The Walking People (54 page)

Eavan shook her head, looked at James, closed her eyes, and hoped that Gary would hurry up with the extra bags of ice he was emptying into the coolers outside so he could come in and stand beside her.

"Don't you young people want to go see where you're from?"

"We're from New York," James piped up from across the room. "The Big Apple."

"That's where you live," Oran Quinn corrected. "Only where you live, boy. My Frank thought the same as you, and then he brought his little boy over to Donegal last summer. Do you know what they said to him in the shop right there in Killybegs? They said 'Welcome
home.' Now look, Frank had only been over a few times, and it was the boy's first time, but that's what they said to him. Welcome home. They knew by his face and his name that that's the only place he could be from. Four hundred years the Quinns were in Killybegs. Four hundred years of being reared and married and raising a family in Killybegs. Until July tenth, 1968. The day myself and Maude left for America. You think four hundred years can be erased in forty?"

"No," Eavan said, as if she were ten years old again, being lectured by an adult for some childish indiscretion.

Maude Quinn turned to the woman next to her and said in a loud voice, "It's a new thing with him. He likes to give long speeches at parties. Must be old age."

Oran wagged a finger at his wife, but stepped back, smiled, freed Eavan from the iron trap of his arm.

"Now tell me this, Oran," Greta said, circling the group, a glass of white wine in her hand. As Gary once pointed out to Eavan, Greta didn't walk, she crept. Careful, deliberate, like an animal trying not to make a noise. She glided through the small dining room, around the clusters of people gathered in the living room, her drink held out in front of her so she could be sure not to tip it onto the carpet, her other arm raised slightly, as if she was trying to make a space for herself, the stem of a ship leading the body through water. Though it was too soon to be possible, Eavan could almost swear she felt the baby move in her stomach as her mother cleared her throat. Outside, the street was quiet. The cars had stopped arriving. James was holding his cell phone in his hand, waiting, glancing at it now and again to make sure there was a signal.

"Tell me just one thing," Greta said, walking up to Oran Quinn, setting her drink down on a side table, and putting her hands on her hips. "You tell me how you know it's a girl. Have you been consulting the cards?" she asked. "Because I think it's a boy."

Everyone looked at Eavan's belly.

"He has the gift," Mary Monahan called out, and everyone roared laughing. James hushed them, and they tried to laugh more quietly. "Isn't it true, Oran? Wasn't your mam or your grandmammy one of the walking people?"

"You're completely daft, Mary," Oran said, smiling thinly. Everyone laughed harder when they saw that he was offended. "Didn't I just say the Quinns have always been Donegal people?" He raised his glass to toast himself.

"It
is
a girl," Eavan said, smiling into her cup of ice water. "I found out yesterday." Those within reach clapped Oran on the back as if he had something to do with it. Eavan looked over at Greta and shrugged. "I was going to tell you later."

From the back door, Gary stood on his tiptoes and grinned over at his wife.

"Okay, people," James shouted, snapping his cell phone closed. "Get away from the windows. He's coming. He's two blocks away."

Laughter breeds more laughter, Greta thought. It was something she'd learned in church as a girl when the teacher would march everyone in the schoolhouse across the square, two abreast, for first Friday Mass. Only in church would she giggle at something that wouldn't have even made her smile if she hadn't been stuck in such a solemn situation, if so much hadn't depended on good behavior. Johanna once laughed so hard during the consecration that the priest looked down from the altar and singled her out. It wasn't the laughter that gave her away so much as the loud gasp for breath she had to take after struggling for so long to stay silent. Father kept both Johanna and Greta after and wrote a note for Johanna to show their parents. As he scribbled Johanna's crime on thick cream-colored paper that looked and smelled to Greta like Mass itself, he used the time to point out that even though Lily and Tom Cahill had put themselves in mortal danger by not attending Mass every week and showing a bad example to their children, if they had any sense at all, they'd take Johanna's behavior seriously. Not showing them his note, he warned Johanna, would be a grave sin.

"But not a mortal sin," Johanna had chirped on the way home. Later, after the note had been read aloud, Big Tom demanded to know what she'd found so funny. Johanna couldn't remember exactly. "Nothing," she'd said finally. "Only the bench squealed a little when Sister Agatha sat on it."

