Chapter Fifteen
Fifteen
We walked through a series of narrow alleyways covered in colorful murals—a building with the lower part painted like a giant pride flag, a portrait of Chappell Roan with stars in her hair, a stylized blue-and-red print of a man with a mustache, the name Joyce stamped across the bottom.
I even saw what looked like an antique newsprint page, blown up and wallpapered in one alcove, that began POBLACHT NA H EIREANN, The Provisional Government of the Irish Republic…
I could’ve stopped at any one of the pieces to look at them more, but Eamonn was moving and I didn’t want to slow us down.
When we rounded a corner, there was the “something else” he’d wanted to show me.
A bronze statue of a woman pushing a cart topped with baskets that a few other tourists were already gathered around, taking pictures.
“The famous Molly Malone,” Eamonn said, gesturing toward the statue. “It’s a cliché, but you have to pay her a visit if you’re in Dublin. I don’t think they let you leave the country otherwise.”
“What’s she famous for?” Besides apparently having huge knockers.
The brass of the top swells of her breasts, bursting out from above her low-cut dress, was worn down to a light sheen from so many people touching it.
Even in the minute we’d been standing there, I’d already seen one family take turns posing for a picture with their hands on her.
I felt weirdly protective of Molly Malone, like it wasn’t fair that she had to stand here for all eternity and get manhandled like that.
“Ah, you know the song,” Eamonn said. “Everyone knows it. In Dublin’s fair city, where the girls are so pretty…”
He spoke the words rather than sang them, and trailed off after that one line, like he didn’t want to quote any more. I wondered if he was remembering earlier in the park, when he’d called me pretty. I certainly hadn’t forgotten it.
“She was a fishmonger,” he said. “Some stories put her as a part-time prostitute, as well, but that seems like it might’ve been…”
“Misogyny?” I guessed.
“Right, exactly. As far as I know, I think she’s semihistorical, semilegendary.
The gist of the song is that she goes through town with her wheelbarrow of cockles and mussels, just like her mother and father before her, and then she dies young of a fever and her ghost still pushes the wheelbarrow around. ”
“So she was pretty, she worked, she died? That’s it?”
“And then she’s a ghost,” Eamonn said. “Which is good craic.”
I didn’t want to ask him to explain every bit of slang, so I tried to figure that one based on context. “If I come back as a ghost and am still answering phones, help me cross over,” I said.
Eamonn laughed. “Fair enough.”
The thought had occurred to me—it was possible this wasn’t a dream or a fairy dimension or even good old-fashioned human trafficking, but some form of the afterlife.
I had hit my head pretty hard, but not that hard, surely?
I didn’t feel dead. If anything, I felt more alive than ever.
I really didn’t think that was it, but it was hard to keep the fear from creeping into my mind, before I had to quickly shove it away.
The whole point of coming out to see Molly Malone had been to lighten the mood, so I didn’t want to bring it back down.
“Why are people always feeling her up?” I asked. “Is that a thing?”
“Some people think it’s good luck, I guess,” Eamonn said. “You know, when people rub Buddha statues and the like. And then in this case, where you’re rubbing…”
He gave me a smile that was somehow half wicked, half embarrassed, like he was inviting me to be complicit in the salaciousness but apologizing for it at the same time.
I looked over at the statue again, taking in all the details—the folds of her dress, the weave in the baskets, the way her face was forever staring directly at you, looking more serious than the song and her alliterative name and the tourists touching her might suggest. She’d be fun to paint.
Getting at the metallic shine of the brass, the matte places on her chest from where hands had touched, not only her skin but the top fold of her dress, blending from the darkest black in the shadows all the way up to the almost pure white highlight of those well-loved spots.
“Have you ever done it?” I asked. “Be honest.”
“Hand over heart,” he said, and literally placed his hand over his chest, right where his heart would be. “No, I haven’t. But I’ll not judge if you want to. Go ahead, if you need the luck.”
I was more tempted to put my hand over his when it really came down to it, or to touch his chest through his soft sweater the same way he had, see if I could feel his heart beating.
I’d left too long before responding or acting, I realized only when his hand finally dropped away. Instead, I’d just been staring at him, which probably made me look strange.
“It feels like assault somehow,” I said, trying to recover.
“Even though it’s a statue. And now I’ve thought about it for too long—it would’ve been different if I’d just gone over there and put my hands on her.
But now I’ve spent all this time noticing how shiny the brass is there, the detail in the valley between her boobs, the way her dress dips just low enough that she seems seconds away from a nip slip. I feel like I’ve made it weird.”
“Okay,” Eamonn said with an exaggerated yikes expression. “You have definitely made it weird. Now you’ll get stopped at the airport if you do touch her. Come on, you shouldn’t even be looking at her in a public street.”
He pinched the sleeve of my jacket—his jacket—between his fingertips, like he was going to lead me away, but he didn’t actually give any sort of tug. It felt like his fingers stayed there for a second longer than they had to, when it was only a playful gesture, but then he dropped his hand again.
“How does the song go?” I asked, hoping any breathlessness in my voice could be attributed to the cold. “Maybe I wouldn’t objectify Molly if I heard her song first.”
“I told you her whole story,” he said, “including the ghost part, and that didn’t stop ya.”
“Sing it for me.”
He gave a little laugh, rubbing the top of his head. “Jaysus, no. I don’t sing.”
“Please?”
He looked at me, the corner of his lower lip tucked under his teeth. “Okay,” he said. “But you owe me.”
“Technically, I already owe you,” I said, even though I realized it was only undermining myself to point it out here. I’d told him to tally up everything he’d spent on me so far, and I was going to hold him to it.
“No,” he said. “I mean, you owe me a request of my own, down the line.”
