The Passions of Emma (25 page)
Noreen watched her sister’s face intently, listening. She turned back to her mother again and shrugged. “She just knew.”
Bria caught Emma’s eye, giving a little shrug herself. “They think you’re an angel.”
“Oh, surely not,” Emma protested, flushing.
“Better than being mistaken for the devil, I suppose,” Bria said, and her eyes squinted with such teasing laughter that Emma couldn’t help smiling.
Bria smiled back at her, then she gave Noreen a little nudge. “You girls wash up now.” She linked arms with Emma, pulling her into the kitchen. “I’m making
colcannon
for supper. That’s a good Irish dish if ever there was one, and sure, then, if it isn’t my Shay’s favorite. It’s made of mashed potato and cabbage, which is fried in milk and butter with a wee bit of nutmeg added. Why don’t you share a bite with us?”
colcannon
for supper. That’s a good Irish dish if ever there was one, and sure, then, if it isn’t my Shay’s favorite. It’s made of mashed potato and cabbage, which is fried in milk and butter with a wee bit of nutmeg added. Why don’t you share a bite with us?”
Emma suddenly couldn’t get a deep breath or control the curious racing of her heart. It was the off-Saturday, which meant short shifts for the mill and rubber factory and the onion fields, and that
meant families would be gathering to share the afternoon meal, and that meant . . .
meant families would be gathering to share the afternoon meal, and that meant . . .
“Thank you,” she said. “I’m sure it’s delicious, but I really shouldn’t stay. No doubt your . . . Mr. McKenna will be coming home shortly, and I . . .”
She didn’t want to come face to face with Bria’s husband, not that she thought about him much anymore. She’d decided that she couldn’t have been infatuated with the man, because she was going to marry Geoffrey. She was in love with Geoffrey; everybody said so. They could see it on her face.
As for the Irishman—she might allow that what she’d felt for him had been a certain
interest.
It was just that she still felt such shame when she remembered the thoughts that had leaped into her head that night.
interest.
It was just that she still felt such shame when she remembered the thoughts that had leaped into her head that night.
She would never have gone off with him into the storm, though, not even if she really had been the one he’d come for. She’d never been the brave Emma of her imaginings.
“Oh, Shay won’t be home till long after sunset this day, because the striped bass are running,” Bria was saying. She had let go of Emma’s arm to go stir a pot on the stove. “He’s just bought himself a fishing dory with money borrowed from Mr. Delaney, who owns the Crow’s Nest. He don’t like owing to a saloonkeeper, does Shay, but he was that desperate to get out of the onion fields. And sure if no Yankee bank is going to be throwing money at the head of an Irishman—”
Bria dropped the ladle into the pot, splattering gravy, and her hands flew up to her flaming cheeks. “
Dhia
, what’ve I said?” She whirled and looked at Emma with stricken eyes. “Oh, Miss Tremayne. Don’t you be telling me the banker’s an uncle, or some such.”
Dhia
, what’ve I said?” She whirled and looked at Emma with stricken eyes. “Oh, Miss Tremayne. Don’t you be telling me the banker’s an uncle, or some such.”
Emma sucked on the inside of her lower lip to hide a smile. “Well, he’s a cousin. Once removed. And he’s rather reluctant to throw money at anyone’s head, I’m afraid. My father once accused
him of sitting on his investments and trying to hatch them like a brood hen.”
him of sitting on his investments and trying to hatch them like a brood hen.”
Bria sputtered a little laugh. “
Och
, still you’d think I’d learn to mind me tongue.” She pointed a stiff finger at her daughters, who still stood just inside the front door, their eyes riveted on Emma. “And didn’t I just tell you girls to do something?”
Och
, still you’d think I’d learn to mind me tongue.” She pointed a stiff finger at her daughters, who still stood just inside the front door, their eyes riveted on Emma. “And didn’t I just tell you girls to do something?”
Merry ran to Emma and held up her hands, humming a tune that was sweet and pleading.
Emma looked at Noreen, who seemed to be the interpreter for her sister’s strange way of communicating. A wariness lingered in Noreen’s pinched face. She stood braced, with her hands clenched at her sides, as if expecting a fight. She’ll not be won over easily, Emma thought, and loved her all the more for it.
Meanwhile, Merry’s humming had reached the crescendo of a shriek.
“Nory,” Bria said. “Have some mercy on our ears and tell us what your sister wants, then.”
A challenge flashed in Noreen’s eyes as she looked at Emma, but she answered her mother readily enough. “She’s saying she wants the lady to wash her hands for her.”
“Me?” Emma looked behind her, as if someone else had suddenly appeared in the kitchen.
Merry hummed and nodded and spun once around on one foot.
