Chapter Three

The first thing I did, when I was satisfied the plane was indeed not about to explode, was order one of those nice mini bottles of French red wine. I couldn’t think of sleep. At best I hoped to knock myself out for a couple of hours. I just sat there stewing in the juice of Johnny’s betrayal, though. And then I would see the glamorous flight attendant and I’d remember Carmela. That would keep me busy ’til the picture of Johnny salivating over Portia McTavish would again appear. But it’s funny how things move along. As the plane crept over the mysterious Atlantic ocean, I felt my own fortune falling into place. It was almost as though I were waiting for this very thing to happen; like my whole life had been on hold while I raised the kids and now, here I was again. Me. Claire Breslinski, on my own, the way I’d known and loved me best.

When we were landing, the plane tipped cavalierly to one side. I held my breath but dared to peek from my squeezed-shut eyes and saw the dawn on the cockeyed little land squares. The notorious forty shades of green. I wasn’t prepared for a green that would reach inside me and make me soft. It tugged at my heart.

Shannon Airport was quiet after Kennedy. There were nothing but white people. I felt immersed in my tribe. Jet-lagged to the point of delirium, but with my red-headed, white-skinned tribe. Like a Jew after a long, first-time journey to Israel, I thought. Or a black American to Mombasa. I staggered around the shops bursting with shamrocks and golf caps. That was the worst of it. Finally I found an authentic Italian cappucino stand near the duty-free and I perched myself there on a comfortable high stool, ate soda biscuits with raisins in them, the best I’d ever had, really, then I’d alternately nod off and zing upright, berserk with caffeine, until they called my flight. I wondered what I would do if I ran into Temple Fortune, for this would be the sort of place you would run into him, hopping a flight over to London, on his way to LA. I knew he lived in County Cork. I remembered every word he’d ever said to me, casual or impertinent. I haven’t talked about Temple Fortune. It was one of those things that’d taken so long to stop monopolizing my life even though he had nothing to do with it, that I just didn’t even want to take it out and unfold its musky attic scent for fear of feeling pain like that again. Or loss. It was more like loss than pain. And more like sex than no sex. Even though we’d never had any.

It had happened, or, in this case, not happened, in Munich five years ago. The kids were small and I was thrilled to be away from them for the first time, working. I used to see myself as quite the dashing character when I was young and here I’d been feeling that way again, though I’d been perfectly happy as a retired mom, happy in my long skirts and touch of lipstick, hanging out at the grammar school, tying shoelaces at lunch duty, running to the supermarket or the more exotic 101st Avenue for homemade linguini and oozing mozzarella. At least I think I was happy. But then in Munich, there he was. And I’d never gotten over him. When I met him, those five years ago, he’d filled me with the most incredible longing and heat. I’m not inordinately wild about men. I mean, I’ve had my share and I particularly enjoyed my husband’s body when we first hooked up, but Temple Fortune, when he came into my life, had me writhing through the most encompassing lust and ardor I’d ever felt. If he would so much as stand near me, I’d get filled with such a sexual yearning I’d go to my bed and rock myself back and forth. I didn’t enjoy this. It was so strong, though. So overpowering. If he’d been the slightest bit forceful, he could have had me. But he’d left it up to me. And the kids were so young. I’d never felt important enough to destroy an entire family for a good roll in the hay. For that’s what it would have been. He’d put it to me. He’d said I was just out to use him. I didn’t want to marry him. Just get him to fall in love with me and then I’d go back to my family. He was right. What I’d wanted was exactly, I suppose, what I just knew Johnny was having now. A steaming, clandestine, illicit affair. Except mine hadn’t happened. I’d had my righteousness to keep me warm. And we know what the Bible says about righteousness. It’s like a bunch of old rags. What I hadn’t counted on, and how could I have known, was that I’d spend almost three years trying not to think of him.

Then I read in my Uptown dentist’s Eastern philosophy magazine, if you want to lose something, you’ve got to concentrate on it totally so it can have its day and then go. So I let myself concentrate on him, his face, the memory of his wrists, his voice. Eventually, it worked. Entire days went by without the yearning. Then, slowly, weeks. I’d just about gotten to what myself and I laughingly referred to as my golden trimester of non-thought, when all this happened. Okay, except for the portable sex bit but I mean for heaven’s sake, you’ve got to have something.

I wondered if he lived in southern Ireland anymore anyway. Most likely he’d moved back to LA. You’re probably thinking no wonder her husband took himself off to another woman. You’re probably right.

The hop to Cork was nothing and my luggage was waiting for me when I got to the carousel. I found the counter for my rental car and almost couldn’t breathe when the girl announced all she had left was a stick shift. “And how much will it cost, ballpark, for, say, two days?” I asked her. “Two hundred something pounds,” she told me. “Huh,” I said. I hadn’t had to drive a stick since a thousand years ago in India. “You’re awfully lucky to get it,” the good-with-people Irish lassie in plaid confided. “There isn’t another working car to be had from here to Skibbereen.”

