7

MICHAEL WARD FELT Johanna's eyes following him, just as he had the last time he was in Ballyroan. She was no better at being sly about it now than she'd been back then, and it struck him after a few weeks that maybe she wanted him to notice, wanted him to approach her and ask if there was something she wanted to talk to him about. They spoke only at supper. He ate breakfast long before her, and she and Greta took their tea at the inn. At supper she always took the seat directly opposite him, and she looked away whenever he glanced up. Sometimes he'd catch her eye as he was passing the carrots or the bread, and he'd get the sense that she'd been looking at him for a long time. Conversation, when she initiated it, was meant for everyone to hear.

"Did you make much progress on the shed?" she might ask. Or "Did the heifer's fever break?" Questions like that couldn't possibly be what was on her mind when she stood in the lane with her bicycle for thirty minutes, watching him run one of Little Tom's razors down his cheeks, an old, spotted hand mirror Lily had lent him angled to catch the light.

He would answer yes or no, and Little Tom would chime in with his half-talking, half-miming way of communicating; then Greta, who laughed in that childlike way she had at any funny story, would contribute her little bit and, unlike Johanna, never look away whenever he caught her eye.

Lily had taken to sitting in Big Tom's chair while they ate, leaving room at the table for the young ones. She told them that age was claiming her appetite and that the bits she put in her mouth while she was getting supper together were enough to make a meal. She didn't point out that it was easier to see every look that passed between them from the chair by the fire—or what those looks told her. She too had observed Johanna's behavior toward Michael at the supper table and decided that the girl was trying to impress the boy by acting grown up. Lily was more interested in what she observed in Greta, the flitter of flirtation here and there, the way she tried to tame the wilds of her hair. And once, during the boy's first week with them, she'd come to supper without her glasses, claiming she didn't really need them, only to have to go fetch them when it came time to peel spuds. Poor girl doesn't even know to pretend disinterest, Lily thought as she watched her youngest glance at Michael Ward, then down at her plate, then back at Michael even when he wasn't speaking. Lily watched Michael's reactions carefully and decided there was nothing to fear.

 

When Johanna appeared in the hay shed one night, long after the lights had gone out in the cottage, Michael wasn't completely surprised. "Hello," she whispered into the deep cavern of the shed, the hills of stacked hay. "Where are you?"

"Here," he whispered back. He'd been sleeping. "Hold on." He pulled on his trousers and slid down from his nest in one of the mid-level piles, down to the ground, where Johanna waited. He plucked bits of hay from his hair, brushed it from the seat of his pants. She was wearing a nightdress, with a long sweater over and boots underneath. There was a small space between the top of her boots and the hem of her nightdress that showed pale white skin.

"I have to talk to you," she said. "Will we take a walk?"

Michael blinked and stretched, filling his chest with air and reaching as far out into the night as his bones would allow. He counted back and tried to figure out how long it had been since the night Dermot woke him to fetch more turf. Only two weeks, if he'd kept track of his days correctly.

"I was fast asleep," he said, but she'd already started walking.

They went down to the river, down past the water bailiff's boarded hut, down near the place where Big Tom drowned and the boys pressed the triggers of their shotguns to begin their journey out of Ireland. Johanna stopped at a sloped stretch of grass, leaned over to press her palm against the ground, and, finding it not too damp, sat down and patted the space next to her. Michael looked back in the direction they'd come from.

"Mammy's sound asleep," Johanna said.

Michael sat.

"She warned us about you, you know. Me and Greta. She warned us you might try something."

Michael didn't know what to say to that, especially with her looking at him with her nearly black hair loose around her shoulders and smirking like she was daring him to do something. Maybe that's why she'd been staring at him and following him. Maybe she wondered why he hadn't tried anything yet. She was a good-looking girl, dark and fair at the same time. She was tall like her brother, like her father, if Michael's memory served. It was easy to see the shape of her legs under the thin cotton nightdress, and now that she was sitting, the moon yellow and full, he could see the fine hairs on the space of skin above the tops of her boots. This was a girl who swam in her knickers, her skirt, blouse, and shoes left in a heap at the shore for the waves to lap up and swallow. Once, on his second day staying in the Cahills' hay shed, Little Tom had sent him miles down the road in search of a calf gone missing overnight. He never found the calf, but on his way back to the cottage he'd seen them, Johanna and Greta both, cycling their bicycles with their skirts bunched up around their waists, their long white legs folding and reaching and folding again as they pumped the pedals.

Johanna's laughter caught even Johanna off guard and knocked her back on one elbow. She clapped her free hand over her mouth. "You should see your face," she said.

