The Passions of Emma (60 page)
She shut her eyes for a moment, and then she stared up into the infinity of the sky. But if Bria was there, she couldn’t see her. Yet the alternative was too horrible to contemplate—that nothing of Bria existed anymore beyond the bones in this grave.
Emma heard a footfall behind her and turned slowly around to see Bria’s daughters coming toward her down the cemetery path.
Noreen’s chin was up; a wariness was in her eyes. “We always come visit Mam’s grave after school,” she said. “Lots of times, anyways. We didn’t come because
you
were here.”
you
were here.”
Merry hummed furiously and shook her head.
Noreen glared at her sister, her cheeks flushing brightly. “All right! So Merry said you would be here today. She said we had to come, because you’ve been looking for us for a long time now.”
Emma opened her mouth, but she was so choked with feelings no words came out.
Merry squatted on the ground beside her and took Emma’s hand. With her other hand, the little girl began to smooth down the dirt of her mother’s grave, petting it as if it were a living thing, and humming softly under her breath.
Noreen remained where she was, studying Emma with dark eyes.
“Da said you had to go away for a while, to visit family. He said that’s why you stopped coming to see us.”
“Da said you had to go away for a while, to visit family. He said that’s why you stopped coming to see us.”
Emma felt tears burning in her eyes, and she fought them back. “But now I’ve come home again,” she said. She tried for a smile. It came hard and trembled on her mouth, yet it unlocked something deep inside her. “So, you go to school now, do you?”
“Da makes us. Merry doesn’t like it—she hardly even hums anymore.”
“Tell me about it,” Emma said. “Tell me all about school and little Jacko—oh, I imagine he has gotten so big! Is he crawling yet? And tell me . . . tell me about your papa. Tell me everything.”
A slow, tentative smile spread over Noreen’s face, and then she began to talk, and Merry chimed in with long and trilling hums, and the months of winter began to melt away.
Emma came back to Bria’s grave the next day, and the girls were waiting for her. After that she told them when she would be coming, too afraid to leave it to chance or to Merry’s fey ways.
One day in April, when all that was left of winter were a few tattered, wrung-out clouds high in the sky, Noreen brought sardines and soda bread and they had a tea party at Bria’s grave, even though they had no tea. On another day, in May, when the sunshine flowed warm and smooth as melted butter and the air was soft, they went for a walk down Ferry Road and picked wildflowers, which they put in a tomato can beneath Bria’s headstone. That day, Emma thought she saw Father O’Reilly come around from in back of the plain wooden church. He started toward them, but then he turned away.
And once, on a day when the whole earth fairly sang of spring, Emma saw a woman in white batiste, with wild red hair and a laughing mouth, standing beneath one of the cemetery elms. She was so real that Emma lifted her hand and opened her mouth to cry out, but in her next breath the woman was gone.
And then there came a day in early June, when the linden trees were in their full, haunting bloom, that Emma came to the
cemetery and the girls weren’t there. That day, she had brought violets to plant, and so she began the joyful task herself. She knelt in the greening grass and turned the soft, moist earth over with a trowel. This time when she heard a footfall behind her, she was smiling as she turned.
cemetery and the girls weren’t there. That day, she had brought violets to plant, and so she began the joyful task herself. She knelt in the greening grass and turned the soft, moist earth over with a trowel. This time when she heard a footfall behind her, she was smiling as she turned.
He was jauntily dressed in a lounge suit accompanied by a striped tie, a bat-wing collar, and a derby hat. He walked alone down the cemetery path, walked in that long-strided, confident way he had, walked right toward her.
Emma stood up slowly and carefully, as if afraid of falling. She didn’t really go forward to meet him, she only stood and felt the pull of him, like gravity.
And then he was there, standing before her.
“Shay,” she said, the color rising to her cheeks as she said his name.
His eyes, startling and green, fixed on her in that hard, terrifying way he had. He had come up so close to her that she could smell the spicy soap he’d used to shave with, could see the way his hair still curled a little too long over his collar.
“The girls and Father O’Reilly—they all told me that you often come here lately,” he said. “Surely, darlin’, you knew that they would tell me?”
“Yes,” she said, but it was a lie. She’d been too afraid to let herself know.
“And you know, surely, that I’d be coming myself someday, that I couldn’t make myself stay away forever?”
“No . . . Yes.”
How can this be, she thought, that after all this time, even when he’s not touching me, I can still feel him touching me?
“And so?” he said.
She wanted to ask him what he wanted from her.
She was terrified of asking him that.
“And so . . . I don’t know.” She lifted her shoulders in a small, helpless shrug.
He took a step away from her. He looked down at his wife’s grave and the violets she had planted there. He took off his hat, and she saw that his fingers were white on the brim.
She wanted to say to him, That we all found each other, you and Bria and I, even when so much should have kept us forever apart—it ought to count for something, shouldn’t it?
He turned around to face her again. “And so,” he said, “you are still to be marrying your Mr. Alcott next Saturday?”
She wanted to say to him, I will never love again, not like this, not like I love you.
“Yes,” she said. “The ceremony will be held in the gardens at The Birches, unless it rains of course. If it rains, it will have to be postponed indefinitely because Mama will have killed herself.”
