The Crooked Branch (22 page)

Ginny nodded her head, wiped her face with her sleeve.

“When the packet arrives from Raymond, you can call it a day, hah?” Father said. “Once he starts sending money back? You can go home to them and make everything right. You can forget all about Springhill House, forget it ever happened.”

Ginny nodded some more, tried to recover the courage that had leached from her in this beloved, familiar place. She dipped her fingers into the holy water well beside the door and blessed herself, blessed Raymond.

“Thank you, Father,” she said, squeezing his hand.

She was already out the door when he called her name. She turned back to face him where he stood, his hands in his pockets, his eyes downcast.

“You probably did the right thing, Ginny.”

Ginny smiled gratefully back at him, and then turned to her waiting friends. Seán offered to drive her home to the cottage in Knockbooley to see the children.

“We have an hour at least before Mrs. Spring would expect us back,” he said.

Ginny looked at Roisin, who was already up in the carriage, waiting. She handed Raymond up to her friend, and then stood in the churchyard with her hands on her hips, her face still damp from her spent tears.

“No,” she said.

“No?” Seán looked at her like she was daft, but she shook her head adamantly.

She knew she didn’t have the strength for it, that if he took her there, she wouldn’t be able to leave again. She thought of Maire, her fine, fearless face. She thought of the gap in Maggie’s mouth where her tooth had been. She imagined Poppy mooning over the new baby, and Michael watching everything silently, taking it all in. How could she leave them again? How could she pry their baby brother from their arms, walk past Maggie’s majestic cairns in the side yard, and wave them good-bye? By now they had got past the worst pangs of their mother’s absence. They were settled in their routines, growing accustomed to their self-sufficiency. It wouldn’t be fair for Ginny to come home for an hour and undo all that.

“You sure, Ginny?” Seán asked.

“I’m sure,” she lied.

He gave her his hand. She was still rather delicate from the birth. He helped her up the steps into the back of the carriage.

“Springhill House, then,” he said, and he started the horses off on a trot.

•   •   •

When Raymond was a few weeks old, Roisin and Ginny were interrupted from their cooking one afternoon by a footstep on the stair. After a moment, Alice Spring swept into the room, all perfumed elegance in a neat red gown. Her golden hair was gathered up off her neck and looped dramatically with black ribbons. Roisin immediately began wiping her hands on her apron and fussing about nervously.

“Where’s our little Raymond?” Mrs. Spring asked, looking at Ginny.

“He’s just there.” Ginny gestured to his basket atop the barrel. “Dreaming, I’d say.”

Mrs. Spring’s crimson skirts swished beneath her as she crossed the room to the baby. “He is such a gorgeous little thing,” she said, peeking down over him. His mother smiled. “Would you mind if I took him out for a constitutional?” She turned and looked at Ginny earnestly. “I don’t like to think of him down here the whole day, and you working, unable to tend to him. I’m going out anyway, and he’d be fine company for me on my walk.”

Ginny left Roisin at the worktable, and went over to where Mrs. Spring stood next to Raymond’s basket. He was awake and blinking up at them. “Well, I don’t have a perambulator, I’m afraid,” Ginny said.

“I have one!” Mrs. Spring answered quickly, and then she changed her voice and her pace; she slowed. “I mean, I happened to come across an old one stuffed into the back of a wardrobe in one of the upper chambers. I had Katie haul it out last week and give it a clean. It’s all ready for him.”

Ginny nodded. Perhaps it would be good for him then, a bit of fresh air. “Well, that would be lovely,” she decided. “If you’re sure you don’t mind.”

“Oh no!” Mrs. Spring said. “It’s no trouble at all. I’m so fond of our little Raymond.”

Mrs. Spring scooped him easily out of his basket and up onto her shoulder. She was so natural with him, and Ginny could see the longing in every gesture of her body, how keenly she wanted a baby of her own to love.

“You have a great knack with him now,” Ginny said. “All the practice you’re getting.”

“Ah, we’re great friends, aren’t we, mister?” Mrs. Spring said to him. “I’ll bring him back in a while.”

“I’m only after feeding and changing him,” Ginny said. “He should be grand for a couple of hours, but if he gets fussy, don’t hesitate.”