He leaned into her briefly, then away, pushing her off balance. "Did you wake me out of my lovely dreams just to make fun?" He was smiling, glad she couldn't see his face redden. He felt the heat travel from the tips of his ears to his throat to his chest. She threw off her own heat, and he could feel that too. It burned through her nightdress and her sweater and bumped up against the cool night air. This was what his father meant about wanting a body next to him, a soft, warm body to lean into and take hold of. This is what his father meant when he told Michael he was handsome. It was the same as telling him there was no need to be afraid.

Johanna sat up, pulled her nightdress tight over her knees, drew her sweater closer around her chest. She was no longer smiling.

"I want to talk to you about an idea I had."

What she'd said about Lily warning her and Greta still rang out in Michael's ears. He'd never given her any reason to worry, aside from being eighteen and a boy and a tinker—all things he couldn't help. And Greta! She was as pretty as Johanna, yes, and kinder than Johanna in the way she looked and nodded and never acted as if a person had gone on too long or said silly things, but sometimes she seemed almost as young as she was the last time he was in Ballyroan.

"Go on," he said.

"I want to go to America. To New York. Well, later I'd go to other places, but to start, New York."

Michael waited. He got the feeling that she wasn't looking for congratulations, but he didn't know the right question to ask.

"And I thought you might want to come with me."

"To America?"

"Have you been listening? Yes, to America. You've been to England and seen all of Ireland, and you're just after leaving your family behind and wanting to settle. You can't really want to settle here of all places. Why not New York?"

He was tempted to turn the question right back at her. Why not London? Sydney? Berlin? Why not Ballyroan of all places? Where else could he find land that was like an island you didn't have to row a boat to find?

"With you and Greta?" he asked.

"Greta?" Johanna asked after a moment. "No, not with Greta. Just you and me." She was surprised he'd asked after Greta, and she felt guilty all over again that she had not let Greta come with her to fetch Michael from the shed. Greta had woken when Johanna raised their bedroom window and had known immediately where Johanna planned to go. "What are you doing?" Johanna had asked when she saw Greta reaching for her boots, but instead of answering, Greta had stared at Johanna with those big eyes that seemed somehow bigger whenever she was not wearing glasses. For what seemed like ages, Greta remained fixed over her one unlaced boot, the neck of her nightshirt down over her shoulder. "He won't go," she said finally. "It's useless to ask. He won't leave here."

"We'll see," Johanna had said, and was out the window and across the field before Greta had a chance to catch up.

"Are you serious?" Michael asked now. People said they wanted to do things all the time, said they were going to do things, said they had plans in the works, started sentences with "this time next year," but most of the time, people were full of it. That's what Michael had figured out. There were lots of people who talked and talked but rarely did.

"Yes," Johanna said, without feeling the need to go further. Michael believed her.

"Why me?" he asked. He was just curious, he wasn't saying he'd join her, but Johanna turned toward him, bending one knee and tucking her foot under the other, and he could see that she thought he'd accepted.

"Because my mother was wrong about you," she said, smiling, and Michael knew that whatever her reasons, she wouldn't share them tonight. She'd grown up around brothers; maybe she wanted him around to feel safe, to navigate the streets of New York City as she imagined he'd navigated the streets of other cities. But New York was not like other cities, and she didn't realize that he'd never been to anyplace except Ballyroan in a group of less than a dozen. He'd never led. He'd only followed, head bent, trying not to wish he were someone else.

Then she leaned over her bent knee, put her hand on his shoulder, and kissed him. Dermot had hinted around this too. Girls who knew what they wanted. Girls who weren't shy. Most times, Dermot warned, he should stay away from these types. Now Michael wished he'd asked why.

He'd always wondered if there might be something in life he was brilliant at but never had the chance to try. For a while it was rugby. Dermot had outlawed the sport for being British. Then it was longdistance running. Then it was swimming—if he could just get a few lessons, who knew what his body might do? That night, the old wonder about untried possibilities rushed back. He discovered he was good at something he'd never before attempted—kissing a girl, tasting inside her mouth, finding a route under the flap of her sweater and between the buttons of her nightdress to her breasts, guiding her to the flat of her back, where he pressed her into the damp ground with the weight of his body. He'd seen similar scenes between the cracks of the tent flaps and had paid attention so he'd know what to do when his time came. Now he realized that his body didn't need instruction; it was reaching and pressing as if he'd had a girl under him every night of his life. She pulled him closer when he lodged his knee between her legs, but she stopped him when he reached for her with his hand.

They sat up, straightened their clothes. "You should be ashamed of yourself," she said, and the feeling of not being able to find the right words swept over him as it had all his life when it came time to beckon people down to his stall to see his grandfather's tin pails.

