ON THE MORNING of the day of Michael's retirement party, or party day, as Greta and the children had been mouthing over Michael's head and behind his back for going on six weeks, Greta stopped sweeping the front step to watch a black cat emerge from behind a tree, walk across the neighbor's lawn, across the sidewalk, across the sun-warmed tarmac of the street, hop up the curb on Greta's side, prance across the Wards' lawn, and brush against Greta's bare shin as she passed by (it was a she-cat) to settle herself on the Wards' welcome mat. Good luck or bad luck? Greta couldn't remember. Good luck to see a black cat on moving day. Good luck on a wedding day. Bad luck to see one by moonlight. Bad luck to have a black she-cat look at you if she's just after licking her paws. But what about on party day? The cat purred, stretched herself across the mat, settled in for a sleep. Step over her, Greta told herself as the cat's soft belly rose and fell. Glad none of the children had arrived yet, and with a suspicion that the neighbors were looking out their windows and laughing at her, Greta turned and walked around the house through the dew-wet grass. She felt younger than fifty-nine today, as if she could run ten times around the block without getting winded or turn a cartwheel on the lawn if the mood took her. She climbed up the back steps, left wet footprints across the dry boards of the deck, and entered the house by the back door. The morning weather report had called for heavy rain, but so far the sky was blue and the day unseasonably warm.
Her stomach had done flip-flops all night. Lying there beside Michael, who snored so loud that she had spent most of the night peering over at him in the gray and chilly dark to see if he was having her on, she wondered if everyone who'd been invited would come, if they'd expect a big spread, if James would remember to pick up the cake, if Eavan had remembered to buy a few music CDs. "Mom, are you serious?" Eavan had nearly shouted the week before when Greta suggested they just play the radio, as they always did at home. Julia, swamped at work, was expected only to show up, relax, turn off her cell phone and the thing she punched messages into when she thought the rest of them weren't paying attention. After working in merchandising for Polo and Kenneth Cole for a combined fifteen years, Julia was now head buyer for a new clothing label that had started up in New York. She kept calling to ask what she could do to help and then telling Greta to hold on, she'd call back, would Greta be free in two hours?
The children tried to talk her into doing an RSVP date, but it seemed so formal to Greta, so pushy. Respond by this date or else. People liked to be able to change their minds, Greta explained. They liked to feel they were being spontaneous. It seemed to Greta that RSVPs had come into fashion only in the last decade or so. At how many weddings had she simply slipped into the back of the church? An RSVP date also implied something about the party that Greta didn't want to imply. Without one, she could get away with doing the food herself, having plastic plates, playing the radio instead of worrying about music. There would always be enough room. There would always be enough food.
How? Her children asked, each in their separate ways—Julia with a sigh, James with raised eyebrows and a shrug, Eavan with the same question over and over and over: "But how do you know?"
"I just know."
"But how?"
"It always works out."
"But how does it work out?"
"It just does," Greta said, and then reverted to the line she'd been using with each of them since they started school and began to question how she knew things, how she came to her decisions. "Some things you know in your brain, and some things you know in here." Greta placed a hand on her chest.
"Your rib cage?"
"Don't be fresh."
"I'm not. Your upper intestines?"
"That's not where your intestines are, is it?" Greta looked down at herself and saw that her hand had migrated south.
"But Mom, we've sent out close to eighty invitations. How will you know how much food to buy?"
"I'll know to stop buying when I have enough."
Early that morning, before Michael's alarm, Greta had stared at the clock, its neon orange numbers two inches high and casting a glow over Michael's face, their bed, Greta's bare arm. It was 5:13. She sighed, thinking, I've not had one single wink of sleep this night. But then she turned gently, careful not to let the cool air under the covers, and felt her pillow wet with drool. Well, maybe for an hour or so, she thought. Maybe a few minutes here and there. Michael shifted, threw his heavy arm over her, trapped her arms at her sides. The alarm woke up, sent its shrill wail directly down Greta's spine. Michael closed his eyes tighter.
"Ay," she'd whispered into the dark as she tried to free one of her trapped arms. "Last day."
"Last day," he'd repeated, and held on tighter while the alarm continued to sound. He moved closer, nestling his chin against her shoulder until they were like one of those prize eggs at Easter, where the smaller egg is tucked inside the larger. Slowly, slowly, she pushed back with her elbow until she made contact with his stomach, and then she kept pushing. He sat up abruptly, threw back the covers, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and pressed every button on the clock until it went silent. Greta watched the shape of his back as it bent, began to lean, his head drooping off toward his pillow. Outside, the sky was as dark as midnight.
