Kaitlin soon understood why some people spent years piecing together their ancestors’ stories. The problem wasn’t a lack of information. The problem was that you could drown in information and still not find what you were looking for. There were countless websites as well as scores of message boards, books, pamphlets and videos. Helping people to learn more about themselves was a lucrative business.
Family trees were unwieldy, and she didn’t have time to explore every branch. What she would have to do was give the tree a shake and hope that something interesting fell out. The task was made more challenging by her decision not to consult her parents. She didn’t want to cause friction. Not yet anyway. Orla had been right about her mother. She was enthusiastic about Brian’s new job. ‘Who knows where this will lead?’ she’d said, as though the West Wing was beckoning.
Kaitlin started her search by trying to find out more about her paternal grandparents, both of whom had died when she was in her teens. She knew they’d grown up in South Boston and had met and married there. Fortunately, the 1940 census was available online, and she was able to track down Joseph Andrew Wilson and Shirley Bridget McDonagh.
Finding them was one thing; learning more about them was a stiffer challenge. The enumerator had the worst handwriting she’d ever seen, making the census sheets all but impenetrable. Then again, he – she was convinced the writing belonged to a man – couldn’t have predicted that seventy-nine years later someone would be poring over an online version of his work, zooming in and out to try to read the squiggles and loops.
In 1940, her grandfather had been five years old. Her grandmother had been two. They’d lived just streets apart. All four of their parents had been born in the United States, as had many of their neighbours. The records also showed a sprinkling of more recent immigrants. While Kaitlin had expected to see people born in Ireland, or ‘Eire’ as the form called it, she hadn’t anticipated the neighbourhood’s diversity. Not far from the McDonaghs and the Wilsons, there were families from Italy, Russia and Armenia. Another man had been born somewhere she couldn’t quite decipher. Newfoundland, perhaps.
Her mind felt sharp as she examined the rows of names and occupations. Sharper than it had in months. She tried to picture what it had been like on those streets when the Second World War was young and FDR was in the White House. Had people spoken in their native languages, or had they quickly picked up English? Had there been many cars? What had they eaten for dinner? What had they learnt at school? Had they all rubbed along together, or had they formed national cliques?
Further examination revealed that her great-grandfather Wilson had been a labourer, while her great-grandfather McDonagh had been a baker. He’d been called Cornelius, and in 1940 he’d been aged thirty-six. His wife, Margaret, had been three years younger.
Kaitlin decided to follow the McDonagh side of the family. Her choice was based on a hunch. Cornelius and Margaret McDonagh sounded a shade more Irish than Peter and Helen Wilson. With any luck, this meant they were only a generation or two removed from Ireland.
‘I remember that house in Southie,’ said Drew. ‘Mom took us visiting all the time. Her parents must have spent forty years there. Not that I ever heard them referred to as Cornelius and Margaret. They were Con and Meg.’
He was looking at the census printouts given to him by Kaitlin. If she was reluctant to involve her parents, there was no reason to avoid Drew. She had the feeling that, of all the Wilsons, he would understand.
Beside him at their large kitchen table, Orla stroked her coffee mug. A shaft of early-evening sunlight peeped through the cloud.
‘I’m sorry I never knew Con and Meg,’ she said. ‘They’d both passed away by the time I met Drew. But I get the impression they were quite the pair.’
‘They were,’ said her husband. ‘Even as a kid, I loved listening to them. They were great storytellers.’
‘What were the stories about?’ asked Kaitlin.
‘Mainly about characters who lived on the block. They had the gift of making everyone and everything sound entertaining. At that time, most of their neighbours were Irish.’ He winked at Orla. ‘I was indoctrinated at an early age.’
She laughed and gave his arm a playful punch.
‘It was a very sociable house. There were always people dropping by to shoot the breeze, and many of them were good for a spare quarter.’