"I thought ... I'm sorry."

"Are you sure you're sorry?"

He looked up. She was laughing at him again, pulling a face he guessed was meant to mirror his own: serious, terrified, speechless. She was still laughing as she stood and brushed herself off. They walked back toward the cottage.

"Next time we'll decide when we'll go," Johanna said at the point where he had to veer off toward the hay shed, and she walked toward the dark window of her bedroom. Michael decided he'd wait until next time to tell her he had no interest in New York.

 

In mid-July, when Mr. Breen finally got around to letting Johanna and Greta go, he opened with a story about seals. "Girls," he said, "you'll appreciate this, living where you do out beyond." At first Greta thought he was retelling the priest's homily, knowing they didn't often go to Mass. Then she thought it was a story he'd read in the Irish Times, knowing they didn't ever buy the Irish Times. But no, it was his own story, and one glance at Johanna told Greta that her sister already knew how the story would end. He told them that selkies were the most mysterious of sea creatures, long studied and written about, and the thing that made them most special was the belief among some people—not himself, mind you—that they had human souls. Some believe that on every ninth day the selkies swim to shore, shimmy out of their thick gray-blue skins, rise up on two legs, and become women who walk and talk and appear to the world just like normal women. Greta wondered if he really thought they hadn't heard this legend—being, like he said, from out beyond. But there was no stopping him, and as he spoke, he raised his hand and pointed out the door toward the ocean.

"I'm not a believer, mind you," he said for the third time, "but a thinking person would wonder. If it's been written about and talked about for so long by so many people, mightn't they be as likely right as the nonbelievers? Neither side has proof one way or the other."

Johanna yawned. Greta shrugged. She never thought she'd hear a grown man discuss it so seriously. It was a story told to children at school or before the fire on a stormy summer night. Then again, the legend of the selkie was the reason so many otherwise levelheaded fisherman were against killing the seals, even when they were desperate and their lobster traps came up empty. Mr. Breen's face was glistening, as if he'd just emerged from the ocean himself, and he pressed his forehead and his cheeks with a napkin.

"I tell you this, girls, in explanation. Will we sit down? Will I make the tea?" He got up and plugged in the electric kettle. Then he unplugged it, filled it with water, and plugged it in again. He rooted around the cupboard.

"In the tin," Johanna called. "Beside the breadbox." She made no effort to help him and slid down in her chair until her knees were jammed up against the leg of the table.

They all waited in silence until the water boiled, then Mr. Breen came back with the pot in one hand and three cups hanging from three fingers of the other.

"You see, I was down at the water yesterday, watching the seals swim and climb out of the water onto that piece that juts out from Harry's Point, and as God is my witness, I heard my wife speaking in my ear."

"Oh?" Johanna asked, still slouched in her chair. "What did she say?"

"Will I tell ye? She said 'Jim'—she called me Jim—'why do you have those two lovely girls cooped up in that inn to be bored and feeling useless all day when they could be out enjoying the fine weather?' And I thought to myself, good question."

"Did you tell her you're paying us wages?" Johanna asked.

"Which we're very thankful for," Greta added.

"Well, she knows that of course," Mr. Breen said. "And that's the second problem."

"The only problem, since we solved the first," Johanna said.

"Did we? We did, yes. Well, as you know, there was big promise of a tourist boom in this part of the country, but we've seen none of it yet, not a bit, and to put it as simply as possible, I just can't swing it until the boom arrives. Ye've been a great help, an honest-to-goodness boost, and I'm sorry."

"Your wife came back as a selkie and told you to let us go." Johanna was like the man on the wireless news who said in one sentence what the man before him had taken fifteen minutes to explain.

"No, no, no," Mr. Breen protested, dabbing at his sideburns with his napkin while he let out short barks of nervous laughter. "When you put it that way..." He laughed some more, his body rocking the small table and the lukewarm tea inside their cups.

When it came time to go, Mr. Breen walked with them around the side of the inn to their bicycles. "A departure gift," he said, handing each girl an envelope with her name printed carefully across the front. They thanked him, shook his hand. Each tucked the envelope into a pocket and waited until they'd cycled out of sight to pull over and open them. Inside Greta's was a card with a picture of the baby Jesus and the word "Hark!" She opened the card, and a ten-pound note slid out and landed on the road. She trapped it under the sole of her shoe while she read the message:

 

Thanks and good luck.
From James Breen
P.S. Excuse the Christmas card.