"Five-eighteen." She nudged his rear with the ball of her foot. When he was finally standing, she threw back the covers on her side, stood up, felt her way across the room until she laid her hand on the thick cotton of her robe. "I'll get the kettle," she told him. He was stretching, extending his arms like wings and then tucking them back in beside his body.
"Stiff," he muttered, clenching and unclenching his fists. Yawning, he reached down and rubbed the muscles at the front of his thighs, rubbed his hips, put his hands on his waist to drive his thumbs into his lower back. He cursed, coughed a few times to loosen the dark phlegm in his throat, hopped up and down once, twice. Above the elastic waistband of his boxers his stomach curved to meet his broad chest. A good stomach, Greta thought. Full. Healthy. Well fed. Not like the gaunt 1960s or the fat '80s, when he seemed unable to pass a bakery without stopping in for a slice of pie. Every hair on his body was gray.
"Bacon and eggs," he said, pausing his kneading fingers to listen for her response. When she didn't answer, he looked over and smiled at her. "Last day," he said.
She switched on the lamp next to him.
"Oh, you're mean," he said, shielding his eyes.
"Five-twenty-one," she said.
To be at work in time for his shift, Michael had to leave their house in Recess by 5:45. Without traffic, he'd be at Thirtieth Street and Tenth Avenue by 6:15. This would give him forty-five minutes to park, change into his gear, get over to the cage, and get down the seventy stories to the tunnel. It didn't used to take so long. Years ago, he could get out of his street clothes and into the tunnel in twenty minutes. Less. Lately, he couldn't shake the feeling that he was forgetting something. Once he was dressed in his work clothes, he'd have to look himself over, bend to confirm the boots on his feet, wiggle his toes to feel the thick socks beneath. He'd pat his chest for his folding ruler, his back pocket for his flashlight. Three times in the last few months he'd gone over to the supply shed to get another hard hat, only to have Donahue, who kept track of everything, reach over and rap on the hard hat that was already on his head. Each time, he had put his hand to the top of his head, astonished to feel the hard plastic, the knob at the back that tightened the strap. The first time, Donahue had laughed and laughed, shouting after him from the door of the shed as Michael made his way across the site to the cage. The second time, he'd just looked at Michael with eyebrows raised and told him to get more sleep. The third time, he didn't laugh, didn't smile, only placed his hand on Michael's back as he walked with him across the yard.
The first two times Michael forgot about his hard hat, he saved up the story to tell Greta when he got home. "That Donahue," she'd said, rolling her eyes. Exactly, thought Michael, smiling along with Greta as if it were Donahue who'd put the hard hat on his head and then caused him to forget it. Greta urged him to go to bed earlier and stop falling asleep in front of the TV. She started getting up when his alarm went off to make oatmeal for him to eat before he left. Eavan mentioned something about ginseng, so Greta began laying out one ginseng pill next to his multivitamin and his cholesterol medicine. The ginseng made his piss smell strange, he complained. Piss is piss, Greta said.
He didn't tell her that it had happened once more or that one morning, just two weeks before his last day, he'd taken the train with the others down to the dead end of the tunnel, a twelve-minute ride at the train's slow pace, and had looked above him and beside him at the tunnel walls and couldn't for the life of him remember where he was going. He sat up to look around the shoulders of the man in front of him and saw that the tunnel narrowed to a point and then disappeared. He looked behind him and saw the same thing. They were going on a trip, he decided. A journey. It was nighttime. It was raining. He looked over his shoulder once more to find Ned Powers, his friend. "Where to?" Michael had asked, and Powers laughed so hard he nearly fell out the side. Michael laughed too, and the joke spread up and down to every member of the crew. When the train finally stopped, Michael was relieved to discover that he knew exactly what to do, where to stand, which tool to reach for. Still, the entire shift seemed off, like a picture that was always slightly askew no matter how many times he walked up to the wall and nudged it at this corner, that corner, a little here, a little there. Later, back on the train that returned them to the shaft, he kept his mind fastened on the movement of the machinery, the work they'd just done. He focused on the cage, its rust recently covered with another coat of reflective yellow, emerging in the hazy distance.
"Don't expect this treatment every day," Greta said as she slid two eggs onto his plate and placed it in front of him. The clock in the kitchen read 5:37, and Greta reached over to snap up the blinds. "It'll start getting light soon," she said as she brought the saucepan from the stove and spooned out the beans. She reached for bacon that was resting on paper towels on a plate on the counter. "Another few weeks and the sun will be up at this hour."