Ginny watched his wide eyes peeping over the top of Mrs. Spring’s shoulder as she disappeared up the stairs with him. When they were gone, Roisin sat down heavily on one of the stools beside the worktable. She looked awful shook.

“What’s the matter?” Ginny asked her. “Are you unwell? You look pale.”

“In my four years in this house, that woman has never set foot in this kitchen,” she said, shaking her head. She stood up then, brushed the flour from her hands. “I hope she’s not planning to make a habit of it.”

Ginny laughed lightly, and for the first time, she saw something of a sour look pass across Roisin’s usually jolly features.

“My goodness,” Roisin said, “but that made me awful nervous altogether.”

“Well,” Ginny said, returning to the onion she’d been chopping before the disruption, “she’s gone now. We survived.”

Roisin was sifting flour for a spice cake. “She’s grown very attached to young Raymond,” she said. “Very attached indeed.”

•   •   •

It became customary, after that, for Mrs. Spring to spend a couple of hours each afternoon with Raymond. It was early June, and the weather was fine and clear most days, so they often walked out in the gardens together, and when it rained, she would bundle him into her arms, and sing to him beside the big fire in the drawing room. She brought him extravagant gifts, fine little suits of clothes, an exquisite silver and ivory rattle, sweets he was too small yet to eat.

Ginny told no one of her plans to leave Springhill House if the crop came good at home, not even Seán, though she was sure he suspected. She couldn’t risk upsetting the comfortable balance they had all settled into. She knew it would distress Mrs. Spring to be parted from baby Raymond when the time came, but that couldn’t be helped. In truth, Ginny was growing fond of Mrs. Spring, too, despite her peculiarities. How could she not, with the way the woman doted on her son? When they got out of here and went home, when Raymond was back from America and the crop was strong again . . . when Ginny’s family was whole and all of this was a distant memory, she would welcome Mrs. Spring into her home in Knockbooley. Of course she would. Mrs. Spring could visit young Raymond whenever she liked.

•   •   •

Ginny and the baby still slept cuddled up together in the four-poster bed in that silked, striped room, which seemed to have become a permanent arrangement, despite Ginny’s repeated insistence that they were well able to return now to the servants’ quarters in the attic.

“It’s too drafty up there for him,” Mrs. Spring would argue, fussing over Raymond. “Besides, this room is only sitting empty anyway, gathering dust. He’s the most delightful houseguest we’ve ever had at Springhill.”

So they stayed.

Late one night while all the house slept, Ginny was nursing little Raymond when she heard a clatter at their window, which was frightful, being that they were on the second story of the house. She thought some bat or night bird had hurled its poor body against the glass, and she arose from her bed with Raymond still at her breast, to look out. Seán was standing below, his features upturned and glowing ghostly in the moonlight. She opened the glass, clutched the baby tightly, and looked out.

“Oh, thank Jesus that was the right window,” Seán said, replacing his hat on his head. “Come down, Ginny.”

Her heart skidded. “I’ll be right there.”

Raymond whimpered when she pulled him off the breast, as he was only halfway through his feed and still hungry. He kicked angrily at the blanket his mother swaddled around him.

“Shh, shh, it’s just for a minute, love.” She kissed the top of his head. She had no housecoat, and she could hardly go down to Seán in her nightdress, so she slipped into her shirtwaist and skirt as quickly as she could. She tried not to wonder, but she knew something must be very wrong at home for Seán to come in the dead of night like this. He had been to see the children earlier, and he must have gotten some urgent news, to risk disturbing the house.

“Please God, don’t let it be the blight,” Ginny said. “God keep that crop clean and strong.”

She hoisted the baby onto her shoulder and fled down the corridor, her heart racing. Raymond squawked in her arms, and she tried to shush him, but it was too late. The door to Mrs. Spring’s chamber was opening, and she was peeking out.

“Is everything all right?” Mrs. Spring asked. “Nothing’s wrong with the baby? Is he ill? Shall I send for the doctor?”

Ginny’s mind was flipping and racing, but she managed to go to Mrs. Spring, to feign calm. She reined steadiness into her voice. “No, no, we’re grand,” she said. “I just need a bite to eat. He’s hungry, and I haven’t enough milk for him, so I’m going to make myself a cup of tea. Go back to sleep.”