 

"He gave us the same?" Johanna asked, peering over Greta's shoulder to read her card and spotting the tenner trapped under her shoe. "Even though I made more per week?" She made a throaty sound that emphasized her disgust, then got on her bicycle and pedaled hard and fast. Greta expected not to see her again until she reached the cottage. It had happened before, Johanna taking off in some private fury, Greta left to squint into the failing light, careful to steer around large stones. But when Greta came around the bend that meant she was three short miles from home, there was Johanna, sitting cross-legged at the side of the road, slapping an impatient rhythm against the wind-scoured ground.

"You know what this means, don't you?" She was calm now, even happy. Something had occurred to her in the miles since she left Greta in the dust. "This is all I was waiting around for. There's no more wages to be earned here. Not in Conch, not in Ballyroan, not even in Galway, if what I hear in town is true. Nowhere."

After the first time that Johanna had gone out the window to meet with Michael Ward, Greta had not asked any questions. She woke up each and every time she felt Johanna leave their bed, and she could never fall back to sleep until Johanna was tucked in beside her again. She wondered what they talked about for so long in the middle of the night and if Lily's warning had come true for Johanna. She hated to see them both in the kitchen at breakfast on mornings after these nighttime visits, acting as if everything was as it should be. Sometimes, when Johanna was short with him—if he used the last of the milk or took a second egg—and he reacted as if she'd struck him with a switch—startled, ashamed—Greta wanted to shout at him. But when she tried to think of what exactly she would say, her mind felt too full to pluck out one single thought.

"And did you ever think what would happen to me if I stayed?" Johanna asked. "The four of us in that cottage looking at each other until we die? No sir. No way."

"And what about me?" Greta asked.

"Oh, Greta," Johanna said.

***

The most recent letter from Jack, written on behalf of himself and Padraic, had said nothing about coming home. They'd met girls, Australian girls, and Jack asked his to marry him. This is what he wrote to tell his mother. He was getting married in a few weeks time, nothing big, nothing fancy, just a few of their friends and the girl's family.

Reading it, Lily knew it wasn't as if he'd thought about asking her to come and, after discussing it with Padraic and the girl, had decided against. No, he simply couldn't imagine that Lily would ever leave Ireland, not for her eldest son's wedding, not for anything. Sitting on the back step with the letter in her lap, alone except for the sound of the dog yipping at a bird down by the river, she envisioned herself packing a suitcase, catching the bus to Shannon Airport, boarding one of those jets that now zoomed daily over their heads, and walking in on the ceremony as though it required no more thought on her part than taking the bus to Galway. They'd faint cold on the spot. She smiled. They'd cry. She'd tell Padraic he was getting a little tight in the belt—he'd been starting down that road before he left—and she'd tell Jack his hairline was just like his grandfather's. Before she left, she'd take the girls into Galway to help her pick out a dress. Pale blue. Periwinkle. Peach. She hadn't been to Galway in years. The girls could pick out gifts for their brother, tokens, really. She wouldn't let them spend too much, and on the way out they'd stop for tea in that hotel they'd been to the day Greta got her glasses and was like a little baby bird who'd been pushed out of the nest.

She folded the letter and slipped it back into the envelope. No, she was sure they hadn't meant to exclude her. And she was just as sure neither of them would ever come home. "They're right," she said aloud, looking up at the sky. "Why should they come back?" She had suspected herself of feeling this way for a little while now, but she had managed to push it away by insisting that she felt the opposite. She said to the empty yard, "They have cash money where they are, and why shouldn't they stay and find good women and build fine houses for themselves?" For the first time, she wondered if she'd been wrong to keep Little Tom from going with them.

Their situation in Ballyroan was grim, whether the children realized it or not. This is what she hadn't wanted to wake up and face after Big Tom died, and at times she wanted to return to that long slumber, her days a dull repetition of eating, sleeping, one of the girls helping her into the basin, handing her a washcloth, returning again and again with the red-hot kettle, and pushing her knees and shins out of the way while the steaming water poured in. But now that she had managed to step out from under the cloak of Tom's death and take a look around, it was impossible to look away. The biggest problem was that they needed a new cottage. The kitchen was decent because the daily fire dried out the walls, but the rest of the rooms were rotting away. It was getting difficult to breathe, and everything she laid her hand on seemed weighed down with dampness—the furniture, the sheets on their beds, the pictures hanging on the walls. Little Tom and Greta were oblivious; she could see it in the way they talked and went about their chores and flopped down in their chairs at the end of the day, as if those chairs would always be there, that roof always over their heads. Johanna was more aware of the road they were traveling and was the one who pointed out that Conch, their lifeline to the world for so long, was not the same as it was when she was a girl. She reminded them at dinner one night a few weeks ago. "Didn't there used to be farmers' markets? Fairs? Where has everybody gone to?" Now Conch was almost as quiet as Ballyroan. It was rare to see a group of young people standing together anymore. Shops closed for hours in the middle of the day while the old ones who tended them went home for a sleep.