"As of tomorrow morning, I won't be up at this hour, so the sun can stay where it is."
Greta watched him work across his plate, his head bent so low he could have stuck out his tongue and lapped up the stream of egg yolk that had gotten away. "So," she said. "Will they have something planned for you, do you think? Something at lunch?" From the fridge she took the bag lunch she'd prepared the night before. She placed it on the table next to his plate so he wouldn't forget it.
Michael coughed, reached for his mug, sipped the steaming tea. "Of course. The whole shift goes to Tavern on the Green, and after lunch they present me with a cake with one candle for every year on the job. And a gold watch."
"That's it, wise guy. You've had enough." Greta took the plate out from under his nose and jerked her head toward the clock. He pushed his chair back, stood, rubbed his belly, reached the hall closet in three long strides.
"What are you doing?" Greta asked as she watched him pull his heavy winter coat off the hanger.
"My coat," he said.
"It's supposed to get up near eighty today."
Michael frowned, put the coat back on the hanger, patted the pockets. "Fine. My keys, then," he said. "I'll just take my keys."
"Michael," Greta said, taking his hand in both of hers and bringing it to her mouth, "you haven't worn that coat in months." She squeezed his fingers as hard as she could, then repeated what she'd already said. "Okay? Months, Michael. Now go on. You'll be late."
She reached around to the wall where he'd hung his keys the day before, and pressed them into his hand.
Greta began preparing the moment the taillights of Michael's car disappeared down the block. There were a lot of things she had meant to do, but the days had gotten away from her. She meant to figure out a way to get Michael to paint the shutters outside before party day. She meant to get a new mailbox. She meant to buy a potted plant for the front step. She meant to get Michael to put a fresh coat of tar on the driveway to cover up the oil stains and the crack. She put a pot of water on the stove to boil the potatoes for potato salad. She took down the kitchen curtains and put them in the washing machine. She stripped her bed and dug out her best quilt, usually brought out only for Christmas Eve, when they had Ned Powers and a few other people over. She brought every mat and throw rug out to the deck and beat them one by one against the railing, pressing her lips tight against the dust that flew back at her. As usual, the rugs were heavier than she expected, and as she leaned against the railing, panting, she noticed that the sun had come up. She swept the driveway, the flagstones of the walkway, the steps leading up to the front door. By midmorning, taking the black cat as a sign, she decided that she needed a break, and she sat down at the kitchen table to write the card she'd picked out for Michael. No sooner had she composed her first sentence—"Dear Michael, Thirty-seven years!"—than she spilled a glass of juice across both the card and the new tablecloth. When she bent to mop up the mess, her glasses fell off her nose and cracked. It took forty minutes to dig up her old pair.
Eavan, the swelling in her belly just beginning to become obvious, arrived at eleven o'clock with a bag of fruit and four long baguettes for making the sandwiches. When Eavan walked in, Greta was sitting at the kitchen table wearing a pair of James's old track shorts and a T-shirt she'd found at the bottom of a dresser that said THE STONE ROSES across the chest. Before Eavan had even said hello, Greta explained that she didn't want to get anything on her party clothes, which she had folded over the back of a chair in the living room and would put on just before people started to arrive. Eavan hadn't even noticed. It was common to come home and find her mother in clothes she or Julia or James had discarded more than a decade before. Once, when Eavan brought a friend home from college, Greta, after a morning spent weeding, had come in to meet the guest wearing a T-shirt that said SCUMBY RIDES THE BIG WHITE WAVE.
When they laughed, Greta had asked, "What's a Scumby?" pulling the front of the shirt away from her body and trying to look at it upside down.
Eavan set the bag down on the counter, and Greta began to unload the melons, oranges, cherries, grapes, apples, paring knife, peeler, butcher knife, melon baller. She placed the baguettes on the table. Eavan forgot the wine she'd tucked in behind the passenger seat and went back out to the car. She returned with a bakery box. "Shit," she said, leaving the box on the doorstep and turning back. On the way in she nearly stepped on the box, which contained Michael's favorite: caramel apple pie.
"You losing it?" Greta asked, rushing forward to take the pie from harm's way and standing by to follow Eavan's ample behind down the hall. Greta had already predicted that her daughter would be one of those women whose arse looked as pregnant as her belly.
Eavan put her hand on her forehead, as if checking her own temperature. "Julia has a meeting at Saks at two o'clock," she said. "She'll leave as soon as she can."