The shack, Emma discovered, didn’t have either a bathing room or a water closet; it had no hot-water pipes. What it did have was a washstand with curtains of patterned cretonne, and a chipped white enameled basin and pitcher.
While Bria filled the basin, Emma cupped the little girl’s hands between her own and dipped them into the water. She gathered up a dab of soap in her palms and ever so gently rubbed those hands, so small in hers. Merry hummed, a gentle lullaby that quivered into a bright, excited trill.
The water was cold. The soap, rough with pumice and lye, stung Emma’s pampered skin. The huck towel Bria handed her was stiff
from having been dried before the stove and smelled of coal dust. But all Emma knew was a sense of wonderment that such a small thing as washing a little girl’s hands could make her feel so full up inside with happiness.
from having been dried before the stove and smelled of coal dust. But all Emma knew was a sense of wonderment that such a small thing as washing a little girl’s hands could make her feel so full up inside with happiness.
S
he was a wonder to herself when she was at the house on Thames Street. And when she left there and went back to her other life, her Great Folk life, she carried with her a lingering sense of unease. The faintest conviction that she had known what it was like for a time to be someone else.
he was a wonder to herself when she was at the house on Thames Street. And when she left there and went back to her other life, her Great Folk life, she carried with her a lingering sense of unease. The faintest conviction that she had known what it was like for a time to be someone else.
She brought the children little presents, lemon balls and hair ribbons. She brought Bria a box of petit-point handkerchiefs, and a Currier and Ives lithograph of a thatch-roofed village nestled among green rolling hills. It was called
Life in the Old Country
, and the look of real joy on Bria’s face as she held it in her hands made Emma feel as though she’d just given her friend the world.
Life in the Old Country
, and the look of real joy on Bria’s face as she held it in her hands made Emma feel as though she’d just given her friend the world.
Her friend. Emma wasn’t sure when that, too, had become real. Perhaps it had always been so, and they had only needed the courage to discover each other.
She came every day that week, in between Great Folk garden parties and teas and afternoon at-homes. Most times she came openly, but other times she was at the Thames Street house when Mama thought she was sailing, or sculpting in the old orangery.
On Sunday she sat at the table in the kitchen with the flowered wallpaper and scrubbed linoleum floor, watching Bria comb kerosene through Merry’s hair to get rid of the lice. The kitchen
smelled of steam and soft soap, for Bria had a copper full of linens on to boil.
smelled of steam and soft soap, for Bria had a copper full of linens on to boil.
“They pick them up at the mill,” Bria said, her mouth and nose wrinkling with disgust. “No matter how hard and often I scrub their heads.” She pointed the comb’s tail at Emma. “You Americans, always bragging on your land of milk and honey. I say better you should call it the land of cattails and cooties.”
Emma looked down at the pattern she was tracing in the brown oilcloth so that Bria couldn’t see her smile. “There aren’t any cooties in Ireland?”
“
Cooties
in Ireland? Go on with you!”
Cooties
in Ireland? Go on with you!”
Merry hummed, a long, flat tune that lilted up on the end like a question. But Noreen wasn’t around to tell them what she’d said.
Earlier, Bria had confided that little Merry hadn’t spoken a word in almost three years, since “some troubles” back in Ireland. But Emma knew she hadn’t imagined the child speaking real words that day in front of Pardon Hardy’s Drugstore. She kept it to herself, though. She understood a little girl’s need to keep some things secret, even from those you love.
So while Merry hummed, Emma leaned forward to rearrange the flowers in the tomato can that sat in the middle of the table. They were white daisies and wild irises this time. “I think she’s trying to ask you something about Ireland. Was it so long ago that you left there?”
Bria patted the mound of her belly. “Sure and I should always be able to remember the day I first set foot in America, what with this one about to be making his appearance now these nine months later,” she said. But then the smile that had started to pull at her mouth seemed to catch, twisting it. Shadows moved, like clouds, over her eyes.
She grew quiet after that, and Emma thought she could almost see the memories come over her and settle deep.
“Will you tell me a little of your life there?” Emma said. “Can you bear to?”
Bria gave a little shrug with her shoulders, as if to throw off the weight of any sadness. “
A mhuire
. I could numb your ears with the stories I could tell of the
ould
country,” she said, the Irish brogue curling thick now on her tongue. “My own birth, you mind, was not regarded as a blessing in my family, what with my father dying three weeks before of the sweating sickness. There was only the three of us, after that: my mother and my brother and myself. We worked for Squire Varney, any farm work he’d give us, but mostly breaking up clods in a potato bed with a spade.”
A mhuire
. I could numb your ears with the stories I could tell of the
ould
country,” she said, the Irish brogue curling thick now on her tongue. “My own birth, you mind, was not regarded as a blessing in my family, what with my father dying three weeks before of the sweating sickness. There was only the three of us, after that: my mother and my brother and myself. We worked for Squire Varney, any farm work he’d give us, but mostly breaking up clods in a potato bed with a spade.”