My brain definitely went in one very specific direction with those words.
Something like Kiss me or Touch me or even Sit on my lap and let me play with your hair.
I didn’t know if any of those thoughts showed on my face—I hoped not—or if Eamonn just heard how his own words might’ve sounded, because he rushed to clarify.
“Of a similar type,” he said. “If I’m going to embarrass myself now, later I reserve the right to make you do karaoke or something.”
I liked the idea of a later, that he was already thinking of our hangout going into the night. “Deal,” I said. I lifted my hand to shake on it, but shoved it in my jacket pocket instead, my fingers closing around that folded receipt still in there. “So start singing.”
“In Dublin’s fair city, where the girls are so pretty…
” His voice was low, meant just for me to hear it, but I saw a couple tourists turn their heads.
He had a nice voice, I thought, smooth and deep, even if I couldn’t tell from that one line if he could actually carry a tune.
“I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone. As she wheeled her wheelbarrow, through streets broad and narrow, crying ‘cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!’ ”
I could tell he’d started getting into it a little bit, by the end of that verse, but also that he was going to stop and claim that he’d filled his side of the bargain.
And technically he had, even if I knew there was more to the song—I’d never specified he had to sing the whole thing.
I started to protest, to point out that if he expected me to do my part later, then I really deserved the entire song, when I heard another voice come from behind me.
“Alive, alive, oh!” the man sang, gesturing with his hands for others nearby to join in. “Alive, alive, oh! Crying ‘cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!’ ”
The man looked expectantly back at Eamonn, less like he didn’t know how the next verse was supposed to go and more like he thought Eamonn was leading this performance, and he didn’t want to take any of his spotlight.
The man was clearly another American tourist, wearing a football jersey for a team I wasn’t knowledgeable enough to recognize.
Eamonn gave me a sideways smile, and I could practically feel him saying something like, This fucking guy…I really did read the word fuck into so much of his body language, but not always in a bad way. Like now it felt easy and light and a little silly, like we were in this together.
“She was a fishmonger,” Eamonn picked up, more of his accent coming out, as if he was putting it on a bit. “But sure ’twas no wonder, for so were her father and mother before.”
Some people had their cameras out now, I realized, like this was a staged performance.
I felt momentarily bad—Eamonn had barely wanted to sing at all, much less serenade a growing audience on the street—but when I glanced back over at him, he didn’t seem to mind.
He was still putting on that overexaggerated accent, adding little flourishes to the words of the song, and he’d even lifted his hands as if miming pushing his own wheelbarrow through the street.
I covered my mouth to keep the laughter from bubbling out.
He was being so ridiculous about it, so outrageously over the top.
He couldn’t all the way carry a tune, it turned out, but that made it better.
“And they both wheel’d their barrow,” he said, still pushing his own imaginary cart, “through streets broad and narrow, crying ‘cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!’ ”
The crowd was fully into it now, and by the time the chorus kicked in again, they were all singing along. “Alive, alive, oh! Alive, alive, oh! Crying ‘cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!’ ”
This entire experience was Eamonn’s to control. He had them in the palm of his hand, and they looked to him for the next verse, wanting to see what to do. His face looked lit from within, his eyes two bright blue sparks of laughter even as he tried to put on a somber expression.
“Now on to the sad part of the song,” he said. “Let’s sing it quiet, show Molly some respect. She died of the fever…”
Most everyone seemed to know the words, which made me feel like I was out of the loop. How was I the only person who’d never heard this song before?
“…and no one could save her, and that was the end of sweet Molly Malone. But her ghost wheels her barrow, through streets broad and narrow, crying…”
One person tried to keep things going, but Eamonn had stopped, waiting expectantly before finally dropping the last line. “ ‘Cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!’ ”
“C’mon, you know this now,” he said, and I realized he was talking directly to me as the crowd launched back into the chorus.
I did know this part, and it was fun to sing along with everyone, to be part of this moment.
“Alive, alive, oh! Alive, alive, oh! Crying ‘cockles and mussels, alive, alive, oh!’ ”
He leaned in close enough that I could hear him over everyone singing, the slight tickle of his warm breath on my cheek. “Not Hawaii Five-O,” he said. “Common mistake with Americans.”
I rolled my eyes, laughing. “I wasn’t saying that.”
“I have very good ears,” he said. “I know what I heard.”
You do have good ears, I thought, and could feel my own prickle with heat.
He was near enough. I could kiss him right now.
I could put my hands on his jaw and pull him toward me, pressing my lips to his.
He’d kiss me back, I thought. If only for a second, long enough before he came to his senses, or I did.
I was stuck in this strange liminal state, with no business lusting after anybody, much less this man I’d met only hours ago.
“You all right?” he asked. “I warned you about my singing.”
The crowd had mostly dispersed by then, making way for a few new tourists to approach the statue. Two men wearing matching fleeces came up to flank Molly and touch her chest, laughing and holding hands as they walked away.
It was a little easier now, to picture Eamonn the way he might’ve been at nineteen.
Fun-loving and pleasure-seeking and a bit wild.
The way he’d instantly risen to the occasion of that song, knowing how to get people involved and what they most wanted to see, trying to show them a good time.
I thought about him as I’d first met him, practically throwing that sandwich at me, like he didn’t want me to read it as generosity, or didn’t want himself to.
“I’m okay,” I said. “Just a bit cold.”
His eyes searched my face, like he knew there was more to it than that, but in the end he let out a long breath, almost like he was trying to see if he could make out its vapor in the air.
There was nothing—maybe a slight shimmer, a bit of movement, but no visible breath.
Still, he made a show of giving a shiver, like he was cold, too.
“Let’s get some tea, yeah?”