"I have knives, you know," Greta said, reaching for the paring knife Eavan had brought.
"Not good knives." Eavan shrugged. "Sorry."
"Okay, well, I have spoons. I have very good spoons," Greta said, nudging the melon baller.
"That's not a spoon," Eavan said, whisking it away and putting it back in the bag. "Did you get the meat for the sandwiches? Are the potatoes in the fridge? Cooked? Jackets on?"
"Yes, boss," Greta said. "But first we need a cup of tea and a snack. Don't we?"
"Mom, we have a lot to do between now and four o'clock, and you know when James comes, all he'll do is distract—"
"It's a lovely day, isn't it? Perfect."
"It's supposed to rain later."
"You have too many worries, girl," Greta said, taking the peeler out of Eavan's hand and tossing it into the sink. Facing her daughter, Greta took Eavan's hand and waltzed her across the kitchen.
"You're out of your mind," Eavan said, laughing, placing her hand on her mother's shoulder and letting herself be led across the room.
"Party day. Let's hear some of that music you worried so much about." Greta leaned over to speak directly to Eavan's belly. "Wanna hear some music in there? Let's see if your Mama picked out anything with a fiddle."
After a short break for tea, they rolled up their sleeves and got to work. They peeled, chopped, diced, turned melon after melon into perfect bite-size balls. Greta looked on as Eavan cut slices of bacon, wrapped each around a pitted date, and drove a toothpick through the middle. They made a team in the bathroom, where Greta scrubbed the tub and the toilet while Eavan polished the mirror, scrubbed the sink and the counter, and stashed away Greta's jars and lotions, Michael's razor and shaving cream. Eavan placed a candle behind the toilet while Greta searched under her bed for the little soaps shaped like seashells she'd picked up at fifty percent off weeks earlier. When they finished, Greta put out the good towels, the new bath mat. My girl can clean, Greta thought as she glanced at the sparkling sink. My girl is a good worker, a fine, strong, capable girl.
"The fumes don't bother you?" Greta asked. She'd been crippled with nausea when she was pregnant with James, and sometimes the sight of a pregnant woman still made her stomach turn.
"Nah," said Eavan, and reached up on tiptoes to brush away a spiderweb. Greta saw that she had already begun to thicken at the shoulders, the neck. Head to toe, her whole body was getting ready for the baby. Greta hadn't been that kind of pregnant woman. People used to say they couldn't tell she was pregnant unless she stood in profile. Eavan would have looked pregnant in a head shot at only five months along.
"You know what my mother used to say about expecting a baby?" Greta said.
"That she could squat down in the field in the morning and be up again to get the tea?"
"So I told you already."
Eavan looked at her.
They teamed up again on the deck, where they hoped people would gather. The weather was warm for May. The rain would hold off, Greta assured Eavan, and commanded that Eavan look at the sky, acknowledge that it was blue, stop worrying. Greta swept and then went down to the spigot at the side of the house to fill bucket after bucket of water to wash down the planks of wood. Eavan scrubbed two seasons' worth of grit from the white plastic chairs, six in all, and then stood aside as Greta splashed them clean. They used their hands to flatten the creases in the vinyl outdoor tablecloth. As they worked, they talked about names for the baby. Greta suggested good, strong names like John, Patrick, William. Mary, Ann, Kathleen.
"We want to do a family name," Eavan said as she used her fingernail to scratch a stubborn piece of dirt from the window.
"Michael is a family name."
"We thought Maeve is pretty for a girl." Eavan watched her mother reflected in the glass. "Or Lily," she added. "Gary likes either of them."
Greta, down on her haunches, with the sponge dripping water down her shin and into her sock, looked up toward the back of the yard and shrugged. All these years later, so many miles from home, and still the children felt a connection to these people they'd never met. It was a fad now, she'd noticed. Family trees and tracing ancestors. There was big money in it. Money spent mostly by Americans, Greta guessed. She could probably count on one hand the number of times Maeve Ward was discussed by name in their house. Lily was right. Blood is thick. Greta wondered briefly how Maeve Ward had turned out, whether she was still alive, still traveling, or whether the government had settled her in a flat outside Dublin.
"How did she spell it? Do you know?" Eavan asked.
