‘We grew up assuming we’d have to leave,’ said Orla. ‘And, in some ways, that was what we wanted. I can hear people saying, “She could have stayed in Ireland,” and, yeah, we weren’t being persecuted or anything but, God, it was dreary. Besides, there were no jobs. Even though I’d done well enough at school, college was never really an option.’ She took a swig of her beer. ‘I remember people here being surprised that so many of us had left, and I used to say, “Listen, the surprise is that anyone stays.”’
They were sitting on rattan chairs in Drew and Orla’s backyard. The evening was mild, the air scented with lilac and sweet peas. In the near distance, someone was cutting grass. Despite the tranquil setting, there was an unfamiliar tension about husband and wife, a tightness to their shoulders, a wariness around their eyes. Kaitlin was puzzled by this because so far neither had said anything she hadn’t heard before.
This time, she’d made sure to tell Clay about her visit. He’d chosen not to join her.
Orla put down her bottle and continued. ‘We arrived in June ’86. I can see the day. The weather in Ireland had been miserable, but Boston was scorching. Within a couple of minutes, sweat was collecting along my spine, and I thought, This is it. This is the place for me. And I hadn’t even left Logan.’ She smiled and shook her head at the memory. ‘Up until then, I couldn’t have told you much about Boston. I’d wanted to go to New York. But Shay – my boyfriend back then, Shay Drennan – had a cousin in Allston, which meant we had a floor to sleep on. So Boston it was.’
This was new. Kaitlin couldn’t recall hearing Shay’s name before. She’d always had the impression that Orla had arrived with a gaggle of girls. Also, in earlier versions of events, the Allston cousin had belonged to Orla. She glanced at Drew, but his face gave nothing away.
‘All we knew about America was what we’d seen on TV,’ said Orla, ‘which meant I was expecting a cross between Hill Street Blues and The Waltons.’
‘You must have been disappointed,’ said Kaitlin.
‘Not a bit of it. The city was everything I’d hoped for. It was so . . . so American. Does that sound mad?’
‘Yeah, I think I know what you mean, though.’
‘Let me try to explain. If I was arriving now, the experience wouldn’t be so mind-blowing. The differences between Ireland and Boston have become less obvious. But back then? Back then everything was different . . . the high-rise buildings, the stores, the cops with guns, even the traffic lights . . . Oh, and the cars! In the 1980s, everyone here still drove those long, long cars. It was all Chevys and Oldsmobiles. I’d watch the traffic and laugh.’ She brushed back a strand of hair. ‘You wouldn’t believe the things I found exciting. Like CVS. Imagine being thrilled by a drugstore. The biggest difference, though, was the people. When I was growing up, Ireland must have been the whitest place on the planet. In my whole life, I’d only met two or three black people.’
Orla stopped for another drink. ‘I revelled in the differences. Most of us did. I remember going up the John Hancock tower one evening, watching the lights blinking across the city, and loving every inch of the place. Compared to Limerick, it was so . . . liberating. There was nobody to watch you or tell you how to live. You’ve no idea how refreshing that was.’
Kaitlin tried to imagine her exhilaration. She reminded herself that Drew’s wife had been eighteen when she left home. At eighteen, life should be filled with excitement.
‘Like I’ve told you before,’ continued Orla, ‘I was undocumented. I don’t recall that word being used, mind. “Illegal” was what people called me, but that didn’t colour their view too much. Once you were willing to work, folks were happy to let you. And, let’s be honest, I was helped by the fact that it was such an Irish city. There were networks in place, you know? At home, jobs were few and far between. In Boston, it was boom time, and there were “Help Wanted” signs everywhere.’
‘That’s how I remember it as a teenager,’ said Drew. ‘There was a real expectation that the good times would keep on rolling.’
Keen to steer the conversation back to Orla’s boyfriend, Kaitlin asked if he’d had a visa.
‘God, no. For most of us that wasn’t the way. In the main, people arrived on holiday visas and stayed. We assumed we’d get sorted, that somehow a green card would turn up. We had this notion that being Irish gave us a superior status. And the truth was, even if we’d gotten into trouble, we were less likely to be deported than someone from, say, Haiti or Mexico.’ She fingered the cuff of her chambray shirt. ‘Looking back, I suppose we understood white privilege before we’d ever heard the term. We knew that life was more straightforward for us.’
