Landing (25 page)

And once I went
over the ocean,
Being bound for
the proud land of Spain,
Some singing and dancing
for pleasure,
But I had a heart
full of pain.

—ANON

The Maid with the
Bonny Brown Hair

Sile's fortieth birthday began well, at home in bed, when she opened the parcel with the Canadian postmark and found a tiny Japanese notebook in which Jude had written, one item to a page, four hundred things she loved about Síle.

Your flair for argument.
Your orange eyes.
The way you let Petrushka shred your couch.
Your zest.
Your wrinkled instep...

But then she had to hustle to the airport for her flight to New York, which turned out to be a stinker. High winds on approach made them abort their landing; the plane was diverted to Philadelphia, and sat on the ground for three hours. Food ran out, passengers fumed about missed connections, and one got stuck in the bathroom and went into hysterics. Síle managed to remove the lock with a screwdriver, which would have made a nice story:
How I spent my fortieth earning Mrs. Walson from Alabama's eternal gratitude.
Except that Mrs. Walson exploded from the tiny bathroom and knocked her down; Síle found herself lying across a passenger's feet, with a twisted knee and orange juice in her hair.

"I've wangled an extra day's layover in New York to rest my knee," she told Jude on the phone.

"I thought you said it was all better."

"Oh it is, but not officially. Meet me there on Tuesday?" she begged.

That little intake of breath that meant her lover was marshaling her stubbornness.

"Come on, for once, just let me pay for everything. I could have post-traumatic stress disorder!"

"You're such a bullshitter," said Jude, laughing. And then, "I'll get the Greyhound, it's cheaper."

Manhattan was a dazzle, a confusion; Síle watched it through the eyes of someone who'd never seen it before. She rode the elevator to the forty-ninth floor of their hotel, and when she let herself in she found Jude curled up asleep in the wide bed, her hair still wet from the shower. Síle stood and watched her. A fairy tale: Snow White in her glass box. She bent over to wake her with a kiss on the eyelid.

They'd meant to hit the town, as they had less than forty-eight hours, but they ended up not leaving the room that night. It had a view of the Chrysler Building, lit up in icy Deco curves. At two in the morning Síle insisted on calling Room Service for her delayed birthday dinner. They had oysters, grilled pear salad, and BLTs served with parsnip chips, a pretentious detail that made Jude laugh like a two-year-old.

Everything was a little too fast and frantic. Síle's body felt like sandpaper, then like mercury. Jude didn't take her hands off her, not for a minute. When Síle went to brush her teeth, Jude followed and held onto her hips.

"Doesn't summertime end tonight?" asked Síle. "Or is it different over here? No, I think I'm right."

"So have we lost an hour?" Downcast.

"Gained," Síle assured her, putting back the hands of her watch. "Look, it's not even three A.M., all over again."

"Spring forward, fall back," murmured Jude, leading her to the bed. "I can never remember which way it goes unless I say that. It's a depressing phrase."

"You think?"

"Like that math problem about the snail that climbs ten centimetres up the well every day but slips down five every night."

They had brunch in a revolving restaurant above Times Square, which moved so slowly you didn't notice until you glanced up and found the view had changed. "I'd have an old house in Florence," Síle decided, "with a week or two of skiing in the Rockies, then Sussex in March to see the bluebells, oh and Sydney for Mardi Gras, and lilac time in New England, then a month in West Cork, then, hmm, Bangalore's pretty nice any time of year because it's so high up. You must see Bangalore, Jude, it's what the future looks like. Maybe late summer in San Fran—I always feel exhilarated there even if it's foggy, it's so improbable the way it's built on all those hills. Autumn in New York—or maybe Toronto, why not, there's the big film fest, and drives to see the leaves," Síle offered, aware that she was juggling the conversation single-handed—"then back to the Med. What do you think?"

"I don't like this game. The whole point seems to be to make you restless," said Jude.

"I was born restless," said Síle with her best approximation of a devilish grin.

"The answer's never going to be Ireland, Ontario, is it?"

"Maybe for the Summer Squash Fair," she said weakly.

"Besides, living's not tourism," Jude pointed out. "We stay in one spot on the planet because of real things like jobs and families, not because of the scent of the bluebells."

Christ, sometimes the girl sounded sixty-five. "Bluebells are real."

"You know what I mean."

"It's only a game," said Síle, taking a bit of bacon from Jude's plate, more to be cute than because she wanted it; it was cool and clammy. "Where I'd really like to live, actually, is a little-known hideaway known as J. Turner."

