The Walking People (33 page)

At night, it was easy to forget. But every morning the absence of Johanna startled her all over again.

 

The third postcard came a full six months after the second, from San Francisco, and in this one Johanna told Greta to send news from New York and Ireland. It was August 1965, a full year after she'd left. She'd long since left her traveling partner behind. "She had it bad," Johanna wrote. "Worse than I knew. A drink first thing in the morning and sips from the flask in her pocket all day long." She didn't say whether she was alone or if she'd taken up with someone else. Michael was at work when the mail came, and Greta read the postcard standing next to the row of mailboxes in the vestibule. After reading it through, she flipped it over and examined the picture: a long red bridge with a boat passing underneath. Greta shoved the rest of the mail back into the small box and read the postcard again. This time Johanna had included a return address. "I love it here," she wrote. When Greta got to the bottom of the card — the words shrinking in size as they drew close to the edge — she read it once more.

"How's the baby?" Mrs. Kraus asked Greta as she squeezed by clutching two grocery bags in each of her arthritic hands. Green cabbage, Greta knew. Ham. Germans seemed to eat the same things as Irish, except noodles instead of potatoes.

"Loud," Greta said, smiling, shoving the postcard in her pocket and reaching for one of Mrs. Kraus's bags. "Fast," she added, thinking of how quickly Julia could cross a room on all fours. She could walk a few steps here and there, but when she really wanted to travel, she dropped to the floor and moved those chubby arms and legs. The old women in the building loved her; Greta could feel it. Loved having the young child around. Loved the young couple starting out in America. Loved that Greta welcomed every word of advice they gave her.

Your husband is so young, they told her. A worker. You're a lucky girl. And your sister, they asked. What happened to her?

They were forgetful old women, Greta had noticed. They asked her the same questions again and again.

Back to Ireland, Greta told them.

Now that you've had the baby, they told her, you look more like her. The hair, the face. Pregnancy does strange things to a woman.

Yes, Greta said.

You must be lonesome after her, they said, and didn't wait for an answer.

Instead of getting on a bus and heading west as she always thought she would once she finally had an address for where Johanna was, Greta found herself very calm at the news. Once she was back inside the apartment, after a quick glance at Julia to make sure she hadn't escaped the barricade Greta had made—two chairs and the small kitchen table turned on its side—she read the postcard again. It was chilly in San Francisco, Johanna wrote, and in the winter it got cold. These were the details Johanna offered. She asked a single question: Didn't you think California was warm all year? And then she answered it: It's not.

Greta turned again to the photograph. Maybe there was a message in this bright, candy red bridge. After another few minutes of staring, Greta walked the postcard to her bedroom closet and tucked it in with the others. Later, as Michael sponged himself in the bathroom and called through the crack in the door the news of his workday, Greta started to tell him. She started to tell him again as he peeled potatoes for supper, the dark slashes of skin neat and uniform under his blade. And again as they were falling asleep. But they were all false starts, like mounting a bicycle faced downhill only to find after a few turns of the pedal that the road pointed upward.

I'll not write her any news, Greta thought as she lay awake that night listening to Michael snore. She didn't even ask for Julia, Greta marveled, didn't even ask how we're coping here. She doesn't even wonder whether Julia is growing strong or if she's saying any words. She expects me to just write and tell everything without even having to ask. Well, I'll not write back, Greta confirmed, shrugging her shoulders and nodding to herself in the dark. She wondered why she didn't think of it earlier. She wouldn't give one bit of news unless Johanna came to her and got it in person. Let her know how it feels to check her mailbox every day, to take in the daily bills and flyers and go back again a few hours later just to make sure that no small piece had gotten overlooked. Let her know what it's like to wait and wonder.

E
AVAN EVENTUALLY FELL
asleep at Greta's nipple and, with her little belly full with milk, didn't stir even when Greta moved her to her crib. People said she was a laid-back baby, but Greta felt she was crankier than Julia had been, already more demanding of her attention. Michael said that the moment Greta called out a hello when she walked in from work, Eavan's little fists started flying and her legs began cycling in the air. "She already knows her mother's voice," Julia said once, and Greta wondered if Johanna had walked in the door when Julia was one, two, five, seven, would Julia have known her?

