Chapter 6 Ruby
Ruby
Mom was happy to be home. She was determined that Dad and Erin would join us soon.
She was house hunting. She reconnected with lots of old friends and went out to lunches and dinners and trips to the cinema.
She wanted me to meet her friends’ children, but I resisted strongly.
How could I have anything in common with Irish kids?
They seemed rougher than us. When I saw them messing about in the grocery store or in the local park, they cursed a lot.
Especially the boys. Grandma agreed with me.
Dad would have been shocked at the profanity.
When Mom went out, Grandma and I would bake together, or she would dig out old photo albums and show me pictures of Mom growing up.
My uncle in Australia was handsome when he was a boy.
Grandma said he’d been gone so long but that she still missed him.
Phone calls to and from Australia were very expensive and Dennis was not a good letter writer.
Grandma thought Mom should never have come home without Dad, even though she disapproved of him and his church.
She kept asking when he was joining us. Grandma was a strict Catholic.
The teachings of Dad’s church were much more relaxed than her own faith and the observance of it was different.
We didn’t say grace before dinner like we did at home.
There was no Bible Camp, and I missed that, but we went to Mass on Sunday.
It was a lot different from going to church back home.
Irish people didn’t dress up, the music was incredibly dreary and there were few people there of my age.
I wasn’t expected to contemplate anything or read the Bible on Sundays, and I was allowed to watch TV and play Mom’s old records from when she grew up here. There were fewer rules. I liked that.
On the night of the incident, before we went downtown, Dad had poured me a large brandy for the shock.
The taste was awful but it warmed me from my toes to the top of my head.
I knew I had been through something utterly terrible but, somehow, the brandy took the edge off it.
In the days and weeks that followed, I found myself working my way through my parents’ liquor cabinet without alerting them, topping up the gin and vodka with water, and the whiskey and brandy with tea.
They rarely drank and didn’t notice. I continued this little practice when I got to Ireland.
I spent most of my allowance on liquor and beer.
I was seventeen by then. I could drink legally in Ireland at eighteen, but I was only asked my age once in the liquor store. I lied.
While we were welcome in her home, Grandma made it clear that a wife’s role was to be at her husband’s side, regardless of his faith.
Mom said that maybe Dad could set up a mission in Ireland, just like he had set up his church by himself before.
Mom assured Grandma she could persuade him.
Dad had given guest lectures in Ireland a few times.
I vaguely remembered going to one five years earlier, when Dad was mad because there was only a handful of attendees.
He missed us, Mom said. Grandma sniffed with disapproval. I was sure Mom would persuade Dad.
Grandma never mentioned what Milo did to me, not once.
I think it suited us both to sweep it under the carpet.
I liked Grandma. She let me be, though I didn’t cause her any trouble, not then.
I appreciated the fact that she never asked me, and Mom was happy about it too.
She knew I never wanted to talk about that.
Laquanda and Tasha did write diligently for the first few months; Janet, only twice.
I was even allowed to call them on the phone, though Grandma paced up and down the hall muttering about the phone bill when I did.
I had permission to call two friends once a week for fifteen minutes.
Mom had brokered that deal with Grandma, even though we had enough money to call our friends any time we liked.
We were rich compared to other kids in my school in Boston, never mind the kids on this Dublin street.
‘Wasteful,’ said Grandma. Mom said that we would get cellphones of our own.
Grandma didn’t trust cellphones. ‘If you want to fry your brains, go ahead,’ she said.
But even with my new cellphone, my friendships couldn’t survive the width of the Atlantic Ocean.
There was no more conversation about our wedding days.
Laquanda and Tasha kept asking when I was coming home and I’d say ‘Soon’, thinking that I could never go back.
The letters and calls eventually dried up.
There were only so many ways to answer ‘How are you?’ when the answer was ‘I don’t know’.
In the last call I had with Tasha, she said everyone had moved on.
Nobody talked about us now. Milo had been sent to Whiteshore Prison.
I knew his family were fundraising to appeal. I guess they had believed him too.
Dad visited us in time for the July 4th weekend, five weeks after we arrived.
Erin didn’t come at all. The excuse was that she’d got a job supervising at a kids’ summer camp in Vermont.
I was upset about that. Erin had been good at telephoning regularly, but the conversations were always short.
Even before we left home, things had been awkward between us and I’d hoped that when she came to Ireland, to this new environment, that we could all reconnect.
Dad told me I was not to worry about Milo’s appeal.
It was never going to happen because there was no new evidence.
That was a big relief. The thought of ever having to go through a court case again was terrifying.
Dad was adamant that he was not ready to retire even though Mom said he didn’t need any more money.
Mom had set up all these meetings for Dad with religious people he didn’t know and didn’t wish to know.
He referred to them as tadpoles. Mom didn’t know any heads of banks or investment brokerages.
Dad wanted us to come home. We wanted him to stay in Dublin.
I was the most resistant to returning to Boston and grew hysterical at the thought.
Mom said she couldn’t leave me here on my own.
Dad only stayed eight days. Mom was glassy-eyed and devastated.
Before he left, Dad said that he loved me very much but he couldn’t start over in Ireland.
He told me that I shouldn’t blame myself.
Mom blamed me, though she said she didn’t.
‘The important thing is that I love you and that’s never going to change,’ Dad said.
I howled and cried, but that made Mom even more upset, and Dad charged me with looking after Mom.
‘You two need to support each other. I’ll come over when I can, and when you are properly recovered, you can come back, and we’ll be a family again.
’ I knew for a fact I would never be fully recovered.
I was devastated that Dad was choosing his job and his ministry over us.
He told me that Erin really missed me. I missed her too.
The phone calls were awkward, but I knew that if she were to come to Ireland, we could get back to normal.
When Grandma heard that Dad was going home on his own, she was upset too.
And to get away from Grandma’s judgement, Mom bought a large apartment for us on Mount Merrion Avenue with a spare room for Erin that went unused ninety-nine per cent of the time.
Neither of us believed that this separation was permanent.
We thought that Dad would miss us too much.
Mom had several friends in Dublin, some of whom I’d met and some who were strangers to me.
I’m sure she told some of them what had happened, but nobody mentioned it to me.
They arrived with dinners and cakes and wine.
It was good to hear her laughing. She went out to dinner parties and concerts, and I encouraged her. She had sacrificed enough for me.
I started high school, or secondary school as they called it, in September 2000 in a school that was girls only (unusual back home but entirely normal in Ireland).
The school was called St Anne’s and apparently had a Catholic ethos, not that I saw much of it.
It came up in class one day that my father had founded his own church.
I think they were confused by that. When asked if it was a Catholic church or a Protestant church, I wasn’t sure how to answer.
I said it was a Christian church and that we followed the teachings of the New Testament.
They didn’t ask me anything else and, thankfully, I was left alone again.
Our teachers were all female and two of them were nuns. I had two years till graduation.
School was okay. Stricter than Boston, but then home was no longer as strict as Boston.
I was scared to make friends. I kept to the corners and tried not to engage.
I didn’t think I deserved friends. The incident had caused mayhem in the lives of all the people I cared about.
I had nothing in common with these girls.
Without our church group, there was nothing to bond us.
I liked U2, I guess, and The Cranberries, and sometimes I swapped CDs with girls, but I never invited anyone home and I never got invited to their houses either.
I was sick with loneliness but terrified to join in.