‘Did you stay with Shay’s cousin?’
‘No, we moved on pretty quickly. After a month or so, we found another place in Allston, near Packard’s Corner.’ Orla tipped her head towards Kaitlin. ‘Not a million miles away from where you live now, though nothing like your apartment, obviously. It was fairly seedy, and when I say there were a lot of us, I mean a lot. There were always at least seven or eight people in a two-bedroom place, with others coming and going. New people arrived every week. And some of them . . . well, talk about lost souls. It’s a miracle they managed to book a plane, let alone take care of themselves in America.’
As she spoke, the years fell away. The spray of fine lines around her eyes appeared to fade, and she became the young woman Kaitlin had seen in photographs: black curls frizzing in every direction, a splash of freckles across her nose, her mouth in a full-wattage smile. In those photos, she looked sharp and three-dimensional, even when everyone else was out of focus.
Drew was harder to gauge. While it would be an exaggeration to describe him as ill at ease, he was more tense than usual.
Still unsure where the story was heading, Kaitlin asked if Orla had ever been homesick.
‘At the risk of sounding like a total bitch, not often. I didn’t come from the happiest of homes. But, yes, there were days when I longed for a good natter with my mother. Back then, staying in touch wasn’t easy. A lot of the time, I had to call home from a phone booth on Comm Ave. You should have seen me with my pile of quarters.’
‘She was doing that when I met her,’ said Drew.
‘I probably asked if you had any spare coins.’ They both smiled.
After a short while, Orla had got a job minding children for a Brookline couple called the Whitmers. Meanwhile, Shay was working in construction – and doing well. He was clearing more in a week than either of his parents was earning at home.
Orla, who for the most part had been looking at Kaitlin, allowed another glance to slide in Drew’s direction. He gave a slight nod.
‘I haven’t spoken enough about Shay,’ she said. ‘In one way, everything between us was fine. But as the months went by, I worried that we were living in an Irish cocoon. And as much as I liked my fellow immigrants – some were the soundest folks you could ever meet – I was keen to hang out with different people.
‘Heidi Whitmer was a major influence on me. She was forever encouraging me to go places or to see particular movies or whatnot. Like, she knew I was keen on art and design, so she brought me to the Isabella Stewart Gardner and the MFA. That doesn’t sound like a big deal, but I was flattered. She also encouraged me to go to university. Shay took against her, though. He claimed she was filling my head with nonsense and that I was forgetting who I was.’
‘How did you react?’ asked Kaitlin, who could picture a young Orla striving to broaden her horizons while a jealous boyfriend attempted to hold her back. It was a potent image.
‘Not well. I said, “Listen, I didn’t come all this way to spend every waking hour with characters we could have met at home.” We argued for ages, and it was only then I realised he wasn’t enjoying America like I was. That he was one of the people who wanted to go back.’ She stopped for a drink and drained the bottle. ‘At that point – we’re talking the early summer of ’87 – I should have reassured Shay, met him halfway. Instead, I resented his attitude. I resented his dissatisfaction.’
‘You were incredibly young, though. What were you? Nineteen?’
‘Except I was old enough to . . . to be a better person.’
Drew rose from his chair. ‘Anyone for another beer?’
‘I thought you’d never ask,’ said Orla. ‘My throat’s dry from all this talking.’
Kaitlin was surprised to see that her own bottle was nearly empty. By rights, she should say no. The sun was slipping away, however, and she sensed that Orla’s story had a way to go. Presumably, it ended with poor Shay going home to Limerick, though why that should be such a secret, she didn’t know.
‘I’d love a beer,’ she said, ‘but it means I’ll have to stay the night. Is that okay?’
‘Of course,’ said Orla, patting the back of her hand. ‘There’s plenty of room.’
‘Three beers coming up,’ said Drew.
While Kaitlin messaged Clay to tell him about her change of plan, Orla was quiet.
‘I’ve wrestled over what to tell you,’ she said eventually. ‘We both have. And it’s important we give you the full picture.’
‘No, that’s fine. It’s fascinating, only . . .’ Only what? Kaitlin wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence and she was relieved when Drew returned with three bottles of Sam Adams.
