Learning to Swim (17 page)

One day at the beginning of August, as my days in Oyster Beach dwindled, Mrs. O’Leary asked me to run to the Resort to get Ronan. She said, out of nowhere, that the toaster was broken and needed immediate fixing.

I suggested I look at it, but she insisted Ronan be fetched. Regardless of not wanting to face him, I had tender feelings toward the old woman what with our recent talks and the way her eyes had begun to hold a watery fearfulness. Rory’s painful reproach of my behavior toward Mrs. O’Leary still burned, but despite the way my stomach turned over, I feigned cheerfulness and agreed to go get him.

“You just go to the main office, the big red building, and Mr. or Mrs. O’Brien will be there, and just ask for Ronan.”

I nodded and told Princess to “stay” before walking off down the boardwalk.

Make your peace
, I told myself sternly. I was determined to take advantage of this situation and change the way this boy thought of me. Show him I
had changed.

The big, red, two-story cabin looked deserted from outside, but I went in anyway. A bell tinkled overhead as I entered, and a woman popped up from behind the desk quite unexpectedly.

I must have started because she laughed heartily. “I’m sorry, pet,” she said. “I was fetching a pencil, though I do seem to have lost it for good.” She was short and squat with a round, rosy face, but all this was barely noticeable under her strong Irish accent. I assumed this was a relative of Rory’s, but I couldn’t put my finger on any particular resemblance. “What kin I do for yas?”

“I’m looking for”—I paused here and bit back the name Ronan—“Rory.”

She smiled but looked confused. “You a friend a his from school?”

“No, I’m a friend of Mrs. O’Leary’s,” I said.

“Oh, dear child, you must be the girl from the big houses.” She was absolutely beaming as she came out from behind the front counter and beckoned for me to follow her. “I’m Rory’s mum.”

“Cora,” I said, shaking her hand. I was more than surprised to hear such an accurate guess of my identity.
What has he said about me?
Or had she been talking to Mrs. O’Leary?

She led me down a narrow hallway. It was brightly lit and covered with pictures of children at various ages. The woman walked rather slowly and I studied them for the familiar face as I passed.

“Your family here for the summer?” the woman asked, occasionally darting interested glances over her shoulder. She seemed pleased with the interest I took in the pictures on the wall. “Won’t find Rory in many of these pictures, sweetheart,” she said. “Always in the water, that lad, rarely in front of the camera.”

“He swims a lot,” I said, a half-question. I felt braver under the guise of friendship that his mother assumed we had.

She laughed loudly. “That’s an understatement, child. The boy lived in water till ’e was five. ’e was devastated to learn that school for human lads wasn’t quite like schools of fish. Still swims every mor’n fer hours.” She paused for a moment and then went on. “I suppose you’ve heard Mrs. O’Leary call ’im Ronan.”

I nodded.

“That name, it means ‘little seal.’ I’n’t the strangest? This boy spends more time in the water than out. And there’s little Mrs. O’Leary, calling ’im the wrong name that means ‘little seal.’”

She stopped and pointed to a picture above both our heads. “There ’e is, just a tot.” It was a picture of a smiling kid in water wings and up to his neck in the ocean. Looking closer, it did look a lot like the Rory I knew.

 “You have other sons?” I asked.

“Gracious, child, we’ve six. Rory the youngest but one.”

“Six?” I repeated. The woman’s smiling red face had lulled me out of my temerity and I looked openly around at the pictures now.

“Our four oldest boys—” she indicated a picture of a mob of smiling boys with all very similar faces, “and my two girls were born in Ireland, then Rory and Aidan joined us after we’d settled down in Oyster Beach.”

“They all look so much alike,” I said.

A little crease appeared between Mrs. O’Brien’s eyes, but she didn’t say anything. I went back to scanning the pictures. It was a moment before I realized she was walking away down the hall. I skipped to catch up with her.

“Rory’s doing rounds now,” she went on, “we’ve a big party coming up at the weekend, and we’ll all be running around with our heads cut off then, but for now he should be easy enough to track down.”

“Oh, if he’s busy, I’m sure—”

“Nonsense, child, if Mrs. O’Leary is wanting ’im, he best go. But if ya’d be good enough and take something down to ’im fer me.” We emerged into a sort of backyard where a lone boy was watering plants with a hose at the side of a patio.

