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Jamie hadn’t quite understood the significance of what was happening in Ireland until he, Mike the P.A., Kate from crafty, and Siobhan from accounting arrived at the ferry terminal at Holyhead. There were crowds and chaos like he’d never seen before. They were putting on extra boats, and everyone was talking to strangers.
Mike elbowed Jamie in the side. “You’ll never get to do anything this anonymous again. Better enjoy it.”
Jamie scoffed. “Better see who I can get it on with in the loo then, yeah?” He laughed, even though he’d never been the sort to do that. No, Jamie fell in love. Which he probably wasn’t going to get the opportunity to do tonight.
The boat, as they boarded it, was crowded and the experience communal. Someone handed him a rainbow flag and someone else chucked a handful of plastic beads at his head. Balloons were everywhere. When Kate told them all to check Twitter, Jamie had to sit down on the messy deck of the increasingly exuberant ferry in surprise at what he saw.
They weren’t only putting on extra boats; they were putting on extra planes. People were turning up at the airports, and the airlines — at least those in London and Boston and Berlin — were responding.
“I don’t understand,” Jamie said when Mike crouched down to see what was the matter with him.
“What don’t you understand?”
Jamie scrolled through the #HomeToVote tag for another few seconds and then held his mobile up for Mike to see. “Why does everyone care about us?”
It was Ireland. No one cared about Ireland anymore. Not even the Irish.
* * *
BY THE TIME THE FERRY docked at Dublin Port, Jamie was too wound up to feel tired even though it was nearly three in the morning and he’d gotten up at five the day before. Callum had texted him until midnight, keeping him up to date with news coming in and also words of fond encouragement. Jamie wondered for the thousandth time how Callum, not to mention his life, were real.
At the dock Jamie’s father met him at the same spot he always did when Jamie came home. Hugh Conway, like Jamie, wasn’t a tall man. Also like Jamie, he was all sturdy arms and broad shoulders. His brown hair, now turned mostly gray, was tucked under his knit cap. When he pulled Jamie into a rib-crunching hug, Jamie inhaled the smell of damp wool and the clean air of home.
“Glad you made it, Jamie-boy,” his father said into his shoulder.
Jamie loved his father and hoped he didn’t make his already complicated life any harder. Hugh Conway had been a Magdalene laundry baby, lucky enough to have been adopted out. Any record of his birth mother had been lost, but he loved the parents who had raised him. He had a wife and four children: Two girls, married with children of their own now, Jamie, and Jamie’s little sister, Aoife, who had Down Syndrome. Jamie knew that sometimes people, well-meaning and awful, offered his father sympathy — about his queerness or Aoife’s situation — as if his family wasn’t the sort anyone would want.
But a family was what you made it; Jamie’s father had told them all that their whole lives. His older sisters had careers and families. Aoife was happy, had a job in a bakery and a boyfriend. When Jamie had been bullied as a child, his father had taught him how to punch and then told him he never had to if he didn’t want. Jamie’s mother, Maureen, had raised her children to do right by each other and the rest of the world, as far as they could. She’d driven Jamie to countless auditions and come to every school play Jamie had ever been in. When he got the part in Butterflies and Fences, she'd cried with happiness and then phoned all their neighbors and cousins to share the news. When it came to parents, Jamie knew he couldn’t have done better.
“There’s tea in the flask if you want it,” Hugh said as they got in the car.
“Thanks.” Jamie fished the slightly dented container out of the cup holder, unscrewed the cap and gulped a too-hot mouthful gratefully. It had started to rain on the last leg of the ferry ride, and the wipers squeaked on the windscreen as his dad pulled the car out onto the road.
“Good ride?” Hugh asked.
“Yeah.”
“Your mother’ll be glad to see you.”
“Yeah.”
Jamie was glad when they lapsed into companionable silence. It was always like this when Jamie first got in. Quiet and easy, his father giving him time to get used to being home again. Jamie had worried the first time he had come back after moving to the UK for drama school that somehow home wouldn’t still be home. But as infrequently as he took them, trips to Dublin always grounded him.