‘So,’ said Orla, ‘it was around then that Shay began working for Wilson Brothers Construction. In those days, the brothers in the company title referred to the previous generation. Drew’s dad, Joseph, was the boss.’ She looked at Kaitlin. ‘Your father was in his early twenties and already heavily involved in the business.’
‘I’d just left high school,’ said Drew, ‘and I was finding my feet. We were all working on the same job. At the time, it was probably the biggest contract the old man had ever won. We were subcontractors on a housing development in Dorchester. And the thing about a contract like that is, if you prove your worth, you can be certain that bigger paydays will follow.’
‘That’s how we met,’ said Orla. ‘At a birthday party for one of the guys on the site. I was there with Shay. It was one of those crazy Saturday nights you only get when you’re very young. There were scores of people, all jammed into a tiny apartment, high on beer and weed. Everyone flirting like demons. You should have seen the state of us: all the girls wanting to look like The Bangles. Our hair was biiig.’ She placed her splayed hands about six inches from her head. ‘And all the guys were thinking they were Mickey Rourke. Somehow, I got talking to Drew.’
‘We hit it off immediately. I remember we went out to the stoop . . .’
‘. . . to “get some air”,’ added Orla. ‘Everyone was so blitzed, I doubt Shay even noticed I was gone.’
Kaitlin turned the beer bottle in her hands. She could picture the party – smell it, almost. The sweat and hormones and sickly eighties perfume. ‘Did you know Shay was working for Drew’s dad?’
‘Not to begin with. They were co-workers as far as I was concerned. We sat there, chatting about this and that. Someone played “Livin’ On A Prayer” over and over again, and everybody was singing along. Jesus, the noise. It was banging through the walls.’
‘Gradually,’ said Drew, ‘the chatting became flirting. We went for a walk and . . .’
‘. . . the flirting became kissing.’
‘We knew straight away. Well, I did.’
‘We both did. I thought he was the finest thing ever.’
Drew gave Orla his number, and a few days later they met again.
‘Going back to the apartment was tough,’ she said. ‘I kept wanting to drop Drew’s name into the conversation. That’s what it’s like, isn’t it? When you know, you know.’
Once upon a time, Kaitlin had wondered what Orla saw in Drew. A green card, her mother would probably have said. But that was too simplistic. As she got older, she saw how evenly matched they were. It reminded her of how, as a kid, she’d automatically thought the tanned blonde girls were the pretty ones. It was years before she recognised the subtleties that made the quirkier girls more attractive. So, yes, Orla was the more immediately glamorous of the pair, but Drew with the short neck, square body and slow laugh was in every way her equal. His quiet intelligence and pure, practical kindness set him apart.
‘When did you break up with Shay?’ she asked.
‘That . . .’ started Orla.
‘. . . wasn’t what happened,’ said Drew.
Silence fell between them. The trees at the bottom of the garden were in silhouette now, the sky a heavy shade of blue.
The silence lengthened.
At last, Orla spoke. ‘I was getting together the strength to tell Shay. I wasn’t going to mention Drew. I reckoned I’d fall back on the old clichés: we’d grown apart, we wanted different things . . . because in many ways they were true.’
‘Surely he was going to find out?’
‘We were going to say we only hooked up afterwards. I know, I know. It wasn’t the most inspired of stories. At the same time, I was trying to sort out the practicalities. Splitting up with Shay meant moving out of the apartment and finding somewhere new to live. I’d arranged to get a bit of floor space with a girl I knew over on Kelton Street. I was all ready to go. That was when—’
‘To give you a clearer picture of what was happening,’ said Drew, ‘we were working long hours on the site. Crazy hours. Dad kept stressing that if we did well and finished on schedule, there’d be better days ahead. I can’t say that corners were cut, but we put in longer days than I’d expect anyone to work now. Don’t get me wrong, Dad was a great guy, but when it came to growing the business, he tended to lose perspective.’
A picture of her grandfather, Joseph, entered Kaitlin’s head. She could see him in this very garden, a broad-shouldered man with huge hands and the sort of booming laugh that had seemed obligatory among men of his generation. He’d called her sweetheart and teased her about her red hair. ‘The most Irish of us all,’ he’d said, meaning it as a compliment. He hadn’t understood that looking Irish meant having blue-white skin and a face like a dumpling, thin pale lips and thick freckled arms. She’d been seventeen when he died. That had been the first time she’d seen her own father cry. The second time had been when they’d talked about Stella’s death.
