10

EAVAN EVENTUALLY FELL asleep at Greta's nipple and, with her little belly full with milk, didn't stir even when Greta moved her to her crib. People said she was a laid-back baby, but Greta felt she was crankier than Julia had been, already more demanding of her attention. Michael said that the moment Greta called out a hello when she walked in from work, Eavan's little fists started flying and her legs began cycling in the air. "She already knows her mother's voice," Julia said once, and Greta wondered if Johanna had walked in the door when Julia was one, two, five, seven, would Julia have known her?

Back on the couch, the letter from Ireland was still there where Julia had tossed it. Michael's snores were drowned out by the heavy clank of the heat, which had begun coming up for the evening. The sound of the heating system was the one thing Greta had not gotten used to over the years, and once in a while she still suspected that someone was in the basement banging on the pipes with a hammer or a wrench. Their first winter in the apartment Michael had believed the pipes were broken; nothing else would explain the violence of the sound, like cast-iron pans slamming against each other for a full minute every hour on the hour. But after a quick conversation with the super from across the street he understood completely and came home to Greta with a story about steam and water and what happens when they bump against each other inside the pipe. Eavan had already learned to sleep through the noise.

It was Johanna's handwriting on the airmail envelope, a detail Greta had noticed right away. So she was back in Ballyroan, Greta thought as she leaned back to rest her head on the arm of the couch. A holiday, Greta guessed. Vacation. After that first postcard bearing Johanna's address so many years ago, Greta had held out for six whole weeks before she broke down and wrote back, but even then she was stingy with the news. Instead of sending updates about home and Julia, Greta told her about Bloomingdale's and Michael's work in the building and the new coffee shop that had opened on Eighty-sixth. Johanna worked as a waitress in a restaurant she said was very popular, and she sent pictures of the apartment she had rented just outside the city limits. Dissatisfied with Greta's news from home, Johanna started writing home directly for the first time since arriving in America. She explained to Lily that Julia was a situation she and Greta had worked out between themselves and there was no need to worry. She said she was sorry not to have written earlier, to have kept the secret from home, and then to have left for so long without telling where she was, but it was over now, wasn't it, and there was no use digging up old mistakes. Besides, she wrote, Greta doesn't mind. Greta took to Julia straightaway and even signed up for a public library card so she could go reading up on things having to do with babies. She was a natural. And she had Michael to help her.

 

In Ballyroan, especially after hearing that Johanna had left New York, Lily inquired almost every month about airfares at the small travel desk at the back of the post office. And almost every month she walked out of the office and said to herself, "Next month." When she heard that Johanna had gotten as far as San Francisco, she couldn't stop thinking of the day she'd waved at her two daughters from the pier in Galway and how she hoped strangers wouldn't be able to guess there were pound notes sewn to the underside of their skirts. It never occurred to her that they'd split up and that one of them would keep traveling until she arrived at a new ocean. But as long as she kept hearing from them, she felt at ease; they were alive and earning and feeding themselves and had a roof over their heads, which was almost more than Lily could say for herself. The roof over the boys' old room had finally collapsed, but instead of trying to fix it, as they would have, surely, if the other two boys were still in Ireland and Big Tom were still alive, Lily and Little Tom didn't discuss it and didn't go near it. Tom looked at it for a day or two, poked it with an old walking stick, tried to prop it up with long branches and tarp, but the damp was too heavy, and it all came down again.

He tried to buy lumber on credit but was turned away by a man who walked him to the front door of his yard, all the while saying, "You see the position I'm in. Surely. You see it. You must see the position I'm in." When Tom began to refuse his dinner and instead of eating or smoking stared into the fire with his hand cupped over his mouth, Lily decided to simply shut the door to that bedroom and stay away from that side of the cottage. She told Tom to do the same.

So the girls were doing well, and once in a while Lily forgot what was worrying her so much about them. Then she'd remember the baby, and the feeling of remembering what had momentarily been forgotten was like hearing the news for the first time all over again. Her little girl had a little girl. And Greta, that goose, left to raise her. There's no use going all the way to America, Lily told herself, when Greta will be home with that child any day. Any day now the post will come with a letter to say look out for the Galway bus. And then it came to her one day that she didn't know a single person who'd been to America and returned. Even Regina Fallon, who at fifty-seven years old only went over because she won the county raffle and wanted to see Niagara Falls, had never come back again. The next time Lily was in Norton's shop, she asked Mrs. Norton to name three people who left for America and returned. When Mrs. Norton failed to do so, she demanded of Lily, "What's that to do with the price of eggs?"

Once the lines of communication had reopened between Johanna and Ballyroan, Greta remained as gatekeeper of only one area: Julia. About a year after she arrived in California, Johanna had started mentioning Julia in all of her letters. She did it mostly in roundabout ways—how nice the schools were out in California, how much more room she had in her garden apartment than Greta and Michael had in the apartment on Eighty-fourth. Johanna never mentioned her apartment without also mentioning that it was a garden apartment. Greta finally asked a woman at work what that meant. She imagined rosebushes and tulips and a vine-covered trellis that Johanna passed under every time she went out. The woman at work said all it meant was grass outside the front door, sometimes no bigger than a doormat. Greta thanked her for clearing up the question, but privately she decided that it must have a different meaning in California, or why would Johanna mention it so much? In every letter, Johanna painted a picture of San Francisco that was calm and peaceful, with elbow room galore. Julia was two at the time, and Michael and Greta decided the best thing to do was to ignore the hints. Then, just as Greta had gotten past thinking of Johanna's garden apartment every time she bumped into Julia's crib, another letter would arrive. Finally, just after Julia's third birthday, 1967, Johanna wrote to set up a phone call. She wanted to hear Julia's voice.

