Chapter Six

Seamus was tending the road when I got back. He now knew who I was and couldn’t wait to tell me all that had happened. “We rode the whole long way in a minivan,” he exploded the moment he saw me. “They let us see the inside of the police station! Oh, it was ever so grand! When you walk in, it looks like a cinema lobby! Bright, fancy colors it was! There were vending machines in the cafeteria and there was chocolate—hot chocolate!—come out in wee cups you could hold in your hand!”

“And did Inspecter Mullaney let you see the jail?” I smiled.

He stopped in the middle of the road. His face turned inward and his arm crossed over his hands, palm to chubby palm. “’Twas a terrible sight,” he said. “They was empty but full of all sorts of sadness and worry.” He shuddered.

I went back and grabbed hold of his hand. “Come on, don’t think of that.” He’s like a lorry in neutral, Jenny Rose had said. Just pull him along. I started up. He trollied easily enough along with me. “Let me tell you where I went,” I said. “Into Skibbereen and saw the cattle market across from O’Donovan’s.”

He brightened right up. “Did you see a pig?”

“As a matter of fact I did.” I remembered the wispy eyelashes and the man in the felt hat beside him. I described them to Seamus. “I even took their picture,” I said. He listened carefully.

“Did they sell it and fetch a grand price, d’you think?”

“I think they must have. Everyone looked very content.”

Seamus’s eyes shone. “That’s fine,” he said. “Did you go over and pet him?”

“Me? No, I just admired from afar.”

“Oh. Did he look glad to be where they’d put him, you think?”

Jenny Rose was coming down the road at us, a grin on her face. I let go of Seamus’s hand.

Urgently, he tugged at my arm. He was so strong he almost tipped me over. “Well, did they?”

“What? Yes. Very glad.”

Jenny Rose turned her face away and said in my ear, “Don’t let him go get started on a pig.”

“Why not?””

“He had one once and it died. You’ll never hear the end of it.” She put her arm around my shoulders. “I’ve got great news. Come on.”

“Did my mother call?” I said.

“Oh, she did. Everyone called. The story’s in the Southern Star. Bridey’s having a fit.”

“My mother’s all right?”

“She’s so happy. Your sister called right after she did.”

“Zinnie?”

“No, it was the other one. The poncey one.”

I stopped and stood still. She was talking about her mother. She refused to say her name. How could she refer to her like that? She couldn’t be so unfeeling. She wasn’t. I knew she wasn’t. She was playing at being so removed from it because she dared not show her true feelings. I knew that route. She dared not even feel her true feelings. So she referred to Carmela the way everyone else did. “Jenny Rose.” I gently put my arm about her waist. All these years and her mother never calls and then when she suddenly does it’s for another reason, not for her. It didn’t seem possible.

She looked at me with challenge in her eyes, just daring me to say a word.

“I love you,” I said. I said it because I did. I said it for Carmela. I said it so she would know. Jenny Rose didn’t say a thing but I felt her stiffness loosen. She was still a child, for all her grown-up talk. The meadow moved, and turned a greener green. Then the moment passed. “Now tell me all your news,” I said, aware of Seamus’s growing distress.

“He’s definitely in Baltimore! I called Mrs. Walsh, she’s the lady owns the hotel there. She used to run the Eldon Hotel in town, you know the one, where Bernadette works. Oh, that Bernadette’ll be runnin’ that place before long.”

“I don’t doubt that for a minute.”

“We passed it and I pointed it out. Michael Collins ate his last meal there, remember I told you?”

“Yes, I remember,” I whispered. He’s nearby, I thought.

“Well, Mrs. Walsh and her husband bought the Algiers Hotel there and her daughter Helen and I graduated from the Convent of Mercy and so I called to ask for Helen, knowing of course she’s off to London but wanting all the news and me knowing Mrs. Walsh’d be the one to have it. You won’t believe who’s staying there. Right there in her very hotel. Who do you think?”

“Jenny Rose, I cannot just show up and present myself. I can’t do it. Don’t you see?”

“Why not?” She searched my face, all disappointment.

“Surely you must see that if I arrive there, he’ll take it to mean I’m pursuing him.”

Her hands flew into the air in exasperation. “But you would be! What ever’s wrong with that?”

“Well, I’m shy.”

“But you’re not shy, you’re a grown woman!”

“I know it seems old-fashioned … all right, archaic, but I could never be comfortable with him unless he’d been the one to pursue me.”

“That’s dumb. Of course he’ll want you! Why wouldn’t he?”

“Why, Jenny Rose! That’s the nicest thing anybody’s said to me in a long time.”

She tilted her head, looking at me. “I could paint you, now,” she said, “just like this. Happy. Knowin’ he’s not too far away.”

I took hold of my cheek. “Is that it? Is that why suddenly everything seems worthwhile? Your life goes on and you can’t feel it so it’s like drudgery. And then someone comes along and speeds things up, makes them sparkle.”

Out on the marsh you could see burly Liam and Willy Murphy, gracefully swinging their golf clubs. The sound arrived through the clean air.

We’d reached the door and Uncle Ned let us in. A cantaloupe had been split open and the smell of it filled the kitchen. Aunt Dierdre was hunched over the table. Jenny Rose hugged her with all her might, then flopped into the rocker. Dierdre wore black and it looked as though she’d been weeping. Her turn, now, I thought. But she hadn’t been weeping. Her face was wet with cantaloupe. Pinky up, she licked her fingers, unbecomingly, of pearly juice and came over to me, taking me by both sticky hands. “Ow!” She grimaced. “That bites the teeth right back it’s that sweet. Is this our Claire, then? She’s all Mary!” She bit her lip and rocked her head at Bridey. “Just look at her!”

Personally, I like to think I look a little different than my mother but I guess everyone does. It was an odd feeling, being with Dierdre. I’d already gotten used to her being dead.

“She’s harder than Mary.” Bridey smacked and turned the scone dough on the marble slab.

