Chapter Thirty-Three
From the back seat with Nola Wren, Faye listens to Maeve and Molly argue over the best route to Dublin from the airport. It has been push and pull for months.
In the aftermath of Faye’s revelation, Molly had returned to that bar, the Salty Siren, in search of Glenda, determined to confess the truth about what happened the night Conor O’Kane died.
But the bartender claimed he’d never heard of a Glenda and said people come and go.
After that, the only solution for Molly was to go with Faye to Ireland so she could confess directly to any O’Kane at all.
No one had been able to talk her out of it.
That plan started rounds of bickering and negotiating and tears, battles over who would go with Faye and who would stay behind until the only solution was for Maeve and Molly to both go to Ireland and Nola Wren too.
Their fates would be sealed or unsealed together.
Thankfully, there’s no argument about who should drive.
Molly knows she is a frantic driver—too close to the wheel, too many nervous glances over her shoulder, on and off the gas like she’s playing a pedal organ.
Maeve, though, is a natural, and it is when she looks most like William as far as Faye is concerned.
Even here in Ireland, on the wrong side of the road, her right arm extends from the shoulder and drapes over the steering wheel, while her left hand rests easily on the stick shift.
Nola Wren, glued to the window, watches cars and buildings and trees on the motorway. Faye watches with the same wonder.
Over decades of witnessing a changing America, Faye somehow believed that Ireland was only a rural place of hills and sheep and stone walls and craggy shores.
The modern buildings and roadways, cars and lorries zipping around, shock her.
Had she thought that time stood still here?
Her only sense of an Irish city is the Belfast of news reports.
She knows from William’s clipping that she and Elisabeth got off the mail boat at the docks in Dublin, a memory so innate in her it is like a memory of sun on one’s face.
Dublin, though. It’s a postcard, a colorized photo.
She has no memory of this or any Dublin at all.
In the tiny hotel room, they stash their bags and wash up in the bathroom.
The mattresses sag and the wallpaper is worn, but it’s clean, which is all Faye hoped for.
Molly stakes out the bed she will share with Nola Wren, leaving the one closest to the door for Maeve and Faye.
Tight quarters to be sure. Nola Wren bounces on the bed now in her stocking feet, trying to touch the low ceiling out of her toddling reach.
It’s not even noon, Dublin time. The idea of taking a quick nap is considered and rejected—there’s no way they’ll be able to sleep with Nola Wren awake.
“We have to rally,” Maeve says. “Get on local time.” She takes out the guidebook.
“Here. Let’s walk to Saint Stephen’s Green, stretch our legs, then grab lunch.
Maybe afterward this little monster will be ready for a nap.
” She sweeps up Nola Wren, swings her around until giggles erupt.
Molly takes the child from Maeve. “Let’s change your diaper, sweet girl.
” With that, chins drop, and Maeve and Faye set about fussing with their suitcases, knowing looks flickering between them as Molly struggles with the diaper bag.
“You two can stop with the glances. I don’t need you scrutinizing every move I make. Honestly, the judging! I’ve got this.”
This terrible tug-of-war. Neither Maeve nor Molly seems able to let go—Molly trying to prove to everyone, herself included, that she is a capable mother, and Maeve, rubbing it in that Nola Wren still seeks her out despite the fact that the child lives full-time at the farmhouse with Molly and Faye now.
“I wish . . .” Faye can’t finish her thought.
She doesn’t know what she wishes for anymore.
So many conversations, so many battles to get to where they are.
They agreed they would start in Wicklow, at the center in Glencree.
There they would look for information about Faye’s sister.
Maeve had suggested calling or writing ahead, but Faye said no.
She wanted to go there in person even if they weren’t able to find Elisabeth.
Bad news would only keep her away. She wanted to retrace the last steps she took as a German girl.
“Come what may,” she told her daughters.
From Glencree, they would head west to the village on Dunmanus Bay.
She would know the fields and walls. She would know the sea.
Then they would seek news of Hannie and Hugh and of the O’Kane family and their whereabouts.
“You wish what, Mom?” Maeve asks.
Faye shakes her head. “I wish I knew it was all going to be okay.”
“It will be, Mom. Whatever happens. We’ll get through this,” Maeve says.
Faye hears William in her voice.
They enter the city park through black iron gates beneath a stone arch.