Lately Lily had developed the habit of shooting ahead in time. She didn't do it on purpose, and she wished she could make herself stop. She'd be doing everyday things, chores she'd done her entire life, throwing grain down for the chickens, pulling the udder of a cow, and her mind would leap ahead twenty years, thirty years. She didn't see herself in these images—dead, most likely, and that sat just fine with her—but the girls and Little Tom, two sisters and a brother stranded in a forgotten place. Little Tom would go completely silent because his sisters always knew what he wanted without having to be told, and the girls would go weird, Greta especially. Johanna would get cranky and let her hair go long and loose like a banshee. She'd take out every little thing she felt on the other two, and they'd take cover when they saw her coming. They would have no husbands, no wife, no gasúir running around to populate the place. Johanna would swim in the ocean in her knickers until she was an old woman, with only her gray hair to cover her. They'd make no effort to go to Galway and walk among the people, because one foot in the city would remind them that they'd been left behind.

 

Michael met Johanna down by the river twice a week for six weeks. At first there was no more word of New York. She'd simply leaned into his arms and played her fingers at the back of his neck. She kissed his mouth, kissed his throat, kissed the top of his chest where she unbuttoned his shirt. Half a dozen times now she'd put her hand inside his pants. She took off her blouse and the thin gansy she wore underneath. She slid out of her skirt and stood in her underpants, turning for him with her hands up in the air like a film star. She let him cup her breasts while he kissed her, and later, when he had more courage, she let him inspect them with his eyes and his mouth. She was always the one to start with the kissing and pulling, and he was always the one to guide her down to the ground, where they could press closer together than they could standing up or sitting. He'd stopped asking himself why she'd picked him, and after the first time, the question had seemed foolish. Who else was there? Like Dermot told him, he was handsome. The women had said so.

Once Johanna and Greta were let go from their jobs at the inn, the nighttime visits to the river were transformed. Michael would place a hand on Johanna's thigh, but she'd move her leg away and remind him that there were plans to be made. He'd move behind her and put his hands on her shoulders, pressing and kneading in the way she liked, but she'd shrug him off and stay rigid until he moved back to his place beside her. She'd made written inquiries about the medical tests they'd have to have done, and she'd written to Shannon O'Clery asking her to sponsor them. "The sponsor thing is a bit of a joke," Johanna explained, already feeling wise to the ways of America. "She tells the immigration people we'll live with her and that she'll help us find work, but it's really just to get us over there. She'll claim I'm her first cousin and that she has a friend who will give me a job minding her children while she goes to work. But I'm not her cousin, and there is no friend, and once we're there, we're on our own. With both of us working and sharing a flat and splitting expenses, I think we'll be grand."

Michael decided that Johanna was prettier by moonlight than she was during the day. She had a nice voice, something he hadn't noticed until they started their secret meetings. Her tone was serious, but that voice seemed to ask him to move closer, to put his arm around her.

"Are you listening?" Johanna asked, looking at his hand as though it was a child who'd spoken out of turn. "How long until you think you'll have enough for the fare? Tom gives you a little something now and again, doesn't he? Have you been putting it away? Do you have anything from before?"

Michael shrugged, shook his head. Tom gave him a pound once in a while, but he was mostly paid with a place to sleep and three meals a day.

Johanna sighed. "Well, that's another thing to figure out. If worse comes to worst, we'll go by ship instead of by air. It's far less dear."

And far easier to sneak aboard, Michael thought, thinking how many times he'd watched the foreign ships leave Cobh, the scene a swirling mess of hats, hugs, luggage, tears, families allowed to escort ticketed members to their cabins, even in second class, where the cabins were little more than closets with bunks and strangers roomed together. He could slip on board and crouch in a dark corner until the ship was at sea. Dermot once told him he had a talent for making himself small. Once, on the ferry from Dublin to Liverpool, he'd hidden in a compartment below the thin planks of the wagon floor for eight hours as the ferry carried them across the Irish Sea.

Johanna started every sentence having to do with America with the word We. We'll hitch to the airport or to the Galway dock, depending on how we go. We'll stay with Shannon for one month, and then we'll get a flat in Woodside because Shannon said there's a lot of Irish there. We'll get jobs. We'll see the Atlantic from the other side. Michael wondered if he'd let her go on too long to stop her now. She'd be angry. She might even tell Lily about their river visits and make it so Lily blamed him, Lily who had given him a seat by the fire on that wet day and three hot meals every day since then. He asked her if Greta had refused to go with her and if that's why she'd asked him to go instead. "Greta? In New York City?" she'd asked, as if Greta Cahill and that great city was the most far-fetched combination a person could come up with.