“Aye,” agreed Dierdre, taking a step back. Here they were discussing me as if I were a bolt of cloth. “Our Mary’s soft as butter.”

Hey, I thought.

“You’ve not met correctly, have you?” Bridey carried off the rest of the cantaloupe in a way that was strangely clandestine. She grappled with her apron, stood back and watched us shake hands. A separate conversation was taking place on the radio atop the fridge. Long-winded political priests.

I sat down and let the aunts have their look at me. Dierdre raised my earring in her hand and held it. That ear felt suddenly light without the weight of it and I got a chill. “What is it?” Dierdre said.

“Tibetan,” I said.

“Oh. I thought it was a jelly jar.”

This might have been a great joke for the amount of time they laughed. I pulled my city shawl of self-righteousness around my shoulders. I thought, This woman’s life-mate has just been found dead. “So you spoke to my mom,” I said.

“We did. We both did.” Dierdre narrowed her cornflower blue eyes. They were small eyes, too small for her face, and they closed up and disappeared when she smiled. She was blowsy and a little cheap, just the way my mother’d described her.

“She’s all right?”

“Pleased, I should say.” Bridey sniffed.

“I just mean because she’d been in the hospital. So much excitement, after all.” I don’t know why the heck I was explaining myself to them.

“Well, she has her other girls about her, doesn’t she?”

“Sure.”

There was a hefty silence. Only the priest’s voice on the radio went on like murmuring poetry. Smudged mascara darkened Dierdre’s eyes. Her roundish nose and cheekbones were still pinked from her holiday. A jaunt to the top of the Eiffel Tower, I thought. She must have been a picture, once. She didn’t look very sad. Or she was putting on a good show. She looked at me and I at her. You could see she hadn’t slept. Poor thing. She thought she’d come home to her life and found nothing the way it’d been. I remembered Jenny Rose’s words. Maybe it was a crass time to bring it up but I, too, wondered how much Peg had left. It’s a terrible stress when someone dies but it’s an even worse one when they leave you all their debts and paperwork.

A box of snapshots was off on the ledge, pushed away safe while they’d eaten the fruit. I thought I realized what the discomfort had been about. They’d thought they’d enjoy the cantaloupe while no one was around, the same way my mother sometimes will. “It’s like this,” she’d told me once. “If you’ve two sisters and nary a bite, when you find something tasty, you go find a safe spot and you go and enjoy it.”

Dierdre went to the refrigerator, opened it, bent over to fish out the milk bottle, then held it up in the air and drank from it, right there, in front of everyone. I didn’t know where to look. She touched her mouth with the tips of her fingers, then put the bottle back, thinking of something. She turned to me. “You’ll be the one with the adopted daughter.”

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. “My daughter is my daughter,” I said.

Bridey leaned forward too. This interested both of them. “We know how you feel about her,” Bridey explained, more kindly. “She just wants to get you straight from your sisters.”

Then I understood. Jenny Rose was hers. How could I be so stupid! “My daughter, Dharma, has only been with me since she was seven. Not like Jenny Rose.”

They glared at me suspiciously.

“I mean Jenny Rose has been with you since the beginning. It’s as if she were yours by birth.”

They relaxed. Dierdre said, “You’ll be the one takes the pictures.”

“That’s right.” The clock ticked. “That’s a nice old clock,” I said, to change the subject. “Was it your grandmother’s?”

“Loses two minutes a day,” Bridey said, thinking I was laying claim on it, somehow. I could see it in her eyes. I remembered what my father had told me, about their worrying I’d be here to stake my claim.

“Aunt Bridey.” I cleared my throat. “I’ve taken that room at Auntie Molly’s Bed and Breakfast after all. My room should go to you, of course, Aunt Dierdre.”

There was a loud silence.

“What will Mary say?” Dierdre finally said to Bridey. “Her own daughter sent off to a hotel?”

“Never you mind about that.” Aunt Bridey sniffed. “Room and board have been settled up between us years ago. There’s no debt there.”

A painting, or was it a photograph, framed in a nice burnished gold frame, was propped on the sideboard. I got up and walked over to it. An outline of a man and woman looked back at me. It was only their silhouette, but it gave them both away; the woman charming, her permed hair blowing about her face. The man strong and protective. “This is lovely,” I said.

“It’s a snap,” Bridey said.

“It’s great. What is it?”

“It’s their shadow.”

“Really? It’s wonderful. Who is it?”

“Peg and me,” Dierdre said, following my eyes.

“Peg?” I got up and took hold of the dog-eared photo. Dierdre got up herself. It looked like a man and a woman. In fact there was no doubt of it.

Resignedly, Jenny Rose got up and brought back another picture, a photograph. There was Dierdre in the background and Jenny Rose, a little girl, off to the side on a bicycle. It must have been Easter from the flowers and hats.

“And that’s Peg.” She pointed. But Peg wasn’t sexy and wily looking, as I’d imagined. As Jenny Rose had led me to believe earlier at O’Donovan’s. On the other hand, Dierdre was square, truckish and, there was no other word, mannish.

I looked beseechingly at Jenny Rose. “But you said—”

“You were having such a fine time with your psychological sketch.” She grinned. “I didn’t like to spoil your fun.”

“You mean you were kidding.”

“Well, everything you said suggested that homosexuality stems from abuse. As if it’s all just an indelible memory of same-sex experience from childhood. As if people take refuge in their own sex.”

I looked at the women to see how they were taking this. “Okay.” I felt myself look embarrassed. “So I’m a jerk.”

Jenny Rose picked up the dog and spun her ’round and ’round.

“You didn’t have to fib, though.” I braided the back of my hair defensively and pinned it up. “I’m really just trying to piece everything together, myself. It’s pretty hard to do when you throw me a deliberate curve ball.” I must have sounded impatient.

Bridey said, “Jenny Rose is famous for embroidering tales. What’s it about now?”