Landing a part in Butterflies had been a dream come true. On set, Jamie could focus on the work. Away from it, he was realizing that he was scared more often than not. Not frightened, but uncertain of how to behave. What was he supposed to talk to his family or his friends about without sounding like a huge prat? The production office was making noises about a press junket and, ridiculously, attention from random people on the street had already started.
It had been cool the first time and embarrassing the second. Now it made Jamie feel awkward because people wanted some happiness out of meeting him that he had no idea how to give. As the headlights swept the dark road ahead, Jamie was glad for the break. The bustle of London started to fade in his mind. On the monotony of the road he was exactly who he always should have been: Absolutely no one, going home to see his family.
The dog, improbably named Vegetables thanks to the combined efforts of Jamie's nieces, started barking as soon as Jamie and his dad opened the front gate. When his mum came to the door, Aoife peering around her shoulder, the creature bolted out into the garden and ran happy circles around Jamie while the humans hushed him to be quiet before he woke the neighbors.
Maureen pulled her son in for a hug like he hadn’t been home for years, then bustled Jamie into the kitchen. The house wasn’t large, but it had never felt cramped, not even when Jamie had been in school and he, his parents, and his three sisters had all lived under the same roof.
The kitchen was warm. The old familiar lamp swung gently over the table, making the shadows on the wall sway slightly. The light fell on a needlepoint sampler, embroidered with a prayer, and on the kitchen table with the faint outline of water stains Jamie and Aoife were responsible for as children. The cushions on the chairs were a bit flat from years of use. At the window, lace curtains formed a creamy yellow barricade against the dark May night outside.
“I’m glad you made it back,” his mum said, stern like any Irish mother, though the corners of her eyes crinkled with her smile. She had the same blue eyes and thick dark hair as Jamie.
Jamie laughed. “You had several very specific threats as to what would happen if I didn’t.”
“And they worked, didn’t they? Do you want coffee?”
Jamie said no and thank you, because it was his mum. If nothing else, making movies was teaching him the ongoing value of courtesy. “Don’t figure I need to be awake to vote,” he added. If he was going to get through the next two days, he was going to need to pace his caffeine intake. “How’s Mary? And Beth and the kids?”
As his mum made them all breakfast, Aoife filled him in on the doings of their older sisters. Mary, who was thirty, lived in Cork with her husband and worked in hospitality. Beth was thirty-two and had married her high school sweetheart. She and her husband now lived a few streets over from Hugh and Maureen. Their daughters, Anne and Grace, the nieces responsible for naming the dog, were apparently quite put out that Uncle Jamie was going to be in town but they weren’t going to see him.
“You should call more often,” his mum reproved.
“I know. It’s been busy.”
“You want to tell us about it?” Hugh asked.
“Want to,” Jamie said. “Don’t really know how.”
“They nice to you, working you like that?” Maureen asked.
“Yeah,” Jamie said distractedly. “Yeah they...well Callum, he — is this weird?” He squinted at his dad. There were half a dozen DVDs of movies Callum had been in on the shelf next to the TV. Jamie knew, because he’d seen them all as a teenager. Multiple times.
“’Course it’s weird,” his dad said with a fond smile. “Now tell your mother the story.”
Jamie took a breath. “Okay, I screwed this up. Bad, like. And I’m totally not supposed to be here. But Callum, I don’t know, it’s like he feels important when he can do stuff for people, and when I said I was worried about how mad you were going to be if I couldn’t get here....”
“I can only respect your interests if you’re going to protect your interests,” Maureen said.
“Yeah,” Jamie blew by his mother’s constant bargaining about his bisexuality. She wasn’t wrong, and she did accept him, but it wasn’t always easy. “He made me get all the Irish kids on set together, figure out who had a plan and who didn’t, and then came up with a way to fix it for us. Made the director change the schedule and everything. So yeah. Everyone’s nice.”
Saying it out loud, Jamie knew it mostly made sense and yet didn’t quite. No one was that nice. He wondered, not for the first time, if Callum felt he had some stake in the vote. He wasn’t Irish, of course. But there were occasionally rumors about his sexuality if a person Googled hard enough.
The sky was growing lighter and the birds had started chattering up a storm. Jamie’s mother looked at the clock. “The polls are opening soon. Aoife, love, get your coat, we can drop you off at the bakery after you vote. Let’s get in line.”