Michael had laughed. "Am I any more likely to get on there? Are you?"

"Me?" Johanna had said in a huff. "Worry about yourself. You don't know Greta. Something would happen to her, and I'd always have to be tracking her down and checking on her and helping her with things she can't figure out." Her voice softened. "I'll miss her, don't get me wrong. And maybe once I'm settled and know my way, I could bring her out. If she would come, that is. I can't see her straying too far from here, to be honest."

"I think she's wiser than you think," Michael said. He wondered how much Greta knew about Johanna's plans. She seemed troubled lately, quiet and attentive. At supper she took everything in, every word, every look, as if she was organizing what she observed and had plans to file it away.

Johanna's portrait of life in America was vivid, tempting, and sometimes Michael forgot that he was ninety-nine percent sure he wasn't going to go. Eighty percent sure. Fifty. And even if he did go to America, why would he want to stop in New York? There were other places to see, much more appealing places than New York City. He imagined New York to be worse than Dublin, with its smells and crowds of people and car horns blaring all day long. Dublin, where no matter how long he stood next to Dermot and listened along with the crowd as his father seemed to sing every Irish song ever written, no one dropped a single coin in his hat. He'd heard of huge tracts of land in the states of Montana and Wyoming and Colorado, places he'd meant to ask Johanna to look up on a map, but couldn't now, not the way she was going on about New York City and using the word We.

"When is liftoff?" he asked, careful to leave out reference to himself.

"October. What do you think?"

"October is my favorite month of the year," he said, and slipped his hand under the wide sleeve of her sweater, all the way up to her shoulder.

***

Greta found Shannon's letter among Johanna's things. Inside was a note to Lily, which Johanna had not passed on. Greta read both letters and put them back exactly where she found them. Then she sat on the edge of her bed and looked at the second dresser drawer—Johanna's drawer—for thirty minutes. After thirty minutes she couldn't recall having a single thought except to cycle into town and visit Norton's shop.

In the shop, while Mrs. Norton searched the back room for a tin of condensed milk, Greta walked quickly down the middle aisle and plucked a packet of powder yellow stationery and matching envelopes from an upper shelf. She'd had her eye on the set for weeks, thinking how nice the yellow would look against her blue fountain pen and how thick and important the letters she wrote to Jack and Padraic would feel thanks to the heavy stock. She also liked the packaging—the envelopes stacked on top of the stationery inside the handsome navy blue cardboard box, everything tied together with a crisp white bow. She shoved the box under the waistband of her skirt, the bottom corners doubly secure by the waistband of her underpants.

"I'm out, love," Mrs. Norton said as she emerged from the back. "The only can I have is dented, and I wouldn't risk it."

"I'll check back this day week," Greta promised, and walked out of the shop feeling much better.

Poor girleen, Mrs. Norton thought as she watched from the window with the dented can of milk in her hand. If only she could lose that peculiar way of walking. If only she wasn't as odd as two left feet.

After a few days went by, Greta returned to the letters, removed the one addressed to Lily, and stored it with her other things in the tin box under the bed. The next day, she took the one Shannon had written to Johanna as well, envelope and all.

Once she made her decision, she left the letters out on the mantel in the kitchen for Lily to find. She propped them up beside the clock, then walked across the room to where Lily might glance up as she came through the back room. No, not obvious enough. She moved them over to lean on their folds against the rarely used lantern. Then she changed her mind again and left them under the sugar bowl on the table. She stood at the entrance to the kitchen and squinted toward the table. She changed her mind one final time and brought the letters straight to Lily's room, where she left them on her mother's pillow.

 

"Ay!" Little Tom called into the hay shed. He picked a hayfork off the ground and banged the shed's tin siding with the prongs. He coughed, walked back and forth kicking up the grit. Finally Michael Ward woke up and rolled down to ground level, buttoning his pants on the way.

Little Tom raised his thumb over his shoulder to point back at the cottage. Michael looked over Tom's shoulder at the drawn curtains of the kitchen, the smoke issuing from the chimney.

"She wants to see me?" Michael asked. Tom nodded.

"Are you coming?" Michael asked, trying to read Tom's crooked features for a hint of what waited for him inside.

Tom shook his head, used the same thumb to jab the air in another direction. He clapped Michael on the back and walked away.