Dierdre smacked Jenny Rose’s bottom. “You’d think she’d have grown out of it by now,” she complained. But she wasn’t angry.

“Stop handling that dog and sit down and drink your tea!” Bridey said. “Act like a lady!” She was vexed we’d mentioned homosexuality.

“I have a better idea.” Jenny Rose pulled me from the room, ignoring what had just happened. “I’ll set my easel up on the hill overlooking Baltimore bay and I’ll be painting a portrait of your face. There I’ll be, with the beautiful image of his own true love’s face! He’ll die of fright!”

“His own true love, indeed.” I laughed, nervously. I wouldn’t like the aunts to hear. “What if he doesn’t remember me? He probably falls in love with women all the time,” I murmured, fearing it were true. “He’ll look at the portrait and say, ‘Hey! I knew a woman very like her once! Ten pounds thinner, though.’”

“He’ll take one look and his heart will start to race…”

“Very romantic. And how will you be sure he’ll come over to see what you’re painting?”

“Everyone does. Nobody doesn’t. It’s a damned nuisance.”

“No, Jenny Rose. I love your ideas. I do. I can see them all happening. I just can’t see them all happening to me.”

“You’re not supposed to see them.” She raised her little valentine face at me. “You’re supposed to live them.” She climbed up on the table and held an arm up. “It’s time to let life not pass us by!”

“I know. I just can’t. It’s the wrong time. I mean, first Dierdre dead. Only it’s really Peg.”

Gently, she climbed down. “I should be saying that, not you. You’re just chicken.”

“Yes.”

A car was pulling up the gravel. Jenny Rose peered through the window. “Fuck. Inspector Mullaney. C’mon. Let’s go to my studio. Don’t tell him where we’re going,” she hissed across her shoulder.

“I’ll just get my—” I’d been about to say camera, then changed it to “stuff.” No sense scaring her off. We snuck out the back window, Brownie alongside us, and ran over the marsh.

Her studio was up on the cliff. We ran, our heads down to the wind, just long enough for the damp to knife through us. The green long openness came to a sharp end and went down. It was terrifying. I’d never seen a better spot. She looked under a big stone, realized she’d left the key somewhere else and pushed open the lofty door without it. Inside was the size of a factory garage and white. She had nothing cozy, no nice space where you’d cuddle up with a cup of tea. It was all work here, all art and a huge gritty window overlooking the sea. Plus, it was freezing. There was the lion-claw tub on the one side. Not an inviting spot for a bath. Jenny Rose strode across the room, clearly happy, and tore a shawl from a massive easel. “It’s not dead north, the window,” she chatted, “but almost. No matter if it’s storming”—she looked at me—“as it is half the time, you’ve got your good light no matter what.”

The painting on the easel was of a naked man. Behind him the window, exactly as it was, filled the whole canvas. The man was on the one side, his back to the viewer. Still, you could see a great deal of him. Then there was a small table on the other side, spare and blunt. Something was on it but it was difficult to draw your attention from the man. Behind him, out the window, in a washed clear sky, a seagull lolled. It looked so real, all of it did. I think that’s when I actually knew Jenny Rose was special, that she wasn’t just, as Liam had dubbed her, another self-appointed goddess. Familiarity really does breed contempt. I knew it from my own work, when I’d just started out. No one had particularly wanted to look at my work in Manhattan, because I was from nearby Queens. I’d had to go to Europe to be “discovered.” By the same token, the photographers from Europe had to go all the way to New York to make a living. I stood in that chilly studio above the churning ocean and realized this work was awfully good and anyone who knew anything about such things would surely see it. I had, however, witnessed other artists’ works before they’d been seen and tested by the world. Some with real talent, different than this, but real as well, and that was where it had stayed, as potential, for one reason or another. One artist I remembered had died soon after he’d started. An overdose. Another had been arrested and sent to prison. Yet another had been hired away by a successful graphics design company, a fate, we’d condescendingly assured one another at the time, far worse than any other. I moved closer. The object on the table was a tool, a claw. An antique digging tool, black iron with a bird’s head.

“Has anyone else seen this?” I said.

“Just you.” She blew on her hands and went over to the fireplace where cuts of bog had been set to dry. She put on gloves with the fingers cut off, picked up the safety matches on the stone mantle and knelt to light the bog. It caught on swiftly, flailed, then went out. She lit it again and this time it caught.

“You’ve got it this time,” I said.

“Gives the mice a chance to clear off.”

“Mice?”

She looked at me over her shoulder. “So they don’t get their bums scorched. I don’t mind them a bit. They’re sweet. Don’t eat much.”

“We had some at home. Just the other day. I guess they’re clearing out, the weather getting warm and all.” I plucked my skirt gingerly from the floor. “We killed them off.”

“What, with traps?”

“Yeah.”

She made a face. “Why kill them if they’re clearing out?”

“It’s an American thing.”

“I guess it is.”

“You can’t keep mice.”

“They’re just two wee little fellows.”

“Not for long. They could bring rats.”

“Nah. They’re company for me.” She went about getting her stuff set up. She glanced at her work. “Last time I was here,” she said, “was when it all happened. That night.”

“I’m glad I came with you then,” I said. I went closer to the canvas and touched the paint. It was dry. “What do you call it?” I said.

Jenny Rose wiped a brush thoroughly with a rag. “I was going to call it One Man. Now I think I’ll call it Café Mozart.”

“Café Mozart?”

“Like in The Third Man. Remember?”

“Jenny Rose.” I chuckled. “I can’t keep up with you.”

She looked at me over her shoulder. “Well, I can’t very well call it The Third Man.”

I sat down on the floor. “It really never bothered you that Dierdre and Peg were lesbians, Jenny Rose?”

Outside it rained but the light was high and white, almost fluorescent, like in an empty department store. “I didn’t like it when I heard them at night,” she said softly. “I hated that. I don’t think Dierdre much liked it, either, to tell you the truth.” She let a moment pass. “What’s she like?” she said without looking at me.