Alice Spring yawned, her face anxious beneath her cotton nightcap. For a moment, Ginny was afraid she would insist on joining them. Ginny took a deep breath, faked another yawn herself. “I’m going to be quick, and straight back to bed. I’m exhausted,” she said. “We’ll see you in the morning.”

“Good night, sweet Raymond,” Mrs. Spring said, her voice still thick with sleep.

The door closed with a click, and Ginny flew to the staircase and down as quickly as she dared in the dark, with the baby on her shoulder. She opened the small green door across from the stable, but Seán was nowhere to be seen.

“Seán,” she whispered.

The bushes next to her rustled.

“Shh!” he said. “She was looking out. Mrs. Spring was at the corridor window a few minutes ago.”

“Is she there now?”

The bushes wobbled some more.

“No,” he whispered back. “I don’t see her now.”

Ginny opened the door a bit wider. “Get in, quick!” she said.

“You’ll need tea,” Seán said, and she could feel her face drain of color.

They went down to the kitchen, and Ginny unloaded Raymond into Seán’s arms while she filled the kettle and started a fire in the high hearth, for to boil the water. She lit a single lamp on the worktable, and then sat down on one of the high stools beside it, to steel herself for whatever he had to say. Seán was awkward with the baby, and tried to hand him back to her, but she shook her head.

“I can’t,” she said. If there was a shock coming, she didn’t want to drop him. “Is it the blight? How is the crop?”

They had started hearing sporadic reports that the curse was returning, that it was marching, more slowly this time, but just as decisively, across the land. Hope was still the order of the day, but now it was tinged with alarm. If the crop failed again, the starvation would be endless, the misery complete. There was no mercy coming from the landlords. They had proved themselves more pitiless than ever in the time of Ireland’s greatest despair. This time, it might not be absurd to think of the absolute extermination of the Irish. How could they possibly survive another failure, another whole year of nothingness?

“The crop is fine so far,” Seán said. “Maire has been checking it daily, for signs of decay.”

Ginny breathed. Raymond squirmed in Seán’s arms.

“Raymond?”

Seán looked at her, confused. “He’s grand, he’s here.”

“They didn’t have word from America?”

“Oh,” he said. “No, no.”

“So what is it, then?” One of the children. Something was wrong with one of the children.

Seán cleared his throat. “It’s Michael.”

Ginny sucked her breath into her and trapped it there. She found she couldn’t breathe out again. Her knuckles were hard and white, her cold fingers curled over the edge of the worktable. Her knees trembled on the stool beneath her, and she could feel her bowels loosen.

“What about Michael?” she whispered, but her voice came out warped, louder than she intended. She already knew what Seán was going to say. He was ill, her son was unwell.

“He’s ill,” Seán said, and Ginny dropped her head into her hands.

“How bad?”

Seán paused, then conceded, “Bad.”

She could hear the water boiling for the tea, but she didn’t move from the stool. Seán handed her the baby, and went to lift the kettle from the fire. He spooned some tea leaves into the waiting teapot, and poured the steaming water in over them. Raymond was stretching and mewling, but Ginny barely registered him. In her mind, she was already home.

“In what way is he taken ill?”

Seán cleared his throat, swirled the water in the teapot in front of him. He didn’t want to say any more, but he knew he had to.

“High fever, headache. He’s not himself at all. He’s very poorly.”

“When did it come on him?”

“Only yesterday he was fine, Maire said. It was very sudden.”

“Anyone else ill, nearby?”

“One of the Fallon boys fell ill during the week. The mother thought it was the dread famine fever.”

“And?”

“Died last night, Maire said.”

Ginny gasped, and it felt like a punch to the stomach. She rocked herself and her baby on the stool. Her hand was moving frantically beside her face, like a small bird, like it didn’t belong to her.

“Has he any rash? Michael?”

Seán nodded. “Along his abdomen, and up under his arms.”

Ginny knew the danger of that rash. She knew what it meant. The worst kind of fever. Her stomach plunged. She stepped off the stool and fell down on her two knees in prayer. Through her muddled shock of grief she could hear Seán’s voice, clear like a bell cutting through the din. “Ginny, you need to go to him.”