In a way, thought Kaitlin, Drew and Orla’s home was similar. Although not as given to parties as her mother, they welcomed a regular stream of callers. At its best, it was a freewheeling place, a house where the kids brought friends home, confident that their parents wouldn’t embarrass them. There was an ease here that wasn’t always present in her own family home. Built by Drew back in the 1990s, Kaitlin remembered the house growing from a skeleton to a substantial building. While the exterior was a stately grey and white, the interior was a collage of colours. Orla had a weakness for the work of student artists, and the walls were covered with bright canvases. Then there were the photos: from baby pictures to high-school graduations to significant birthdays, every occasion was on display.
If Drew had an impressive appetite for work, the same was true of Orla. Where other women might have been overwhelmed by raising three children in a new country, she’d also attended college as a mature student. She’d trained to be a teacher and now taught fourth grade in Dorchester. She explained her industriousness by saying she’d left a country that had provided few opportunities for young women like her. In America, she’d been determined to grasp everything on offer.
‘Do you remember anything else about Con and Meg?’ asked Kaitlin.
Drew started, ‘Not really—’
‘We’ve got pictures,’ his wife interrupted. ‘Upstairs in an old box. Drew’s mother kept them all.’
He sent her a questioning look. ‘I hope you’re not going to bore Kaitlin with those photos. Besides, it’ll take you all night to find them.’
‘No, it won’t. I know exactly where they are. They’re at the back of the closet in Pearse’s room. I’m sure Kaitlin would love to see them. The old black-and-white ones are hilarious.’
Before anyone could say anything further, she was halfway up the stairs. When they heard her feet overhead, there was a subtle yet distinct change to Drew’s tone.
‘It’s fun to talk about the old days,’ he said, ‘but how far do you plan on going with this?’
‘Ideally, I’ll keep going until I find someone who arrived on the boat from Ireland. I want to be able to say, “Look, this is who we are.”’
‘Or “This was who we were more than a century ago.”’
‘I don’t think it’s that easy to flick away history. It matters.’ Worried she sounded too earnest, Kaitlin added, ‘Well, it matters to me.’
‘What if all you find is a lowlife?’ asked Drew. ‘A sheep stealer or some such?’
‘From what I’ve read, the sheep stealers were deported to Australia. America got the best and brightest.’
‘Well, there you go. What if the family tree is heavy with bores? What if the first person to make it here was poor but honest, had an unadventurous journey and a hardworking life?’ He illustrated his point with a loud snore.
‘I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. It’s not as if this is just about Brian. It’s about all of us. I want to know where we came from. What’s wrong with that?’
‘He’s not warning you off, is he?’ said Orla, from the kitchen door. She was carrying a dusty box that looked as though it had once held a pair of boots.
‘Of course I’m not,’ said Drew. ‘I’m asking Kaitlin what she’d like to find. Am I right?’
Kaitlin was about to reply, but Orla spoke first.
‘As far as Brian’s concerned, Drew and I aren’t quite on the same page,’ she said, putting the box on the table and sitting down again.
In truth, Kaitlin was finding Drew unusually difficult to decode. One thing was clear: he’d been keen to finish their conversation before Orla came back.
‘It’s not like I support the people Brian’s going to work for,’ he said. ‘I don’t. Only I’m not sure it’s our . . . my . . . place to get involved. If it’s what the guy wants to do, let him go. God knows he spent enough time fooling around.’
Kaitlin felt a dull pain at the back of her eyes. She hadn’t expected this. Unlike many marriages, where the couples appeared to be in a constant low-level battle, Drew and Orla were almost always in agreement.
What she couldn’t dispute was Drew’s assessment of Brian. Until he’d found his calling with Mitch O’Leary, Kaitlin’s brother had been without any obvious ambition or purpose. He’d underperformed at college and had bounced from job to job. His amiability meant everyone had indulged his behaviour. ‘He’s a great kid,’ they’d say. ‘He just needs to find his way.’ Even though she’d never admitted it, this had rankled with her.