I knew right away who she meant. I was relieved she trusted me enough to ask. “Carmela? Talented. Recognized. She’s one of the lucky ones. Only she doesn’t know it. No, of course she does but she’s too polite to let on that she does. Not polite. Arrogant. She pretends she’s polite but it is arrogance. Takes everything as her due. She’s annoyingly arrogant. She disguises her arrogance in polite behavior. That’s the horrible truth. I want very much to get the words right when I’m talking to you about her, but I seem to just say what I feel. Not only does she have looks and success, she has the knack of getting you to feel sorry for her, besides. It’s nuts.”

She poured turpentine carefully from a drum into a jar. “Am I like her at all, do you think?”

“In that your art is more important to you than people? You’re like her that way, yes. You don’t let yourself be distracted. One thing, though, you have a wacky sense of humor.”

“She doesn’t?”

“Well, let’s just say yours is more highly developed than most people can appreciate. Oh! Okay, I get it. The Café Mozart. Orson Welles was supposed to have been dead and then he showed up. I see the connection but I doubt many people will.”

“Yeah, but I don’t care,” she said.

“On second thought, you’re more like her than I thought,” I chided her. I enjoyed her defiance, though. Only the very young or the very old have that.

She arranged her brushes one beside the other. “People just like to think they get it, don’t you think?” she said. “Nobody really knows what goes on inside someone else’s mind. Even, maybe especially not, the people closest to them.” She lifted her dark head. “Is she happy?”

“Happy? No, I wouldn’t describe Carmela as happy. Who’s happy?” I didn’t want to say she was one of the most self-absorbed, disdainful people I’d ever known.

“I am.” She stood with her fists on her hips. “I’m happy when I’m working. I’m happy right now.”

“You’re young and pretty. You should be happy.”

“But not beautiful.” She grinned philosophically. “Not like her.”

“It’s a funny thing about the very beautiful,” I said. “They’re attributed all sorts of magical powers. And they themselves are the only ones left wondering why. One thing about Carmela, though. She’s her own person. She doesn’t look for her identity in the form of a boyfriend, I’ll say that for her. But for all her beauty, she’s alone. Your brand of beauty is more alluring. You’ll find love and keep it. I’m sure of it.”

She kept her head down but you could tell she was listening.

“You don’t mind if I poke around and take some shots?”

“You can do what you like,” she said. “I have to ask you. Your camera, what is it … a spy camera?”

“Not really. It’s a very good German camera. Made in the twenties. I did a series of portraits once of an American general. This really old guy. We hit it off, both of us having spent time in Bavaria. When everything was going my way,” I couldn’t help adding. “He told me the story how at the end of World War Two he’d been ordered to steamroll an entire airfield of German cameras. It near broke his heart, a man reverential toward fine machinery the way he was, but he did it. Not, however, before he swiped one. Or spared one, if you like. It was this Contex”—I held it out for her to see—“this little baby you can hold in the palm of your hand, but with a depth of field in the lens that lets you photograph even in candlelight. He gave it to me because, he said, he liked my work. I don’t think he saw very well anymore at that point. His son wasn’t interested in photography. He worried it would be stuck on a shelf in an attic, I think.” I patted it fondly. “They don’t make ’em like this anymore. And I’ve got it.” I grinned. “He thought I would do it justice, he said.”

“And have you?” She smiled politely. I realized she was really more interested in Carmela.

I moved over and sat down uncomfortably on the divan. I had to touch it first. It was stiff with bits of paint. “No. Not yet,” I admitted. “I’ve neglected all the hopes I’ve had for it.”

“How come?”

“Certainly not because of raising a family. The beauty you find there is photographable. No, it’s more a mind-set. You get so numb to the familiar.”

“You’re using it now.”

“My eyes are fresh. Ah, the Emerald Isle. No, I’ve worked on and off for some time. When I have the time to go through all my work and assemble the best stuff, then I’ll have a show. But my masterpiece is still to come.”

“Mine, too.”

I noticed there was an electric hot plate. It was crusted with rust. “This thing work?”

“I guess so,” she said.

I poked around on the busy table for a cup I could wash. “So, uh, Jenny Rose?”

“What?”

“Who’s the babe?”

“He’s, well, different parts of different people.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. See, if you look closely, you’ll see Ned’s hands, Liam’s neck, Seamus’s shoulders”—she smiled a slow, Cheshire cat smile—“and Willy’s deep inner strengths.” She frowned uncertainly, tipped her head to the side and bent down as though she were looking underneath him. “At least what I would like to think are Willy’s deep inner strengths.”

“Heavens. A man for all seasons. You know you’re going to get in an awful amount of trouble when they see this.”

“Yes, I know. Then maybe they’ll all leave me in peace.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Don’t I?”

I stopped tooling around the room and regarded Jenny Rose. There she stood.

“What are you thinking?” she said.

“I was just wondering if Peg was murdered.”

“Ah. And if I’m the one that did the deed.”

“I was just wondering if we’ll ever know the truth.”

“It’s a wicked shame.” Jenny Rose shook her head.

I couldn’t help thinking she didn’t seem to mind much. But girls her age make a business of acting cool. Molly had mentioned Peg had been cruel to her. So, why should she mind? I found myself using my mother’s words. “Have faith,” I said. “There’s nothing goes good without it.”

She looked at me softly when I said that. Her sharp eyes changed and I imagined I saw a glimmer of love there. Then came the panic-stricken protection of embarrassment.

“Not to change the subject”—I smiled—“but do you think Dierdre and Bridey were annoyed I went off on my own and got a room?”

“Probably.”

“Did I do something wrong?”

“No, you were just being thoughtful,” she said generously.

“I wasn’t. I was serving my own means. I just talked myself into it by telling myself I was being thoughtful.”

“Yes, well, they’re both of them uptight.”

“Do they dislike me, do you think?”