‘What happened?’ she asked.
Orla pressed her palms together. ‘There was an accident. Shay was working on the roof of an apartment building . . . and he fell.’
‘I wasn’t there at the time,’ said Drew.
‘Because he’d bunked off to meet me.’
‘I don’t know exactly how Shay came to fall. I do know an ambulance was called straight away, the fire service too. They did everything they could. But the poor guy died almost instantly.’
Kaitlin inhaled with surprise. A moment ago, she’d been visualising a lost era when girls wore a pound of hair gel and guys wore top-to-toe stonewashed denim. In an instant, those carefree images had been swept aside.
‘Shit,’ she said. ‘That’s awful. I had no idea.’
‘They took him to the hospital,’ said Drew. ‘But it was too late.’
Recounting what had happened was costing him some effort. All the same, when Orla went to speak, he gently waved her away.
‘When I got back to the house, Dad was at the hospital. Mom was sitting at the kitchen table, chain-smoking. Kevin and Susan were there. Everyone was twitchy.’
‘Wasn’t that the summer my parents got married?’ asked Kaitlin.
‘They’d got back from their honeymoon in Aruba the day before. What a welcome home, huh? We were all shocked. I asked if anyone had been in touch with Shay’s family. Kevin wasn’t sure. Then I asked about Orla. “He has a girlfriend,” I said. “Has anyone told her?” I already knew the answer. We’d been together until a half-hour before. Without thinking it through, I said, “I can find her.”’
‘And that’s what he did,’ said Orla. ‘We went to the hospital. It was so bizarre. Jesus, I’ll never forget it. There were people swarming around: doctors, nurses, cops, a priest. I could barely talk. They must have thought I was a complete eejit.’
Drew paused for a drink. ‘If anyone was taken aback to see the two of us together, they didn’t say.’
‘I was upset, obviously . . . but, to be honest with you, my head was in about fifty different places. I’d been going out with Shay since I was fifteen. I’d also been a day or two away from breaking up with him. And when he’d fallen to his death, I’d been fooling around with someone else. I felt guilty, as if I’d pushed him. Everyone was asking questions – “Does he have any family in the United States?”, “Do you have a number for his parents?”, “Will they want his body returned to Ireland?” The only person I could think of was Clem, the cousin we’d stayed with when we first arrived. Thankfully, he took charge because I’d have been hopeless.’
Kaitlin noticed tears in Orla’s eyes.
‘In the middle of all of this,’ said Drew, ‘there I was, mooching around, not knowing what to do. By that point, Dad was panicking. Even though the regulations weren’t nearly as tight as they are these days, the cops were involved. I figured he was worried about safety violations. I was wrong. What worried him was that Shay was undocumented.’
‘Would that have been a big problem?’ asked Kaitlin.
‘It wasn’t as much of an issue as it is now. There’d been a crackdown a year or so earlier, though, and the law had been tightened up. The thing was, the company was in line for more government contracts so . . .’
‘You didn’t want to be the guys who played fast and loose with the regulations?’
‘You got it.’
‘What did your father do?’
‘Lied, basically. He insisted that, as far as he knew, Shay had been legit. He pointed out that he’d given the company a social-security number and all the rest of it. Now, everyone knew there were lots of ways of getting a social-security number. It was no harder than getting a fake ID. There wasn’t any comeback, though, so the excuses must have worked.’
‘And Shay? Was he buried here?’
‘No,’ said Orla. ‘One of his brothers came over from Limerick and took his body home. There was a row because everyone, including my parents, presumed I’d go back. My mam didn’t speak to me for ages afterwards. She said all the neighbours took a dim view of my behaviour.’ For a moment, she faltered. ‘And Mrs Drennan, Shay’s mother, was very sour towards her. There I was, she said, living it up in America when my boyfriend was in Mount Saint Oliver’s. You can guess her reaction a few months later when I called to say I was getting married. Mrs Drennan is dead now, but she never spoke to me again. As she saw it, I married into the family that killed her son.’
‘If you’d gone home for the funeral, would you have been able to come back to Boston?’ asked Kaitlin.
‘Considering I’d arrived a year earlier on a three-month visa, there wasn’t a prayer I’d get in again.’
‘That was what worried me,’ said Drew.