In the kitchen, Lily was seated in her usual place. He heard no sound from any other part of the cottage, and he guessed the girls had gone out. Or were sent out. Or were forbidden to enter the kitchen with him there. On the table was a bowl of fresh strawberries picked from behind the cottage and a bowl of heavy cream.

"Might as well," Lily said when she saw Michael looking at the bowl. "They won't stay forever, and I've eaten myself sick of them. I've been boiling them all morning."

Michael nodded his thanks and chose his usual seat. He poured cream over the berries and thought of how often they'd almost killed each other over fresh fruit at camp. If someone managed to get hold of a few oranges, they had to split them so many ways that all he ever got was a section or two. Behind him he heard the creak of Lily's chair as she stood, her shoes scuffing the floor as she took the few steps over to the table.

"I have to talk to you, Michael," she said as she settled herself across from him. She had never sat alone in the kitchen with him before, and she was reminded of the day his mother came with her beady pocket, offering tonics and cures for anything in the world Lily might name.

She pulled Shannon's letters from her berry-stained apron and laid them out flat on the table. Michael looked at them, took in the miniature American flag in the upper-right corner of the envelope, put down his spoon.

"Mrs. Cahill—" he managed to say before his lungs gave out, and he fought to catch his breath.

"Michael." She held up her hand. "I know my own daughter. Believe me. I'm not saying you've nothing to be guilty for—that I don't know—but as far as the America scheme is concerned, I know who dreamed it up. And she asked you along, did she?"

Michael nodded.

"And you've agreed?"

Michael paused. Lily narrowed her eyes.

"I took you in here, Michael," she said.

Michael nodded.

"And she planned to go off without saying anything, did she?"

Michael stayed perfectly still, stared at the little square of stars inside the slightly larger square of candy cane stripes.

"She wants you because, brave as she is, she doesn't want to go alone. And you've been places. She hasn't. You understand? Once she gets her bearings, she mightn't be so happy to have you around. That might take two years or it might take six months. I love her. She's my child. But I know her."

Michael nodded.

"You're still willing to go?"

Michael opened his mouth to speak but didn't know what to say. He never had any intention of going to America until Johanna had started with all the talk of We. Then he'd listened to her for so long, waiting for the right time to tell the truth, that now that it had arrived, he didn't know what he wanted. All his dreams of settling had looked just like Ballyroan. Every single thing about the place was right, down to the hawthorn trees and the rushes and the river stuffed with salmon. But after just a few months he could see why people had had to leave their lovely cottages behind and let their fields turn to scutch. Anything planted risked being torn up by the heavy salt wind. He had no money to start raising livestock straightaway, and even so, he'd have to get a stableful to make enough to live on. He was a stranger in Conch, suspected of being a tinker, and no shop would give him credit. The Cahills couldn't help him for much longer; he could see that. And he was lonely, a condition it took him a while to figure out. After a short time in Ballyroan he began looking forward all day to the supper meal, the passing of plates, the sound of chewing and tearing meat from bone and the steaming potato skins falling to the center pile. Aside from the time spent with Johanna down at the river, it was the only part of his day when he looked other people in the face and they looked in his. It would be worse after Johanna left. Sometimes he wondered what they'd do if he started a campfire beside the hay shed and invited them to visit him there. It would be their own upturned buckets they'd have to use for seats.

"You're not sure," Lily said. Johanna would run circles around this boy. If he loved her, and she loved him, it might be enough to keep her head on her shoulders, but they weren't in love, that much was obvious. He had sense, yes, but he had no hold on her. It wouldn't be enough.

"If I went..." His voice sounded strange to him, choked off, breathless. He cleared his throat and began again. "If I went, I'd need to get word to my father. I wouldn't like to leave without him knowing. Leave Ireland, I mean."

It was a practical question Lily had never thought of before. "How do you...?"

"They keep letters at the post station, and he picks them up whenever he's near. I've an aunt who's a decent reader, and she sounds all the letters out for him and anyone else who gets one. If he thinks a letter might have something in it he mightn't want the camp to know, he asks the postman to read it to him." Michael paused, let her catch up.

"I see," Lily said as she reached for a strawberry, scooped out a bruise with her fingernail, and put her finger in her mouth. "Well, I could help you with that. Couldn't I? You tell me what to put, and we'll work on it together. And in exchange you'd have to take good care of my girl. You'd have to protect each other and help each other no matter what happens. I don't know how it is in America, but here we help each other because we come from the same place."

