Charleen and Pamela looked eagerly out of the plane window. Thousands of feet below them was Ireland. From the air, it looked like a pretty green patchwork quilt. It really was emerald, Charleen thought in surprise. Grandma was always talking about how green Ireland was. And how friendly the people were.
On St Patrick’s Day, she would have a sip of sherry and get tears in her eyes. She would cry a bit. ‘I’m sorry I never went home to Ireland,’ she’d say sadly.
‘Chicago is your home now,’ Charleen’s mom would say firmly. Charleen’s mom, Sandra, had never wanted to visit Ireland. She preferred Florida. She liked the sun.
‘I don’t get much vacation time,’ she said. ‘And I don’t want to spend it in the rain.’
‘It rains in Chicago,’ Grandma would argue. ‘It snows too. It doesn’t snow that much in Ireland.’
Charleen wished her mom and Grandma wouldn’t argue so much.
As the plane landed at Dublin airport, Charleen began to feel really excited.
‘We’re in Europe!’ she whispered to Pamela.
The two girls grinned happily at each other.
‘I hope the McDonnells are nice people,’ Charleen said. That was the only scary thing. She’d never met her Irish family. Now she’d be stuck with them for two weeks.
‘They sounded nice in the letter your granny’s sister sent,’ said Pamela.
‘Yes,’ said Charleen nervously. Grandma had told her lots about her cousins. They sounded very different from the Chicago side of the family. Grandma said they were very clever girls and had been to France and everything.
Emer was wearing new jeans and high boots. She had put half a can of hairspray in her blonde hair to make it sit flat. Her make-up had taken an hour. It was very hot in the airport and her high heels were killing her. But she didn’t care. She looked good. That was the most important thing.
Laura was wearing her old jeans and flip flops. If Emer was going to dress up to the nines, she would dress down. Whoever said that twins did everything the same was mad.
Elsie and Kim looked as if they were going out to a party. Elsie was in her Sunday best outfit and was carrying her good white handbag.
‘Mother, sit down,’ said Kim.
‘It would be rude to sit down,’ said Elsie. Despite the house being done up, she was still nervous.
‘Mother, they’re two eighteen-year-old girls,’ said Kim crossly. She was nervous too. ‘They could be ages getting their luggage. I wonder where Clodagh is?’
They needed two cars to bring everyone and the luggage from the airport. Clodagh said she’d come to give moral support.
Two very ordinary looking girls in jeans came out of the arrivals door. They were pushing a big trolley. They looked around and saw the big sign that Emer had made.
‘Welcome Charleen and Pamela,’ it read in big writing.
‘That must mean us,’ said Pamela, seeing the sign.
The Dublin branch of the family smiled at the visitors.
‘Hi,’ said Charleen nervously. ‘Are you the McDonnells?’
‘Yes,’ said Kim. ‘Welcome, I’m your aunt Kim.’
She was pleased to see that both girls looked friendly and unsure. They weren’t wearing lots of expensive clothes. They looked like ordinary teenagers.
Elsie was pleased to see that Charleen looked a little like Maisie.
Emer was pleased that the American girls looked very normal, not like movie stars at all.
Laura was pleased that they were wearing jeans. She didn’t want to spend two weeks with people who wanted to dress up all the time. It was bad enough sharing with Emer. Emer put on make-up to answer the front door.
Why were they all standing around like dummies? Clodagh wondered. Somebody had to take action. ‘Lovely to meet you!’ she said and hugged Charleen. Then she hugged Pamela. ‘I’m Clodagh. Which is which?’
There was nobody like Clodagh to break the ice, Laura thought.
Soon, they were all smiling and hugging. It was as if they’d known each other for years.
There was a big discussion on which car everyone was to go in. Clodagh took charge again. ‘Right,’ she said. ‘Emer and Charleen can go with me. We’ll take half the bags. Pamela and Laura can go with Kim and Mum. Right?’
Charleen had never seen a car as old as Clodagh’s before.