She paused in the combing of her daughter’s hair and looked around her, her mouth curling into a wry smile. “And our
shibeen
now—
och
, it would make this house look like a palace. Just the four stone walls thatched with straw, with a hole cut in it for a chimney and no windows so it was always dark. For a time we had us a pig and he lived in the house along with us.”
shibeen
now—
och
, it would make this house look like a palace. Just the four stone walls thatched with straw, with a hole cut in it for a chimney and no windows so it was always dark. For a time we had us a pig and he lived in the house along with us.”
Emma caught a startled laugh with her hand. “Surely not.”
“Aye, and he ate better than we did, too. Mam was always saying that pig was worth a sight more than Donagh and me since we couldn’t be slaughtered and made into bacon.”
Emma laughed again and this time Bria joined her. And Merry, her humming swelling into happy shrieks. They laughed together, loud whoops that filled the kitchen and felt good.
Bria ended her laughter with a gentle sigh, and Emma thought she’d become caught up in sweeter memories now. She looked up, her gaze going to the lithograph Emma had given her, where it hung now in a position of honor above the holy water font.
“The place you came from,” Emma said, “does it look like that?”
“As sweetly green, surely. But it’s a wilder land. Our village, or
clachan
, as we say, is called Gortadoo, which means ‘black fields’ in English. It’s on the tip of county Kerry, where the land gives way to the sea. The fishing isn’t so good as you might think, though, but you won’t starve long as you have a boat and a net. The land itself is poor, rocky and rain-soaked, and good for little else than
growing a few potatoes. But, oh, is it green. And every shade of it from dark to light. A rainbow of green . . .”
clachan
, as we say, is called Gortadoo, which means ‘black fields’ in English. It’s on the tip of county Kerry, where the land gives way to the sea. The fishing isn’t so good as you might think, though, but you won’t starve long as you have a boat and a net. The land itself is poor, rocky and rain-soaked, and good for little else than
growing a few potatoes. But, oh, is it green. And every shade of it from dark to light. A rainbow of green . . .”
Bria’s shoulders jerked, as if she’d suddenly come awake from a deep sleep. “Will you listen to myself describe the place. You’d wonder why I wept so when I left it.”
“Why did you leave?”
It was a moment before Emma realized that her question had been met with silence. That Merry, standing between her mother’s knees, with her hair dripping kerosene, had gone utterly still with the kind of quiet that wells up from a place deep within. That Bria’s face shone pale and was sheened with sweat.
Then Bria coughed, a harsh, ragged sound. She took out her handkerchief and coughed into it again, covering her whole face with the cloth, and Emma thought she might have been hiding tears, as well.
Emma looked carefully away. “Forgive me for prying into your troubles.”
Bria stuffed the handkerchief back into the sleeve of her butternut shirtwaist. “Prying? God save us,” she said on an expulsion of breath that was close to a laugh. “Nobody can talk like we Irish can, and trouble is the subject dearest to our hearts.”
Emma’s gaze came back to Bria, and they shared a smile. A smile that deepened, altered, and became something more. Became an understanding that Emma
felt
, as surely as if they’d reached across the table and clasped hands.
felt
, as surely as if they’d reached across the table and clasped hands.
“God save us,” Bria said again, after a long and tender silence had passed between them. “I’ve got to get this child’s head washed.”
She stood up and steered Merry by her shoulders over to the washstand. “Would you mind giving those sheets a stir?”
After a moment Emma realized with a start that Bria had been speaking to her. She didn’t even try to hold back the smile that broke across her face as she got up from the table and went to the stove. If Bria could ask her to share in the chores, then it must mean they were becoming true friends.
Emma felt some trepidation, though, as she folded back the cover of the steaming copper cauldron, for she’d never done such a thing before. She picked up the wooden paddle and began to stir, or rather she tried to. She was surprised at how difficult a task it was; the water-logged linens were heavy and hard to push around.
Blinking against the lye fumes that stung her eyes, she looked up and out the window . . . and saw Shay McKenna come into the yard.
Run
into the yard, where he stopped, his chest heaving. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and even from where she was, here in the kitchen, she could see how the sweat gleamed on his bare skin. His chest and shoulders were sun-browned and strapped with muscle.
Run
into the yard, where he stopped, his chest heaving. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, and even from where she was, here in the kitchen, she could see how the sweat gleamed on his bare skin. His chest and shoulders were sun-browned and strapped with muscle.
She looked away from him, and her hands that gripped the paddle grew still. She felt so strange, her skin tight all over, too small for her body. It was the memory of that night, of her secret and foolish imaginings, she thought. It made her uncomfortable with herself.
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