Big Tom had taken a big puff from his pipe, leaned back in his chair, and said, "You're a silly sort of a girl, aren't you?" He said it as though
he'd diagnosed something fatal, and just like that, as if he'd reached over and flipped a switch, Johanna started giggling again.

Now that the laughter had started, it was impossible to trap and stifle. Hands were clapped over mouths as everyone, old and young, crouched down and squeezed into the back half of the house. "I have to tinkle," one of the women said, and someone snorted. "I always have to tinkle at these parties. As soon as we have to hide."

"Why do only women tinkle?" a male voice whispered. "Men don't tinkle; they only piss."

"Some men tinkle," another man said, and Greta shushed them. The engine of Michael's Toyota drew closer and closer. It turned into the driveway, which they'd made sure to keep clear of cars. Even without seeing him — without seeing much of anything in fact, she was squeezed so tight between two sets of tweed-covered shoulders — Greta could feel him hesitate. She could see him standing in the driveway and surveying the cars lining the curb, listening for the sounds of a party somewhere on the block. Greta had planted a seed a few days earlier, looking up casually from her toast and jam and commenting, "The graduation parties will be starting soon, I suppose."

He'd nodded. "That time of year, isn't it?"

The crowd, with its collective held breath, began to grow impatient. "What's taking him so long?" a woman whispered. "Is he out there having a sleep?"

"I might have a sleep if he doesn't come in soon."

"Hush," another said.

Had he figured it out? Greta wondered. It had been a strange week overall. A strange few months. At first he'd been so happy with his decision to retire, so excited to make plans to rent a car and drive west. But then as the day got closer, he seemed troubled by his decision. People asked him what he'd do with all his free time, and he seemed at a loss. Back in 1970, when he'd first gotten a job in the water tunnels, he'd signed on with the belief that he would stay only six months. It was an in-between kind of job, he told Greta. Not the kind of job a man could do for life.

"Should you go out, Mom?" Eavan whispered from somewhere behind Greta. "Should I?"

"No. Just give him a minute."

They gave him a minute, but still nothing.

"Okay," Greta said, pushing her way out of the cluster. "Everyone stay where you are." Greta walked quickly to the living-room window and looked out. She saw his car, saw that it was empty, but she didn't see Michael. She walked down the steps to the screen door. She pushed it open and stepped outside.

"Michael?" she called. "Is that you?" She walked down the front path, taking one glance back at the house and noticing how quiet it seemed, how empty. Maybe he'd be fooled after all. She peered in the passenger's window of his car and saw the plastic bag filled with his dirty work clothes.

"Where are you?" she called.

"Over here," came the answer, closer than she expected. She whirled around, saw him crouched at the side of the house. He was holding a small Phillips-head screwdriver, one of the many tools he kept in his car, and was using it to clean under his fingernails. He held his hands up to her for inspection. She held her palms out flat, and he put his hands on top.

"They're fine," she said, looking at him carefully. She licked her thumb and reached over to smooth down an errant lock of hair at the back of his head. "You're grand," she said. He tucked in his shirt at the back.

"How did you know?" she asked.

"Greta," he said, looking up at the blank face of the side of the house, the single window, their bedroom. He tilted his head up further as if to examine the line of the roof. Greta followed his gaze, searched for whatever he was searching for. They hadn't outgrown the house. When the value of the houses in their town had gone up, other people on the block had cashed out, moved away to bigger places. But the Wards had stayed, year in and year out, and the house always seemed just enough to hold them.

"What will I say?" Michael asked.

"Just smile and say hello to everyone. They'll do the talking. They're keyed up already. It's only people you know. Only people you'd want to see. Trust me. It's only your friends, Michael. They know you."

"Who?"

Greta rattled off the names as they came to her and watched as the worry lines around Michael's eyes relaxed. A few more names, and she wondered if he was paying attention; he seemed preoccupied, distant, as if he'd moved on to thinking of other things.

"So," she said, cutting the list short when she saw that he was no longer paying attention. "Are you right?"

"Right as rain," he said, and took her slim hand in his. "I'll act surprised, will I?"