A pause. "Oh yeah? Whereabouts, specifically?"

"The Inter-Mammarian Plain," Síle suggested. "Or, no, a little valley between Leftleg and Rightthigh."

Jude smiled, after a brief delay, and they went back to their hotel.

Later that afternoon they took the ferry to Ellis Island. "It's great to be arriving by sea, just like the immigrants did," said Jude, leaning over the rail.

"Who would you be?—if I'm allowed any more Let's Pretend?" Síle asked cautiously. "What about a humble but hard-working button girl?"

Jude shook her head. "I'm a tomboy who's passing as a sailor because men get twice the pay."

"Cheat!"

"It happened a lot," Jude assured her. "It was doable if you kept your cap tilted down."

"Okay," said Síle, delighted by the image. "And I'm an exotic ayah traveling with a boorish English family, and my dark eyes cannot leave your narrow mysterious form. I discern your secret and we make a pact to run away to the Wild West together the minute we're through customs."

Jude craned up at the green giantess rearing up out of the gray water. "She doesn't look quite as ... welcoming as I expected."

Síle lifted the camera attachment on her gizmo, and its lens went erect like a nipple. "Mm, I know that's meant to be a torch she's holding up, but it looks more like she's saying
Stop!
"

The Museum of Immigration was vast. On a CD-ROM, Jude found a Shawn O'Shawnassy from 1893 who could easily have been a great-uncle of Síle's.

"His surname isn't spelled the same way," Síle objected.

"They'd have written it down wrong," Jude told her. "Like Bukovski becoming Booker, or Cohen, Cole."

The Interrogation Hall was empty except for a vast Stars and Stripes. A little exhibition hall displayed the tests used to weed out applicants of subnormal intelligence. Síle laughed at this, but when she was doing the Spatial Relations puzzle and Jude said "Ten seconds left," she panicked and couldn't finish it in time. "Well, that'd be me and Great-Uncle Shawn back on the boat."

"How can a world traveler be bad at spatial relations?"

"Ironic, isn't it?"

They read stories of applicants who spent years on Ellis Island, waiting; women who were effectively held prisoner until their menfolk turned up. On their way out they passed a huge pile of old-fashioned trunks and barrows. "Must be Hollywood props left over from some set," said Síle.

Jude looked up from the plaque. "Actually, they're real. Unclaimed baggage."

"No!" Síle stared at the handsome old trunks, bound or nailed shut, and the skinny barrows. She reached for her gizmo. "Pose beside them, sweetie. Look sad."

Jude turned away.

"Go on, go on!"

She shook her head. "I don't feel like playacting."

Síle bit her lip. Every way she turned, she seemed to step on glass.

On the boat they had a dull conversation about solar energy. It was understandable, Síle reassured herself. Days together were so strange, so short. They couldn't be having a fabulous time every minute.

When Síle woke the next morning, the first thing she knew was that it was very early; there was only a faint light at the edge of the curtains. The second thing was that the sound that had woken her was Jude crying.

She enfolded the shaking woman in her arms. "Don't."

"I want a cigarette.'

"Don't cry, love. Don't cry. We still have half a day."

"And after that, when do I get to see you again?"

Síle couldn't answer. She thought of saying "Soon," but it sounded feeble. Darkness nibbled at the edge of the word.

Jude sat up, hunched around her knees.

"Do you really want a cigarette?" Síle asked.

Her lover shook her head and stared out the window, where a hungry-faced gull shot by.

Síle considered various arguments she could make. Her knee was aching again. She thought of suggesting they ring room service for breakfast.

What came out of Jude's mouth was, "I can't do this." Síle waited: Silent, for once.

"All this. Any of it. The waiting," Jude growled. "I know I should be grateful that we've been able to meet six times in seven months, I know we've got it so much better than most. But I'm tense all the time, it's like this gigantic rubber band about to snap in my face..."

"I know. I know," Síle crooned, "it's brutal, it's the pits—"

"But you've got the knack," Jude interrupted. "It's as if you can breathe at these altitudes."

"No I can't."

"Well, you seem to."

"How does it help," said Síle frantically, "to moan and groan? Are you trying to pick a fight on our last day?"

"No," said Jude, so low Síle could barely hear her. "I'm trying to say this is over."