She shrugged. “They think you’re bossy.”

“Me?!”

“That’s just because they are. What really bothers them is that you don’t need them. Aren’t impressed with them. Don’t want to take their pictures.”

“Do you really think so?”

She shrugged. “Of course. You play yourself down, but to them you’re an international photographer still. They’d like to think you’d find them interesting. At least a little bit.”

“I never even thought— What a smart girl you are, Jenny Rose.”

“Do you think I can sell my friend here?”

“If you can’t, I’d be very surprised.”

“I’m just waiting for someone to tell me to put pants on him.”

“That won’t be me.” I grinned.

There was a floppy gray velvet cushion on the floor surrounded by jars and palettes. I went to pick it up.

“Don’t!” she cried. “It’s Seamus’s spot. He fusses if I move it about.”

“On the floor?”

She lifted some sheets of colorful smearings. “He likes to snuggle up in his apron and finger paint.”

“You could always sell them as modern.”

“Don’t think I haven’t tried.” She laughed.

“No luck?”

“Nah.”

“They’re very bright.”

“I know. They’re pretty. I framed them and put them on consignment in a shop in town.”

I picked one up. “I’ve seen worse. On fancy walls, too.”

“Yeah. And it’s a shame because he could use the money.” Her shoulders dropped. “I must try again. I’ll take them to Kinsale, next time. Throngs of tourists there. They can’t get enough original work. Anything they can smack a ‘Handcrafted in Ireland’ sticker on. You know he takes care of his mother.”

“Seamus? But he’s—”

“Yeah, I know. But Mrs. Wooly’s got to be close on ninety, can you believe it?”

“How can that be?”

“He’s thirty-something, Seamus is. I know he doesn’t look it. Mrs. Wooly had thirteen children living, at one time. And of course there were those she’d lost. She had Seamus when she was almost sixty. Yes, she was almost sixty. It was in the newspaper.” Jenny Rose sighed. “Ah, the church.”

“Why do we bother?” I sighed.

“I don’t like my family. Doesn’t mean I’d desert them,” she said fiercely.

Well, well, I said to myself.

“I mean, every family has its heartache. It’s how you deal with it tells what you’re made of. Anyway,” she went on, “they live in a cottage down the coast toward Castletown. They used to be in the big house on the water there but her arthritis was something horrible and the kids had gone off and they moved a wee bit inland, y’see. Lost a good house, there, they did. German people bought it. They fixed it up lovely, I’ll give them that. You’d have thought the children would have come back just to arrange for the house; the Woolys, I mean. The one she’s got now isn’t half the worth. Poor old woman. All those children and none of them comes to visit. Everyone a them that could moved away. Probably fearful they’ll have to take over watchin’ out for Seamus. Them gettin’ on now themselves. And here he is watchin’ out for her. I ought to go see if she needs anything, now I think of it.” Her hazel eyes glanced at me shyly. “You could come with me, if you like. Hasn’t a tooth in her old mouth. D’you know, Seamus chews her food for her.”

“Uch.”

She looked at me reproachfully. “I think that’s beautiful.”

“That’s because you’re an artist and I have been poisoned with comfort and decadence. You remind me of who it is I want to still be, Jenny Rose. Do you think she’d let me take her picture?”

“Ooh, I don’t think she’d mind that. You’re in for a treat, if that’s what you want. She has a spinning wheel and there she’ll be, spinning all the day long, when she’s up to it. You’d think you were in Rapunzel’s godmother’s cottage, or something. She’ll read your tea dregs too, if she’s in the mood.”

“She would?”

“Long as we bring her some scones, she’ll let you take the furniture.”

“Yeah, I’ll go. What’s this?” I picked up a sketch.

“Oh, just a rough draft.”

“From the mural at your old house?”

“One of them.”

It was a scene of women dancing. The likeness was so true, they were Bridey, Dierdre and Peg.

“My ‘three graces,’” Jenny Rose said, brushing off her knees. She looked at it over my shoulder, pleased to see it.

In the woods along the side was a face half-blended in the trees. It was Molly.

“What’s Molly doing in the trees?”

Jenny Rose bent over and picked up her brushes like flowers. She looked at me over the tops of the bristles. “It was just a dream of Seamus’s. I shouldn’t have put it in. It didn’t fit.” She looked at me with that frank gaze of hers. “I meant it to be Mary. Your mom. But I didn’t know her. And portraits from snaps always look like they’re portraits from snaps. I know, I’m impossible that way. Once I’ve put something in, I just can’t take it out. I mean it just looked so true.” She snatched the paper from my hand. “So absolutely right, ya know? I just liked it.”

“It looks haunting to me.”

She regarded her work, pressing the tip of her tongue on her top lip. “It does, you know. Good thing no one saw it. They wouldn’t approve of themselves all naked. You know how people are.”

“No one saw it?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“Do you not like Molly all of a sudden?”

“What? No. No, I like her a lot. I was just wondering if it could have hurt her, seeing this. It looks so…”

“Scary?”

“Yes.”

“Seamus has dreams. The nightmares of the innocent.” She laughed. “You can’t take them seriously, though. You’d be up all night. Sometimes he dreams of me, awful things, surrounded by blood. Fighting … He’ll dream of everyone. You should hear what he dreamt of Bernadette!”

“What?”

“He said she was out in a dinghy chewin’ on a stick.”

“A stick?”

We both burst out laughing.

Jenny Rose wiped her eyes on the edge of her shirt.

I held the paper up. “So she never saw this?”

“Nah.”

“And it’s the only draft.”

“Yeah.”

“Just wondering.”

“Wonder away. Hold on.”

“What?”

“Nah. That wouldn’t have—nope.”

“Tell me,” I insisted.

“No, I was just thinking that maybe there had been another copy of that drawing. But just when I was sketching it. I mean I must have thrown it right away. I only mention it because you seem to think it was important.”

“Maybe it was. Are you sure?”