The sounds of Dublin fall away in the green space, ducks and geese and swans lazing on the lagoon before them, gulls careening overhead.
Friends sit on the grass together, couples push carriages.
Nola Wren scrambles out of her stroller to scatter a flock of pigeons into a flurried whirl.
Maeve throws her arms up, dodges a stream of excrement. “Ew. Just what we need, to get shat on by a bunch of birds.”
“Supposed to be good luck,” Molly says.
“People only say that to make themselves feel special because a bird shit on them.”
Despite the worry hanging over her, Faye recognizes that traveling with her daughters and granddaughter, sharing this space with them, is an adventure.
The Irish accents remind her of Thomas and of William, sounds from the only sense of home she has ever known.
She has been Irish most of her life. To be here now, in Ireland, preparing to relinquish her identity, feels like another betrayal.
She hooks her arm into Maeve’s, taking comfort there, as they follow Molly and Nola Wren along the winding path edged with low iron fencing.
They pass through the open center, a Victorian garden of fountains and flower beds.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Faye says to Maeve. They watch Molly bend with Nola Wren to feed the ducks.
“Yeah,” Maeve says. Faye hears that catch in her voice and stops.
“C’mon, let’s sit down. What’s wrong?” She wants to add “now” or “this time” but stops herself. Maeve doesn’t need her judgment.
“My heart,” Maeve says. “It feels like it’s wrapped in thorns.
” She gestures with a nod. “After this trip is over, Molly will take her away somewhere. She can’t stand being around us.
I know I’ve made it hard on her. I got so used to feeling like I had to be the best mother and the best wife.
To prove myself all the time. I didn’t mean to make it into a competition with Nola Wren as the prize.
I let myself think of her as mine. But she never was.
” Maeve rests her head on Faye’s shoulder.
Faye touches Maeve’s cheek. She knows it’s all true.
Molly chases after Nola Wren, who heads away from the open field toward a stand of trees and a fountain.
“I don’t know how to keep us together anymore,” Faye says.
That word. Together. It was so important to Elisabeth, it’s one of the few German words Faye remembers.
Zusammen. But it felt impossible to Faye even then, as if her old soul knew better. Things fall apart, she thinks.
“I was thinking about Grandpa, after you told us about, well, all of this,” Maeve says. “Him and his Yeats. Things fall apart.”
Faye smiles, stunned by the shared thought. The ghosts are with us.
“Maybe I’ve been kind of playing house, like make-believe. Same old, same old.” Maeve says, touching her mother’s sleeve. “If Molly hadn’t come back . . .”
“But she did, Maeve.”
“No. I know. What I’m trying to say is that this thing with Wendy is different.
I’m different with her. When we go home, I want to do my life differently from here on out.
I’m gay, Mom. I want to say that out loud so I can be that everywhere.
I feel like I’ve been tiptoeing around, careful of revealing too much.
Or maybe I’m just tired of trying to prove that I’m worthy even though I’m gay. It’s not a flaw. It’s who I am.”
“I know I’ve made you feel that way. I’m really sorry, honey. I put my own worry about being outed—Is that the right word? Of being outed on you.”
“Yeah, that’s the right word, Mom. You’re very cool now.”
“Have you ever heard the saying, ‘The barn’s burned down, and now I can see the moon’?” Faye asks.
“No. But speaking of barns—” Maeve says, though Faye doesn’t seem to register it.
“Basically, it means sometimes something wondrous is revealed after a catastrophe. We can only hope.”
“I want to talk to you about an idea,” Maeve says. “Wendy and I were thinking—”
“You guys!” Molly shouts, waving them toward her.
“Let’s catch up with them,” Faye says, pulling a reluctant Maeve to standing.
Molly points at a bronze statue of three women in a circular fountain where Nola Wren dips her hands. “Check it out. Maiden, mother, crone,” Molly says.
“What?”
“Maiden, mother, crone,” Molly repeats. “The three Fates? Spin, measure, cut?”
Maeve gives her a perplexed look.
“The three Fates. It’s like, in all mythology. Women determine man’s fate, the length of his life. The young girl unwinds the thread to spin it, the middle-aged woman measures it out, the old woman cuts the thread.”
“It’s us,” Maeve says. “Nola Wren is youth, we’re in the middle, and Mom’s the crone.”
“I’m not a crone!” Faye says.