He actually laughed. It didn’t seem fair that he could laugh, when she hadn’t laughed for so long, so long . . . Since the last time they had laughed together.
“Ourselves,” he said, “it so happens we’re leaving for New York that same day. I’ve a job working for a ward boss down there, settling new immigrants into the borough, providing them with Christmas turkeys and scuttles of coal and buckets of beer and such. It’s a political job, so the money’s a fine thing to behold. I won’t need to be putting the girls in any mill.”
She wanted to say to him: Why are you telling me this, when it still hurts so to hear it said?
“’Course, while I’m settling those immigrants in, I’ll be telling them why they ought to be voting Democratic, and I’ll be collecting donations for the clan.
Erin go bragh.
Perhaps there’ll be a rising in my lifetime after all.”
Erin go bragh.
Perhaps there’ll be a rising in my lifetime after all.”
“If there is, would you go and fight in it?”
“No. I’ll be staying here.”
“In New York.”
“Aye, New York, rather.”
She wanted to say, I am coming with you. Incredibly, the words had been there, nearly spilling off the end of her tongue. As if
there hadn’t been anything between this time and the last, as if she hadn’t been broken.
there hadn’t been anything between this time and the last, as if she hadn’t been broken.
“Emma,” he said. “I want . . .”
Her breath caught and held, and held, and held.
“I want to thank you,” he said, “for sparing the girls a hard parting. When you could’ve just disappeared out of their lives and always left them wondering.” He flashed a quick, sudden smile. “It’s a grand lady you are, Miss Emma Tremayne—and I wanted to say that to you as well.”
He held out his hand to her, and for a moment she allowed herself to feel it—her hand in his.
And then she was watching him walk away from her.
“Every time it’s the same,” she said into the empty world that he had left behind. “You happen to me all over again.”
Later that afternoon, she went home and changed out of the plain black skirt and shirtwaist she’d been wearing, and into a spring costume of gray-green silk decorated with black velvet knots and buttons, and a large cravat of white chiffon spilling from the neck.
She rode with her mother in the family brougham to the Hope Street mansion, rode back into the safe, familiar territory of her Great Folk life. She walked up the lane of marble flagstones, arm in arm with Geoffrey. The linden trees were blooming, filling the blue sky with floating blossoms and sweet smells. In the still air she heard laughter coming from the tennis court and the genteel pat of the ball against the strings.
We are walking together, she thought, Geoffrey and I. Walking down a lane of marble flagstones, beneath a canopy of blooming linden trees, walking together, arm in arm, and not touching.
A man’s heart was a queer, stubborn thing, thought Seamus McKenna. It just went on loving a woman long after it should have stopped.
He stood on the Hope Street sidewalk, next to a cast-iron hitching post, as if he’d just paused there to catch his breath. He looked through the iron gates at the Great Folk drinking champagne among marble fawns and nymphs, and his gaze searched for a woman with a long, white neck, a shy smile, and seafoam eyes full of wild longings.
“I used to know a Seamus McKenna who would’ve beaten down this gate with his champion’s fists to get at the woman he loved.”
Shay shut his eyes a moment, then opened them and turned to his brother-in-law. “Can you not be leaving me in peace for more than a minute, then? What are you doing here anyway?”
“Passing by.”
“Do tell? And it’s a powerful lot of Catholic souls, there are, at this end of town.”
“And the cod are fairly swimming, thick as fleas on a hog, down Hope Street as well, I see.”
Shay was feeling a pain in his neck from the effort it was taking not to turn his head, not to be looking through that gate for just a glimpse of her. “I had to see her one more time,” he said, and he wasn’t surprised to hear Donagh sigh.
“You were seeing her fine this morning. If you had the brains God gave a bladder worm, you would’ve arranged then to be seeing her every day for the rest of your life.”
Shay looked; he couldn’t help himself. He heard laughter and the clinking of glasses, but the part of the garden that he could see was empty now. “Sometimes,” he said, “life leads you to places where no one can follow. Sometimes those who love you can only wish you Godspeed.”
The wind blew, sending a snowfall of linden petals drifting down onto their heads. Donagh caught some with his hand, but then he let them go.
“’Course, it’s wise you are,” he said, “not to be tempting her into letting life lead her into running off with you. Think of what she’d be giving up—an empty existence and marriage to a man she
can’t love, surely. Not when her heart fairly burns in her eyes when she looks at you. Think too of what your girls and your young son would be giving up—all their growing-up years without a mother who loves them.”
can’t love, surely. Not when her heart fairly burns in her eyes when she looks at you. Think too of what your girls and your young son would be giving up—all their growing-up years without a mother who loves them.”
The wind came up again, and Donagh lifted the derby off his head and settled it down more firmly. “Aye, it’s a grand and honorable sacrifice you’re making on their behalf, Seamus McKenna. Our Bria would be proud.”
Shay stared after the priest’s broad, black-cassocked back as it walked away from him, passing beneath the leafy vault of maples and elms. Then he looked around him, with eyes that ached as if he’d just spent the last year of his life weeping, looked at the grand mansions with their columns and tall windows.
Donagh was wrong. Champion or no, he couldn’t smash an iron gate with his fists. And if he tried he’d only end up hurting himself.
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