Kaitlin’s forehead throbbed. She was trying to summon an appropriate response. A proper family response. Something empathetic. Unfortunately, all she had were lawyer-like questions. ‘Were there other undocumented workers on the site?’
‘Several,’ said Drew. ‘They were told to lie low for a while. A couple got work elsewhere. A couple more came back. If you’re wondering whether the company kept hiring undocumented guys, the answer is yes. Everyone did.’
Kaitlin thought of the Immigration Reform Alliance of America’s website. She’d been a frequent visitor in recent weeks. In particular, she recalled the section that criticised employers for ignoring American workers in favour of cheaper foreign labour. She was afraid to ask about Wilson Brothers’ practices now.
For a short while they sat in the dark, each captured by their own thoughts. The only sound came from the distant swoosh of traffic and the occasional whine of a neighbour’s dog.
Orla was first to speak. ‘Those first few weeks were difficult. I felt so bad about Shay, about everything. And we were scared of anyone seeing us together. After that, though . . . if anything, we became closer. We met up as often as we could. Then, shortly before Christmas, Drew asked me to marry him.’
To begin with, Drew said, his parents weren’t keen on the idea. Gradually, however, they changed their minds. Others were more hostile.
‘When your mother heard the news, she cornered me,’ said Orla to Kaitlin, a tear dropping down one cheek. Drew reached over and squeezed her hand. ‘Not unreasonably, she didn’t believe I’d only started seeing Drew after Shay’s death. The rest of her comments . . .’ She hesitated, and Kaitlin saw that she was trying to be tactful. ‘Let’s just say they were less reasonable. She accused me of setting out to snare him. I was the scheming older woman taking advantage of Drew and his family. No matter how much I protested, she wouldn’t listen. That set the tone for our relationship, I suppose.’
Kaitlin had a sense of pieces slotting into place. Seen in this context, her mother’s microaggressions towards Orla made sense. Susan valued her hard-won respectability. Social ambiguity scared her. Orla was a reminder that even if the family money wasn’t exactly dirty it was tarnished.
‘We got married the following April,’ said Drew, ‘right before my nineteenth birthday. It wasn’t a big occasion. We were very young, and Orla’s family were three thousand miles away. All my friends joked that I was the only eighteen-year-old Irish guy in history to marry a woman who wasn’t pregnant.’
‘Even my mother asked when the baby was due,’ added Orla.
‘For years, Shay was barely mentioned. If anyone referred to Orla’s arrival in America, they tended to do it in a light-hearted way.’
‘But with my mother there was always an edge,’ said Kaitlin.
‘You could call it that,’ said Orla. ‘Or you could call it distaste.’ She shook her head. ‘Sorry, that’s going too far. Most of the time she’s cordial, but Brian’s job has dragged everything up again.’
‘That and my questions about the family’s background.’
‘I hope,’ said Drew, ‘you can see why I was wary of getting involved. You were looking for a story from a hundred years ago, when the story was right in front of you.’
‘I understand.’
‘After you left that evening, we argued.’
‘I reckoned we should get everything out in the open,’ said Orla.
‘I didn’t agree.’
‘And then, the other night, your mother called. She lost her cool. I knew she’d be super supportive of Brian. He’s her son, after all. There was more to it than that, though. It’s like she’s frightened I’ll stick my nose in. That I’ll confront him and say, “Lookit, pet, your family thought nothing of employing undocumented people and lying about it. I should know. My boyfriend was one of them.”’
She spoke in an exaggerated Irish accent, and Kaitlin couldn’t help but smile. She swallowed the last of her beer. ‘So why did you decide to talk to me?’
‘I still wasn’t one hundred per cent sure,’ said Drew. ‘But, on balance, it’s best that you know. It might help you grasp some of your mother’s . . .’
‘. . . issues,’ finished Orla. ‘You’re an adult. You’ve been through a lot lately. You deserve better than the rest of us whispering in corners and throwing jibes you can’t understand.’
Kaitlin’s head was whirring. She was struck by how little she knew about her family – and about the issues simmering just beneath the surface. Briefly, she wondered if she should reassess what she was doing. No, she decided. If anything, this made her more determined to press on. There must be other family stories, and she would like to hear those too.
‘I take it I’m to pretend this conversation didn’t take place?’ she said.
‘Oh, God, yeah,’ replied Drew. ‘We don’t want to make everything worse.’