Misinterpreting my horror for displeasure, she chirped, “Come on, let’s go have a look at it. It’s really cute. You’ll love it.”

I didn’t dare let on for fear she’d take it back and I’d be relegated to the bus.

“Can you tell me anything about Skibbereen?” I asked her as we made our way out to the open car park, me lugging my big bag on my shoulder, my camera bag around my neck like a horse harness. The sky was so big in every direction. It was all over the place. A group of Belgian kids straggled past us and joined the line for the bus into town. They had their backpacks and hemp-woven shirts.

“Well,” my girl said, steering me through the bumpers of rows of cars, “it’s a lively market town, isn’t it? Cows and pigs. I take it there’s quite a large arts and crafts community for such a small town. Only about three thousand.”

“What’s that smell?” I asked, trying to keep up with her. It was strong and pungent and unusual. Like farm fodder.

“What smell?”

I looked back at the troop of kids waiting there for the bus. They all looked so healthy and free.

“This is it,” she said, standing in front of an uninteresting-looking white car.

I imagined myself throwing my gear in the “boot” and fiddling with my mascara until she’d left the lot. When she would be out of earshot, I’d buck my way out of the parking area.

“You know what?” I said. “I’ll take the bus.” I gave her some sort of a lurching salute and strode away, feeling absurdly wonderful. The bus was just finished loading its passengers and I climbed aboard, plunked my measly three pounds over to the driver, sat beside a stringy woman in a starched and ironed lilac dress with a handmade lace collar and listened to her all the way to Skibbereen. She told me all about her misshapen broken foot that had mended so badly almost thirty years ago when her sister’d pushed her down the cellar stairs and then she held it out, twice, for me to admire. Oh, she told me lots of things. Where to go down the lane to Nancy’s slim-making class. And last but not least she pointed out the house of the lady where you could make a triduum to St. Jude the Impossible.

I was so relieved to be on the bus, not having to worry about driving on the left side, not worrying about maps and “petrol.”

There were horses in stone-fenced fields and tidy cement houses with flowers on sills. It wasn’t at all the way I’d thought it would be. Every window shone and wore white curtains. Was all of Ireland so clean? I’d imagined it more poor. The sky was filled with dashing clouds. I promised myself I wouldn’t go on about the bonny green hills but, forgive me, it was my first time there and it was such a green green. Before I became used to road signs in Gaelic and snatches of scenes from long ago, the road closed to a path in steep velvety moss on either side. Startled pheasant shot out in front of me. I thought of my mother’s un-American fruit and pheasant pie and I figured we must be getting close.

The center of town was a broad curved street, long and aplenty with doors. I suppose if I’d come in on another day, it would have been drizzly and unimpressive. But I didn’t. And it wasn’t.

It’s not a terribly big town. We’d driven through the two main streets, Bridge Street and Front Street, before I’d had a proper look around. There was a bicycle shop and a bridge over the River Ilen, which divided the town. My first impression was a group of laughing young people in front of a big fountain. Then folk with white hair standing about before a chartreuse store that sold tea and biscuits made in Cork. The lady with the broken foot instructed me to stay on the bus because it was the Toehead side I would be wanting, toward Castletown. I could call ahead from Dayday’s, she told me. She knew where I was going if I didn’t.

The road veered and I got my first glimpse of a dazzling sea. The wooden post along the side of the road read Skibbereen, and I thought, This? This my mother left for Queens? Larks swept above my head and a red boat rocked in the harbor. The bus maneuvered a narrow bend and the little road curved. A man marched across what I took to be the marsh. There was a house alone up on the bracken. A chill, tall house but in a handy spot, with three roads crossing by it. It was painted shell pink. “Dayday’s” it said on the coal scuttle filled with blooming succulents.

“This’ll be it.” The driver pulled to the side and opened the door. I said goodbye to the lady of the broken foot and bumped down the steps. The doors closed and the bus fumed and sped away.

It was a funny feeling. Horizon all around. I called to the young man walking there and getting ever farther away. He turned and strode over amiably, long-limbed with stovepipe pants and a dark gray fisherman’s sweater despite the heat. He had a long, white face with freckles and a couple of red pimples and frank, open eyes.

“I’m looking for the family Cashin,” I called. “Do you happen to know which way?”

Without answering, he pointed down the road I was headed.

“Thanks,” I said, hoisting my bag to my shoulder. “How much farther, would you say?”

“N-not far,” he said, ducking under his brown curls.

“I can go in here?” I looked at the sign again. “Dayday’s?”

“We-we-well, it’s Dayday’s but you’re best to call her M-m-m-Mrs. Driver.”

“Oh, thanks. I’d like to call ahead,” I explained needlessly as I walked toward the building, but he was such a nice fellow I didn’t want to hurt his feelings and let him think I didn’t trust his directions. Mostly because he’d stuttered. Dharma had stuttered on and off for a while when she was little. You never forget the meanness of children toward someone you love. I waved as he walked away and he waved back.