Back on the couch, the letter from Ireland was still there where Julia had tossed it. Michael's snores were drowned out by the heavy clank of the heat, which had begun coming up for the evening. The sound of the heating system was the one thing Greta had not gotten used to over the years, and once in a while she still suspected that someone was in the basement banging on the pipes with a hammer or a wrench. Their first winter in the apartment Michael had believed the pipes were broken; nothing else would explain the violence of the sound, like cast-iron pans slamming against each other for a full minute every hour on the hour. But after a quick conversation with the super from across the street he understood completely and came home to Greta with a story about steam and water and what happens when they bump
against each other inside the pipe. Eavan had already learned to sleep through the noise.

It was Johanna's handwriting on the airmail envelope, a detail Greta had noticed right away. So she was back in Ballyroan, Greta thought as she leaned back to rest her head on the arm of the couch. A holiday, Greta guessed. Vacation. After that first postcard bearing Johanna's address so many years ago, Greta had held out for six whole weeks before she broke down and wrote back, but even then she was stingy with the news. Instead of sending updates about home and Julia, Greta told her about Bloomingdale's and Michael's work in the building and the new coffee shop that had opened on Eighty-sixth. Johanna worked as a waitress in a restaurant she said was very popular, and she sent pictures of the apartment she had rented just outside the city limits. Dissatisfied with Greta's news from home, Johanna started writing home directly for the first time since arriving in America. She explained to Lily that Julia was a situation she and Greta had worked out between themselves and there was no need to worry. She said she was sorry not to have written earlier, to have kept the secret from home, and then to have left for so long without telling where she was, but it was over now, wasn't it, and there was no use digging up old mistakes. Besides, she wrote, Greta doesn't mind. Greta took to Julia straightaway and even signed up for a public library card so she could go reading up on things having to do with babies. She was a natural. And she had Michael to help her.

 

In Ballyroan, especially after hearing that Johanna had left New York, Lily inquired almost every month about airfares at the small travel desk at the back of the post office. And almost every month she walked out of the office and said to herself, "Next month." When she heard that Johanna had gotten as far as San Francisco, she couldn't stop thinking of the day she'd waved at her two daughters from the pier in Galway and how she hoped strangers wouldn't be able to guess there were pound notes sewn to the underside of their skirts. It never occurred to her that they'd split up and that one of them would keep traveling until she arrived at a new ocean. But as long as she kept hearing from
them, she felt at ease; they were alive and earning and feeding themselves and had a roof over their heads, which was almost more than Lily could say for herself. The roof over the boys' old room had finally collapsed, but instead of trying to fix it, as they would have, surely, if the other two boys were still in Ireland and Big Tom were still alive, Lily and Little Tom didn't discuss it and didn't go near it. Tom looked at it for a day or two, poked it with an old walking stick, tried to prop it up with long branches and tarp, but the damp was too heavy, and it all came down again.

He tried to buy lumber on credit but was turned away by a man who walked him to the front door of his yard, all the while saying, "You see the position I'm in. Surely. You see it. You must see the position I'm in." When Tom began to refuse his dinner and instead of eating or smoking stared into the fire with his hand cupped over his mouth, Lily decided to simply shut the door to that bedroom and stay away from that side of the cottage. She told Tom to do the same.

So the girls were doing well, and once in a while Lily forgot what was worrying her so much about them. Then she'd remember the baby, and the feeling of remembering what had momentarily been forgotten was like hearing the news for the first time all over again. Her little girl had a little girl. And Greta, that goose, left to raise her. There's no use going all the way to America, Lily told herself, when Greta will be home with that child any day. Any day now the post will come with a letter to say look out for the Galway bus. And then it came to her one day that she didn't know a single person who'd been to America and returned. Even Regina Fallon, who at fifty-seven years old only went over because she won the county raffle and wanted to see Niagara Falls, had never come back again. The next time Lily was in Norton's shop, she asked Mrs. Norton to name three people who left for America and returned. When Mrs. Norton failed to do so, she demanded of Lily, "What's that to do with the price of eggs?"