"What harm?" Michael said when he read the letter for a second time, his capacity for reading growing by the month. He didn't have to sound the words out loud anymore. Didn't even have to move his lips. Soon he'll read as fast as I can, Greta thought when he handed it back to her. Faster. It's just a chat on the telephone, Greta agreed, and ignored the hard knot of panic that turned in her belly as the date got closer. The concerns Michael used to have about Johanna coming back and turning their lives topsy-turvy had been steadily wiped away as the months passed and she had not shown up to take Julia away. Greta hoped that Johanna wouldn't tell the child she was her mammy and confuse her. It would be just like her, blurting it out to get a reaction. "She wouldn't," Michael said. "Why would she?" Just to say it, Greta thought. To claim what's hers. Greta held her tongue as she dressed Julia, and she even laughed when Julia cried out that Greta was holding her too tight. Together, Michael and Greta walked with Julia down to the stationery store, and once they got there and paid for their fifteen minutes, Greta held the heavy receiver up to Julia's ear.

"Hello," Julia said in her child's voice as she pushed Greta's hand away so she could hold the phone herself. "Who is this?"

Greta couldn't hear what Johanna was saying, but she watched Julia's round face as she smiled and announced that she had a friend named Veronica who had two cats. She told Johanna the cats' names and how they liked to jump up on her lap and up on the refrigerator. When Johanna first left, Greta had thought of herself as taking up a temporary role. She was more than aunt, yes, but not quite mother. Then the months went by, and people in the building and in the shops and even on the street started saying what an adorable little girl, what a young mother, what a good job you're doing with your daughter. Greta watched Julia's face get very serious as she concentrated on aiming her voice at the round bottom of the receiver, and then as it opened and transformed when she noticed a man outside walking dogs. "Mama," she shouted, dropping the phone. "Look at all the doggies!" The man had eight dogs on eight leashes. Michael caught her under the arms just as she was about to run into the street.

"Johanna?" Greta said into the abandoned telephone. "She's run off."

"I probably bored her," Johanna said. "She's a talker, isn't she?" It was the first time they'd ever spoken on the telephone, and Greta noticed that Johanna didn't raise her voice the way Lily did when she took Greta's calls in Norton's shop. She didn't shout down the line as if she were dictating a telegram. She's used of it, Greta realized. Probably had a telephone installed straight off when she got settled in California. Michael held Julia up in the air as if to ask whether he should bring her back to the phone, but Greta waved him off.

"She's a rip," Greta said.

"Like her mother." And then, "Sorry."

"No sorries. You are her mother."

"She calls you Mama."

"Or Mom, or Mommy, depending on what she hears in the park."

"She sounds happy."

"She is happy. And so are we."

"Good," Johanna said. "That's good." And then, after a pause, "Strange to talk on the telephone, isn't it?"

"At first, a bit."

"Same distance you to me and you to Ireland, but I bet you don't get the same feeling like you have to rush."

That was true, Greta thought.

"Because it's over land," Johanna pointed out. "And it's the same country."

"And not nearly as dear."

Silence. Greta wrapped the curly cord around her index finger like one of those Chinese finger traps they sell on the street downtown.

"She doesn't know," Johanna said.

"She's too young to understand anyway."

"Well, we'll have to decide soon what to tell her."

Greta chewed her lip as she watched Michael approach the dog walker with Julia in tow.

"Did you hear me, Greta?"

"Yes, I heard you."

"I'd love to see her. I have vacation time coming and I—"

Julia crouched down to skim a chubby hand down the back of a black Labrador. The other dogs yipped around her, and she kept snatching her hand away and running to the shelter of Michael's legs. Again and again he led her back to the dog, showed her how to pet nicely. "Gently," he said, his voice faint through the glass. He ran his hand from the top of the dog's head all the way down its back, and then Julia did the same.

"No, Johanna," Greta said, surprised at her own firmness. "Let's talk about something else. You said in your last that you bought a bicycle?"

"When, then?" Johanna asked, the tentative voice dropping away. "I've asked a dozen different ways in my letters, and you never mention a thing about it when you write back."

"You said it's up to me and Michael."

"Well, it is, but Christ, Greta. I'm the child's mother."

Greta could see her sister's face, three years older, a fringe over her forehead now—she'd mentioned a dramatic new cut in her last letter. These were the things they wrote about: haircuts, new shoes, cars, gained weight, lost weight, noisy neighbors, weather, and home. Home most of all. Have you talked to home? I heard from home last week. And in Johanna's letters, at the very end, a P.S. about Julia. The more they avoided talking about it, the more Greta felt it rise up between them. It was a dumb show, letters back and forth across the country, comments, questions, gestures without meaning. She's careful of me now, Greta thought as she listened to her sister breathe into the connection. She's the one in the wrong. Now she'll backpedal and make nice.

