City of Hope (35 page)

I watched the black sedan drive off, and when it had disappeared down the hill, I stood for a moment on the porch and breathed in spring.

Anna was out sweeping her porch opposite, and waved across at me before going back inside. Jake was out with another boy, collecting bottles and cans from our neighbors. The two cloth bags hooked to the handlebars of his bicycle swung precariously, his bravado reserved for how high he could fill them and still wheel it home.

This was my neighborhood. Most of these houses had been empty when I moved here, but now they were full of life and people; people I had helped get on their feet, people who were my friends. I had left one life and, within a year, used the money from it to build another from the ground up. In a sudden flash I realized what I had done: I had created not just a life for myself, but virtually a whole neighborhood in which to live it.

“Is she gone?” Bridie called out of the window.

“Just left,” I called back.

“She'll be back—there's breakfast here, if you're interested, and Tom is out back at the coals again.”

I ran around to the side of the house and grabbed him up from the porch, where he had just woken and was crawling off his rug toward the steps. He tumbled and I seized him, then pulled him down onto the grass and rolled around on the ground, nuzzling his face. He let out a delighted squeal as I lay on the warm grass and lifted him up in the air above me, and his head glowed with the sun behind him, a globe of light and laughter. As I brought him down to hug him, he wriggled to be lifted up again. “Again—again, do it again!” Over and over, up and down, up and down—he never tired of this game, never tired of seeing the world from two different angles: up close, far away, up close, far away—his view changing in the whim of another person's arms.

Bridie stuck her head out the back window this time. “For the love of God, Ellie, the breakfast will be stone-cold, and look at the state of you. Come in here and get washed and feed that child—we only just got rid of one fool, and you're behaving as bad!”

I struggled to my feet, Tom tucked under one arm, objecting wildly that our game had stopped so suddenly. As I steadied myself and began to walk toward the back door, I suddenly saw the rest of my life pan out ahead of me. I would be tending the vegetable patch, season after season, year after year; the wire on the chicken coop would rust and be replaced; Matt would paint the back of the house every five years and be up on a ladder cleaning the guttering every six months; I'd sweep leaves from the porch each autumn and never tire of the red and gold, the crispy crunch of them underfoot; Tom would grow up here, and Bridie would die here—both under my tender care. Maureen was all but running the shop now. She was drawing a good salary and was already looking for somewhere of her own with the children. There was a reason I had found her, and it was so that she could bring me to this place; this place where I created a new life.

Yonkers was my safe haven. I would marry Matt, and this would be our home.

But first I had to go and lay my old life to rest.

“One month,” I said to Matt, “I'll be gone a month.”

“Will that be enough time?” he asked. “Are you sure you wouldn't like me to come with you?”

“A month is plenty of time, Matt, I just need to wrap a few things up. I'll bring Tom along with me. You stay and look after the house, and
Bridie
. . .” I called out to the next room.

“I can look after
myself
!” she hollered back.

“. . . I'll be back before you know it.”

The night before I left I lay awake in Matt's arms, unable to sleep. I listened to the stirrings and murmurings of my sleeping charge, and felt Matt's breath rise and fall under my face.

As early dawn made a blue canvas of the sky, the tree outside our window turned to a silhouette and Matt woke up and said, “Don't go, Ellie.”

I knew he didn't want to let me out of his sight. He was afraid I wouldn't come back; he was afraid he would lose me to Ireland—to John.

“I'll be back, Matt—I have to go and sort things out in person.”

He sat up and faced me; his face was heavy with shadows, his eyes glinting with fear.

“Will you marry me, Ellie?”

This was the last thing I needed to hear!

“For goodness” sake, Matt, this is hardly the right—”

“Will you marry me, Ellie? Before you take off halfway around the world—I need to know.”

“Probably, maybe . . .”

He looked away.

“Matt—don't be like this. I need to sort things out first. I need to go home and—”

“I thought this was your home, Ellie: here with me and Tom—and Bridie.”

“Of course it is, Matt, but . . .”

He looked me square in the face again. His lip was quivering. If I didn't know and trust him as well as I did, I might have read it as anger.

“Will you marry me, Ellie? Tell me now.”

This was what I wanted. I knew that. This life, with him and the baby. This was where I felt safe, in this life that I had created; this was the man I was going to settle with, spend the rest of my life with in comfortable, harmonious peace. So now I just had to choose, to make it real.

“Yes, Matt,” I said. “I will marry you.”

He wrapped his arms around me, and kissed and kissed the top of my head and said, “Thank you, thank you,” over and over again. I turned around and clambered across his wide torso to kiss him. As I touched his lips with mine I tasted the salt of his grateful tears.

Ireland, May
1935

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-
NINE

This was my fourth time journeying across the Atlantic Ocean. Normally it was a leisurely experience, there was time to think and reflect—too much time—when I had taken this trip. Traveling with Tom was a completely different experience, and it was also the first time I had been entirely on my own with him for any length of time. Matt, Bridie or Maureen was always on hand. Now it was just me and this child, in each other's company.

Tom was crawling now, an unstoppable tank of a child, full of energy and adventure. The speed with which he could topple a glass, or grab the corner of an opening door, or locate and stick a sharp object into his mouth frightened, amazed and amused me all at the same time. He put my heart sideways in me ten times a day, sliding along the deck until I became inured to the drama of his accidents. When he got his hand caught in a railing, or banged his head on a corner, I would simply pick him up, hold him until he stopped crying, then put him back down into his favorite position: sitting square in the middle of whatever floor we happened to be on so that he could survey his domain. His big blue eyes would blink excitedly and his head turn from side to side as he decided which direction to go in next. At nine months old, Tom commanded the center of attention and, being an engaging and attractive child, he got it. I was, to anyone looking at us, his mother now and took compliments on his rosy cheeks, and good looks and charm, as if I were his natural mother.