“Yeah. No one comes up here but Seamus, I told you.”

I looked again at Seamus’s finger paintings. They were vibrant, all right. But I wasn’t surprised they wouldn’t sell. There was something flat, for all the color. Flat and without depth.

Jenny Rose arced her slender back, cheetahlike, listening.

“What’s the matter?”

“Oh, Jesus! Look out! Someone’s coming!”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“Brownie.”

The dog had raised herself from her spot and begun circling in front of the door. “Mind you, don’t let her out now.” Jenny Rose covered the painting with a battered dropcloth. We peered out the window. It had started to rain, madly now, and it was difficult to make anything out.

“It seems to be a man.” I squinted.

“Heavens! It’s Morocco!”

“It’s a donkey!” I cried.

“Hold the dog! Quick, take hold of him.”

“You can’t go out there! You’ll be soaked!”

“He’ll walk over the cliff!” She ran out the door. I watched her go, then slammed the door. I stood there with the dog, the two of us with our ears cocked. Then I thought, Oh no, something’s wrong, and I pitched open the door and sure enough, there’s Morocco heading straight for the edge and Jenny Rose alongside him, dragging his mane and he’s paying no attention to her at all and it looks like the two of them are headed to go over the side.

I didn’t care what happened, I went out, my arms flailing. Of course, I made everything worse. Morocco just picked up his speed. Jenny Rose was crying and dragging the beast but he was having none of it so then what did she do, she jumps up on his back and just when I thought she wasn’t going to let him go even when he went over the side with her on him, along comes Brownie, barking and nipping, snarling and biting, her little bedraggled self between this monstrously determined donkey and the very edge of the now rivuleting cliff.

I guess it was me who screamed.

Well, we all lived, no small thanks to Brownie, which is the main thing, and we made our way, the four of us, down toward the house, Jenny Rose and I riding, half falling off the little donkey, thinking we’d climb in the back window, same as we’d come out, but by then we were laughing so hard we didn’t realize for the moment what we were going to do with Morocco, our wicked Morocco as we now were pinching his velvet lugs, those are his ears, and calling him and it sounds ridiculous but I swear he did seem to be enjoying all this to no end, so help me, he was smiling. We were streaming with rain.

And of course brave Brownie, who had gone from a great fluffy thing dog to a skeleton, really, all wet and amazingly smelly, even outdoors, but then there you go, they would say later, there’s a goat dog for you; all energy and content. She had a way of throwing back her head. She pranced alongside and under Morocco, hurrying him toward the wisp of smoke from the main house. Darned if those two didn’t seem to understand each other, stubborn Morocco and frisky, responsible Brownie. I don’t think I’ve laughed that hard since I was a girl. We were bumping along down from the hill at what they rightly call breakneck speed, down to Bally Cashin. I spotted glittering eyes holed up under the eaves. A nightbird, I thought. An owl. It sobered me for a moment. We pulled up to the front of the house, joggling past the platoon of cars there in the mud. We slid off the fool donkey and I don’t remember whose idea this was but one of us thought it would be good to include Morocco. We were all so soaked nothing seemed to matter. Into the room we lurched, let loose from our hooved sedan. All but Morocco himself. Here, he put the brakes on. No, he wouldn’t come in. Well, this just set us off again. The minute we hit the dark kitchen our clothes began to steam. Jenny Rose and I were falling over ourselves, wracked with laughter so intense there was hardly a sound coming out, just the occasional rasp of an unfeminine snort. You had to cry at their astonished faces, especially Aunt Bridey, ever so shocked. It took us a good while to come to ourselves. And, on top of this, there were strangers in the kitchen, men with down vests on their backs. They were interviewing Bernadette, it seemed, she cozy there with the throng upon her until we’d burst in. She looked lively, all dolled up in black for the police. Jenny Rose smacked my back over and over again and I turned around to tell her, oh, please, stop because by then I really couldn’t get my breath when, in turning, I realized they weren’t the police at all and I caught sight of one of the four men who was sitting there with Liam and the rest of them, drinking whiskey, just as he turned and saw me.

Him! My heart leapt as my eyes met his in the blue haze.

His mouth and eyes opened.

There was so much chatter and goings-on, no one noticed our rapt expressions. “Jenny Rose!” Aunt Bridey cried out in the most reprimanding of tones. “Pull yourself together, girl!”

Jenny Rose, doubled over, wheezed and sighed to a halt. “Claire,” she said to me, mockingly, “do pull yourself together too!” But I’d already stopped.

Liam had become agitated with delight at the heartiness of other men in the house. He leaned across the table, tipping the flask sloppily into their glasses.

Bridey instructed Seamus to take Morocco out to the shed. “Come on, Seamus.” She cuffed him. “Get the lead out from your shoes!”

Seamus didn’t like to miss anything but he wanted less to tangle with Bridey, so he took up a slicker from a peg and got going.

Temple Fortune had recovered. “Is it always this exciting in far-off Skibbereen?” he asked, his eyes on me. They were murky green and blue at the same time, those eyes. Like the sea. But it was the voice, that inexplicable pitch that mysteriously penetrated my being and had me standing there captive to what would happen next. I don’t know about you but I’m not the type to be moved by a brawny, cocoa-buttered torso. No, it’s audio all the way with me. And any surprising dialogue that comes along with it.

Jenny Rose told them in a rush what had happened.

“Ned,” Bridey said. “You might call Audrey Whitetree-Murphy. She’ll be wonderin’ what’s become of him.”

“And worried sick,” remarked Dierdre.

Ned did as he was told. He stood up to use the phone, although it was just beside him, being of the generation where one launched one’s self to make a call.

Bernadette smoothed her skirt. She pulled Temple Fortune back into his chair. She looked dazzling enough in high-heeled boots and a stretchy black skirt to her ankles. “These gentlemen have come to speak to me about a television piece they’re working on,” she explained with elaborate magnanimousness. As if we were simple or deaf. They must have had her drink scotch. I felt a flicker of annoyance. “I’m afraid they won’t have enough time to hear any more of your tale, right now,” she informed us, giving a co-conspirator’s smile to the men.