"Sorry, Greta. I didn't mean to snap at you."

"No bother."

"But I do want to see her. Not take her, Greta, if that's what you're afraid of. I wouldn't just take her. And I won't ever forget how much you've done for me. For Julia and me."

There she goes, Greta thought, putting herself and Julia on one side and me on the other. She heard the echo of her own labored breathing somewhere deep inside the phone, miles down the line. And what about Michael, who belongs on both sides? Ask, she urged herself. Ask her if she's thought for one second about Michael over the last three years. She closed her eyes and saw without effort Johanna standing on the flagstone path outside the front door of the cottage, hands on her hips, wanting something and not wanting to ask for it. Johanna went out in the evenings, Greta knew. Dinners with friends she'd met out there in California. She sipped wine in restaurants just as she'd always dreamed. She went on dates. One time she wrote of being out on a boat with two other girls and getting a sunburn. Greta hadn't been swimming since Ballyroan.

The tug from Ireland was equally strong, and the letters that came from Lily had none of the careful coolness of Johanna's. Time enough now to be coming home, Lily wrote. That child belongs here, in an Irish school, and wouldn't it be lovely for us here to have a child around? Tom will paint your old bedroom, and Julia can take Johanna's old place in the bed. We could make it nice for her, just as it was nice for you, Greta. You've gotten on so far, Lily wrote, but what next? You are not even twenty years old. Greta, you goose, bring the child here to me.

On the rare occasions where their letters arrived on the same day, Greta felt exactly as if her mother had taken her left hand, Johanna her right, and at the same moment decided to walk in opposite directions without letting go. Once, on the Galway Road, two tinkers, men, had pulled a child's arms out of her sockets doing that. Both claimed the child for his own as the mother stood by hiding her face in her apron.

Greta watched through the gritty window of the stationery store as the dog walker gathered his leashes tight around his fist and moved on down the street. Michael plucked Julia up and over his head to his shoulders.

"No, Johanna. Not yet," Greta said, and without saying goodbye, she hung up the phone.

 

With Julia across the street at the Cookes' apartment and Michael and Eavan asleep, Greta stretched out on the couch and folded her arms behind her head. It was the perfect time to read the letter from Ireland, but she couldn't quite get up the energy. What was Johanna doing in Ballyroan? She hadn't been home in fourteen years, and to not have mentioned it seemed odd. The letters came and went. Sometimes they wrote as often as once a month, and sometimes four or five months would go by. They'd spoken on the phone a handful of times since that morning in 1967—Christmases, birthdays—but Julia quickly got too old to talk on the phone to someone she didn't know without asking a hundred questions later. By the time she could talk properly, she was like a sponge for all that was spoken or even felt inside the apartment. She's like a willow witch, Michael said once, except instead of searching for water, she watches us with those big eyes to figure out what's going on. Johanna had eventually stopped asking to see Julia, but Greta felt that she could get the notion in her head again at any moment. Once, out of the blue, when Julia was five, they received a letter from a lawyer who'd been hired by Johanna to pursue joint custody. Littered throughout the letter were the terms custodial, noncustodial, visitation, and something called a parenting plan. Every night for two weeks, after Julia went to bed, Michael and Greta pored over the letter to try to figure out what it meant.

"They mean to confuse a person," Michael had said. "That's part of it."

"Well then, they're doing their job," Greta said, looking again at the glossy navy blue lettering at the top of the page, the address in San Francisco.

"What do we do?" Greta asked, wishing that Johanna had brought the letter herself so Greta could take her by the shoulders and give her a shake. She had a good mind to write and tell Johanna that even from the other side of the iron gate of the kindergarten playground, she could tell what Julia was feeling by the way she held her shoulders, the way she held her arms at her sides. Every afternoon, Greta stood waiting for her, watching the child's back as she reached with the others for the highest rung of the monkey bars.

"Ignore it," Michael said, folding the letter into quarters and passing it to Greta. "She'll come to her senses."

And he was right. Two weeks later they got another letter from Johanna, apologizing for the lawyer, explaining that she'd been through a rough patch recently, a failed romance, a raise in rent, a job she described as more boring than being cook at poor Mr. Breen's.

"I got talking to this lawyer who came in to the restaurant for a drink, and he turned my head a bit about the whole thing," she wrote. "I would be a good mother now, but I'll never hire a lawyer again, Greta. Never. That was wrong and I'm sorry. I've always said it's up to you, and it is. And it would be a shock to her now, I suppose. Getting to know another mother."

"Damn right it would be a shock," Michael had said when Greta showed him the letter. "That one must be out of her mind."

And as usual, Greta moved to defend her sister. She was young when it happened. She was so full of ideas. She was terribly confused. Michael didn't know what a turn it must have been to her.

And you? Michael always asked. Were you not young? Were you not full of ideas? Wasn't I?

It was different for me, Greta said. She said it the night they got the apology letter from Johanna, and she'd said it on a hundred other occasions.

Ah, Greta, Michael always came back, that's what I'm trying to tell you.

 

Soon after the lawyer incident had passed, they decided it was time to come to some kind of decision.

