Westerly

Chapter Ten #2

As they made their way closer, William whispered, “How old is she, do you think?”

“Maybe close to forty?”

“Yeah, maybe. Hard forty.”

O’Kane took a long drag on his cigarette, then snipped the edge with his thumb like he was taking the head off a dandelion.

Embers arced to the cement as smoke poured from his mouth and nostrils.

He mashed it out with his boot tip, put the butt in his jacket pocket, then made his way inside.

“What a blow.” His voice cracked with emotion. He shook Thomas’s hand.

Thomas nodded coolly. “Yes.”

“I have to say, Fiadh, she was like a mother to me,” Conor continued, his eyes swollen and red-rimmed.

Faye’s heart thudded the way it always did when Conor O’Kane appeared, a snake on a trail.

She had encountered him a couple of times at the cove house, jawing with Jean over cigarettes and coffee.

Only in those situations did he call her Faye, out of deference, she figured, to Jean.

He’d make himself scarce when Faye showed up, though with a slanted eye.

It gave Faye the creeps, the way her mother looked at him as if theirs was a clandestine relationship, as if they were lovers.

“Mm. The two of you did have something special, all right.”

“Don’t take it personally. I made her happy.” He drew Faye into a lengthy embrace. That menacing scent of him—burning paper, pomade, the leather of his jacket almost feral. It was the smell of an animal that lurked where humans gathered. She recoiled as William stepped up.

“Okay, Con. You’ve made your point.”

“All I’m saying is what Jean meant to me. Isn’t that right?” he said to his guest. “Oh, everyone, this is Glenda.”

She was a big woman, hair dyed rubber-ball red, as tall as William and heavier, all of it magnified by blue eyeshadow and overwhelming breasts impossible to ignore, even for Maeve, who stared in that way of children.

“Sorry for your loss,” Glenda said, her voice husky. “Con has talked nonstop about his friend Jean since I’ve known him.”

“Conor thinks everyone is his friend,” Thomas said.

O’Kane, shrugging off the jab, patted Maeve’s head. “This wee one had a time of it.”

“Are you a good witch or a bad witch?” Maeve asked.

“Maeve!” Faye admonished.

Glenda roared with laughter. “Trust me. I’ve heard it before.”

“Quite the spitfire you got there, Fiadh,” O’Kane said. “I’ve got half a mind to kidnap her to Ireland with me. Fiery Irish lass . . .”

“What’s wrong with you?” William asked. “Hardly the occasion for gallows humor.”

O’Kane tried to pat Maeve again, but this time she ducked behind Faye.

“Settle down. It’s a joke. Though it’s true you’ve never been one for humor.

” He regrouped, slicked up his voice. “So, how about that? Glenda and me, we’ll go to Galway soon, then to see her brother in Derry.

Been more than a decade for me. You lot must miss it.

The homeland and all. Too bad Jean couldn’t go back. ”

The scoff slipped out of Faye’s mouth on a blast of breath. She shook her head, rolled her eyes. She’d had it with him. She wished she could shove him into the hole they dug for Jean.

“My wife had no desire to return to Ireland,” Thomas said. “Surely in all your ear-bending with her, she’d told you that much. Her home was here. And I will miss her in it.”

Maeve squirmed next to Faye, fussing with her skirt and shoes until it was too late for anyone to thwart what she had planned.

Her hand balled like it had earlier with the message for her grandmother.

She wound up like a major league pitcher and threw her underpants, hitting O’Kane in the nose with white panties scotched with urine and a child’s poor wiping habits.

“I don’t like him,” Maeve wailed, her face red as a washed tomato.

No one does, Faye thought in an instant, though outwardly she was aghast.

“Dear God,” Faye said, scooping up Maeve and her underwear. “Okay. William. You have to take her home.”

He took Maeve from Faye. “I don’t know what on earth got into her.”

“Little young for my taste,” Conor said, wiping his face with the back of his hand.

“You know,” Thomas said, his finger shaking as he pointed. “Jean said you reminded her of our boys. She was right on one count. They, too, were snickering idiots. I’d ask you to steer clear of us now that she’s gone.”

“Thomas,” Conor said, his head cocked.