‘Hey, this is cool,’ said Charleen. ‘A classic car.’
‘Yeah, right,’ said Clodagh as she crunched the gears. ‘A classic car.’ She opened the window to let some air in. ‘It’s got classic air conditioning too.’
‘What’s that?’ asked Charleen politely.
‘No air conditioning!’ laughed Clodagh.
Emer giggled and so did Charleen. Everyone relaxed. Everything was going to be fine.
At the house, Kim put the kettle on and the twins showed the visitors where they were going to sleep.
‘This is normally the dining room but we fixed it up for you,’ said Emer.
The visitors looked around at the warm red walls. They looked at the huge watercolour pictures that Clodagh had got for next to nothing from her friend.
They admired the floaty cream curtains and the sofa bed covered in the same cream material. Clodagh had even dyed sheets and pillowcases to go with the walls.
‘I love this house,’ said Charleen. It was so different from her home in Crystal Lake. Her Mom and Grandma liked pale colours. But this Irish house was really unusual. Artistic, that was the word for it. The dining room was like a painting and the bathroom was something else. Charleen hoped she’d get a chance to lie in the bath and light all the tiny vanilla candles that surrounded it. She could lie back and look up at the rich blue walls. It was supposed to look like the sea and it really did.
The kitchen made her think of the pretty pale buildings in Miami, Florida. Charleen decided she’d take a photo to show her mom and Grandma. They’d love the McDonnells’ house.
‘Do you like Italian food?’ asked Emer.
‘Sure,’ said Charleen.
‘Great. We’re going to an Italian restaurant tonight to celebrate your visit.’
Charleen smiled with pleasure. Her Irish family were so nice. The way Grandma had described them, she didn’t think they’d be friendly. But they were so warm and kind.
The Italian restaurant was lively and good value. The family sat at one long table and everyone talked loudly. Clodagh told them all that she was going to do part-time interior decoration.
‘She’s so clever,’ said Dan proudly.
Emer said she’d help out as long as she didn’t have to use the wallpaper stripper.
‘I’d love to do something like that,’ said Charleen. ‘I don’t know what I want to do in college.’
‘I thought you were going to be a dentist like your mother,’ said Elsie sharply.
‘Mom’s not a dentist,’ said Charleen in surprise. ‘She works with a dental surgeon but she’s a nurse. She would have liked me to be a dentist but I flunked chemistry and biology.’
Elsie’s eyes were like saucers.
‘I was sure she was a dentist. Tell me, your uncle is a doctor, right?’
‘He is a doctor but not a medical doctor,’ Charleen said. ‘He works in a laboratory.’
Elsie’s eyes got even bigger. What had Maisie been telling her all these years? That Sandra was a dentist and Phil was a doctor. It hadn’t been true at all. She was about to say something about all of this when Kim looked at her.
‘Mother,’ she said firmly, ‘would you like garlic bread?’
Elsie looked back at Kim. She could tell what Kim was really saying: let’s forget all about doctors, dentists, school principals and big houses and posh estates.
‘I’m so hungry,’ she said. ‘I’d love garlic bread.’
That night, Kim sat at her dressing table and rubbed cream on her face.
‘I thought Elsie’s eyes were going to pop out of her head,’ said Tom with a smile. ‘She looked amazed when Charleen said her mother wasn’t a dentist. It sounds like your Aunt Maisie was telling the odd fib too.’
Kim smiled as if she’d known all along. ‘No harm was done,’ she said.
Tom thought of all the hassle of redecorating the house. He thought of how upset both Kim and Elsie had been. He thought of Kim worrying herself sick about the visitors before they came. He smiled back at his wife. ‘No harm was done,’ he agreed. ‘And aren’t Charleen and Pamela lovely girls?’
‘Lovely,’ Kim said. ‘It’s a pleasure to have them here.’
It was a warm afternoon a week later. The four girls had gone off into town to shop. They were all excited about buying T-shirts like ones in a Madonna video. Elsie thought it was dreadful the way popstars were taking holy names now. What was the world coming to?