I barely had time to think or eat myself during the day, I was so caught up with caring for Tom, and I missed the help that Matt, Bridie and the others gave me with him. I bedded down in my cabin each night, smiling to myself at the thought that soon I would be seeing my beloved Maidy and be able to introduce her to baby Tom.

On the last day of our journey I sat at the bureau in our cabin and thought about all of the things that had happened, all of the things I had done. John dying, Charles, Matt—the women, the shop, the houses, Sheila. I started to make the list of things I had to do when I got to Ireland, and when I got back to America. Planning ways to persuade Maidy to come with us, planning my wedding to Matt: a small or large affair? My mind was intent, always working toward some end, some goal. Perhaps I was returning to my old self, the Ellie that had been with John—always plugging the gaps, putting bricks in the wall of our life to make us more secure. Plastering the cracks in our finances, our crumbling house, our unconventional lifestyle. I was doing the same now: solving problems, working out ways to have a better future while the present slipped away.

Tom had somehow hoisted himself up and was standing, holding on to the wall. He turned his head to me, slowly, so as not to unbalance himself, and grinned at me. His eyes were sparkling as if enraptured with the mere fact of being alive. He looked in that moment like—freedom. In the past year I had craved freedom more than anything, yet life had seemed to close in around me—I had, despite myself, sought out pressures and responsibilities. Fear of my own grief had led me off in a direction that I was no longer certain of. Tom, I could see, was so full of possibility—the fearless innocence of adventure. I must have felt like that once?

The baby's legs buckled and he crumbled back down onto his knees. Just as quickly again he plonked himself onto his backside, and crawled toward the door of our cabin. I opened it and let him off up the corridor for a while; his toes like gray pebbles already, his knees like leather, his wet nappy wobbling its way down his chubby thighs.

He looked totally alive. I thought sadly that perhaps my adventure was over while Tom's was only beginning.

I was fine until I got onto the train from Cobh to Ballyhaunis. Tom, who had been demented with the excitement of getting off the boat, fell asleep in my arms the moment we pulled out of the station. As he slept and I looked out the window, I felt myself being sucked back in time. It was as if I had never been away, as if the past year had been nothing but a dream, and I had been jolted awake and was back in my real life. The life where I had gone out to feed the hens and come back to find John having a heart attack; where I had gone to get help and come back to find his dead body. The life where I had been unable to face my neighbors, my friends at his funeral; the life I had fled and to which I was now returning as if the intervening years had never happened. The years before, the year after, did not exist—all I felt now was the grief I had run from. America, Charles, Matt, the baby, Bridie—the people I had helped, the business I had set up, the houses I had renovated, the adventures with gangsters and socialites: what had been the point of it all?

John was dead. I was crying again. There was no escape. Was this to be my life now? Running from these tears?

As the train sped toward the place I didn't want to be, the place I was not ready to return to, my regret turned to resignation. I would do what had to be done, and leave. The only thing here for me, the only person I really needed to see, was Maidy. I would bring her back to America with me! She would be resistant, of course, but I would persuade her. I concentrated my mind on making a plan. I would have to rearrange everything to suit my scheme. Bridie and Maidy would not be able to work and live in the same house; the very thought of how disastrous it would be to have the two women under the same roof made me smile. Perhaps Bridie would move in with Maureen for a while, just while Maidy settled and found her feet. How she would love baby Tom! And Matt? That was too complicated to think of. I put him aside—out of my mind.

I would invite Maidy to return with me on a holiday. That would be the best thing. A couple of months—once her creaking bones had experienced the heat of a New York summer she would not want to return to Ireland. Katherine could send the rest of her belongings over in a trunk; along with the rest of mine, in time for the winter.

By the time I reached Ballyhaunis everything was settled in my mind. The future was decided and everything was back under my charge. There was so much to do before our return that there was no time for tears or regrets; no room for painful memories to poison my plans.

Katherine met me at the station with my car. How worn and muddy it looked; I was glad to see that something had changed, even for the worse. Katherine, in contrast, was still wearing the dirndl skirt and sensible expression. We embraced awkwardly, put Tom into the back, then I drove. I tried to persuade myself that I felt uncomfortable now driving along these narrow country roads with their hedgerows scratching our sides and small birds flitting across the windshield. In reality it took me just a few seconds to get used to it; my year of change fled from me once again. Tom crawled around the back seat and tried to clamber into the front once or twice, but eventually, with the jogging motion, he settled down to sleep on the car floor. He was the thing I had there to remind me that I had been away, but even his presence couldn't bring me solace from the twisting truth.

In the car I told Katherine my plans for the business. I didn't want to wait. I wanted to get everything done as quickly as possible. She could have everything, buying me out at a price that we would agree between us, then paying me off on a monthly basis, transferring the money directly to my bank account in America. The money could be paid off on a short-term basis with no interest or long-term for a low-interest fee, whichever she preferred. Once the money was paid, everything would be transferred into her name. We both agreed quickly that short-term would be best. I wanted no business interests back here in Ireland, and she wanted outright ownership, as I knew she would. The bank would, we were sure, gladly lend her the money to purchase the typing business, salon and Fitzpatricks' Drapery as going concerns.

When the finality of our arrangement had been agreed there was a lull when we both sat in contentment, me driving and Katherine looking out the window at the ordinary, still Irish day. After a few moments I tried into put words how I was feeling and simply said, “Thank you, Katherine.”

“It's me that should be thanking you, Ellie, for this extraordinary opportunity you've given me.”

“If it wasn't for you taking the reins this past year, Katherine, I don't know that I could have survived.”