“And you, Jenny Rose,” the cameraman said, “are you still in school?”

“I paint,” Jenny Rose said.

“And what do you paint?” He smiled condescendingly. “Watercolors?”

“Well, I’m in the process of change at the moment.” Jenny Rose picked up a chocolate and popped it into her mouth.

“Good thing,” Bernadette said. “You wouldn’t want to be stuck doing those tromp l’oeil forever, you know.”

“Why not?” Jenny Rose said. “What’s wrong with that?”

“The phones are out.” Ned put the receiver down carefully.

“Blast,” Dierdre said. “She’s probably wanderin’ around in the marsh, looking high and low for the varmint. You’d best go investigate, Ned.” She looked at the bottle. “Will you be havin’ a drink yourself, Claire?”

“No, thank you.” I stood there, still. I asked myself if what I felt was disappointment. So was this what Cork’s favorite son was up to, interviewing the families of notorious accident victims for television?

“I can hardly see that.” Bridey laughed a nasty laugh. “Audrey Whitetree-Murphy out in the marsh! Not likely. Not for a jackass.” She took a draught of her whiskey. “Not for any jackass.” The one candle burned on the polished side table.

“I take it you’re Temple Fortune.” Jenny Rose reached a friendly hand across the table.

“Uh! What an oaf I am!” Bernadette smiled toothlessly. “Mr. Temple Fortune, may I present my cousin Jenny Rose Cashin. And Mrs. Claire Breslinski Benedetto, my cousin from the States.”

Could she make me any more married? I thought. She got it all right, though, I’ll give her that. She wasn’t a fool, Bernadette. A part of me was pleased that she’d taken that much note of my particulars.

Temple stood up and came around the table. We pressed our cheeks together. He felt so soft. I love you, I said to myself.

We stepped back and looked at each other. “I thought you were snug as a bug in New York,” he accused.

“I thought Baltimore was in Maryland,” I said stupidly.

“You don’t know each other!” Bernadette cried. What an actress! As though she were glad.

“Mrs. Breslinski and I worked together on a film in Munich,” Temple said. “Five years ago, was it?”

Five years, one month and eleven days I had the wherewithal not to say. I could do nothing but stand there.

“Here, now. Is that true?” Dierdre was thrilled.

“Mrs. Breslinski broke my heart,” Temple said in an offhand way.

“If you’re going to refer to me in my married state, you might as well use my husband’s name,” I said, doing battle to his lighthearted tone with my own. “It’s Benedetto.” Now what the hell had I said that for? I flinched.

He took another step back. “Mrs. Benedetto.” He gave a curt bow.

Then he went back with his friends. He had a way of being next to you and then magically not being with you at all. What had I thought? He’d take his place beside me?

Liam busily refilled the glasses, his mouth screwed into a happy bow. Oh, he did enjoy all these going-on. “Mrs. Benedetto,” he said to me in a mocking, fun-filled tone. “Have you found your four-leaf clover, yet?”

“You can go a life long,” Bernadette informed me, “and never find one a those.”

Temple took his glass. “Is that what you’re looking for, Claire?” He smiled at me.

“Well,” I said, “if one turns up.”

“Still serving false gods?” he said.

“Was I then?”

His chin went up. He narrowed his eyes. “Right. Not a god. A policeman.”

Everyone laughed. I could feel my face turn red. He had that power over me. Over all of us.

Temple’s troop was British, I suspected. Or if they weren’t, they might as well be. None of them had very good teeth. Like a gang with jobs and benefits was what I thought. They introduced themselves. I didn’t even hear what they said. The room swelled with Temple Fortune’s presence. It wasn’t just me. Everyone leaned toward him.

“Nowadays”—Aunt Dierdre was making conversation—“married girls call themselves by their maiden names and no one says a word. You wouldn’t hear that in my day. Not without a touch of scandal.”

Liam gave her a you-should-talk look. “What about Audrey Whitetree-Murphy?” he pointed out. “There’s always her.”

“There’s never not her, that’s for sure.” Bridey sounded spiteful.

“Where there’s money, there’s exception.” Liam rubbed a circle into the table with his napkin.

“Aye,” everyone muttered in resigned agreement.

“Money about, eh?” the one they called Tobias put in.

Ned sucked his empty pipe. “That’s a nor’easter, that is,” he remarked about the wind, changing the subject.

Just then, the door blew open. Liam got up, looked out and shut it. “The footee bridge is out,” he announced.

“Fine!” Bridey said. “There’ll be no milk but goat’s milk, then.”

“I’ll have my coffee black, if you don’t mind.” Bernadette winked at Temple.

The voices came and went as though I were in a dream. Bernadette, unworried, stretched her arms, threw out her chest and yawned theatrically. Her top was very low for so early in the day, I thought. Something was wrong. This certainly wasn’t going as well as I’d hoped. Then she whipped her glossy blond cap of hair about her head, laughing provocatively, looking, at the end, not unlike a tousled highland terrier. You couldn’t not look. Temple looked too. I know it’s natural and human but these things always cause me such pain. I am reminded that I am no longer “in the running,” as they say. Men no longer whirl about in the street when I catapult by. I realize that. My figure is as generous now from the rear as it once was just from the front. I’m not kidding myself. On my face, you can see I’ve lived. Still, I have a way about me. I refuse to move over into the corner because I am no longer young.

I lit a cigarette. There was a part of me that had taken energy from Johnny’s betrayal and run with it, like a football.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” Temple said.

“So let me get this straight,” the man beside him said. “You went to Paris, Peg stayed here, your house blew up and Peg went with it.”

“That’s it, yeah.” Dierdre’s head bobbed up and down with a rat-a-tat despondency.