"She didn't spell it, love," Greta said, and ignored that bereaved look all the children got when they remembered that their father's people could not read or write. The fact that Michael had learned as an adult in a matter of months made him a genius in their eyes. They were fiercely proud of him, that much Greta could see, but she never got the impression that they truly knew how much work it had been or how much it meant to him to stand in line at the deli and read the headlines of the paper just like everyone else did. The children would never be able to understand that some days, when he'd been frustrated and Greta didn't know how to explain some aspect of putting words together in a way that made sense, it was less humiliating for him to not be able to read at all than to go to the library and check out a book intended for a first grader, or to be quizzed on the sidewalk beside a new street sign as strangers passed by. Somehow, through the years, the detail that Greta was the one who taught him had gotten lost. In the children's version he'd simply buckled down and taught himself.
"But if you go that way," Greta said, looking up at Eavan, "I'd pick the one Americans will make sense of. Otherwise she'll be correcting people her whole life."
"And Lily?"
"Either one, really. Either one and you can't lose."
"So you wouldn't mind Lily?"
"After my mother?" Greta asked. "Why would I mind?" And she wouldn't mind, she realized as she spoke. Another Lily in Greta's life to fill that long-empty chair would be welcome, and for the first time since she learned that Eavan was pregnant, it hit her that there would be another person in the family soon. Not just an idea, a name tossed back and forth, an empty bassinet, but a person who ate at her table and felt as at home with her as her own children had.
Eavan turned back to the window and, in a habit recently formed, pressed her hand to her belly, spread her fingers wide like a starfish, took a deep breath.
They spoke at the same time. "Will I run into town for flowers?" asked Eavan.
"Do you think your father has any idea?" asked Greta.
"I think flowers would be nice," Eavan said, and turned so fast she knocked the Windex off the ledge and sent it flying over the railing and onto the grass.
Greta stepped up close to her daughter. "You're flushed," she said, pressing the back of her hand to Eavan's cheek.
"I just hope it goes okay," Eavan said.
"Why wouldn't it go okay?" Greta asked, squeezing Eavan's hand. "We have food, don't we? And music, thanks to you? We have a crowd of people all bent on keeping the surprise. Don't worry so much. It's bad for the baby."
James arrived at one o'clock with a cup of coffee in one hand, an oversize cake box in the other, and, tucked under his arm, the pictures he had blown up at the copy shop and mounted on cardboard.
"Jesus," Eavan said when she saw him, and rushed to hold open the screen door. "Ever hear of making two trips?" she asked, taking the cake from him.
Unlike Eavan, who seemed worried and distracted, James was keyed up. Looking him up and down, Greta was glad to see that he owned an iron after all. He'd pressed his khakis and his button-down shirt. He'd also gotten a haircut and bought a new belt. As usual, from the moment he stepped through the front door, it felt as if the house were on tilt and everything within it sliding toward him. "Listen up," he said, as if he were talking to his class of fifth graders. "We have some work to do." He wanted the party to be perfect and had put himself in charge of what he called the extra touches. The blown-up pictures, along with a giant diagram of the tunnel as it would appear when finished in the year 2020, with a sticker that said YOU ARE HERE, to mark where it stood on Michael's last day. The sheet cake had Michael's caricature done in icing.
The pictures were of Michael at a union picnic playing tug-of-war, Michael lying on the couch in the old apartment with his leg and arm in a cast, Michael outside a site in the year 1982, Michael in his work gear, barely recognizable in his blackened, mud-drenched clothes, the dark hole of the tunnel stretched out behind him. When Eavan and James were little, they loved that one, thought it was hysterical, and Greta gathered from listening to them talk that they thought it was something that had happened only once, the day Daddy was covered in mud, Daddy filthy dirty, Daddy with muck all over his face.
"He mightn't like that one," Greta said, pushing it aside. "Maybe we better leave it."
"Mom, stop," James said, pushing it back where it was. "People will think it's funny."
"You know, never once did your father come home with a speck of dirt on him," Greta said, taking up the picture and bringing it close to her glasses. "Never once. He's a very clean person."
James cleared his throat, nodded at Eavan to put the pictures away. "We know that, Mom. That's exactly why it's so great."
"Yes, but—"
"Okay," James interrupted. "So I called last night—did he mention it?—and asked him some B.S. about how to fix a hole in Sheetrock, and I don't think he suspects a thing."
Eavan pulled up a chair and sat down. She put her head in her hands.
"Will he be mad?" James asked. "Mom? What do you think?"