"Come as an aunt," Greta said to Johanna over the phone. "Come as Aunt Johanna and it won't confuse her, and let's take it from there. Can't we do that?" Lately Greta had been dreaming of speeding trains. Sometimes, to stop the train, she hung from the side and put her foot along the ground to slow it with friction. She'd seen that on Julia's Saturday morning cartoons. Sometimes the trains plunged off cliffs into the ocean, the tracks never turning away. Sometimes her train just sat in the station, empty, while all the other trains pulled out. Julia was talking in full sentences and smart as a whip. It was now or never. Michael felt it too. The air inside the apartment had changed. Greta could see the decision pressing down on his features in the quiet way he came in from work and opened a newspaper or stared off into space when he said he was sleeping. Calling Johanna "Aunt" was the solution she and Michael had discussed and agreed on. Johanna was within her rights when she said she wanted to see the child, but still, having her back in the apartment she'd left so abruptly—returned from a milk errand that had lasted so many years—made both Michael and Greta nervous. Boundaries would have to be erased and drawn all over again.

"You mean not tell her who I really am? That I'm her mother?" Johanna asked when Greta told her the plan.

"Yes, Johanna. Say you're her aunt, and she'll understand that that's why she doesn't see you."

"Well, how long then until we tell her the truth?"

Greta felt the same white heat travel through her body that she'd felt that night so many years earlier, hiding on the road while Johanna spied on the traveller camp.

"That's what I'm telling you. That will be the truth. That's it. She's starting to notice the trips we take to talk on the phone, and even the letters. It's time we told her something, and this is what we decided."

"What do you mean will be the truth? It's either the truth or it isn't."

Greta stayed silent, waited.

"Well, I don't know if I can do that," Johanna said.

"Then we'll have to wait until you can."

 

Greta dozed off on the couch, and when she woke, Eavan and Michael were still asleep. She turned to look at the clock. They'd gotten a telephone installed in 1973, the year Julia started fourth grade, and in a few minutes Julia would call from the Cookes' and ask if she could eat over. Greta would say no, she could not eat over, Julia would ask why, and Greta would say because I said so. That's not a reason, Julia would say. Well, it's my reason, Greta would say, and then she'd think of Lily saying no to the dances in Oughterard because it was no good for girls to be on the road like horse's shite. It happened like this almost every Saturday.

Once, Julia arrived home after a Saturday afternoon at the Cookes' and announced that she'd already eaten. "It's not a big deal," she'd added, flipping her hair and skipping off to her room before Greta could say a word.

"Yes it is a big deal," Greta said, following her in.

"Why?" Julia asked. "Why is it a big deal?"

But Greta didn't have a reason. It just was. She couldn't say why except that it gave her a feeling like the time she realized she was the one who'd left the gate open for the new calf to escape. Warm in her bed with Johanna grinding her teeth next to her, she had heard the calf bawling into the dark as Big Tom and the boys searched for her. Lately Julia was demanding explanations for everything, and when those moments arrived, Greta felt more than ever that she was playing a pretend game and that Julia would announce at any moment that the game was up. Lily would have given the girl a belt, Greta knew. Two or three smart slaps to the back of the legs, and that would be the end of it. Greta had smacked Julia a few times when she was little, always on occasions when Julia scared her so much she didn't know what else to do. Don't run out into the street. Don't open the door to strangers. Each time, the child's shock was plain on her face, her mouth a round and soundless O until she caught her breath and the wailing started. Good for you, the older women in the building said. And if she starts with the curse words, give her a smack on the mouth.

At five o'clock the phone rang, just as Greta knew it would. Imagine! Only twenty-five steps across the street and using the telephone to ask. And knowing full well Eavan and Michael were probably asleep! Greta jumped up from the couch and ran to the kitchen to catch it before the second ring.

"Hello," she said, a statement. No question of who was calling.

"That you, Greta?" It was not Julia.

"Yes?" the line crackled.

"It's me. Did you get my letter?" A dog barked in the background. Greta could make out the thin clink of teacup returned to saucer at the other end of the connection. She quickly added the hours ahead and wondered where Johanna could be calling from. Norton's closed at four o'clock in the winter.

"Johanna? Is that you?" Greta said. "No, I didn't see any letter." Too much to explain, getting it but not wanting to open it yet. She wondered if Johanna ever had to work up the energy to face things, or if she just plunged right in. "Is something the matter?"

"It's Mammy. She's sick, Greta. She's had a stroke. She can't talk yet, and the doctor still can't tell how much she'll recover. Are you there?"

"I'm here. Where is she now?"

"Galway. I'm there now at a B and B. She'll be here at least another week."

"Another week?"

"It's been nearly a week already."

"A whole week? Why didn't—"

"We wanted to wait and see. We thought she'd be up talking after a few days and tell us what she wants herself. Sorry. I should have called sooner. But I was in Ballyroan for the first two days and you know the phone situation."

Silence, except for the occasional rush of static on the line. Greta had so many things to ask she didn't know where to begin. Where was she when it happened? Was there pain? Did the doctor come out to Ballyroan or did Tom bring her to town?

"And Tom called you to come home?"

"No. It's a strange thing. I was coming anyway for a visit. It happened just before I arrived. I took the bus from the airport to Galway, and Tom met me there to tell me. I wrote to you right away and dropped it in the post."