Temple took hold of her big hand. It was as big as his. “Forgive us,” he said, “we’re a jaded lot, we media folk.”

The windows were white with steam. The fire small, but fierce.

Seamus came in, the wind along with him.

Jenny Rose took his slicker, shook it out, sat him down. He’d had enough. Brownie, all wet, jumped onto his lap, pink tongue out, all set to play bridge.

“You must have loved your aunt Peg,” the cameraman said to Jenny Rose. “I’m so sorry.”

“Jenny Rosey me blowsey,” said Seamus in the voice of the dead. “Get out of the house or I’ll kill ya.”

Bernadette knocked over the pitcher of cream. “That sounded just like Peg,” Dierdre cried. There was a general sense of discomfort. What a moment, I thought, waiting for the chill to pass. “I think I will have that drink, if you don’t mind,” I said to Aunt Bridey. All of us mopped and batted at the spill with our napkins. Aunt Bridey held the bottle up in the air and the overturned pitcher in the other, inspecting it for a nick. “Of course,” she said, annoyed. “I was just about to serve the coffee, though.”

“Well, fine, then,” I said, cheerfully. “Coffee it is.”

“Why do you stay with him?” Temple asked me, frankly, right in front of everyone.

“He is the sludge of my forbearance,” I answered him. It sounded right. Don’t ask me where that came from, but it was true.

Aunt Bridey turned her back. “Let’s see,” she said, “then I’ll have to have a go look for another cup.” There was music from long ago on the radio. She walked away, then stopped. You could see her tight shoulders melt. She turned around. “Och. The divil. A fresh round of whiskey all around. That’s what we need.”

“Quite right,” said Temple.

“Pity about the weather,” one of the men said. The one with the camera safe between his knees. (“You’d think the likes of us were about to make off with it,” Liam would say about him later.) He was talking to Bernadette. “I would have liked to shoot you outside with your roses.”

“They’re not my roses.” She blushed. “They’re Dad’s.”

“Mrs. Audrey Whitetree-Murphy’s, I’m afraid.” Aunt Bridey’s voice rose from the sideboard. “Protestants, every one of them.”

“I’m sorry,” the cameraman said. “Who is?”

“The roses, Tobias.” Temple smiled.

“Oh, you know,” Aunt Bridey said as she distributed the rinsed glasses around the table to everyone, “there’s no sense worryin’ about spilt milk.” Here she eyed Bernadette in a way that reminded me of my own mother’s warnings.

The cameraman, Tobias, drummed the oilcloth with his fingers. His lips were wet and cherry red against his ivory face.

I was glad there was no one there from the police, like Inspector Mullaney. He would have surely surmised Jenny Rose had had something to do with Peg’s death. Of course she hadn’t. That was one thing of which I was sure. At least I thought I was sure.

Liam took Seamus gently into his side of the house to get him cleaned up.

I felt Temple watching me. I cleared my throat. “Where are you staying?”

“Not far. The Algiers.”

“You’re here about Peg dying instead of Dierdre, then?” Jenny Rose inspected him over unimpressed, pursed lips.

“This lot are,” Temple Fortune said. “I must confess I had an ulterior motive.”

“And what might that be?” No reason not to be blunt in her own kitchen. Bridey broke the seal on the whiskey next in line and lowered herself tenderly onto her chair. She must have piles, I thought to myself. I tried not to look any way at all.

“Just a couple of hours ago, my landlady over in Baltimore mentioned a giant salmon in the River Ilen, here. Three years straight, now, she said. A great whale of a thing, just looking to be snagged. So I thought I’d tag along.”

“And now with the full moon…” Jenny Rose put in, her face very pale.

“Yes. It’s true they’re out and running with the full moon.” Temple warmed to the thought. “All set to bite.” He looked at me. “Can’t help themselves.”

Liam smacked the air. “Aah, that old tale! There’s plenty a bait gone into the makin’ a that fish.”

“So tell those who’ve never had a look at him,” Jenny Rose hurried to say.

“How big is the fellow, do you think?” Temple asked her.

“You hear all sorts of yarns,” Liam interrupted. “They even have a name for him, if you can believe it. Tantalos, they call him.”

“You made up that name, you poncey sod,” Jenny Rose flared at him.

“But you have heard of him being around of late?” Temple said.

“Didn’t Willy Murphy have a bout with that fellow just before all this happened?” Bridey sat down.

“Is that so? What, last week?”

“That’s what you said, wasn’t it, Jenny Rose? You and Seamus were out with him on the Schubeen. Day after Pentecost.”

“Now that was an awful cold day,” Jenny Rose said. “But it wasn’t Tantalos. That was a big one but it wasn’t Tantalos himself. He’s got a blue tail.”

“A blue tail?” Tobias said.

“On one side. Don’t ask me why. Something must have squashed it once, or smashed it.”

“And you saw him, you say?”

“It was like this. Willy Murphy had hold of one fish. Along comes the great king himself, Tantalos, glidin’ along. He put the other fish off! Oh, he’s a terrible sport! Sure, he got away and the other one, too. You just ask Willy Murphy.”

“Who might your landlady be?” Dierdre said.

“Mrs. Walsh,” Temple said.

“Mrs. Walsh. We know the Walsh family … used to live in town, they did.”

“That’s right,” Bridey said. She picked up her needle and resumed her crewelwork.

“They’ve the daughter does the artwork, sculptures like, along the riverbank. Helen. Jenny Rose went to school with her, didn’t you?”

Jenny Rose squashed her face up, as though she was trying to remember.

“Well, anyway,” Temple said, his eyes shining, “it’s just my cup of tea.”

I looked at Jenny Rose. She looked right back, cat, canary and what of it?

Ned poked his head in the door. “Someone better help us get that wood from the bridge before it all blows away,” he said. “There’ll be no getting out of here this night if we don’t.”

All the men stood up reluctantly and tromped away. That was the last we saw of them for the time being.