Greta stood behind Eavan and pulled the hair away from her daughter's face. "I feel sick," Eavan said, then shook her head when she saw James and Greta glance down at her belly. "No, not that." She groaned into her hand. Greta couldn't think why the kids should be so nervous. She, after all, had thought up the idea, and she was the one he'd take it out on if it turned out that he was being serious all these years when he forbade them to ever throw him a surprise party. He issued the warning whenever they went to a surprise party thrown for someone else. It's cruel, he insisted. What was fun about giving a person the shock of his life? It's not to honor the person, it's to laugh at him. And is reaching a particular age really a cause for celebration? Just breathing in and out for a certain amount of time? He'd reminded her after the last surprise — a sixtieth birthday thrown for the wife of a former sandhog—that he didn't even know exactly when he was born, as if she weren't already well aware. That's how silly birthdays were. Probably in early April. Maybe in late March. Probably in 1945, but possibly 1944. It was a circumstance the kids would never in their whole lives get sick of thinking about. "How can you not know when you were born?" they'd demand, the tone in their voices changing little from childhood to adulthood.
But this wasn't a birthday party. It was a retirement party, the first among their small group of friends, and so something Michael had not specifically outlawed except under the general umbrella of surprises. Also, Michael just wasn't that intimidating. At worst he would smile through it and take a week to recover. If he got presents, he'd refuse to go near them, putting his hand to his forehead and shaking his head. "All that money," he'd say, looking at the pile. And then one by one the kids would coax him to pick just one and open it. Then another. Then another, until the whole pile was unwrapped and at his feet.
They had the food prepared by three o'clock, and anything that didn't have to be refrigerated was left out on the dining-room table. The refrigerator was packed to the brim, so James brought the cake down to the garage, the coolest room in the house. Eavan put out a few photo albums next to the blown-up pictures and Greta's gift—a nine-piece gardening set complete with seeds for starting an herb garden. At three-thirty Greta changed into her party clothes: white slacks, red sandals, a short-sleeved black cotton sweater with a red stitch along the collar. They had another half hour to kill before people would start to arrive. Michael—with Ned Powers's help—wouldn't be home until five.
Back in the kitchen, sitting at the table and eating the ends of the soda bread and waiting for the hands of the clock to move, Greta began to take more notice of how odd Eavan and James were behaving. Twice now she'd seen Eavan look at her brother with widened eyes, as if urging him forward. It was as if they were teenagers again, trying to send each other messages with kicks under the table.
"Nicole is coming, right?" Greta asked. Nicole and James had been dating almost two years, making it James's longest relationship by a year and ten months. As Michael put it, she was a sound girl, and Greta wouldn't mind if all this looking and signaling each other had to do with some engagement plan they wanted to let her in on.
James pulled his eyes away from his sister. "Oh, yeah. She'll be there." Same as always. No extra look of significance. No flutter of surprise.
"And Gary?" Greta asked, looking at Eavan.
"Of course," Eavan said, and Greta noticed it again, how she tossed the words out casually, then looked straight back at her brother. Go on, the look said, tell her.
"Stop staring at me," Eavan said to Greta without taking her eyes off James. "Your eyes in those glasses bug me out."
"I'm not staring. Maybe that's your conscience making you think I'm staring. Keeping secrets from your mother." She turned to James and stared at him instead. Of her three children, he looked the most like her. She'd never thought of herself as pretty, but her features on his face had turned out to be quite handsome.
"Cut it out," he said. "Seriously. Didn't you get glasses that don't make your eyes look so weird?"
"They broke. This morning."
"They just broke?" Eavan asked.
"Yep, just broke. Don't change the subject."
Eavan looked at James. "Let's just tell her."
"No! Are you crazy?" James pushed away from the table. "Nice, Eavan. Nice going."
Greta looked back and forth between them as they glared at each other. Eavan, the middle child. Her sensible, dependable girl. James, her unshaven, bed-headed boy. Julia, the oldest, the absentee daughter, the workaholic, the one who called in the middle of the night not realizing the time.
"That's enough," Greta said, putting on her most serious expression. "What's going on?"
"Okay, well, we wanted it to be a surprise—" Eavan began.
"Eavan, you are such a pain in the ass," James interrupted.
"Easy now," Greta said, taking hold of James's wrist.
"Well, this is crazy, James. It's too much. We shouldn't have done it."
"Done what?" Greta asked. They ignored her.
"Something like this"—Eavan pleaded with her brother—"it's not the surprise that's the big deal. It shouldn't be a surprise. Plus—"
"Plus what?" James demanded.
"It's not our business, really. I was talking to Gary last night, and he agrees. It's not really our business."
"I'm going to kill you. I'm serious," James said.
"James, your sister is expecting a child."