She finished weeding the flower bed under the window. The bed on the other side needed weeding too. That was the thing about weeds. Once you finished one side of the garden, the other side was full of weeds again. Her knees didn’t hurt a bit any more because she had a weeding stool. She sat on the stool and used the weeder with the long handle. A bee buzzed by lazily. On the wall, a robin sat and looked at Elsie. She made a tweeting noise to the robin. He put his tiny head to one side and looked at her with his shiny black eyes. Elsie felt happy. She loved gardening. Tom had given her a bit of the garden shed to use for seedlings. She planned to grow bulbs in there in the winter.
Maisie sat in the den in the house in Crystal Lake, Chicago. She had her old photo album on her lap. Maisie had felt sad ever since Charleen’s phone call from Dublin.
‘I’m having a great time, Grandma,’ Charleen had said happily. ‘I love it here. Everyone’s so nice to us. And Auntie Elsie is just like you, Grandma. She’s really kind.’
Maisie opened the first page of the album. The pictures weren’t anywhere near as good as the modern pictures that Phil took with his camera. With that, you could have big photos or small ones or any size you wanted. But Maisie still loved the old ones best. She stared at a hazy black and white shot of herself and Elsie. She had been around eighteen, so Elsie must have been seventeen. They were posed in their best dresses outside the farmhouse. Behind them, their mother’s rambling rose climbed up the wall. Their father’s old sheep dog sat at Elsie’s feet, enjoying the sun. Maisie’s dress had a big full skirt and she had a flower brooch on her collar. She could remember that dress as if it was yesterday. It had been a rich French blue with a white collar. Elsie’s had been pale pink with a cream collar.
They looked so young and so happy. Funny, she couldn’t remember where they were going all dressed up. Or who had taken the picture. Elsie would remember, she was sure. Elsie had the best memory.
They used to talk about the old times in their letters. Elsie would write, ‘Do you remember the day we went to McNiffe’s for the hay making? You said you were in love with young Billy McNiffe and he got all shy?’
And sure enough, Maisie would remember it. She could almost smell the hay and the fun they had when it was dinner-time. The woman of the house would come down the field with the dinner. Everyone would be mad with hunger. There would be hot, sweet tea, thick homemade bread and plenty of cold meat.
Everyone would sit and eat. They’d laugh and joke. Life was so simple then. Elsie didn’t write about the old days anymore. Her letters had been sadder since Ted had died.
Maisie felt a pang of guilt. She should have gone back to Ireland for her brother-in-law’s funeral. She should have been there for Elsie.
The tears started to fall down her face. She and Elsie had been so close. And now look at them. They wrote letters out of habit. They talked about houses and jobs and clever grandchildren. Not about the real things in life. They hadn’t talked on the phone since last Christmas. That had to change, Maisie decided suddenly.
She got to her feet and went to the phone in the hall. She sat down at the small table and thought for the hundredth time that the hall furniture was getting tatty. It wasn’t that she couldn’t afford to replace it. Her late husband’s insurance policy had left her well off. But she was nervous of spending the money. She’d never been used to spending. Now, she was worried about the kids. Sandra had always had trouble getting alimony out of her ex-husband. Phil never had a cent. He was hopeless with money, even thought he got well paid in the university. Maisie liked to think that when she died, her children and grandchildren would be well looked after.
But why not spend the money now? Why not visit her beloved sister in Ireland? Didn’t they always say at home, ‘There’s no pockets in a shroud’. The kids would manage without every dollar of the insurance money. They never asked for it anyway. Maisie had a right to use her own money.
It took Maisie a while to find the number and a bit longer to dial it.
‘Hello,’ said a tired, old voice at the other end.
Maisie felt the tears behind her eyes again. When had her sister started sounding so old?
‘Elsie, love,’ she said hoarsely. ‘It’s me, Maisie. I don’t suppose I could come for a visit?’
‘Oh Maisie,’ said Elsie. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’