For what seemed like the hundredth time, Michael nodded. We come from the same place, he thought, and the space beneath his rib cage hummed like a tuning fork struck with the iron head of a hammer and then, after the clamor faded away, was pressed down on the boards of the wagon to better hear the lowest sounds, the truest pitch, vibrations so fast they sounded like one continuous purr.

"This conversation is between us for now, Michael, and I ask you not to say a word about it until I've talked to Johanna and done a little thinking," Lily said. "Go on now and catch up with Little Tom."

Michael stood, pushed in his chair. "What about Greta?" he asked. He had not known he was going to ask until he was speaking the words.

Lily leaned back, folded her hands in her lap. "What about her?"

"Well, she mightn't like ... She might be lonely after us, after Johanna. I just wonder..."

"I have to think about that too. Now go on," she said, and waved him out of the room.

Michael rushed from the kitchen, lunged across the short length of the back room, barreled through the back door, ran up the lane to the coast road, where Little Tom's silhouette was still making its way.

 

Since handing over the letters, Greta had steered clear of the cottage. After chores, she spent most of her days up at the sea ledge, lying on her back and thinking that maybe after Lily stopped the plan and Johanna wasn't angry with her anymore, they could take the bus in to Galway and walk around. Maybe they could start doing it on a regular basis, and seeing the city so often might get ideas of America out of Johanna's head. They could catch the van to the Friday dances in Oughterard. Lily would be happy to let them go after coming so close to losing one of them completely.

Greta returned to the cottage every evening braced for an explosion. Two weeks went by, and none came. She began to worry that Lily hadn't found the letters after all. Johanna was still asking Michael boring questions in an overloud voice. Lily still sat in her corner and knitted. Only Michael was different. A few times, when Johanna went to the back room for salt or an extra knife or a rag to wipe up crumbs, Greta noticed him glancing at her, as if he were checking on her, confirming she was still there, asking whether she needed his help.

When Lily finally showed her cards, it was not at supper as Greta had expected. It was far later in the evening, after midnight. Johanna had woken Greta by opening the bedroom window, the damp wood catching and groaning in its grooves, and she had one leg out, her body straddled on the sill, when she let out a shriek that woke Little Tom, woke Michael in the shed, woke all of Conch, if Greta had to guess.

"Jesus Christ," Johanna gasped just before she was yanked by a great strength to the grass outside.

"Johanna?" Greta called, unable to move her body to the window to see was Johanna alive or dead. "Johanna!" she said louder, a demand this time. The cold draft from the wide-open window swept over her face, filled the small room. She lay still, listening for any telltale sound. She heard Johanna yelp, say something in a sharp voice, and then nothing. Greta took a deep breath and on shaking legs crept over to the window. There was Lily, tall in her long, pale nightdress, like a shee fairy, with her gray-streaked hair whipping around in the wind. She had Johanna by the ear and was leading her around to the back door.

Greta shut the window and leaped back to bed, where she made herself small and whispered what she would say to Johanna, as if Johanna were already beside her. She mightn't understand now, but she'd understand later, when they were both grown up, with husbands and their own cottages, and Greta would remind Johanna of the time she almost disappeared to America.

 

"Get up," Johanna said hours later. Greta opened her eyes to daylight and Johanna's face above her, pale, exhausted, and Greta realized she'd never returned to bed. Johanna threw Greta's cardigan across the room. "Come as you are," she said. "Mammy needs to see you." Greta rubbed her eyes, reached for her glasses. "Now," Johanna said, and left the door to the cold hall open when she left.

In the kitchen, Lily was pleasant, fully dressed, her hair twisted up and pinned, no evidence of the scene she'd made the night before. Greta sat down at the table and faced not one but two sets of letters. The originals she already knew word for word: Shannon to Johanna, Shannon to Lily. Laid out beside these was a new set: a second letter from Shannon to Lily and a first from Shannon to Greta.

"I've big news for you, Greta," Lily said as she reached out to run her fingers through the tangle of Greta's hair. The child had knot upon knot upon knot. "What do you think about going to America?"

"Johanna going?" This was not the way it was supposed to go. Johanna was to be stopped from going, not encouraged.

"Yes, Johanna. And you as well, Greta. What do you think about that?"

Greta repeated the question to herself, thought of Mr. Joyce of all people, how quickly he'd learned not to put questions to her in front of the class. Greta laughed, not her own laugh, but her best impression of a woman's laugh: throaty, full, in on the fun.

"It's a joke, is it?" she asked when neither Lily nor Johanna joined her laughter.

"No, love." Lily stopped picking through Greta's hair. She pressed her hands against Greta's flushed cheeks, ran them down the back of her neck, settled them on her shoulders, where she squeezed so tight that Greta had to lean forward to get away.