“Papa,” Faye cautioned. Leave trouble untroubled.

“I mean it. You’re not welcome.”

The black hearse from the funeral home approached the front of the church, followed by a car to take the family to the graveside.

Conor stared at Maeve, who glared at him from the safety of her father’s arms. “Changed my mind about that kidnapping. I don’t like you either,” Conor said, taking Glenda’s hand. They walked away without a backward glance, though Conor tossed his arm in the air. “See you lot.”

As the black car pulled away, Faye and Thomas slouched in the seat. Thomas stifled a laugh as best he could, and Faye covered her face. “Oh, my,” she said, turning to look at her father. “Papa. I’m sorry. I should have known better.”

“Don’t mind that. Not a proper funeral until someone makes a scene. Good for Maeve. Maybe she drove that snake away.” Thomas turned to the window. The pool-blue sky shimmered against the dappled gold of autumn. “Jean would have liked it this way.”

Faye squeezed his hand. “It is a bluebird day.”

“That too, my little Faye. No, it’s better this way. Her going first. She would have been too lonely.” Blue and gold and gray whisked by the window as he spoke. “I have you, after all.”

Faye drew in a breath, held it with her tears.

“Still, I wish I could have buried her there by her rocks. Kept her close.”

It was Jean’s favorite place from the very beginning—the massive granite rocks along the cove.

“That’s the future,” she would say. “Out there somewhere is Ireland. They’ve had their breakfast, and their day is half done.

” She would sway her arms back and forth, closing and opening doors to the past. “If only we could clear this away.”

Other times, she would sit on the rocks and jot in a leather journal not much bigger than a hand, small enough to drop into a pocket.

As a teenager, Faye had gotten up the nerve to ask about it, and Jean had told her flat out, “It’s not your business.

A woman is entitled to her story.” Faye had been so overcome with curiosity she’d gone in search of it, rummaging through drawers, walking her hand along closet shelves when Jean was out of the house. She’d never found it.

Faye closed her eyes now, lulled by the motion of the heavy black sedan.

It was the last place Faye had seen Jean alive.

Buoys bobbing in fog soup, seabirds ranting in circles, the laughter of lobstermen drifting from ghost ships somewhere out in the snug cove.

Jean had turned when Faye called to her, and a girlish wisp of gray hair fell from her loosely spun bun.

She’d brushed it up onto her head, then let her hand rest over her mouth in surprise as if she were expecting anyone but Faye.

It was a lasting image for sure, a hunched woman, her motion slowed, caught in a world she was never a part of, alive there but not living.

“That would have been nice, Papa,” Faye said, patting his hand.

The winter that followed was dark and deep, storm after storm, a nor’easter that marooned them between drifts of snow and spotty power.

Faye worried about Maeve’s safety when the marigold-colored bus ferried her off into a sea of white drenched red by brake lights tapping out warnings.

The world outside her window was blue and gray, white on white, as if spring would never arrive.

Snowed in, she baked and cooked in survival mode, stored casseroles in the deep freeze.

It made her feel useful and necessary to keep her family warm and fed, and she hoped it would distract William, at least for a while, from the fact that she had not given him another child, despite their efforts.

Faye longed for William, for his body on hers.

She thought sure she’d recently had another miscarriage, her second, but it had been so early it was difficult to know.

Lately, when she reached for William under their heavy covers, he pulled away, leaving Faye broken and blue.

They tucked Maeve in one night in February, a nor’easter pelting the house with horizontal snow. In the hallway outside Maeve’s bedroom, Faye touched William’s arm. “Let’s go to bed.”

William flinched as if her touch was repulsive, rolled along the railing perched above the foyer, and retreated into their bedroom.

Faye followed him. “Enough of this!” she shouted.

William pulled her to the bedroom and shut the door.

She crossed her arms in a huff. She felt petulant and ugly.

“Is it me? You no longer . . . want me?” A horrible thought crossed her mind.

Had William seen Conor O’Kane? The scene at the funeral had been so horrific maybe Conor had finally exacted his revenge.

Is that what her husband was grappling with?

Her betrayal? She tried to keep fear out of her voice.