Greta heard the locks slide in the door, the door pushed open, Julia drop her bag on the floor. "Anybody here?" Julia called out in a stage whisper once she'd gotten past the closed door behind which Eavan was sleeping. She was a good girl.

"You don't seem surprised I'm in Ireland," Johanna said. "Anyway, we've gotten in touch with the boys. Padraic is tied up, but Jack is going to try his best."

Greta waved Julia away from the kitchen.

"His best to what?" Greta asked.

"To come, Greta. What do you think we're talking about?"

"But she'll be all right, won't she?"

"Well, she might and she mightn't. I think he's coming just in case."

Julia stalled at the open refrigerator and pretended to look for the date on the milk.

"I'm breast-feeding," Greta said. "Eavan's only twelve weeks."

"You could bring them. Bring them both. We'd all love to see them. And Michael too, if he has the time off."

Michael did not have the time off. There was no such thing as time off. Either you worked and were paid for it, or you didn't work and were not paid. He'd taken a week off when Eavan was born, and with the threat of a layoff always looming, he could not afford to take any more time. She flashed to Julia, tugging down her Lee jeans to do her business in the fields just as Johanna and Greta had. It seemed not only out of place, but impossible.

"So you dashed off the letter before you saw her? Then what's all in it? It's thick enough."

"I thought it didn't come yet."

Shit, Greta thought. "It came today, but I'm just after walking in the door from work." Julia turned from the fridge and mouthed "Aunt Johanna?" Greta nodded and shooed her out the door.

"I started the letter on the plane and added to it when I saw Tom," Johanna said. "If it's a question of the fare, I'll be glad to help pay for a ticket. Julia will be an adult fare now. We could half it. Eavan can sit on your lap."

"Wait," Greta said, and leaned against the counter. "Just wait a second. I have to think."

Johanna waited.

"How bad is she?" Greta asked.

"Bad. If she was going to make a good recovery, she'd be partly there by now."

"How's poor Tom?"

"Worried. He was here yesterday but had to go back to feed and milk. He's looking for someone to look after the place for a few days."

Julia came back into the kitchen and poured herself a tall glass of juice. She took a fork off the drying rack and mimed eating, then raised her eyebrows. She rubbed her belly and groaned. Greta picked a dishrag off the counter and whipped it at her until she left.

"Why are you home, anyway?"

"I told you. A visit. Look, things aren't going so well in California anymore. The restaurant closed, and I haven't found anything else yet. I needed a break."

Another failed romance was Greta's first guess. Or maybe she'd just gotten antsy doing the same thing day in and day out. Brush your teeth, rub the washcloth, go to work, make your dinner, go to sleep. It wasn't what Johanna had in mind for herself when the packet boat carried them across Galway Bay to the ship anchored off the shore. Maybe she'd figured out what Greta had already figured out, that even when you find yourself living in a better place than the one you left, the people around you will still want to be someplace else. Listening to her sister breathe into the line, Greta realized that she might be hearing Johanna admit to failing at something for the very first time. She'd failed at being a success in America. In Conch, she'd be the subject of gossip whispered behind cupped hands. Years ago Johanna Cahill had abandoned a sister and a new baby in America, they'd say. And look at her now.

Or maybe she hadn't failed. Maybe she'd just gotten sick and tired of California the same way she'd gotten sick and tired of Ballyroan. Maybe after a few weeks at home she'd set out for Germany or Australia. Or maybe she'd head back to America and start all over again with a better plan.

"Well then, it doesn't sound as if you should be offering to halve plane tickets. Are you strapped?"

"Not at the moment." A pause. "I'll stay here until I think of the next step. Poor Tom, Greta. You should see the cut of him. And the cottage! I barely recognized it. The boys' room and the whole western gable is totally—"

Greta didn't want to hear about the cottage, though she couldn't say why. She declined the information just the same as if she'd plugged her fingers in her ears. "Aren't there loads of restaurants you could work in?"

"We're not talking about me. We're talking about Mammy. Now, what do you think? Will you come?"

"Look. I just don't know. I could bring Eavan I suppose, but Michael works nights, and I don't like the idea of Julia here alone."

"I said bring her," Johanna said. "Please, Greta. Just bring her."

Eavan began to cry and then abruptly stopped. Julia had picked her up.

"I'll call you tomorrow," Greta said. "Four o'clock your time." She took down the number and said good night.

"What was that all about?" Julia asked when she returned to the kitchen carrying Eavan. "Crisis?"

Greta nodded.

"She's always having a crisis. Is that why we never see her?" Julia turned and bounced Eavan out of the room.

It couldn't be a trick, Greta told herself. They wouldn't take it that far. And Lily would never go along. And Johanna would never jinx Lily by making up a story about a stroke. And they weren't a family for tricks or lies. Not toward each other, at least. Okay, once, when Johanna went out to get milk and never came back. And yes, maybe when it came to night fishing or tucking a thing or two into a purse when the boxes in the Bloomie's back room were overflowing. But not when it really mattered. No, the stroke was real. The danger was real. The B and B in Galway and Tom's worry were real. Jack coming all the way from Australia might be real and might not. The most real thing was that Johanna wanted to see Julia. And so did Lily. And now they were together, pulling her in the same direction.