By contrast, her life had been one of clear expectations and outcomes. Her academic record had been impeccable; she’d aced her law exams before securing a job with one of the city’s most prestigious firms. In her personal life too, she’d made sound choices. Not that she’d always done exactly what she wanted. But, as her mother liked to say, people who followed their heart usually did so with someone else’s money. (And, yes, Kaitlin was aware that her path had been smoothed by her family’s prosperity.)
For years, her father had hoped Brian would join the family construction business. It had been plain to everyone except Kevin that this was never going to happen. Thankfully, Drew’s sons, Liam and Pearse, looked like they’d carry on the tradition. The difference was that both would finish college first.
‘Anyway,’ said Orla, opening the box and sifting through its contents, ‘Brian’s decision is beside the point. We’re looking at family photos. That’s all. And I promise you, there are some gems in here.’
The first few photographs weren’t especially old. Many were from the 1970s. Hair was very big or very long, sometimes both. People smoked and goofed around. They hugged each other and flipped the bird at the photographer. Nobody seemed concerned about their angles or catching the right light. Some of the most interesting pictures were of the children. There was Kaitlin’s dad, aged three or four, in striped overalls. Here was baby Drew, sitting in a stroller, a scowl on his chubby face. Oh, and there were Shirley and Joseph with all five children, their smiles as stiff as their starched Sunday clothes. The passage of time had discoloured the Polaroid so that Kaitlin’s grandmother had light green hair while everything else was in shades of mud.
‘Here you go,’ said Orla, plucking a small black-and-white image from the box. ‘This one shows Con and Meg. It’s from the 1940s, I think.’
Kaitlin examined the photo of her great-grandparents. In it, a neat man, who looked far too thin to be a baker, was staring at the camera as though slightly confused. Sitting on the stoop beside him was a woman in a flower-strewn dress. Her blonde hair was rolled at the front in a style Kaitlin had only ever seen in old movies. It would be an exaggeration to call Meg glamorous, but she was very pretty. ‘These are fantastic,’ she said. ‘Seriously. What a great collection to have.’ She passed the picture to Drew.
‘That’s them, all right,’ he said. ‘Looking at them in their prime, you’d have to say Con McDonagh was a lucky guy.’
‘You don’t know anything else about his background, do you? Or hers?’
‘Aha,’ said Orla, ‘it’s funny you should ask because look what I have here.’
The next image was larger. While not a formal portrait, some effort had gone into its composition. It appeared to be from the 1920s or 1930s when, Kaitlin guessed, not many people had owned a camera or even had access to one. It showed a younger Con and Meg. They were beside the beach, and with them were an older couple. The men wore large flat caps, and the women had wavy bobbed hair. All four had serious faces. When, she wondered, had it become mandatory to smile in photographs?
‘Who are the other two?’ she said.
Drew leant in. ‘Those are your great-great-grandparents.’
‘Their names are on the back,’ added Orla.
And so they were. In pale blue ink, the neat inscription read, The McDonaghs, Con and Meg, Ray and Bertha. July 1930. Kaitlin was fascinated. She was, she realised, looking for traces of herself.
‘Ray and Bertha McDonagh,’ she said. ‘What age do you think they were?’
‘I find it hard to be certain,’ replied Drew. ‘In those days, everyone looked old before their time. I assume they were in their forties, though.’
‘Which means they must have been born in the 1880s. Have you any idea where they came from?’
‘Not a clue.’
‘But I’m sure you can find out,’ said Orla, as she placed a hand on Kaitlin’s forearm. ‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’
In the days that followed, Kaitlin thought a lot about the photo. Con and Meg, Ray and Bertha. She needed to know more about the older couple. She also needed to jump back another generation. Orla had urged her to bring the picture home, but she’d decided against. It was too rare, too precious. She wished they’d store it more carefully. It was almost a hundred years old. An antique.