For several seconds, the only sound was the delicate whir of the heating. Síle spoke in a clipped voice. "I don't know what you mean. It's clearly not over, is it? I mean, here we are, the feelings haven't evaporated overnight." She waited. "You mean you'd like it to be over, is that it? You don't want me to visit, you don't want to come to Dublin, to e-mail me or ring me or think about me?"

"Sometimes," said Jude into her kneecaps, "I almost think it was better in the old days—simpler, anyway—when you just waved good-bye to the ship or train, pulled your shawl over your head, and got on with surviving." The pause stretched out like spun glass. "Let's face it, Síle. When you're gone you're gone, and we don't even breathe the same air."

Síle stared at her. But couldn't deny it.

They were oddly courteous with each other after that. They packed their bags like zombies. Jude offered to come to the airport, but Síle said it made more sense for the taxi to drop Jude off at the bus station. Their hands were only inches apart on the backseat. "I'm sorry," Jude said, once. Síle spent so long trying to think of the perfect reply—the magic phrase that would move her lover, persuade her, catch her in a web all over again—that the moment had passed. They kissed good-bye like strangers.

I'll go no more a roving
with you, fair maid,
A roving, a roving,
since roving's been my ruin
I'll go no more a roving with you

—ANON
The Maid of Amsterdam

On All Souls, November second, it was 1867 Day, when the inhabitants of Ireland, Ontario, were possessed by the spirits of their ancestors. Or that was the idea. Jude stared blank-eyed at the passing parade. In her head, voice mail replayed over and over.

Me again. I can wait, while you're thinking about this, Jude; I just need to know roughly how long I'm going to need to wait. Ring me back, leave a message; that's all I'm asking.

1867 Day was Jude's idea, though it was inspired by other living history projects she'd visited, like Plymouth Plantation. She'd picked the year because of Confederation, when Canada West had become Ontario, a province of the new nation. She supplied each participant with a fact sheet about the resident of Ireland, Ontario, he or she would be playing, as they were on November 2, 1867:
Patience Toofer, forty-one, spinster, raising two sons of dead sister, runs a laundry, pocks from scarlet fever
... From the sofa-bound vicar's mother to the bloody-nosed brawlers drying out in the cell, everything going on today was researched, everything was real.

But over the four years Jude had been running it, the locals had come to claim 1867 Day in an increasingly flippant spirit, and now it struck her that the whole thing had degenerated into a feel-good family day out. Marcy the travel agent went by waving in leg-of-mutton sleeves that were at least twenty years too modern; when Jude had pointed this out this morning, Marcy'd said, "Let's not sweat the small stuff," in a most un-Victorian way. Hugo and Lucian from the Old Stationhouse Guesthouse were dressed right but swung their pitchforks over their shoulders like dapper golfers. A boy ran by with headphones on over his flat cap, and two tiny nuns followed on pink scooters with tinsel streamers flying from the handles.

Why had Jude ever thought that playing dress-up would give people any real insight into the strange, intractable past? These comfortable citizens of the twenty-first century hadn't the least idea what it was like to hack a space out of an endless forest; to grapple with a bureaucracy for roads, schools, or churches; to somehow settle what had been a mosquito swamp. Nor did Jude, for that matter, she reminded herself grimly; she'd just read lots of books.

Did you get the letter I couriered? Will you at least read it? It took me half the night to write. I'm in a bad way here. Come on, Jude, pick up the phone; you owe me that much.

Gwen stood beside her. "Have you seen Tasmin, over by the mulled cider stall? Really getting into the spirit."

The girl was breast-feeding her baby through an unlaced bodice. "Looks more like a seventeenth-century harlot than a nineteenth-century farmer," muttered Jude.

"You're just jealous of those tits," Gwen joked. "It's all going good, eh? Very festive."

"It's not meant to be festive. It's meant to mean something."

Gwen's eyebrows rose.

"Sorry. Ignore me."

The messages replayed themselves in Jude's head till she felt like a lunatic. The worst were the abased ones.

I know I was careless, I didn't look after you well enough, I mustn't have loved you well enough; I swear I'll do it better if you'll give me another chance. Please? Jude, please?

"You know, this could last for years," Gwen remarked.

Jude watched the bedraggled procession of decorated carts down Main Street. "No, they're nearly at the turkey factory already."

"Not the parade. You, in this state of suspended animation. If you ask me, which you haven't," added Gwen after a second, "I still think you should have hung on in there."

Jude's mouth was frozen shut.