The heat came clanking up through the pipes again. Mr. Ackerman knocked on the door to say that his radiator was leaking. As usual, he stood on his tiptoes to look past Greta and into their apartment. Greta told him to put a towel down and promised to have Michael up there as soon as he woke.

"I don't have an extra towel for that. Why should I use my towel? Then I have to do laundry a day early? Is it my fault the radiator—"

"Hang on a second." Greta let the door close as she rushed down the hall in search of a spare towel. She plucked a damp one from the laundry. "Use this," she said when she returned to the door and Mr. Ackerman's impatient stare.

Eavan started crying again. Greta changed her diaper. In the kitchen, Julia boiled water for pasta. She broke the spaghetti in half before dropping it in and then twisted the cap off a jar of sauce.

"There's salad," Greta said, striding into the kitchen with Eavan tucked into the nook of her left arm like an American footballer.

Julia dove headfirst into the fridge to search for that bright orange dressing she poured over anything in the vegetable family. Her bum wagged under the fluorescent light.

"What's the news with Aunt Johanna?" Julia asked as she pulled a mostly empty bottle of French from the back of the bottom shelf.

"Nothing. The usual. Work. Life." Julia was like Johanna in some ways. She was a perceptive girl. She might notice the similarities first thing if they ever met. Even now Julia was watching Greta as she began to eat. Her fork poised in midair, she chewed her food slowly, her left hand flat against the table, as if feeling for signs of a coming train, some telltale tremor where bodies connected to solid ground.

"Did she want you to go somewhere? You were talking about airfare. Does she want us to go to California?"

"Ireland," Greta said as she arranged Eavan in her carry-seat. Julia's face fell. The prospect of California was more exciting than Ireland, which, as far as Julia could tell, was full of rain and cows. California on the other hand was full of music, beaches, suntanned boys. No one in her class had ever been farther west than Ohio, except for one boy who was born in Colorado but moved to New York as a baby. Outside, a car squealed to a halt. A taxi, Greta guessed. Maniacs. When they were finished eating, Greta cleared the table and Julia got out her textbooks and the artillery of colored pencils she used to underline and make small notes for herself in the margins. Greta took Eavan to the couch for another feeding. Once Eavan had her fill, Greta burped her and put her down once more, even though she knew she'd pay for it around two o'clock in the morning. She told Julia she was going to for a quick sleep.

In bed, Michael barely stirred as Greta climbed in next to him. If he had woken, Greta would have told him. Instead, she decided to let him sleep. Sometimes it was difficult to keep track of what Julia knew and what she didn't. It was not strange to Julia that she had a grandmother and an uncle in Ireland whom she never saw. The few times Julia had mentioned it, all Greta had to do was name all the people in the building, or people they knew from the block, who were from Germany and Poland and Korea and many, many other places, but who hadn't been home in twenty, thirty, sometimes forty years. Sometimes more. Julia was not the only girl in her school who had a grandparent living across the ocean whom she'd never met.

Even having two uncles in Australia that she knew nothing about didn't faze Julia. She often forgot their names. In stories, Greta referred to all three brothers as "the boys," and when Julia asked about them, it was always "the boys." Australia was a long way away. At twelve going on thirteen, she didn't seem interested in how they ended up there.

What did strike Julia as very strange was having an aunt in California who never came to visit and who never invited them out. Greta pointed out that California was the same distance as Ireland, but Julia kept insisting it was completely different. It was the same country, after all. There were trains that went all the way to California. There was even the Greyhound bus for those who could stick it.

Greta watched the lights from the street play across Michael's legs. One day, if Johanna returned to the States, she might call the apartment while Greta was out, and Julia might answer. They'd get to talking. Johanna would mention the outdoor markets, the trolley cars, whatever else made San Francisco different from New York. And then she'd invite Julia directly. She might even send her an Amtrak ticket. All this, she would do in innocence. There was no harm in getting to know each other, she might say.

"America has made you paranoid," Johanna once wrote in a letter to Greta. "You never used to think people were scheming all the time."

I don't think everyone is scheming, Greta thought, her attention diverted for a second by the sound of Julia's chair scraping against the kitchen floor. I don't think that at all. But I'm no fool either. It was one of the first kind things Michael had said to her after he began living in their hay shed in Ballyroan. "You're no fool, are you, Greta?" he'd asked, not needing an answer. Something in his voice told Greta that he'd come to this conclusion despite what he'd been told.

 

Greta's grumbling belly woke her at one A.M. and she remembered that she'd hardly even touched the spaghetti Julia had made. She opened her eyes to find Michael's face an inch from hers and his sleep-stale breath taking over her air. She turned, counted on her fingers one, two, three, four, five hours ahead. Six A.M. in Ireland. She sat up, pushed off the bedcovers, and stood.

The letter was still sitting on the cushion of the couch. Greta tucked it into the pocket of her robe and then looked in on Julia and Eavan, both sound asleep on their backs with their arms over their heads. She went to the kitchen and turned on the flame under the kettle. She propped the letter against the sugar bowl and looked at it as she waited for the water to boil. It was exhausting, all this writing back and forth. Maybe Michael's people had the right idea when they put an end to it early on. What could be in a letter so thick? All that time on the plane, Greta supposed. Nothing else to do. Greta had never been on a plane, but she imagined it like a long bus ride—nothing but staring straight ahead and thinking any thought that presented itself.