She thought, too, about what Orla had asked. The answer was, yes, she was enjoying herself. Something told her, however, that the question had been as much for Drew’s benefit as hers.
Ideally, Kaitlin would have spent more time searching for her ancestors, but the relentless nature of her job left few opportunities for hobbies or side interests. Frobisher Hunter was a large traditional law firm making efforts to refresh its fusty image. The aim, employees were told, was to maintain a reputation for reliability while also appealing to big tech and pharma. After all, the tech bros controlled the world: no one made serious money without them. And Frobisher Hunter was a serious-money sort of place. The firm had fifteen offices in the United States and was also expanding in Europe. Its lawyers were expected to hustle, but to do so with subtlety.
Occasionally Kaitlin opened her page on the company website and felt overwhelmed by how grown-up she looked. How sensible. How grey. If anyone else read the page, and she couldn’t see why they would, they’d learn that she worked in the business law department in Frobisher Hunter’s main office on State Street, that she’d graduated magna cum laude from Boston College Law School, and that she’d interned with the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office. What they wouldn’t learn was that, despite the firm’s prestige, she had lingering doubts about the job. Neither would they know that sometimes, when listening to her college friends’ tales of adventure, she was breathless with envy.
Every day, she considered talking to Clay about her family search. She would form the words then change her mind. She was beginning to worry that she’d left it too late. When she did speak, he would ask why she’d kept the project to herself, and she didn’t have a coherent answer.
With Brian, too, she avoided saying anything of substance. In the three weeks since the party, they’d had brief anodyne chats, but nothing that could be termed a conversation. She was wary of saying the wrong thing and she suspected the same was true of him.
She was stirring shrimp risotto and listening to a podcast about a failed tech company when Clay got home.
For the past eighteen months they’d lived in an apartment near Commonwealth Avenue. It was filled with IKEA furniture and dog-eared law books. While she would have preferred more space, she loved the neighbourhood: the mix of brownstones and triple-deckers, students and families, ethnic restaurants and neon-fronted liquor stores.
Kaitlin had met Clay three years earlier at a party. She’d been in her usual position, on the fringes, trying to look as if she was having the night of her life, when they’d got talking. Initially, she’d dismissed him as one of a type. Too slick. Too unwavering in his views. Nevertheless, she’d given him her number. To her surprise, he’d called when he’d said he would. To her even greater surprise, she’d quickly grown to like him. He was neither as self-assured nor as dogmatic as first impressions had suggested. It didn’t hurt that he was old-fashioned handsome, with wavy light brown hair and blue-grey eyes. By the end of their first proper date, she’d been charming him with everything she had. At the time, he’d just graduated from law school and was doing scut work at another of the city’s top-tier firms. That was where he remained, steadily, assiduously, climbing the ladder. If anything, Clay’s employers were even stuffier than hers.
He peeled off his suit jacket and threw it across one of the tall chairs beside the breakfast bar. She turned down the heat on the risotto and pressed pause on the podcast. Before she could say anything, he was speaking.
‘I met Orla downtown this afternoon.’
‘Oh?’
‘She was talking about how you’d called over the other night. “Isn’t it great to see the girl in such good form?”’ she said.
His Irish accent was famously lame, and Kaitlin smiled.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ he continued.
‘That I’d been to see Orla and Drew? I did. You were working late, remember?’
‘You know what I’m talking about, Kaitlin. There was Orla, rattling on about old photos and census records and whatnot, and I had to grin like a fool and pretend I was following her.’
Shit. ‘I see,’ she managed to say. ‘I was going to tell you about that only . . .’ Only what? When she’d run what she would say through her head, the conversation hadn’t started like this.
‘Do you want to put me in the picture?’ he asked.
She turned off the heat and leant back against the counter. Her first instinct was to curse Orla, but she’d asked her not to say anything to her parents or to Brian. She hadn’t mentioned Clay. A reasonable person would have assumed he knew what she was doing.