“Aidan, where’s yer brother got’oo?” Mrs. O’Brien called across the yard.

The boy looked up and sure enough it was a miniature version of Rory, brown eyes and all. He had a messy mop of dark hair that fell just a little longer than Rory’s. Brushing the back of his hand across his forehead to push stray strands out of his eyes, he cast me a furtive, curious glance.

“He’s down by ten,” he said, with much the same voice as his brother.

“Alright, child,” Mrs. O’Brien turned back to me, “I need to get back to the desk, but if i’s alright with ya, I’ll send ya that way an’ if ya could take this—” She retrieved a mop and bucket from the side of the door from which we’d just emerged. “He’ll know what to do with it,” she said with a smile.

“Sure thing,” I said. I was vaguely aware of Aidan’s curious gaze, and I tried my best to keep my composure. “Thank you so much.”

“Just follow this walk down and the cabin numbers will rise, and ’e should be right near cabin ten.” Mrs. O’Brien motioned toward a smaller version of the boardwalk, and after more profuse thanks, I scampered away.

The path wound past and between the red cabins, none of which seemed too occupied. They were small and most of them were on stilts, occasionally interspersed with small white houses that must have been privately owned. The boardwalk grew skinnier as it went on, and my nerves grew weaker as I wandered down it. The inevitable awkwardness of the situation was just making itself utterly apparent when I reached cabin number ten. But there was nobody in sight.

A little relieved, I determined to walk to number twelve before giving up, for Mrs. O’Leary’s sake, but he was nowhere in sight. I turned around to go back.

“Cora?”

Damn! So close
.

“What are you doing here?”

I spun around to see him emerging from the side of the cabin, clutching a large bulging trash bag. He looked just as startled as I felt. His hair was messed up and sweaty around his ears, but that didn’t stop my heart from pounding a little quicker than normal. His face was flushed and at this point in time, his brown eyes looked nervous.

“I come bearing gifts,” I said, lifting up the mop and pail with a weak smile.

He was resentful. “I’m really sorry.”

“No, what? No, it’s fine,” I sputtered.
Be friendly. Make him like you
.
And,
cheeks
, you behave!

“God, did my mum put you up to that?” He put the trash bag down and hurriedly went to take the mop and bucket from me. For the slightest second, I thought I heard the twinge of an accent in his words, and I smiled.

“I know what you think of me, thanks to a profusion of very strong words, but I
do
know how to work a mop,” I said.
Good. Keep going.
I let him take the bucket but held firm to the mop. “Not from practice, of course, but I’ve studied Joan for eighteen years, and I’m a great student.” It took all of my strength to will a self-deprecating smile from the depths of my being. “That’s the housekeeper,” I added. I hoped he would understand the peace offering I was trying to make. When it came down to it, it was an admission that he was right, that he’d seen me correctly, that I was trying to change.

But these were thoughts too complicated for the few seconds it took for him to smile back and then laugh, and I felt a simple flooding of relief. He was rubbing his head with one hand, much like I’d just seen his brother Aidan do, and looking at me confusedly.

“Mrs. O’Leary sent me to get you,” I said, again blabbering in the silence. “But now I’m on a serious mission from a Mrs. O’Brien. Do you need help?”

He licked his lips absentmindedly and looked around him a little bashfully. Was he—I ventured to imagine it—embarrassed?

“Seriously, it’s probably time I did some fieldwork,” I added.

He finally rummaged in his pocket and pulled out a ring full of keys. His eyebrows were pushed up and together, and he looked at me out from under a creased forehead, as though unsure of what he was doing.

“It’s no Pink Palace,” he said, as I followed him into cabin twelve, smiling with the glee Rosie would undoubtedly feel when I told her I’d been alone in a resort cabin with a boy. Granted, romance was usually much easier when said boy didn’t have a history of loathing you and gallivanting with pretty blonde girls.

The room was a cozy, dark thing with stone walls and floors. There was a small kitchen area with a long table and couches around the perimeter. It was decorated like a country home, pastoral scenes framed and hung on the walls and cozy floral prints on all the furniture.
Tacky
, my mother would have called it. Rory filled the bucket at the sink and set it on the floor, then held his hand out for the mop.

I smirked and dipped the mop into the bucket. I attempted a weak imitation of Joan (though I’d said it in jest, I really never had mopped before), slapping the wet mop across the floor in random arcs and leaving streams of water on the floor. I looked up to find him leaning back against the fridge, arms crossed across his chest, looking at me with amusement, and something else, which I dared to hope was somewhere along the lines of satisfaction.

He came forward and took the mop from me. His big hands brushed mine and I tried to hide the quick change in my breathing. He motioned for me to go sit on the nearby couch. “I think you need to study a little longer before going into the business,” he said, wringing out the excess water in the mop back into the bucket.

“I’m just not used to such an ancient piece of technology,” I said playfully. “You should invest in a Swiffer.”
Too soon to joke about money?
I wondered.

“Ah, that’s an investment beyond our means,” he said. I flooded with relief. Apparently we were on to the stage where we could joke about it. “It’s a meager living, this place, and, alas, we’re destined to mop until the end of our days.”

It was such a simple difference, but he worked the mop with long, deliberate strokes. The mopping of a kid who’d done it before—been doing it all his life, perhaps.

“It sounds as though you won’t be,” I said after a slight hesitation. Though joking was a big step, I wasn’t sure we’d quite gotten to the point where a serious conversation could be had. Perhaps he was only hiding his distaste for me behind his playful sarcastic comments. Perhaps he still detested me as much as ever. But I was quite beyond any feelings of that kind.

“What’s that?” he said.

“Don’t you go to Ireland soon?”

“August thirtieth,” he said. He jabbed the mop back and forth across the floor, and I vacantly watched his forearms twist and bulge with the motion. It made my stomach flutter.

“Are you going to school there?” I asked.

“Dunno. Probably. And work. Until I get on my feet.”

“Get on your feet?” I repeated. “Does that mean you’re
staying
there?”

He laughed. “Yeah.”

“For good?”

“That’s the idea.”

This was a foreign idea to me. There were semesters abroad and there were years spent travelling and there were business trips. But up and moving across the globe didn’t happen. Not in my world.

He noticed my silence and looked up. “That’s weird to you?”

I shrugged. “You know, Mrs. O’Leary is going to miss you.”

“Yeah, but there are plenty of people to take care of her here. I’ll set Aidan on the house, for one thing. Once she gets used to it, she’ll be happy. It’s what Seamus always wanted.”

“To go back to Ireland?” I asked.

He nodded. “That’s why some people think it was suicide.”

He couldn’t have committed suicide.
He loved her
. That’s what Mr. Hall said.

“I’m no great authority, but I don’t think it was,” he said. “A suicide, I mean. He was a happy man. They all yearn for going back some day, but he had a greater happiness here. With her.”

“Nature,” I breathed softly.

“What?”

“Mrs. O’Leary told me once that nature overcomes everything. That everything has a place. Everything goes back to nature. Is your natural place in Ireland?”

He shrugged and started mopping again. “I guess I don’t know yet. I’m an American citizen, so I guess, legally, my place is here. But my older brothers and sisters were born there. They say my parents were Irish, too.”

I tried to hide my confusion. His mother’s accent was rather obvious. He smiled. “I was adopted,” he explained easily.

“Oh.”
Adopted?
This boy was a giant question mark. What else didn’t I know about him? The silence was uncomfortable, and I didn’t want him to know all I was wondering about his life. “You won’t be lonely over there?” I asked quickly.

“I have three brothers there. That’s more than I’ve got here. I’ve got seven nieces and nephews, too, and they’re growing up entirely too fast. And sisters-in-law and cousins, too many cousins to count.” He’d stopped mopping and was just talking passionately while leaning on the mop handle. “And a bachelor of a brother willing to put me up. I’ve got to go before he decides to get married and I’m out of a free room.”

“Have you been to Ireland before?”

“Some of us go back every year for Christmas. Not all of us, every year. It’s really expensive. But as many as can go each year. And then my brothers, they have childhood friends there, they started moving back as soon as they could afford it. Two of them went to college there, and never left.”

“So you’ve got a winter home, too,” I said quietly.