"I think we should tell her, and if she thinks it's a bad idea, we'll cancel the whole thing." Eavan turned to Greta. "I don't know if we can cancel, really, but we'll figure something out. We'll handle it. Well, Julia will have to handle it I guess. At this point"—Eavan looked at her watch—"she's the only one who can handle it."
As Greta waited for her daughter's long preamble to end, as she looked back and forth between her children's flushed faces and the excitement that played in the air between them, she decided two things. First, whatever it was, they'd taken a big chance. It was something they'd thought about for a long time, argued about, probably decided on and re-decided a number of times before going through with it. Second, they were afraid.
"Spit it out, girl," Greta said. "I never heard such a speech in all my life."
"Seriously," James said.
"You shut up," Eavan said to James. "This was your big idea. It's your head if they hate it. Not mine."
"And if they love it," James pointed out.
"The Lord save us," Greta said. "Will someone just tell me what it is?"
Eavan got up and walked across the kitchen to where she left her purse. She drew out a long envelope. Even from across the room, even wearing glasses she was no longer used to, Greta could make out the airmail stamp on the upper-right-hand corner. She recognized the Irish postmark.
"What's that?" Greta asked, looking at the envelope as if she'd never seen one before.
"It's a letter," Eavan said, placing it on the table. Greta crossed her arms and leaned over to inspect it. She peered at it as if it were a specimen in a cage. She pushed her glasses up on her nose and leaned closer. Everything in her body, every nerve, every vein, every ounce of blood felt in that moment like it began and ended in the pit of her stomach. It's not what I think it is, Greta thought. Silly woman—now their nerves have gone and rubbed off on me. It's not what I think it is, because there's no way they would be that brazen. Had they found out somehow? Done an investigation behind my back? No. Not possible, not after all these years. It was the first big decision she and Michael had made as parents, and they'd stuck to it. Their story was simple. Michael had helped Greta and Johanna with their luggage when they boarded the ship in 1963. He and Greta quickly fell in love. They were careless, and Greta got pregnant with Julia. When they realized what had happened Greta and Michael moved in together, and Johanna went on to California. They've not regretted it a single day since. If the children wanted more information — too bad. There were things parents didn't have to explain to children. American parents explained everything to their children — why they're angry, why they're hurt, why they make every little itsy-bitsy decision. They explain and explain until the child is satisfied. Greta and Michael had explained only as much as they wanted to explain, and placed the rest firmly off limits. The children had an aunt and an uncle in Ireland and two uncles in Australia. Michael and Greta had emigrated from Ireland and would never go back.
"I can see it's a letter, Eavan. Why was it sent to me at your address?"
"We got in touch with them," James said, more tentative now that he'd seen Greta's reaction. "In Ballyroan. Johanna. Aunt Johanna, I guess. We wrote a letter, and she wrote back. So we wrote another letter to tell her about the party. We thought it might be a good excuse to, you know —"
"Excuse me?" Greta felt as if she were treading air. "I've told you a thousand times about your Aunt Johanna and Uncle Tom. They don't travel. Haven't I told you all of that? They can't leave the farm. And the house is tiny, so they can't have visitors. It's just the two of them there, and they don't have —"
"It's not the two of them, actually," Eavan said. "Johanna is married and has two sons, twenty-five and twenty-three. And Tom is still there. And you know, Mom, we're old enough now to have heard of B and Bs. Inns? Hotels? Come on. Besides, they built a new house more than fifteen years ago. Johanna says they have plenty of room."
"How do you know all of that?"
Eavan nudged the envelope closer to Greta. "We just thought we'd make it easier for you. Don't you think it's time? I mean, this is silly, isn't it? She's your only sister. Our aunt. Those boys are our cousins. There are flights between Shannon and New York half a dozen times a day. What could have happened that you can't get over?"
"Nothing happened. I've told you. They're busy with the farm, and we're—"
Eavan held up a hand to stop her. "Mom, please."
Johanna with two sons. Greta looked at the curtain and thought, That's a curtain. She looked at the clock and thought, That's a clock. Where had they moved the barn to? Greta wondered. And then: Why would they have moved the barn? Had they put the new house in the place of the old one or built it right alongside?
"So what does all this mean?" Greta asked, picking up the envelope and turning it over in her hands. It was addressed to Mrs. Greta Ward at Eavan's home address. The name on the return address said Mrs. Johanna Rafferty. I don't know any Johanna Rafferty, Greta wanted to say.
"Open it," said James. Outside on the street, a car slowed to a stop, and a moment later two car doors slammed.