‘Okay, I should have told you. And I was going to, only the timing never seemed right. I thought I’d put everything in train first and then fill you in.’
‘Why?’
She began smoothing the front of her hair, running it between her index and middle fingers. ‘I wish I could give you a straight answer. It’s like it wasn’t important enough and it was too important, all at the same time.’
‘Have you any idea how insulting that is?’ said Clay. ‘How can something be too important to tell me?’
‘Sorry, that sounded wrong. It’s a family thing and I know you find my family a bit much so—’
‘Please don’t lay this on me. I’m not the one at fault here. Oh, and by the way, I still don’t understand what’s going on or who it is you’re looking for.’
She spent the next ten minutes explaining what she’d been doing and why. Rather than emphasise her own thirst for information, something she didn’t think he would understand, she focused on Brian’s new job. She wanted to make her brother squirm, she said. While she spoke, Clay stalked the room. He said little and barely looked at her. When he did, she noticed the patches of red on his cheekbones. They always emerged when he was annoyed, a slight flaw in his good looks. At last, he sat down.
‘I wish you weren’t so hidden away,’ he said. ‘You disappear inside your head, and I can’t reach you. I don’t think anyone can. The rest of your family are all yap, yap, yap, but for some strange reason, you feel the need to keep everything to yourself. You’ve always been like that, but lately you’ve gotten worse. Much worse.’
He was right. Kaitlin was at odds not just with her family, but also with her generation. She’d never been one for pouring out her heart. In the past, she’d been told that this self-sufficiency could come across as arrogance. What people didn’t realise was that she hated judgement. She liked to solve her own problems and answer her own questions without interference from others. Because she found it hard to confide in people, she didn’t have many close friends. There was, she believed, something lacking in her, some skill that other people acquired without thinking.
Once, a confrontation like this would have made her cry. Lately she hadn’t cried very much. She felt as if the tears were stored inside her, and that if she started to release them, she might not be able to stop.
Silence settled around them, the only noise the purr of the refrigerator.
‘I didn’t know I was that bad,’ she said eventually. ‘I’m sorry.’
He sighed. ‘Is Brian’s new job that big a deal? I don’t agree with the people he’s going to work for, but why should his background matter? I mean, is being Irish any different from being English or German or Swedish? Is it really that distinctive? When it comes down to it, you’re just another shade of white.’
‘I know, except to me it’s more complex than that. It’s . . .’ Her words ran dry.
Clay’s last name was Abbott. He assumed his ancestors were English but had never shown any interest in finding out.
‘By all means,’ he said, ‘try to find out more about your family’s history, but please don’t shut out the rest of us.’ He paused, as though something had just occurred to him. ‘What do your parents think?’
‘I haven’t told them.’
‘Don’t you think you should?’
‘I suppose.’
Clay shook his head. ‘I know you’ve had a difficult few months. We both have. But that’s no reason to behave like this. This isn’t how relationships work.’
Despite knowing that she was at fault, his comment irritated Kaitlin. It sounded so lawyerly. So smug. ‘Please don’t talk down to me,’ she said, as she resumed smoothing her hair. ‘It’s really not a good time for that.’
‘Okay, but what I can’t understand is why you don’t get help. Proper professional help. Whatever you were led to believe growing up, there’s no shame in it.’
‘I know there’s not.’
Did she really, though? Therapy wasn’t something the Wilsons did. They supported each other. They valued resilience. Shrinks were for other – lesser – families. What was more, she didn’t think that therapy would suit her. If she couldn’t open up to her partner, why would she talk to a stranger? Oh, and then there was the challenge of finding the right doctor. How many articles had she read about people who’d tried out three or four therapists before they’d found one who suited them? Kaitlin didn’t have time for doctor-shopping.
‘Will you do it, then?’ asked Clay. ‘For my sake as well as your own?’
‘I’ll see,’ she replied.
It wasn’t an honest answer, but right now it was the easiest one.