I shook my hair free of its elastic. The fresh wind blew and combed away the smell of the plane as I made my way up the path to the door. I hammered with the clapper but nobody answered so I just went in. The door creaked and I couldn’t see clearly for a moment. A rack of fresh bread greeted you. The place was dark and disorderly, with a glum-looking group of people there in a huddle, all leaning on a wooden bar. A woman polished glasses behind the bar. A dog leaned over and stretched and I almost cried out when I saw it wasn’t a dog at all but in fact a cat. The biggest house cat I’d ever seen in my life. Its yellow eyes watched me back away. My unnerving seemed to please the house. There was no laughter, just the muffled titter, but I had the newcomer’s awareness of being the butt of a joke. “Hello. Do you have a phone?” I asked the little woman behind the bar.

“I do,” she said. We looked at each other.

“Well, is it for the general public or are you keeping it warm for the landed gentry?” I inquired politely but in the straight-backed way of my mother. Without any discernible difference in her expression, but a distinct twinkle in her eye, she showed me through to another unkempt room (she reached just up to my chin) and then she left me there. I found my aunt’s number in my wallet of growing papers and put the 20p in the slot.

“Hello,” I said when someone picked up. “This is Claire Breslinski. Mary’s daughter … I’m here in Skibbereen—”

“Claire?” a man’s sluggish voice cut in. “I thought Zenobia was coming.”

“Yes, she was,” I said, feeling foolish, “but something happened at work and she couldn’t leave.”

“But she was the policeman,” he said again, clearly disappointed.

“I’m sorry,” I said, at a loss how to continue.

There was the sound of a scuffle and someone else got hold of the phone. “Hello?” a woman’s crisp voice said. “Hello, this is Bernadette Mulderrig. Who is this, please?”

“Hi. It’s Claire Benedetto,” I began again, using my married name for this authoritative female. “Mary’s daughter from America? I know Zinnie was supposed to come but you see—”

“Ah, yes,” she broke in. “Hello, hello. Are you at the airport?”

“No, I’m just outside Skibbereen. On the Toehead side. I think I’m very near.”

“Oh, you are. You’re here. That’s fine. Are you at Dayday’s then?”

“Yes, I am.” I imagined I could hear the sea through the phone.

“Let’s see, then. You’ll never find it. Nothing’s marked. I’ll send my brother, Liam, out. He’ll be your cousin. Have you a car or a taxi?”

“I’ve taken the bus.”

“Oh! I see. Just stay there, now. It won’t take but a short while. Don’t go ordering any breakfast in that place,” she instructed, my stock gone down. “And whatever you do, don’t go sit in the chair.” She hung up.

So she would be my cousin Bernadette, I thought as I replaced the big old-fashioned receiver onto its cradle, feeling safe. When I was a little girl I’d tried writing this family, I remembered now. My pen-pals in Ireland, I’d thought they’d be. They’d had the charm of being foreign. They hadn’t answered, though. They were “off on another track” my mother had gently explained, and I remembered imagining Bernadette as a sort of train. From the way she spoke, I hadn’t been far wrong.

I went back into the main room and ordered a mineral water.

“We’ve none of that.” Mrs. Driver frowned disapprovingly. “Will you have tea?”

“I’d love it,” I said, off on the wrong foot, “but I’m afraid I haven’t time.”

“Ah, yes. American, are we?”

“Yes,” I said, too tired and proud to excuse myself.

She stood there with her hands folded in front, peering up at me from bobbing curls with small monkey eyes. Taking me in. Not offensively, just summing me up. She wore a Navaho print vest. You could see better now. The room had a kind of orangey warmth. There was a lot of stuff crammed about. Odd stuff, like at a garage sale. On the walls, however, hung paintings of the county. Lovely paintings of the town and its doors, the harbor and the pretty boats. They were filled with space and rich, jewel-like colors. There was one painting of two fish on stones, sunlit, wet, rainbow colors. It was so compelling, I walked over to it and touched it. “I know,” Mrs. Driver said. “You’d think they were really dead, wouldn’t you?”

I looked at her.

“Well, you couldn’t say they looked alive.”

The door swung open and there stood a fellow framed in sunlight, keys in hand. He was clearly not coming in by the way he stayed out on the step, I knew he was here for me. “Zinnie?” he said.

“Liam?”

“Thank you for the phone,” I said to Mrs. Driver. “Next time for the tea.”

“Mind you don’t miss the donkey while you’re out that way,” she said.

“That’s a lovely donkey, they’ve got,” the fellow beside her said.

“He’s a brown one, now. Down in Bantry there’s a reddish one.”

“Is that right?” the other fellow said.

I took hold of my bag and followed Liam into the wind.

“Zinnie couldn’t come. I’m sorry. Sorry no one let you know. I am your cousin, though. Just the other one.”