Once the lines of communication had reopened between Johanna and Ballyroan, Greta remained as gatekeeper of only one area: Julia. About a year after she arrived in California, Johanna had started mentioning Julia in all of her letters. She did it mostly in roundabout ways—how nice the schools were out in California, how much more
room she had in her garden apartment than Greta and Michael had in the apartment on Eighty-fourth. Johanna never mentioned her apartment without also mentioning that it was a garden apartment. Greta finally asked a woman at work what that meant. She imagined rosebushes and tulips and a vine-covered trellis that Johanna passed under every time she went out. The woman at work said all it meant was grass outside the front door, sometimes no bigger than a doormat. Greta thanked her for clearing up the question, but privately she decided that it must have a different meaning in California, or why would Johanna mention it so much? In every letter, Johanna painted a picture of San Francisco that was calm and peaceful, with elbow room galore. Julia was two at the time, and Michael and Greta decided the best thing to do was to ignore the hints. Then, just as Greta had gotten past thinking of Johanna's garden apartment every time she bumped into Julia's crib, another letter would arrive. Finally, just after Julia's third birthday, 1967, Johanna wrote to set up a phone call. She wanted to hear Julia's voice.

"What harm?" Michael said when he read the letter for a second time, his capacity for reading growing by the month. He didn't have to sound the words out loud anymore. Didn't even have to move his lips. Soon he'll read as fast as I can, Greta thought when he handed it back to her. Faster. It's just a chat on the telephone, Greta agreed, and ignored the hard knot of panic that turned in her belly as the date got closer. The concerns Michael used to have about Johanna coming back and turning their lives topsy-turvy had been steadily wiped away as the months passed and she had not shown up to take Julia away. Greta hoped that Johanna wouldn't tell the child she was her mammy and confuse her. It would be just like her, blurting it out to get a reaction. "She wouldn't," Michael said. "Why would she?" Just to say it, Greta thought. To claim what's hers. Greta held her tongue as she dressed Julia, and she even laughed when Julia cried out that Greta was holding her too tight. Together, Michael and Greta walked with Julia down to the stationery store, and once they got there and paid for their fifteen minutes, Greta held the heavy receiver up to Julia's ear.

"Hello," Julia said in her child's voice as she pushed Greta's hand away so she could hold the phone herself. "Who is this?"

Greta couldn't hear what Johanna was saying, but she watched Julia's round face as she smiled and announced that she had a friend named Veronica who had two cats. She told Johanna the cats' names and how they liked to jump up on her lap and up on the refrigerator. When Johanna first left, Greta had thought of herself as taking up a temporary role. She was more than aunt, yes, but not quite mother. Then the months went by, and people in the building and in the shops and even on the street started saying what an adorable little girl, what a young mother, what a good job you're doing with your daughter. Greta watched Julia's face get very serious as she concentrated on aiming her voice at the round bottom of the receiver, and then as it opened and transformed when she noticed a man outside walking dogs. "Mama," she shouted, dropping the phone. "Look at all the doggies!" The man had eight dogs on eight leashes. Michael caught her under the arms just as she was about to run into the street.

"Johanna?" Greta said into the abandoned telephone. "She's run off."

"I probably bored her," Johanna said. "She's a talker, isn't she?" It was the first time they'd ever spoken on the telephone, and Greta noticed that Johanna didn't raise her voice the way Lily did when she took Greta's calls in Norton's shop. She didn't shout down the line as if she were dictating a telegram. She's used of it, Greta realized. Probably had a telephone installed straight off when she got settled in California. Michael held Julia up in the air as if to ask whether he should bring her back to the phone, but Greta waved him off.

"She's a rip," Greta said.