I could go, Greta thought as she moved the squealing kettle to one of the cool burners. I could bring Eavan and go and be back in a week's time. Two at most. I could tell them Julia has school she can't miss, because America isn't like home in that way. In America you can't pluck a child out of school for a week here and a week there. And it would be a good time to miss work, because if Bonnie mentioned Mr. Halberstam, that meant the hunt was still on for those hats and scarves. Yes, she and Eavan could go alone, and that way Julia and Michael would be here to come back to. That way I would have to come back.

Well of course I'd come back, she scolded herself in the dark kitchen, lit only by the stove bulb. What an odd thing to think.

Or I could stay right where I am, she thought. She looked again at the letter and began to resent its thickness. Does Johanna think I've all the time in the world to be reading and writing letters of that length?

And Lily would be fine, Greta decided. People recover from strokes all the time. She didn't know the year Lily was born, but she certainly didn't seem old enough to be put down by a stroke. It was impossible to imagine Lily any older than she'd been when Greta and Johanna left Ballyroan. And if she waited until the summer, they could go as a foursome, a family. Michael could get the time from work in a couple of months, provided there was no layoff. In the summer, maybe, when the days were long and the weather was fine.

She moved her mug of tea to the table and sliced the envelope open with the handle of her spoon. Six pages, she counted before she began. Front and back. She took a big swig of tea and began to read.

 

Dear Greta,

You will be surprised to find out where I'm writing from—an Aer Lingus jet headed direct to Shannon Airport. I tried to write this letter twice before leaving California, and even thought about making a surprise stopover in New York for a visit. Then I decided the stopover might make you nervous as you seem to get nervous every time I mention passing through New York.

Greta, you won't want to face this but I think it's high time we talked seriously about what Julia is to be told about her birth. I've thought a lot about what's fair to everyone and I really believe she should know that I

 

Greta stopped reading, refolded the letter, and returned it to the envelope it arrived in. Immediately after, she was surprised at how easy it was to pretend she'd never opened it at all, that it had never arrived. Later, she would tuck it into the cookie tin she kept at the back of her bedroom closet along with all the other letters that had arrived over the years, and putting it there, out of sight, sealed tight under the lid, would feel like she'd put a final close to a conversation she didn't want to be having in the first place. She finished her tea and listened to the second hand of the clock tick off the time. It was one forty-five. She had to be at Bloomingdale's in seven hours. Michael would be up any minute, his sleep cockeyed—as he put it—from working so many nights. She got up, rinsed her mug, and left the kitchen to recheck the locks on the apartment door. They were bolted tight. She returned to the kitchen and tried to remember how she felt when she discovered Johanna's plan to go to America. If she could have chained Johanna to Ballyroan, she would have. If it meant chaining Johanna to Greta's own hands and feet, she would have, and would have been happy to do it. But something had changed since then, doors had opened and then closed. New York had turned out to be the place where Greta became a mother, became partner to a man, became an earner of steady wages, a navigator of public transportation, an expert in building maintenance, a maven of local parks and playgrounds, a master of coupon shopping. All of the busy, racket-filled days since arriving in America had risen up between her and Johanna. Maybe Johanna was onto something—a week in the silence of Ballyroan might put them right again.

Michael would be generous, Greta knew. If I told him all of this, he'd tell me to go home and be back in two weeks and he'd think it's as easy as meeting me at the airport to hear all the news. He was simple in some ways, or maybe it was because he'd never had anyone in the wings threatening to take fatherhood away from him. Let her see the child, he used to say when Johanna's requests got more insistent. It might put an end to all these ideas she has. You are her mother. That's clear a mile away. He'd made few friends since arriving in America. Ned Powers, a man he worked with, was one of the few he ever brought around to the apartment. And only Ned, Greta suspected, because Ned didn't ask too many questions. Michael was protective of even the most innocent information about his life. How he came to live on a nice block like East Eighty-fourth Street. The number of children he had. His age. He was especially careful when he was with other Irish. That way he guarded personal information was another leftover from the camp, and it seemed to Greta that these two sides of him—his increasingly casual outlook on Johanna's role next to his guarded secretiveness toward the rest of the world—were a contradiction. Johanna is your sister, he explained. Your blood. That's all the difference. How many years in America, Greta wondered, until that explanation stops making sense?

At two A.M. Greta heard Michael clearing his throat in the bathroom. It was a practice that was taking up more and more of his routine lately, and it would get worse, he predicted, the longer he worked in the tunnels. Quickly she plucked up the paper where she'd written the phone number of the B and B where Johanna was staying, and she went over to the telephone. She misdialed the first time but got the number right on the second try.

"I just want to leave a message for a guest," she said when a man answered. "Please tell Johanna Cahill I cannot be there, but to please give everyone my love." When she returned the phone to the receiver, she noticed that she felt very calm.

 

They were waiting for her at Bloomingdale's when Greta arrived at nine o'clock. There was Mr. Halberstam and another man Greta had never seen. Mr. Halberstam wasn't normally in on Sundays. She nodded hello and made for the back room, but they stopped her and asked her to accompany them to the top floor, where Mr. Halberstam had his office. Greta tried to catch Bonnie's eye as they passed, but Bonnie didn't look up, only handed Greta one of the smallest of the famous little brown bags, which held Greta's blouse from the day before.

The three of them rode the elevator in silence, Greta in the middle feeling her heart jumping against her ribs. I'll tell them it wasn't me, she decided. They were just little things, here and there, not nearly enough to matter with all that goes in and out of this place. I'll remind them how many years I've been here and how I've never been late, not a single time. She thought of Lily's old warnings in case Mr. Grady should find her alone and ask what she had for supper. She dropped her hands to her sides and tried to keep perfectly still.

"Greta," the strange man said when Mr. Halberstam had closed the door to his office. "I think you must know why you're here."

 

Greta was back on Third Avenue by nine-twenty with a partial paycheck covering what they owed her for that period. Unable to face the subway, with the check still pinched tight between her first finger and her thumb, she turned and walked north up the avenue. They'd been patient. They'd wanted to be sure.

Michael wouldn't understand, Greta knew, feeling the trembling in her legs when she put one foot in front of the other. He didn't like liars. He didn't like thieves. I'll tell him I quit, she decided, but then two blocks later she realized there would be too many questions, and also the chance of him being hurt that she hadn't discussed it with him first. How could she quit with the possibility that he might get laid off? When had she ever been so careless? I'll tell him I was fired because of the milk, she decided, and the way that possibility settled her stomach and calmed her trembling legs meant it was the right one. For the next twenty blocks, she chewed on what she would say. Yes, customers had seen and had lodged a complaint. It offended them, seeing that kind of thing where they shopped and when they'd hoped to have a nice day. Women in America don't know what breast milk is, she'd tell him. They bottle-feed, and even that they hire out to dark-skinned nannies. He would believe it, she knew, with all the stories she brought home about the ladies who bought thousand-dollar winter coats and five-hundred-dollar belts. But Michael, she would say, how could I have helped it?

It was a white lie, she told herself, and recalled Lily sweeping out the henhouse one afternoon and describing to Greta all categories of lies. Little ones, big ones, good ones and bad.

Lily in a hospital bed in Galway. Now she could go to Ireland for a month and not worry about missing work. My pet, Lily might say from the bed, reaching for Greta. My best girl. Their secret. And maybe it would even be fine to bring Julia; Johanna wouldn't be able to pull anything with Lily there to keep things fair. She thought of the weight of Johanna's letter in her hand. She didn't need to read it to know what was in it: Johanna making her case for motherhood so that even a goose like Greta would understand.

When Greta finally got home, she opened the door to find the apartment strangely quiet and Julia sitting cross-legged on the floor with Eavan in the hollow between her knees. It was as if she were waiting for Greta to come home even though she wasn't expected home for another five hours.

"Dad got called in," Julia explained. "The pumps failed or something."

"It happens," Greta said, tossing her keys on a pile of papers. Julia was not a worrier, but something in her face seemed tense and afraid. Even Eavan seemed not herself—subdued, watchful—as if at almost four months she knew something her mother didn't.

"I have bad news," Julia said, and at almost thirteen, felt very grown up all of a sudden, more grown up than she was prepared to be that day. "Aunt Johanna called. Your mother"—Julia sighed as she cast around for the best word—"died." She froze, never having broken such news before, not sure what was supposed to happen now.

At first Greta didn't do anything—didn't move, didn't even breathe. Then she made a sound Julia had never heard her make before. It was a sob, throaty and heartbroken. The couch springs creaked as Greta's body sank into it.

"Mom?" Julia whispered. When Greta didn't answer, Julia set Eavan on the floor and crawled over to Greta's knees. "Mom?" she said again, louder this time.

"So your Nana is gone to heaven," Greta said, huffing back a wave of sobs in a style Julia recognized as her own. Julia handed Greta the piece of paper where she'd taken down all the information. The time, the doctor's name, and again, the number of the B and B where Johanna was staying. There was no extra information.

"What else did Johanna say?" Greta asked. "Did you talk for long?"

"No, just a minute or so. She said Tom was waiting for her. She said she hoped to see me. She said that you said we're going over there and I'd meet everyone for the first time."

"I never said that," Greta corrected. No point now, she added silently. Mammy gone. That feeling of a fire always warming the kitchen of home abruptly put out. Even though she had had no real intention of going back, the news of Lily dead felt as if that option were stolen from her and that she was in America for the very first time not as a foreigner trying out a new life, but as someone who'd come for good and could no longer return to the life she'd left even if she wanted to. Going home now, she knew, would only mean being reminded of all the years she had not gone. Even when Lily had begged, and Greta knew well what such a return would mean to her, she'd put her off with "later" and "soon," until Lily could hardly get up the energy to ask.

And Johanna, stuck there now because she'd been present for this. Stuck to make decisions about the farm and the cottage and what's to be done about Little Tom, the very last person left in Ballyroan.

"Which one is Tom?" Julia asked softly, and then watched as Greta slid from the couch to the floor and covered her face with her hands.