“It’s all right,” he said. “Any cousin from America will do.”

“It’s Claire,” I said. “Claire Breslinski.”

“Claire?” He scrutinized me. “The photographer?”

“What’s left of her.”

“Oh, good.” He heaved my bag away from me and we made our way over the spongy path to his car. We had the same tromping Viking rhythm, long legs, thick arms, the same heavy, once-bright-red hair. Our faded places where freckles had been had correlating genetic tracks across our identical noses. We liked each other right away.

“You look more like me than my own sister does,” he remarked.

Fast drops of rain plunked onto us. We had to duck into the car, me thinking I was hopping into the passenger seat and then faced with the steering wheel.

“Do you mind?” he said, tossing me the keys.

“Not if you don’t value your car,” I said, catching them.

“Who cares?” he said. “It’s Bernadette’s.” He relaxed and lit a cigarette, his white fingers with red woolly hairs on them tapping the strong tobacco in good. I pulled away and we chugged down the salty peninsula. Gulls swept up and then down out of sight beneath the steep cliffs. There weren’t many houses at all this way, just now and then you could make out a turn-off.

“Tell me about Jenny Rose,” I said when the car seemed to be moving along with hardly a lurch. I didn’t want him to think I’d just found out about her. At the same time I didn’t like being thought of as having neglected her all these years. Not being lumped in the latter atrocity seemed worse so I told him, “You know, the first I heard of Jenny Rose was yesterday.”

“Is that so,” he said, obviously not believing a word of it.

“Yes, as a matter of fact it is.” I let my own indignation show in the edge of my voice. We rode along in impressive silence. Finally, I said, “Would you like to tell me something about her?”

“What’s to tell?” He shrugged. “She needs a bath.”

Needs a bath? I thought. Who’s been raising this child?

He shook his head disgustedly. “She thinks she needn’t get up and live life like the rest of us mortals, y’see. Oh, no. Not Jenny Rose. She needn’t come and breakfast with the world. She’ll go straight from her dreams to the canvas and the rest of the world can be damned. No matter what needs doin’, see. She thinks—”

“What, she paints?”

“Yes, well that’s it. That’s all she ever does do,” he practically shouted. “Or fish,” he muttered. “She’s a fine one for bringing fresh fish home, I’ll give her that.”

“You don’t like her?”

“Like her? Funny question. She’s family. Anyway, Jenny Rose doesn’t want to be liked. She wants to be respected.”

“That’s not her stuff hanging on the wall in Dayday’s, is it?”

“It is. Who else would buy it?”

“But, she is good. You can see that right away.”

“Yeah, well, they’re all good, aren’t they? The lot of these little chippies and Van Goghs. All self-appointed gods and goddesses, if you ask me. Without classical training they’ll all of them end up selling collages from the tourist shops over in Kinsale.”

“And that would be so bad?”

I got a withering look. “Oh, Lord, now we have another one. Yeah, it would be so bad if you see yourself as someone really good, really worthwhile … and then just because you’re too pig-headed and arrogant to take advice, and, and go to university and study what it is you claim to want to spend the rest of your life doing … so that it all comes to nothing but waste”—the veins in his neck had begun to bulge—“then yes, it is a crying shame!”

I kept my eyes on the road. “There are plenty of talented young people who go to college and give it everything they have. They make all the right moves and wind up getting a job designing greeting card covers. And those are the lucky ones.”

“You’re probably right,” he said bitterly. “It’s all who you know.”

“Which way?” I said. We’d come to the choice of three lanes.

“Take the coast road,” he said.

I bumped onto it. I could tell he was miffed. To tell you the truth, I didn’t much care. So this must be their bone of contention, this going to school or not.

“The middle one winds up the same place. Just no one ever takes it,” Liam continued in a confidential way about the road. Like me, he had an aversion to not being thought of as nice. “They all three of them wind up the same spot if you follow them long enough. Trinity Lanes, they call the lot.”

“Where does the left road go?”

“Goes to the Bishop’s seat. Or stops there. Local gentry, like. Anyway, been there forever. Willy Murphy is the young heir. You’ll see him stridin’ about the countryside. Fine fellow, Willy. Lives there with his mother. Audrey Whitetree-Murphy. Never would give up her maiden name.”

Neither would I, I thought, liking her already.

“Her people were the Whitetrees, a course. Audrey’s father was the bishop. Bishop Whitetree. Protestants, you understand.” He shook his head. “Died very suddenly of an aneurysm. Totally unexpected.” Liam gave me a shady look. “Then not long after, Brenden Murphy died as well. The husband. Willy’s father. Terrible. Terrible thing for everyone. Bad enough Audrey’s father dropped dead. Not a month after, her husband, rest his soul, went. Terrible. Now there was a lovely man. That was terrible for everyone.”

“What? The son?”

“Son-in-law.”

“How did he die?”

“Brenden? Fell off the face of the earth, did Brenden Murphy.”

“What do you mean?”

