remember?"

"Mr. Organic?" Síle was still bewildered. "You mean—"

"Pedro's never been faithful to one man in his life," said Marcus, gravel-voiced, "but I suppose I deluded myself that I'd converted him."

"Sweetie!" Why hadn't Síle known any of this? Why hadn't she asked? She'd been entirely preoccupied with her own big move. "Is he coming back?"

"Oh, probably." Marcus said it without enthusiasm. "I don't know. We'll see what there is to salvage."

Síle felt an awful dragging sensation. "Was it—was moving down the country too much for Pedro?"

A snort. "I had the impression he adored it. But then, I had the impression he adored
me
."

"I'm sure he did, both. Does," said Síle with some desperation. "I suppose people and places are similar that way, that you can't tell how long you'll end up staying."
Shut your trap, woman, you're not helping.

But Marcus was nodding. "Yeah, but if love's a country, there's no such thing as a permanent visa. Deportation without notice," he added bitterly. "Free fucking trade."

Síle held him very tightly. Then the door swung open, and "There's herself!" She was pulled back into the party, for big hugs, requests for one last coffee or drink before the fifteenth, the endless, maudlin good-byes.

Only when she was going down the stairs with the last few stragglers did she realize who it was that she'd been scanning the crowd for all evening: Kathleen. Not that Síle had contacted her, but she supposed she'd had an absurd hope that some friend might have passed word on, and that Kathleen would have dropped in for a minute, just to say good luck, to offer some kind of pax, or release—as if life were ever that neat.

Shay and Orla came back to her house to wait for the taxi to bring them to the Southside, since the company said it could be up to three quarters of an hour. Síle made them tea and toast. "It's a fascinating story," Shay was saying, "someone from the Iraqi Children campaign sent me a clipping. This fellow bought a tape on how to do bird imitations, and decided to focus on owls. He tried out his calls in the back garden:
hoo, hoo, tuwit, tuwoo.
And one night he heard an owl hooting back! The two of them sounded identical—at least to his ears—and he was thrilled to find himself talking to a bird, like a boy out of Grimm's fairy tales. Though of course he had no idea whether the two of them were swapping territorial claims, or mating calls, even."

Her father's excitement made Síle smile.

"He kept this up for months, till one night—"

"It turns out to be his neighbour, practicing owl calls," she finished for him.

"What a twit!" said Orla.

Shay frowned. "You should have stopped me."

"I liked how you were telling it. It did the rounds online, years ago."

"But this article was from a recent newspaper," he objected. Síle shook her head. "It's an urban myth, Dad."

"Ah."

Then she regretted having made him feel foolish. "Which isn't to say it never happened."

"Are you nervous?" Orla asked when Shay had gone upstairs to use what he called the facilities.

"I am of course."

"I worry about you."

"Me? I'll be grand."

Orla was sitting on the very edge of the couch, eyes on the rug. "I know you think you're just like Da," she said hoarsely, "but she's the other half of you, remember."

"Who, Amma?" asked Síle in puzzlement.

"It was the move that did for her, even if it took eight years." Orla didn't look up. "You've always preferred the official version, okay, that's what I tell people myself, because it's none of their business. But I've always wondered, Síle, do you actually believe it?"

Fatigue had Síle in its grip; she wished the taxi would come. "What are you on about? What official version?"

"Oh come on," said Orla. She glanced up the narrow stairs, but there was no sound from the bathroom. Her fingers formed quotation marks. "
Our beautiful young mother died of diabetes.
"

"But she did."

Her sister spoke in a furious undertone. "Tell me this, then: How come she managed just fine for two years after being diagnosed as Type 2, then when Da took us away for a long weekend she just so happened to lapse into a terminal coma?"

Síle's throat hurt. "The signs of low blood sugar aren't always obvious; I read this article..."

"Oh, Síle, cop on." Orla counted on her fingers. "Tremors, sweating, headache, dizziness..."

"Confusion! Confusion is one of the main symptoms—"

"What, with no warning, all at once she was so utterly confused that it never occurred to her to drink some juice? She kept sweets in her purse, in the car, in the kitchen drawer! I remember nicking one and Dad told me off, they were our Amma's special medicine for emergencies."

"These things happen," said Síle, almost stuttering.

"Yeah, mostly to stoned rock stars," said Orla. "Or to depressed immigrants who pack their family off down the country and take a triple dose of insulin."

Síle was shocked into Silence. Then she put her face very close to her sister's. "You're paranoid. You're making this up. You were only five!"

"Old enough to notice that Amma was one of the walking dead. She'd got really fat, lethargic; did you never wonder why there are no pictures of her from the final year? I'd come home from school that winter and she'd still be in bed." Orla spoke in a rapid whisper. "Back in my teens I figured out, there's only two logical options: Either she took too much insulin or she starved herself all that weekend. Maybe she thought if she just curled up in bed and ate nothing, it wouldn't count as suicide."

The word hit Síle like the boom of a boat.

The sound of a flush, the tap running. The sisters stared at each other, unblinking.

Shay came down the stairs carefully. "The place looks much better purged of all your clutter, I must say."

"Doesn't it," she managed to say.

A beep from the street, and she pulled the blind aside: Their taxi was here. Orla hugged her too hard and muttered something about meeting for a last lunch early in the week. Síle pulled away from her without a word.

As soon as she was alone, she rang Jude, and spilled the story out in a shaking voice. "I was so oblivious!"

"You were three years old!"

"I mean, since, looking back. I suppose I loved the smiley pictures of Amma in my head, and love makes you stupid."

"Darlin'—"

"It's not that I want to believe it, but it all makes a sick kind of sense," said Síle, beginning to sob. "She must have felt bits of her starting to crumble off as soon as she landed. She settled in Da's family house, with all her neighbours goggling over the hedges; she turned Catholic, stopped speaking Malayalam, got a little less Indian every year. She must have felt she was
withering—
"

"Wait up a second. Even if it's true—"

"It has to be true, damn it," she shouted. "Orla says Amma was so depressed she stayed in bed all day. It's just too much of a coincidence that she'd fall into a coma the one weekend we were away!"

Jude's tone was reasonable. "What I want to know is, why would your sister drop this bombshell tonight, of all nights in your life?"

"She was warning me."

"What, that if you emigrate you're doomed to despair like your mom, even though your circumstances are totally and utterly different?"

Síle felt rage like spit between her teeth.

"It just sounds to me like Orla's trying to punish you for leaving."