NEW YORK, NOW

I
n the morning, Leo lets me sleep in, and it’s strange, waking up to my own biology, without the frantic urgency of Emma’s cries to retrieve me from my dreams. It takes me a moment to figure out where I am. Sometimes in sleep, I think we’re still in our tiny Manhattan apartment, and I’m still thin and modestly glamorous. Waking to this new life is still a confused adjustment to me.

I sit up, and realize that my pillow is wet, and so is my face. What was I dreaming? I can’t remember, but I have an awful, unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach. Ginny Doyle’s diary is sitting on my nightstand. I take a deep breath, reach for it, and flump back against the pillows, but before I can crack it open, Leo’s face appears in the doorway. He has Emma tucked into the crook of one arm, and a plate of pancakes in the other.

“I got you maple butter and honey!” he sings, but then I guess he catches a glimpse of my face, and his expression falters. “What’s wrong?”

I shake my head. “Nothing, I don’t know. I think I had bad dreams last night but I can’t remember.”

He sits up onto the edge of the bed, and nestles Emma into the canoe of my legs.

“Yeah, you were very restless in your sleep,” he says. “I almost woke you.”

I yawn, stretch, and toss the diary onto his pillow beside me.

“But that should make you feel better,” he says, gesturing at Emma like he is Vanna White and she is the prize. “And this.” He gestures back to the stack of buckwheat pancakes he set on the nightstand.

I reach for the plate instead of the baby.

“These are my favorite,” I say, stuffing a towering bite into my mouth. “So good.”

He smiles at me. “Try not to drip food on your daughter,” he jokes. But I do not laugh.

The buckwheat and honey go dry in my mouth, and suddenly I can’t chew, because I’m crying instead. For fuck’s sake.

“Hey. Hey,” Leo says, leaning forward, and taking the plate from me. He sets it back on the nightstand. “I was only joking. You can spill all the food you want on the baby. Maybe she likes maple butter. She needs a bath anyway.”

God love him, he’s a good sport. He’s trying to joke his way out of it. I finally manage to swallow the enormous bite, but it sticks in my throat halfway down, because I didn’t chew it enough. Leo is holding my hand.

“It’s not you.” I sniff. I thought I was ready to talk, but my lips feel hard against each other, and my throat is taut. I wave my hand in front of my face—why, I have no idea. It doesn’t help. “God, what is the
matter
with me? I’m such a mess.”

Leo doesn’t push. He waits until I can breathe deeply, and then he says, “Listen, take it easy on yourself, Jelly. You’re not a mess. I hate it when you say stuff like that.”

I breathe again, and Emma rises and falls with my breath even though she’s on my legs, because my body is now so spherical and interdependent that any activity going on in one part of my anatomy causes fallout around the globe. I’m planetary like that.

“I know,” I say. “I’m just not used to being so emotional. Gah. It’s awful. I’m so sick of all this weird, random crying. It’s like I suddenly have no self-control.”

This must be what it feels like for people who have incontinence. Like,
Oh dear, would you look at that. I just pooped my pants again!

“I know it’s hard,” Leo is saying, “but it’s totally normal. I was just reading about postpartum depression on WebMD and—”

“You what?” I interrupt.

Leo looks up at me. Caught.

“I was just, I mean, I was just looking around, not like I was specifically looking for information about postpartum depression, but . . .”

“Good, because I don’t have that.”

“No, I know, that’s what I’m saying.”

My tears have vanished now, and the weird, desperate sadness I felt a moment ago has been entirely replaced with anger. I have switched gears unequivocally, like only a proper psychopath could do.

“So why were you looking up postpartum depression?” I say. “Do you think I’m falling apart?”

“No way.”

I lift my chin. “So then why?”

“I was just reading about different kinds of postpartum experiences,” he says. “And I think yours is perfectly normal. The hormones racing through your body during this time, they’re just . . .”

I can tell he wants to say
crazy
or perhaps
insane
. He casts about for another word.

“Overwhelming?” I offer him.

“Yes.” He snaps his fingers. A look of unadulterated relief settles over his face. “Overwhelming. Even if you didn’t have the sleep deprivation, the big life change, all the stress of caring for a new baby. Even without all that stuff, just the dips and spikes in your hormone levels alone are enough to make you feel supersensitive.”