"It's like childbirth, or what I've heard of it: You can always bear more than you think. When I first took up with Luke," Gwen confided in an undertone, "the first six weeks, I didn't imagine I could do it for long. The squalor of being so secret, and brooding about his wife—I really thought I was going to have to call the whole thing off. But it passed."

Jude turned and looked at her. "Great, now you've been unhappy for three years."

Gwen's eyes were hard. Jude had never seen her cry, and perhaps she never would. "I'm not setting myself up as an inspiration here. My only point is, you can get used to anything."

"Then someday I'll get used to being on my own again."

A sigh of exasperation. "Are you still refusing to talk to the poor woman, even?"

Jude knew she'd never done anything crueler than this. Síle lived and breathed talk: Silence choked her. To leave her in limbo, to refuse to even acknowledge any of her messages, was an act of brutality. But Jude could find no other way.

Fucking hell, Jude, how can you cut me off and pronounce the case closed?

Joe Costelloe went by in a pair of anachronistically clean overalls
(Eddie Bauer,
said the big label). After a minute, Jude said, "I want a clean break, not like Joe and Alma."

"That's nothing like," said Gwen scornfully. "They're divorced, but they still share a toilet!"

Jude, I'm telling you for the last time: Pick up the damn phone!

She was being beckoned over to the information booth to deal with some crisis, and Gwen said she'd go try a candy apple. Jude held onto her friend's sleeve briefly. "Bear with me."

"As if I have a choice," said Gwen.

There were two new messages when Jude got home, many hours later. The first was in the rapid, malevolent voice of a crank caller.

I don't understand, and I don't forgive you either. People think you're so strong: What a joke! You hadn't the stamina to hold onto me for even a year. You hadn't the balls.

The second was nothing but low sobs.

As soon as she'd got off the Greyhound from New York, Jude had done all the right things, just as if she'd been packing away an exhibition: She'd taken down the framed photos (Síle on the Triumph, Síle asleep on the couch, Síle and Jude sitting on a giant vegetable marrow), taped up the box of letters and e-mails, put away the atlas so she wouldn't be tempted to turn to the British Isles page. Every time something reminded her of Síle—an espresso pot, a crookback gourd—she put it in the basement. This time last year the house had contained Jude and her mother and all the clutter of their joint lives; now it was beginning to have an uninhabited air.

Always Jude felt the tug, the hook in her ribs.
The fish can't be landed.
The thousands of kilometres between her and Síle should have provided insulation, padding, soundproofing, but somehow they didn't. If only the woman had never come to Ireland; if only the town hadn't become imprinted with memories of her. The stool she'd sat on in the Dive (third from the wall) still bore her silky stockinged ghost.

It's over, it's over,
Jude kept telling herself, like a mantra. But the phrase didn't seem to mean anything. Like those teenagers who boasted, "I broke it off with him on Saturday night but Monday lunchtime we got back together": These weren't actual events, only declarations. Why were people such fools as to think they could stage-manage love's confusing entrances and arbitrary exits? All Jude could see to do was suffer through, keep her mouth shut, get to the end of one day, then the next, then the next. In the hope that one day she would get her life back.

She had turgid nightmares of trudging across fields of snow that turned to black ice and cracked beneath her feet; of tangled ropes, barking huskies, grappling hooks. But one night, when she finally dropped off at three in the morning, she had a lovely dream. They were sitting on a windowsill together, a hundred stories up. Síle kissed her lightly on the cheek—heat blooming on the spot—then took her hand, and they dropped together into the air. Fearless, soundless. Jude woke cringing, as if someone had snapped on the light and ripped off the quilt.

Rizla had this notion about a trip to Detroit, that it might cheer Jude up. Eventually she agreed to a single overnight, just to shut him up. He did the driving, because as he pointed out, Jude was in such a fog these days, she'd go off the road. It was weirdly mild weather for November; Jude wished she hadn't worn such a thick jacket.

On the outskirts of Detroit, they got lost in the tangled highways. She kept the pickup's windows shut and stared out, remembering their honeymoon. What a child she'd been; it shouldn't have been legal. Downtown, certain burned-out blocks looked like Godzilla had just stomped through, though the riots had happened more than thirty years back. Steam puffed up from vents in the street, clouding Jude's vision. She thought of all those white people who'd fled to the burbs and never come back. She pictured Síle, her dark face gliding through a crowd of pallid ones.