“No, honey, no.” Deep sorrow rent across his face. He turned away, stretched his hands out to grip the edge of the dresser before facing her. “I would be a wreck without you. I don’t want to . . . upset the order here. We’re happy, right? The three of us?”

“You’re not making sense.”

He sighed. “I know. I keep thinking maybe something is wrong. I’m afraid I’ve gotten myself sick with worry that if you do get pregnant again, after all this time, something will go wrong. I couldn’t bear it. And what would happen to Maeve?”

Faye wiped at her face to remove the web of fear she’d woven. “The doctor said I’m fine. Nothing is wrong.”

“I don’t know.” William pulled at the waves of his hair as if the right answer had burrowed in there.

“Look. I come from—” A flip-book of images fluttered in her mind, a patchwork of her stitched-together life. “I’m a strong woman. Don’t push me away.”

By spring, Faye knew she was pregnant. When she was confident she was out of the woods, she told William, and they both told Thomas.

She had worried about her father’s loneliness with Jean gone, but he assured her that he had books to keep him company and pints when he wanted one at the pub near the docks.

“Such lucky news, and right when the lilacs are blooming.”

Maeve, when it was her turn, ran from the house. William chased her down in the barn, held her in an abandoned goat stall while she cried and cried. Faye arrived close behind.

“I don’t want a baby. I told Grandma Jean.

On the list.” Faye had never asked what was on the crumpled paper that wound up in Jean’s casket.

Maeve held up her fingers. “One: A kitten. Two: Pennies from heaven, like Daddy’s song.

Three: A baby doll. She never listened to me. No one ever listens to me!”

Faye opened the gate, collapsed cross-legged next to Maeve and William, her heart bursting. “I’m sorry, sweetie. We’re listening to you now. Tell us anything.”

“Will it be a boy or a girl?”

Faye shrugged. She hoped for a boy. For herself, for William, so Maeve would have a brother.

She tried to shake off her ambivalence about having a girl.

On one hand, it might be nice for Maeve to have another girl in the house.

But the thought of sisters sent Faye to a place she didn’t want to be or to think about anymore.

“It will be a surprise!” Faye said. “Now, let’s talk about that list.” The three of them, plus baby on the way, sat on stacked crates among William’s growing collection of woodworking projects, toppled bean pots and crocks, antiques, and rusted tools, and they talked about kittens and pennies and dolls and all the ways their family might grow.

Molly was born the day after Thanksgiving, bleating like a lamb, William’s red hair curling off her waxy scalp.

Though she was smaller than Maeve, labor had been harder and longer.

Torn and depleted, Faye could hardly move her head from the pillow when William brought Maeve into the room.

She scrambled onto the hospital bed to be close to Faye and the baby who rested against her.

“Careful, careful. Mommy’s a little sore and tired,” Faye said.

Maeve touched the baby’s swaddling, and a tiny arm escaped, wrinkled fingers clenched to fight.

“I wanna hold her,” Maeve said. She stiffened, stuck her arms out. “Can I hold her?”

Faye petitioned William with a raised brow, and he replied with an easy nod. Faye swiveled and placed the baby in Maeve’s arms. “Be gentle. She’s very tiny.”

The baby fussed, and Maeve brought her knees up and curled her arms around the flannel blanket. “I’ll be careful,” she whispered, cooing until the baby settled again.

From a green metal chair next to the bed, William stroked Faye’s hand. “They’re pretty cute. She’s a natural, that one.”

Faye put her arm around Maeve, snuggled her daughters closer. She felt a serenity that bordered on euphoria, though every part of her throbbed. “You’re not disappointed? That it’s not a boy?”

“What? No!” William said. “Look there. One of you holding one of me. They’re perfect. Keep hold of her head there, Maeve. Don’t let go.”

Maeve pipped her lips, made kissy faces. “Don’t worry. I won’t let go, Daddy. Not ever. I’ll be a good big sister. I promise.”

Faye covered her mouth, quieted a sigh, let a water-drenched memory wash over her. Two girls—indigo skirts, billowing peasant tops, blistered hands carrying tin pails—blurred together in a greenwashed field. New life and old ghosts. And second chances.