My favorite pancakes are getting cold on the nightstand, and Emma, as oblivious to my emotions as ever, has fallen asleep on my legs.

“You’re very sweet, Leo,” I say, even though I feel slightly annoyed by this whole conversation. I
want
to think it’s sweet. But instead, I feel like my very real, very personal emotions have been reduced to some safe, clean Internet diagnosis. “But you know, I think it’s more than that.”

I trace my finger along the contours of Emma’s sleeping face.

“How do you mean?”

“I just—” Where do I even begin trying to explain all of this to him? “Yes, it’s true, everything you’ve said is true. I’m hormonal and overwhelmed and sensitive. The change in my lifestyle has completely knocked the wind out of me, and I didn’t expect that. I thought this would be effortless for me, that I’d be a natural.”

“You are, you’re so nurturing,” he says.

That sentiment is so wildly wrong that I don’t even bother contradicting him.

“Every effort I make seems to flop. I’m not used to that. I succeed. I’m a succeeder!” And then I shudder, remembering. “Ugh, that mommy group yesterday. Even that girl Jade, from channel C . . . I liked her. I mean, it was awkward, but she seemed nice. And then I practically had to put her in a choke hold to get her to take my phone number. I’ll probably never hear from her again.”

Leo rubs a hand along my leg. “It will get better,” he says. “You’ll find people you click with. And you’ll get back to work when you’re ready. You’ll find a rhythm.”

“I know,” I lie. I glance at the diary on his pillow, then reach back and grab it. “I was reading this last night, before bed. I think this is what upset me, gave me the nightmares or whatever.”

“Why, what does it say?” Leo picks up the plate and takes a bite of my pancakes.

“She killed someone.”

“No shit!”

“Yeah, in front of her kid.”

Leo chews thoughtfully. “Wow.”

“I know.”

“Salacious!” he says, puckering his lips.

“Leo, this is not
Us Weekly
,” I say. “This woman was related to me.”

He sets the plate back down, and begins to nod his head.

“Oh, I see, I get it now,” he says, and he brings his hands together in front of him, in this maddening professorial gesture he uses whenever he’s theorizing about something. “So because your, what was she, like your great-great-great-aunt’s uncle’s cousin’s grandmother? Because she was a bad mother, because she killed someone in front of her kid, somehow this trickles down to you?”

“It’s not as crazy as you make it sound,” I say.

“Actually, it kind of is, Majella.”

“No, it’s not,” I say. “Think about it, Leo. You know my mom. She’s not exactly the warm, fuzzy type. She flees the scene at the first sign that she’s about to become a grandmother. She’s incapable of talking to me about anything more serious than a hammertoe. She’s totally emotionally vacant.”

“She is not, you’re too hard on her.”

I grip the diary hard in my hands. Leo’s mom died when he was seventeen. She was diabetic, and she more or less ate herself into a doughnut coma, from which she never recovered—speaking of emotionally healthy women. He and my mom have always loved each other, and even though he understands my exasperation with her, he can’t help but take her side from time to time. And it’s not even like I can really blame him. She is a tremendously charming woman. Just ask the receptionist at her accountant’s office! Everyone loves her. Maybe that’s why I don’t feel like she’s really
mine
.

“She is vacant, Leo. You don’t understand.” There’s nothing I hate more than the sound of my own whininess, so I reach for a note of concession. “I know she could be worse.”

Leo snorts. “You have no idea.”

“But she could be better, too.” I revert to whining. “This is not the relationship I want to have with her. She’s totally closed off to me.”

“She’s just a phone call away, Majella.”

“She is in
Florida
,” I say, as if this is the grandest, most obvious proof that she’s unreachable. Why doesn’t he understand? “I’m just saying, it comes from somewhere, the way I’m feeling. We learn how to be parents by watching our mothers.”

“Yes, and then we
choose
whether to emulate them or do things differently,” he argues.

“Yes, that’s what sane people do,” I grant him. “But what if you can’t choose? What if it’s coded deep into your genetics, and you can’t outrun it? And what if I’m just part of some inescapable genetic cycle of failed nurturers, and I’m about to fuck up our baby, too?”

I am crying again now, and Leo bites his lip. The poor man is utterly defeated. I feel so sorry for him. I’m terrified, in this moment, that he is wishing he married someone else. Someone more stable and light, someone more like I used to be. I reach for his hand, and I squeeze it, but not to reassure him. I wish I were that selfless. I’m afraid to let go.

“You could never fuck up our baby,” he whispers.

Please let that be true.
He touches my face, and then we both look down at Emma, asleep on my legs. I’m so glad she’s not old enough to understand any of this. I hope I’m better by the time she can. I so want to be that strong, steady woman Leo thought he married. Didn’t I used to be that woman?

“Leo?” I whisper, and now I am truly shaking, because against my better judgment, I’m about to confess something that I had no intention of telling him. I can feel the words unfurling inside me, and I wish I knew how to stop them, how to swallow them, but out they tumble, unbidden. “You know I love her, right? I do.”

“Of course.”

And then there’s a long gap of silence, when I think I might actually be able to thwart these words before they appear. I might be able to conquer them. But no.

“I don’t know if it’s enough,” I whisper. “I don’t think I love her the way I’m supposed to.”

The silence that descends over the room now is beastly. Heavy. I can feel it on my chest. Leo’s face is broken. He pushes breath up and out of his lungs. I can see his cheeks puff as the breath leaves his body, but there is still no sound. He takes the diary from me, thumbs through it without reading anything, and then stands up from the bed.

“You should throw this fucking thing in the fire.”

“What?”

He’s shaking his head. “It’s ridiculous, you getting yourself into this kind of state over some stupid, prehistoric diary.”

“It’s not about the diary. . . .” But he won’t listen. He’s found his comfortable scapegoat. He needs this to blame, instead of me. He is shaking it at me.

“This has nothing to do with you, do you understand me? Nothing.” He is actually pacing, like some thwarted soap opera lover, and his voice is loud. He’s going to wake Emma. “Whatever crazy-ass thing some whackjob lady did in front of her kid some two hundred years ago
has nothing to do with you
.”

Emma’s eyes pop open, and she immediately begins to cry. Leo stops in his tirade and tosses the book onto the bed at my feet. He reaches for her, but I get her first, lift her onto my shoulder. She stops crying, and it is a bona fide miracle. I kiss the side of her head. Leo watches us. His hands hang helplessly at his sides.

“Look at you,” he whispers, and then he comes and holds us both for a long time. “I wish you could see what I see.”

•   •   •

I take a long shower before I head downstairs, and I expect Leo to be ready to walk out the door to work. Shoes on, jacket. But he’s not. He’s sitting on the couch with a cup of coffee, the PlayStation controller in his hand, and his socks up on the coffee table. Emma is doing tummy time on the yoga mat beside him.

“Aren’t you going to be late for work?” I ask from the kitchen. I’m rummaging in the cabinet for a mug while I inspect the coffeemaker, as if my powers of deduction alone are powerful enough to tell whether it’s decaf.

“It’s half-caf,” Leo says from the couch. “And I called out.”

I have the coffeepot in my hand now, but I stop pouring midstream, and turn to him. “You what?”

“I called out. I’ll probably go in later, for the dinner rush. Mario can handle the prep. Thought I’d spend the day with my girls.”

“On a
Saturday
?”

In the seven years I’ve known him, Leo has never called out of work. Not once. The idea that he would do it on a Saturday, on the restaurant’s busiest night, is actually unthinkable. He has worked through migraines, fevers, flu symptoms, and, one extremely foolhardy time, even food poisoning. Something is extremely suspicious here. Does he want me to believe he just called out on a whim? Just because he got a hankering for some family time? I turn back to my mug and fill it up before I join him on the couch. I sit on the far end, as far away from him as I can get. I look around the unfinished room.

“Yeah, you wanna spend the day getting a jump on some of these projects, then?” I say. “Maybe we could install some of the wood flooring?”

Our renovation efforts have come to a screeching halt since Emma was born. Steam curls up from my mug and around my face. I sip. I am laying an ambush. I am about to pounce.

“Yeah, maybe,” he says, focused on his game. The buttons click beneath his thumbs.

“So what, you don’t trust me with her now? You can’t go to work and leave me alone with her?”

He glances at me for just an instant, but it’s long enough to distract his on-screen quarterback, who throws an interception. Leo throws the controller down on the coffee table, and it hits his coffee mug, which sloshes.