"They know I'm out here telling you."

"Fair enough. Plan foiled."

"There's one more thing," Greta said. "And this is a surprise to both of us, believe me."

Michael looked up, gently dropped her hand, waited. He looked like his father now, Greta noticed once again. Better-looking, but still, his features were becoming an inheritance he had no choice but to accept. Greta remembered Dermot on the day he took his wife's body away from their little cottage. It was shocking to think he was probably twenty years younger on that day than she was right now.

"It's the children. They did something."

"Threw me a party."

"Well, yes, that. But they did something else. They wrote to Ballyroan. To Johanna. Asked her to come today. To the party. Are you following? Johanna wrote back to say yes, and where do you think Julia is right this moment but transporting them from the airport. Tom too. They're on their way, Michael."

"Johanna and Tom?" Michael repeated. He whistled, shook his head. "Well, that is a surprise," he agreed. "There's traffic. A jackknifed tractor-trailer just before the bridge."

Greta put her hands to her head, pressed her first two fingers to her temples. "Is that all you have to say? We don't know what they've been writing back and forth about. Julia too. Julia and Johanna have been writing back and forth. For weeks now. Maybe for longer. I don't know. I've just learned of all this myself."

"So you think she's told Julia? Is that it?"

"What if she did?"

"She wouldn't. Besides, Julia is more than forty years old. No one's going to take her away from you now. No one's going to put a claim on her but herself."

"What does that have to do with anything? I don't know what you're talking about. How can we say what Johanna would or wouldn't do? I haven't spoken to her in nearly thirty years. Jesus, thirty years. Think of Julia, finding out something like this at her age."

"Maybe she forgot. It's possible, isn't it? I never think about it."

Greta looked at him closely, but couldn't tell if he was serious. "No, Michael. It isn't possible."

"Greta, love," Michael said, reaching down to pick at some weeds. "Let's just go in to the party. They're waiting for us."

"I don't understand you," Greta said. Michael put his arm around her shoulder, led her toward the front of the house and the door.

"A shame Lily couldn't have come," he said. "It would be lovely to see her again." Greta stopped, turned to face him. "Lily? My mother?" she asked, struggling to keep her voice down. She put her face just an inch from his.

"Michael," she said, gently slapping his face. Once, twice, three times—the slaps got a little harder each time. "Lily is dead. Lily has been dead for a long time. Don't you remember Lily dying and Julia taking the message and me telling you when you got home?"

"Jesus, Greta." Michael caught both of her wrists in one of his hands. "I was only saying if she was alive, she would have loved to come for a visit. Remember how we used to say we'd pay her way out? It's a shame we never did that. She would have seen Julia was ours if she'd come. Would have seen Julia was happy and all the talk about sending her home would have stopped. Maybe. I don't know. She would have liked to see where you live and the children and the city and all that. I was only just saying." He released her wrists and rubbed his arm where she pinched him. "Jesus Christ," he muttered. "Are you crazy?"

"Sorry," Greta said. "I'm so sorry, Michael." She reached and touched his face again, this time to soothe it. "I misunderstood."

As they stood there, Ned Powers pulled into the driveway, hopped out of his car, walked across the lawn with his car keys swinging on his index finger. "Cat's out of the bag, is it? Well, we tried."

"Ned," Michael said, "I watched you in my rearview the whole way. I went through that light on Central so I'd lose you. Didn't you think it odd I sped through that light?"

 

Inside, the welcome was thunderous. Some stayed on script and shouted, "Surprise!" Many others just shouted, or roared, as it sounded to Greta. Wineglasses shook on their stems, the liquid inside lapped at the rim of each glass as if the house had suddenly taken sail on a blustery day. The floor trembled. They attacked Michael one by one, and Greta hung back as he was swept away from her. They clapped his back, grabbed and shook his hand. The women banged against his cheekbone as they leaned in for a kiss. He was pulled into the kitchen, pushed out onto the deck, called back into the dining room to be patted and prodded some more. You knew, they accused him. They recalled stories of running into him in town, on the job, at a card game, and almost but not quite mentioning the party. You knew all along, did you? they asked, and he explained about the cars, about Ned staying so close, and they smacked their heads and laughed. