No Way to Say Goodbye (12 page)

Vicky looked at her husband with concern. Steven looked at Barry with the same concern. Even the twins were silenced. Ivan stared at his plate. His mother leaned over and squeezed his hand. “It’ll be fine,” she said to the table.

Afterwards the others made their way into the sitting room. Ivan insisted on helping his mother in the kitchen. She allowed him to, knowing that he hated being in the crowded sitting room alone to be reminded of the family that had left him. Halfway through drying up, he sat up on the counter. “Wow, a separation and a possible heart condition all in the space of a year. I must be on a roll.”

She laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous!” She scrubbed hardened potato from a sudsy plate.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re not going to have a heart problem,” she told him. “You and Fintan take after me. It’s Barry and Séamus who won’t be able to eat a fry for the next forty years.”

Ivan laughed – he couldn’t help it. His mother wasn’t a doctor, yet he knew that if she said he had nothing to worry about, it was the truth.

“Thanks, Mam,” he said, leaping off the counter like a teenager. He gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“You’ll get checked, though?” she asked, and he nodded. He walked to the door.

“Tell me this,” she said, “who’s your new lunch mate?”

He was confused.

“The American,” she said.

“Oh, Sam!”

“Tell my niece her auntie Sheila likes the cut of her new neighbour.” She winked.

Ivan grinned. “Will do.”

“Tell her to come and visit, and sure if she likes she can bring him along.”

Ivan left the room laughing.

By five he was on the water and in the company of the American the whole town seemed to be talking about. Sam wasn’t much of a fisherman but he was a quick study and Ivan enjoyed guiding him. The sea was crystal clear and the mackerel were biting so it was shaping up to be a pleasant evening. They had been fishing for more than an hour when Sam broached the topic of his standoffish neighbour and commented on her unfavourably. Ivan let him speak, then mentioned that the woman he was dismissing was his own cousin and best friend.

“You’re kidding me?” Sam said.

“I’m not,” Ivan replied, and laughed heartily, thoroughly enjoying his new friend’s discomfort. It was then he had offered him two pieces of valuable information. One: a warning never to speak ill of a local unless he was absolutely sure there was no connection between the person to be spoken of and the person being spoken to. And two: the reason why his cousin was as she was.

Ivan spoke of how he’d watched Mary beat the unbeatable, surviving a devastating crash to go on to give birth to her dead boyfriend’s son, and then he had told him where his neighbour’s little boy had died. The tale was devastating. A beautiful child broken and a mother’s screams. She had held him in her arms knowing that death was instant and that no doctor could bring him back. Others had stood around, silently bearing witness to her agony while clinging to their own children, covering their small faces from the horror before them. As a storyteller Ivan could transport his listener to another time and place. Sam felt a lump in his throat and sat quietly, feeling pretty guilty for judging the unfortunate woman.

Ivan was silent for a while and Sam didn’t know what to say so he concentrated on the water. After a few minutes, the pole bobbed and then he felt strain. Ivan returned to the present to help him hook the smallest fish he’d seen in a long while. They laughed and threw it back. Then they shared a flask of coffee and shot the breeze about nothing in particular.

But Sam wanted to hear more about Mary and about what had happened in the aftermath of such tragedy. Ivan didn’t seem to mind returning to it.

“Well, we thought we’d lost her,” he said, scratching out the sea salt lodged in his hair. “We thought there was no coming back.” He nodded, affirming it. “Her mother she could get over – sure she’d never known anything different. Robert, well, he was just a boy – ’twas hard on us all but we knew she’d recover. But after Ben ’twas different and no one was sure if she’d ever be right again.”

“But she was,” Sam found himself interjecting.

His new friend smiled. “After a long time, she came back to us,” he said.

“But not the same?”

“No,” Ivan said, a little sadly, “not the same.” He put down his pole to pour some more coffee into his cup.

“How long has it been?” Sam asked.

“Six years this week.”

“Holy shit!” Sam breathed.

“Yeah. It’s always a bad time for her but it’s over now and summer’s around the corner.”

Sam’s pole bobbed, the line tightened and so did his grip. This would not be a small fish.

Later that evening when Ivan had docked the boat outside Sam’s, Sam had wandered past it and made his way to the wood. He walked until he came across the plaque that bore his neighbour’s child’s name; a sodden teddy bear and wilting flowers lay beneath it. He had no idea why he felt he had to sit by a stranger’s memorial but recently he hadn’t had much reason for anything.

That night Ivan went home and phoned his kids. Chris was out playing soccer with some new pals but Justine was there and she seemed to be in a lighter humour than when they had last spoken.

“How’s school?” he began, predictably.

“Jenny Thompson’s dog got run over!” She seemed quite excited.

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” he said.

“I’m not!”

“You’re not?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“The first time I went to her house he bit me and, anyway, he only broke a leg.” She spoke as though she’d been waiting for him to get his comeuppance.

“Fair enough so,” Ivan conceded.

“He has a cast and everything.”

“Yeah.”

“It’s funny.”

He could hear the smile in her voice and grinned. “How’s Chris?”

“He’s a pain.”

Ivan laughed.

“Mam wants to talk to you,” she said, with a sigh.

“I love you, Justy,” he said quietly.

“Love you too, Dad.”

He waited for her to pass the phone to her mother.

“Dad?” she said.

“Yes, love.”

“I can’t wait to see you.”

Before he could answer she had passed the phone.

“Ivan.”

“Norma.”

“Look, I was thinking that maybe you could take the kids for the Easter holiday.” She was rustling papers.

“I’d love to have them,” he said.

“Good.”

“Doing anything nice?” he asked.

His question came as a surprise – normally they restricted their conversation to the children – and caught her off guard. “No, Des and I just need some time alone,” she admitted.

“Oh.” He regretted asking. “Well, I can’t wait,” he added, with delight.

“OK, then.”

“Right.” He put down the phone.

His kids were coming for an unexpected visit in less than a month. He thought about painting their rooms but decided against it. Justine feared change almost as much as her auntie Mary and, indeed, he did.

Sam made his way out of the wood in time to bump into Mary, who was coming home from the pub. Sunday nights were always quiet and her father was happy enough to close on his own. He was trying to open his wooden gate as she got out of her car. The damn thing seemed wedged shut and refused to budge. He shook it and shook it, cursing under his breath.

“You have to kick it,” she said.

“Kick it?” he echoed.

“It probably swelled in the rain.”

“Swelled,” he repeated.

She put her handbag on her car and gave the gate a good boot. It swung open. She picked up her bag and walked into her own garden.

“Thanks,” he said.

She responded by putting her key into the door.

“I said thanks.” He wasn’t used to being ignored and didn’t like it.

“I heard you,” she replied.

“So say, ‘You’re welcome,’” he ordered, and the pity he had felt for her earlier all but disappeared. Nothing excused bad manners.

“You’re welcome,” she said, and closed her door.

“Did that kill you?” he mumbled, putting his key into the lock.

9. All is forgiven, Brinkerhoffs

A red sun lit the dusky evening sky. Sam walked along the path, eyes north, watching the colour seep. The various shades of this small town had fascinated him during his two weeks in residence. This evening he was wandering again through the wood, a little conservation area that nestled between the golf course and the river. This place, with a Gaelic name he couldn’t even begin to pronounce, was filled with trees, swamp and water, all overlooked by low hills. There were wooden benches, a bat sanctuary, leafy trails and scampering teenage would-be lovers, and it was the place his granny had talked of most. Before the days of conservation, wooden benches and a bat sanctuary, this was where she had been a girl full of romantic dreams for a bright future anywhere but in a small, depressed town in south Kerry. This was the place where she would lie on her back, count the stars and pray that some day she would cross them to reach her destiny. Even as a child, his granny had known she would not stay in the beautiful little town yet in some small way she would mourn it all her days.

“Caught between two lovers!” She’d laugh. “Ireland versus America.” Her smile would fade just a little. “Heart versus head.” There was nothing in Kenmare for his granny in the early 1930s. The war had scarred the whole country and there was little opportunity, especially for a woman who didn’t believe in marrying for the sake of it. Her mother had despaired of her but she was the apple of her father’s eye. Her five brothers treated her like the princess they felt she was destined to become. Her mother had found a man to take her but she’d stood firm, not willing to compromise in a time when compromise was the way of life.

Maybe her feisty nature had turned her mother against her, but it had ensured her doting father’s support and her brothers’ admiration. When her mother had tried to force her daughter’s hand, the men in her life had contrived her escape. Her father could have put his foot down, but he knew that, married or not, his daughter wanted more from life. She was desperate to taste the New World and he was desperate to give her all she wanted. Instinct told him his beloved girl belonged to another place, so he drove her to the boat and sobbed as he handed over the money he and his sons had worked for to secure her emancipation. He had held her close while the whistle blew insistently, willing them to part, then pushed the money into her hand. “It’s up to you now, girleen,” he’d said, his voice choked and eyes brimming. “We can’t help you when you’re gone. America is so far away.”

She wiped the tears from his eyes. “I’ll always be in here, Daddy.” She laid a hand on his chest so that he could hold it there. “You tell the boys that I won’t let you down.” She was crying because she knew she might not see him again.

They used to call the party that was held before a family member moved to the States the “American Wake”. Emigration was tantamount to death. Sam’s grandmother didn’t have an American wake and her mother never got to say goodbye to her. In hindsight her father might have admitted this was a mistake, as his wife was not the same after her only daughter had deserted her. The boys hadn’t made a fuss either: each one had packed a small token in her bag and kissed her goodbye on a day she thought she was accompanying her dad on a job. She’d only realized she was leaving when they were on the docks and he’d handed her a bag filled with her clothes and her brothers’ farewell gifts.

“I love you, Daddy.”

“I love you,
mo chuisle
.” And with that he turned and walked away, not looking back at the daughter he would never see again.

Sam’s granny had often talked to him about the boat journey to America with enough money to last her a week or two. She would speak of her fright that first night at sea, feeling desperately sick in the bowels of the ship, without a soul to comfort her. But then she’d tell him she need not have feared facing the New World alone because on the third day of the voyage she met the man she would marry. Together they would get off the boat and together they would forge a new life better than the one they had left behind.

When Sam was dragged to the première of
Titanic
, he had smiled at the story, which seemed somewhat familiar – aside from the treacherous lover, the large jewel and the sinking ship. His granny had loved to talk about how she had fallen for his grandfather over a game of cards and one too many whiskeys. She’d spoken of home too, lamenting its beauty and the love of those she’d left behind. Even as an old woman, the small town had been part of her identity, although it had become as foreign to her on the day she died as America had been on the day she stepped off the boat as a teenager in love.

Sam looked around at the old trees, all witness to his grandmother’s youth. The grass, the sky, the water that lapped against the rocks renewed themselves but the trees held time and one a message from the grave. Now her grandson, a New Yorker through and through, was tramping through her old sanctuary, looking for the one tree in a million that bore her carving. She had only mentioned it once. “I left my mark,” she had said, smiling. At the time Sam hadn’t understood what she meant but now, an adult in Kenmare and with time on his hands, he was determined to find the tree. Unfortunately this entailed a lot more work than he had anticipated – for a small wood, there were a hell of a lot of trees – but he was as determined to find her there as she had been to leave.

While he was surveying trees he had time to contemplate his short time in Kenmare. Since the incident with the swollen gate, he had tried to keep out of his rude neighbour’s way but Fate had acted against him. It seemed that every time he’d opened his front door she was in her garden, coming in or going out, on the pier with her dog or sitting into her car. When he ventured into his back garden to hang clothes, she’d come outside with the same intention, just a wall away. They’d attempt to ignore one another, which was uncomfortable due to their proximity. He didn’t enjoy awkwardness and with each encounter he’d curse coincidence, yet he would have been lying if he’d said he didn’t miss her on the rare day he didn’t catch a glimpse. Mary wasn’t over-toned or plastic. Her skin glowed, her body was soft and it occurred to him that she could have been the embodiment of an earth-mother if she hadn’t been such a bitch.