They passed empty-eyed buildings with trees growing through them. "Betcha there's pheasants and shit in there," Rizla murmured. "Wish I'd brought my rifle."

"That would really have endeared us to the border guards."

"Ah, they like guns down here. Land of the free!"

By luck or some homing instinct from his drinking days, he found them a blues bar with a good house band. He bought Jude one of their CDs, but she felt only irritation that he was wasting money. They ate their way through a vast order of chicken fajitas. After a couple of hours they were hoarse from trying to talk over the music, so Jude suggested they move across the road to a bar with a rainbow flag she'd glimpsed on the way in. It turned out to be called Lip Sink; they sat through the semifinals of the Best Chest in Detroit competition. Jude was managing a pretty good imitation of a girl having a good time. She tried to enter Rizla's name for the prize, but he twisted the slip of paper out of her hand.

"Ow," she said, rubbing her wrist.

"That'll teach you."

He reminisced about their wild days, rides on dirt roads, slamming on the brakes to do doughnuts; he folded back her ear to find the old scar from that game of tabletop.

"Cut it out." She pulled away.

When the table beside them filled up with female twenty-somethings, Rizla grinned. "That's better. Remember that fetish night you took me to in Montreal that time, and those gals with the live snakes?"

"You're a very strange guy."

"Ten o'clock," he muttered, and she checked the clock on the wall, which said five past midnight. "Ten o'clock," he repeated, "nice little blonde!"

Jude glanced over, then shook her head.

"Thought you liked 'em girly?"

"There's girly and then there's scary, Riz. She's got sequins on her nails."

"What about her?" He jerked his thumb the other way. "In the red dress? You're picking all the straightest-looking ones."

He shrugged. "Just trying to see through your eyes, babe. Personally I'd go for the little cutie in the shirt and tie."

"Pervert!"

Several beers on, she was finding it harder to keep up the act. When Rizla quoted "Time wounds all heels, as Marx says," she snapped "
Groucho
Marx, moron."

"You know what your problem is, Grouchy?" he asked, sipping his beer.

"If there's one kind of person I hate," said Jude, "it's the kind who says, 'You know what your problem is?'" In the background, she realized, they were playing a CD of Irish songs.

She went away from me, and she moved through the fair,
And fondly I watched her move here and move there...

"You gotta let this one go," Rizla told her.

"
This one,
meaning Síle?" The name was like a sharp pebble in her throat.

He shrugged. "Roll credits. The distance wore you out: end of story. Sad but true."

For a light drinker, Jude thought, he could sound like the most sententious of drunks. Sinéad O'Connor moaned on:

And I smiled as she passed me with her goods and her gear
And that was the last that I saw of my dear.

"Show's gotta go on," said Rizla. "If it was meant to be, it would have been. Some meet, right, and some part, and the world keeps on turning."

Jude turned to look at him. It was like a light snapping on; she only marveled that she'd been so naïve. "Oh spare me the hippie bullshit. You couldn't be happier."

He sat back, with a
who, me?
look.

"You did everything you could to sabotage me and Síle. The jokes, the needling, the bets that we'd never live together ... It was jealousy, pure and simple!"

"I don't think so," he said with a chuckle. "Wives are work. I gotta tell you, I wouldn't have you back as a gift."

"No, you don't want me back as a wife," she said; "that was what confused me. You want me single. Isn't that right? Unattached and available for long evenings watching TV, smoking dope, or
whatever.
Your best bud, right here to hand, no strings!"

"Aw, fuck this shit," said Rizla, rearing to his feet. "I didn't drive three hours to get my head bit off."

Jude followed him to the door, at a cold distance. Rain was lashing down. Diana Krall was singing a mournful "Danny Boy." Jude turned up her collar and stepped out into the sheets of biting rain.

"Truck's this way," Rizla barked, pulling her under the canopy of his big leather jacket. They went up and down the parking lot twice, like a four-legged puppet staggering through puddles.

"Are you sure it wasn't the other way?" she asked.

"We turned left to the bar."

"No, you dick, that was the first bar, the other side of the street."

A jeep screeched in reverse out of the parking lot, passing within half a metre of Jude's hip. "Jesus, H," Rizla roared. He left her holding the jacket over her head like an umbrella and lunged after the car.

"Riz," she shouted, "forget it."

He planted his fist on the hood with a terrible bang.

Oh no.

Through the sheets of rain she could see a head stick out of the window. "What the fuck you doing, asshole?" said the driver.