"Has Julia been writing to her too?" Greta asked.
"It was a joint effort," James said. "Now open it."
"No," said Greta, and she held the envelope out for him to take. The light coming through the window dimmed and brightened again. She noticed a small drawing on the back flap of the envelope. Blue pen. A constellation. Orion's hunting dogs. Big Tom's nighttime map when the sky was dry enough to see the stars. Without wanting to or trying, Greta pictured the others: Monahan's whaling ship, the fisherman's beard, the donkey's tail. Not one of them real, Greta had learned long ago when Julia was taught about the stars in school. There are no constellations by those names, Julia had informed her plainly. Not in America, Greta had corrected her. Not that you can see from America, maybe, but in Ireland, yes. In Ireland they have the donkey's tail and Monahan's ship and Orion's hunting dogs. Stars were stars, Julia had said, no matter where you're standing. And besides, the constellations were made up anyway. Made up long ago by people who didn't know any better.
"Okay, Ma. Then I'm going to open it for you," James said. And as easily as he might have picked up a book in a bookstore and turned to the first page, he slid his finger under the flap and ripped it open. He removed the lined page, only one, and unfolded it.
"Here," he said, smoothing it out before he handed it over.
Greta took it without looking at it. "So they'll be here at four? Like the others? All of them? The sons and husband and all?"
"No, just Johanna and Tom," James said. "Julia's at the airport waiting for them as we speak."
Greta turned to find Eavan crying. Big, silent streams ran down her plump cheeks. She dabbed her face with one of the CON-GRADULATIONS party napkins Greta had picked up on clearance at the party store, not realizing until James told her that when they spelled it with a d, it was for a graduation, not a retirement. A play on words, he'd called it, and Greta had suggested that since there was only one word, it was more of a play on letters.
"We shouldn't have," Eavan said, pressing carefully around her eyes to avoid smearing her makeup. "I knew it, and I went along with it anyway."
"No, you shouldn't have," Greta agreed, and handed her a tissue.
Greta sank back in her chair and tried to absorb what she'd been told. Johanna was in New York, on her way to see them. Julia was picking her up at the airport. There was no meeting at Saks. Greta reached out for the water jug and filled a paper cup with water. She swallowed it in one long gulp and poured another. All the youthful energy she'd felt that morning shriveled, and now, feeling James's and Eavan's eyes on her, she felt far older than fifty-nine.
"You'll be happy, we think," Eavan stuttered. "You know. After."
Greta couldn't think of a single thing to say in response, and she felt she couldn't have responded anyway, her tongue as heavy as it was, her jaw as brittle. She ran her hand along the edge of the table as she stood. She could be back in Ballyroan, blind but ignorant of her blindness, Johanna just a blur bouncing up ahead, telling her to hurry it up, for God's sake hurry it up.
As the walls of her kitchen seemed to expand and contract, Greta's thoughts flew back, way back, to the day Padraic, Jack, and Little Tom had let her and Johanna join in on their game of dare. One by one they'd stood with their backs to the lip of the high sea ledge, the waves slamming against the rocks far below, and were directed by the others to move back, back, farther back. The challenge was in believing there was enough room behind for yet another step. When it was Greta's turn, she stood at the marked spot and waited for her brothers and sister to instruct her. "You've loads of room," they called as they urged her to take another step, but they couldn't control the wind, pushing her this way and that with no more effort than it took to push the tall grass, to bend it flat on its back. "That's the wind all the way from Canada," one of the boys had called, and another had corrected him: "No, from America."
And when she did fall—fear and dizziness overtaking her—the long journey from standing with her two feet planted on the hard ground to landing on her rear felt for split second like she'd really gone over. When she realized she was safe, she looked over her shoulder to face how close she'd been to death and saw that there were still a good ten feet between her and the edge. They'd been telling her the truth after all, and knowing she'd been safe all along made her feel as if her mother had swooped in and wrapped a blanket tight around her shoulders. She loved them then, felt guilty for not trusting them, for not knowing in her heart that they'd never let her fall.
Of the five of them, the Cahill children, the last family left in Ballyroan—Jack, Padraic, Little Tom, Johanna, and Greta—Johanna was the only one who wouldn't have stopped on her own. Barely bigger than Greta, a full eight years younger than Padraic, she'd taken every step backward as confidently as she'd taken the first. The rest of them had refused the final step, not believing they could back up farther without falling over the edge, except Johanna, who they had to call back.
"That's it," Jack had had to say at the final point. "You're at the edge. Now walk back toward us."