“In his car. Over the cliff, poor sod. Drowned.” Liam scratched his cheek. “Death by drowning, they said. And that after he’d tumbled down the cliff in his father-in-law’s Bentley. Tragic.” He shook his head. “Never hurt a soul. You won’t find a body say a word against Brenden Murphy. No, you won’t. Willy has a right bit of a stutter since then. He always blamed himself. Left his putter in the front seat. They found it jammed under the gas pedal. ’Course it might have just slid there in the fall—”

“Brenden and Audrey’s son?”

“That’s right.”

“I met him!”

“Did you, now. Oh, you’ll see him often enough. He’ll be walking or fishing, fishing or walking, Willy will. His mother’s a Brit, you know. They live all alone there in that grand manor. Just the two a them and Maura, the tweeny—”

“The who?”

“The domestic. And Eileen, the daily woman comes days. She’s Dayday’s daughter, by the way. And then there’s the gardener. Mrs. Whitetree-Murphy will look after the donkey herself, he’s such a stubborn cuss for anyone else. Only the one donkey. But it’s a fearful shame. They used to have the stable full. They sold off all the horses, one by one. And not for the money, as I hear tell. She didn’t want the bother. Can you believe it? Not wantin’ horses?” Baffled outrage whizzed around his eyes. He shook his head. “She’s part Scots, as well, Audrey is, but never you mind about that. Where else would that great lot of money come from? And there’s nothing wrong with that lad, despite his fine looks. Caught the bullest salmon you’ve ever laid eyes on, ever caught in these waters, here. And that just when he was fourteen. ’Course that was a good long while ago when you think of it.” He gave a piece of tobacco on his lip a silent flick, thoughtful of time passing. “Oh, they’re all after him, the young girls. And a shameful lot of the older ones as well. Not that he’d know it. Mind in the clouds, that boy. His mother wants him to run for public office, always has. That’s the last job for shy Willy, though. He’s a great chef, Willy is. Ever you want a leg of lamb that’ll bring tears to your eyes it’s that good, he’s the one. All smothered in port wine and rosemary branches akimbo. Ah! That’s where his true passion lies, as they say. ’Course his mother will not hear of that. The Whitetree-Murphys are far too grand for feeding the hoi polloi. Not for him that poking about with weeds and spice. But to Willy, it’s a science, like. He’ll go down spend an entire afternoon at the widow Wooly’s house and learn all about those herbs, all the Latin names, what they’re good for, what they go with…”

Then Liam threw back his head and laughed. He was better now. I guessed he liked Willy. And I think he was a bit drunk, as early as it was. Or maybe still from last night. His breath suggested eucalyptus. He was a take-his-shoes-off-fill-up-the-room-with-himself sort of fellow.

“It’s good to meet you finally,” I said.

He squinted at me under bent-down red eyebrows. “You used to write letters when you were a little girl,” he said. He didn’t say it as though he’d just thought of it. More like he had these memories of me close at hand. Saved up and carried along.

“You’re right, I did,” I said, remembering, too. There I’d sat on the porch in the summer. My first experience with stationery. “You knew that?” I said, surprised and pleased to have been thought of.

“‘Bally Cashin,’ you used to address the place, ‘Anyone at all.’”

“Did I really?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you write me back?”

He raised his eyes, nodding meaningfully, ominously, up ahead to “them.”

“Oh.”

“You once requested a four-leaf clover, if I remember correctly.”

“I did?”

“Yeah. In a self-addressed stamped envelope.”

“You remember that?”

“But they were American stamps, so that got you nowhere.”

I shook my head. “Story of my life.”

He put his big foot on the dash. “You don’t look like you’ve had that bad a life.”

“I don’t?” I touched my face.

“The fault lies in the desire. I mean, wanting to own something so … so…”

“Mythical?”

“I was going to say perfect.”

“Why?”

“Because if you own it, it only withers and dies. Never gets to live its own life, like.”

We drove along the cliffs, very close to the edge. Only dots of rain piddled the windshield now. I wiped them away with the correct knob and tooled along as if I’d been doing this for years. Spotlights of yellow sun shot from the big production clouds. In the window came bursts of glassy air.

We passed a stone house. It was to the left of us, sheltered but close. There was a walled garden of roses and a neat vegetable patch at the back. Everything was wet and the wind clean and drippy with the sudden light.

Liam watched me turn. “That’s the Wattles Cottage. Then it was Molly’s. Or it used to be. Well, it still is but now she calls it Auntie Molly’s,” he said.

“Oh? Who?”

“She’s a divorcée.”

I rhumba’d my shoulders. “I see.”

He laughed. “Single, I should say. Sorry. Didn’t mean to sound like that. Runs a bed and breakfast. Does very well, too. She’s on the tourist board list, y’see. And high up on it, now. ‘A’ and all.”

“A?”

“For ‘Auntie.’ Alphabetical order. Dead clever of her, really. First on the list, now. When she got the divorce she wasn’t doing well at all. Then she got the idea and named it Auntie’s. Right now there are only fishermen. But there’ll be no finding a bed around here in a week or two, that many tourists about.”

“Really! Well, there’s no wonder. It’s so pretty.” A cow stood out back. I caught sight of “Auntie” Molly’s slim figure in an herb garden. Her head in a straw hat. Her hands digging in the moist soil. She had delphinium already two feet high and a lavender up to the sill. That’s what I would like to do if I weren’t married, I caught myself thinking. Running my own business and making a go of it.

A grassy ledge on my side of the car broke off to a dizzyingly sheer drop. Far below, a clear pool of green lapped at a sickle of white pebbles.

“Oh! What’s that?” I practically turned the car over leaning out the window, feeling I’d been there before.

He looked away. “Don’t be goin’ there,” he said.

“It’s lovely! I’d love to walk there as soon as I get my—”

“Not there.” He said it harshly. Then it was as if he wanted to cover up, like he didn’t want me to think he was so serious about it. “Fairy ring,” he said jokingly. “Bad luck.”

“Ah.”

“No, but for real. There’s a wicked tide comes in and cuts you off down below there. Dead sudden.”

I looked back slyly. Of course I would go. But I would go carefully. I wasn’t sure I liked being told where not to go. I straightened my spine. “Why wasn’t I to sit in the chair at Dayday’s?”

“What? Oh, Bernadette. My sister, Lady McCatholic when it suits her. No, Mum just doesn’t want Bob’s cat hair all over her clean house. She won’t have the smell.”

“I see. Say, is Dayday’s a pub or a shop? It was hard to tell.”

“In the front room is the shop. Everyone stops there for their milk or their paper or jam, even when it’s out of the way. You walk in and there’s that cat as big as a dog in the chair.”

“Yes, I met the cat.”

“That cat’s from Malta, they say. And he’s everywhere you look, wherever you go. Dayday’s house has so much clutter it’s hard enough to find a spot as it is, but you’d never move Bob, that’s his name, from the chair. So my sister’s worries are, as usual, for nothing. For a while Dayday sold crockery and whatnots, but she could never come to terms with a price, she couldn’t part with an item once she had it. Anyway, all that stuff is still there. That and more. She’s the one knows everyone’s business, Dayday is.”

A case of the pot calling the old kettle black, I thought. “But you call her Mrs. Driver,” I said.

“That’s it, yeah. That’s the way she wants it. My dad’ll call her Dayday now, and get away with it.”

Wasn’t Liam the one who’d had a vocation? I seemed to half remember a reason I shouldn’t ask. Had he started to drink when that hadn’t worked out or had that not worked out because he’d started to drink? I cleared my throat. “Weren’t you in the seminary at one time?”

“I was,” he answered, his Adam’s apple moving. Puff, puff on the cigarette. “Chucked me out straightaway, they did. And a good job they did. Look.” He pointed with his chin. “That’s Bally Cashin, now.”

The lane dipped and ferried inside stone walls to the spangling sea. Four white buildings under slate clustered together at the horizon. Goats hopped the stones and came up to watch the car. My mother’s home, I thought. I stopped the car.

Liam startled me by quoting: “I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree. And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made.”

His big voice filled the car. I don’t think I’ve ever been so stirred with happy expectation. And so I listened greedily, rapt. I am almost secretly fond of poetry. Poetry is Carmela’s territory. I always felt I had to stay away. Lines drawn in early sisterhood.

“Nine bean-rows will I have there,” I said, “a hive for the honey-bee. And live alone in the bee-loud glade.”

We laughed out loud and I started up the car. The tires crunched on the gravel. We passed the blown-up house first. A hanging shutter clacked against the stone. It was only a shell, like a castle ruin from long ago. The smell of it was still acrid and charred, though, and I tried not to think of poor Aunt Dierdre, blown to smithereens. At least it had been quick. I navigated the rest of the lane cautiously and came to the big family house. I guessed it had once been a farmhouse. White curtains in every shining window. Aunt Bridey must be, like my mother, a one-window-a-day woman. Roses pressed beneath the black sash on the door. A scraggly grapevine halfheartedly climbed a trellis.

Outside the house, an old fellow sat on a bench. He had an enormous head, strong, long arms and short, sturdy legs. A sanded board was on his lap with tufts of bright color. He was threading something, like a tailor. Up on the sleeve of his linen shirt he wore a black band. A fishing rod lay across his lap.

“My dad.” Liam pointed where I should go with the car. “Your uncle Ned.”

A stork landed and sat down right beside old Ned.

“Will you look at that,” I said.

“Many a crooked-winged bird in the county who’d otherwise be long ago eaten by Bob were it not for our old Ned,” he said.

So that was nice. To hear a son speaking that well of his dad. I told him so.

“Oh, there’s nothing our dad can’t fix.” Liam pointed me up the gravel, passing praise from himself. “He’s a saint, really.” He lowered his voice, “Putting up with Mum’s sharp tongue.”

“My mother doesn’t mind saying what she means, either,” I laughed, my superstitious heart still charmed by the descent of the mythological stork.

A border collie, lolling over from the barnhouse in the distance, circled the drive where the stork was in Ned’s protective space.

Liam noticed it, too. “And now he has poor Dierdre’s dog, Brownie, to look after as well. Brownie doesn’t seem to mind, which goes to show you what a grand sort Dad is with animals. Brownie’s a cross dog, more often than not, though. And fickle. You’ll mind yourself around her.” He lowered his chin at me. “A right bitch.” The wary bird, mindful of the approaching dog, flew off. The silver light around it struck and held it while it flew away.

We watched it go. Then Uncle Ned got up stiffly and moved over to the car. “This Zenobia?” He stuck his tight puffed hand in the window.

Liam told him who I was. He took me in with kind eyes set in weathered wrinkles. “Aye.” He nodded. “Mary’s girl. There’s no doubt about that. You’ve your mother’s fair smile.”

Aunt Bridey filled up the doorway. Up until that moment I’d pretty much forgotten I was there for a funeral. Aunt Bridey, though, regarded me with a sinking heart. You could see it on her face. I tried to make light of it even then but to this day I remember her outright disappointment and it pains me still.

Bridey looked a lot like my own mother. The same hefty frame, iron hair and strong eyebrows. That’s where the similarity ended, though. She wasn’t like my big-hearted mom. Disgruntlement flattened and drew her mouth down. A line pressed rigid and permanent between her brows. Right away you could see where Liam got his all-the-world’s-a-dreary outlook. I had to busy myself with my handbag so she wouldn’t notice how it disheartened me to be so instantly disliked.

Liam reached across for the keys.

I tried a halfhearted smile at his kindness.

“Watch that dog doesn’t bite ’er in the face,” Bridey called. I looked up to see the dog, Brownie, her paws on the car door, her interested face cheerfully inspecting me. You’d think I was an old friend.

“Someone likes you,” Uncle Ned said.

“She probably smells our dogs.” I tossed off the information, both happy and sad that it was the dog who liked me. I mean, some people do take an instant aversion to my Indira Ghandi–Willie Nelson look but you can’t blame them for that. I pulled my things together, got out of the car and went to meet my aunt Bridey. I thought she’d kiss my cheek but she drew back when I went near and instead offered me her hand.

We stood beneath the lattice. “I see you’ve got grapes,” I said, flustered.

“He’s got the vine,” Aunt Bridey said. “Grapes is another story.”

“They’ll come,” Liam sulked. “One a these days, they’ll come.”

“It’s four years they haven’t come,” she said to the back of his head, “they won’t come at all now.”

“Don’t say that,” Uncle Ned said. “All good things take time.”

“Bless all who enter here,” I said, walking in, stung, but the way I’d been taught.

“Take her bag, Seamus. Don’t stand there,” she said to the oversized fellow gawking at me from the stove. He wore big overalls and a belt full of fishing and gardening tools. One black digging claw had a bird’s keen head.

“That’s not a policeman,” he accused, not budging.

Ah-ha, I thought. The voice on the phone.

“This is Claire, Seamus.” Liam came in with my bag. He spoke patiently. “She’ll be staying with us for a while.”

“I don’t know where we’ll put her, Lord knows.” Seamus’s voice changed from his own dull plod and became an exact replication of my aunt’s. I got a chill. Not only that, but he had one blue eye and one green. “We’ve no room as it is,” he said in a perfect Aunt Bridey voice.

“Go on with you now.” Bridey shooed him, heavy-footed, moving after him. “Where’s Brownie?”

“What’s this?” The crisp figure of a young woman whisked into the kitchen where we all stood. If she’d clapped her hands we couldn’t have come to attention any faster. Seamus went away with my bag, small-looking beside his great size. At the doorway he looked over his shoulder and said, “And I did too see a two-headed horse. Jenny Rose will believe me if you won’t.”

“Hello.” The diminutive woman turned me around and slipped her cool hand into mine in the same movement. “I’m Bernadette.” She took me by the arm and steered me into a big room, letting the rest of them stand there. There was a stone fireplace on one side, a loft on the other. A round table was in the middle of the room, polished to a glow, a beeswax candle in the middle, unlit and poised.

“You must be exhausted,” she told me. “Just look at you, two flights and a bus journey. We thought you’d have rented a car. Most people do. Well. We’ll have you set to rights in no time at all. I don’t know who will be free to chauffeur you about. It won’t be the way you imagine, I’m sure. Come on.” She ushered me into the bathroom before I could object and shut the door on me. I sat down obligingly on the toilet. She chattered on, through the door. “Don’t mind Seamus Wooly,” she said. “He parrots everyone. No one pays him a never-you-do mind. It’s all out of context, you see. He’ll have you down in no time at all, you watch. There’s some won’t go near him. They say he’s a changeling. We don’t hold with such nonsense, a course. Dad’s gone and given him a job. We used to be able to just chuck him out when he was in our hair. Now we can’t even do that. Because, of course, Dad means well but by the end of the week, he’s too chintzy to let go of any money so we wind up feeling indebted.” She heard the chain pull and opened the door with a fresh towel then shut it again behind her before I realized where it had come from. “Seamus Wooly is a special boy,” she went on. “Nobody says retarded anymore. And it’s not like he can’t do anything. There’s a lot more he could be doing around here, if you’d like to know the truth. He’s lazy. Your uncle Ned has him climb up the trees to refill the bird houses, at least. Things like that. On Sunday they’ve now got him carrying the chalice up to the altar. So you’re not to feel sorry for him. He’s got the harbor … cove, really. Pretty as a picture but no light fun in a storm. If you’re ever looking for Seamus, that’s where you’ll likely find him, trotting down the beach in his black Wellies. Never too far behind Jenny Rose. Done?”

I picked my head up, dripping, from the little porcelain sink and looked into her eyes. Arms crossed, waiting, she regarded me from her vantage point at the threshold. Her expression told me she wasn’t impressed. I’d been dismissed already, I could tell. I wasn’t young, for one thing, automatically eliminating me from the dangerous opponent category. She was just waiting to be done with me so she could get on with more pressing stuff.

Bernadette took me through to the room with the corpse. It wasn’t what I’d expected. The room smelled of paint. The whole house in fact had been freshly painted. There weren’t zillions of flowers, the way we do it at home, each death a tribute from a run of all the Queens florists. No, there was one vase of roses on the piecrust table and a variety of holy pictures to choose from. I knelt on the crewel-embroidered kneeler by the coffin and said my three Hail Marys. A silver-framed oval of Dierdre smiled at me. She looked like a glossy version of my mom.

When I finished, Bernadette was standing there, gazing at the coffin. She’d been brushing her hair while my head was bowed. I could tell from the electrified and shivering aura around her head.

“Come along.” She ushered me through a door where you had to duck, up a short stairway and there I was in a nun’s room: bed, table, lamp, cross on the wall, window, little shrank to put your duds in, moor out the window. My bag was upside-down on the bed. The wood floor shone like a spoonful of honey. “Great,” I said.

Bernadette patted her shiny cap of highlighted-all-the-way-in-Dublin hair. It was cut in a line just above her jutted out-for-battle chin. She knew she was an impressive young lady. Tiny little hands and feet. Jewelry. Manicure. If she wasn’t attractive, it was hard to tell, she was that put-together. Pity, though, she hadn’t done something about the shrill in her voice.

“You see the way it is here in the country,” she went on with a stab at humility. “You must think us provincial. Coming from New York, as you do.”

I laughed. “I’m afraid the New York you’re talking about is as far away from me these days as it is to you.”

From her scornful expression I could tell she agreed. Anyone, she thought, who would wear lace-up moccasins …

I sat on the bed and wriggled them off. My feet, at least, had arrived nice and comfy and cozy. Then she said, “Mom was going to put you in the loft but—”

“Oh, I would have loved to sleep in a loft—”

“Jenny Rose said you would have. But, no, our mom said, you’d go back to America telling we’d put you in the hay loft. As if you wouldn’t have been able to see the charm. You won’t mind sleeping here, you said?”

I pulled the soft curtain off to the side and leaned down. You could look at the stone wall leading to the road. “It’ll be great.”

“Because Aunt Dierdre’s just down the stairs. She’ll be right below you, if that’s any comfort. You can be praying for her eternal soul.”

I turned around. She had her hand down her blouse and was kneading the flesh on the top of her back. Her eyes were closed. “Perhaps she’ll sift up through the pores of the floor,” she said dreamily, “and dance. Aunt Dierdre loved to dance.”

Now I couldn’t tell if she was kidding or what. My husband’s face came in front of my eyes. Then Carmela’s. Let it pass, a wise voice inside of me said. Let it all pass. “Swell.”

“I’m sorry?”

“That would be fine.”

“Someone will bring you your tea. You can have a good lie in before the neighbors arrive for the wake. Oh, and watch that dog. She’ll bite you as fast as look at you.”

“Thank you.”

She hesitated. “I’m a bit overwhelmed, as you can doubtless imagine. If no one comes with your tea, you’ll be sure to rouse yourself before they all arrive.” She minced over to the window and looked out too. She looked down the road, worried.

I suddenly felt sorry for her. She was my cousin, after all. What did I know of her heart? “It’s good of you to look after me this way.” I gave what I hoped was an appreciative smile.

“Well, you do what you must, don’t you? People think just because they’re relations they can barge in, don’t they?”

Did she mean me? I could hardly believe she would say it.

She put a towel set on the bed. “If that’s all, I’ll be off.”

I had that silly, ingratiating grin still on my face as she turned and left me there.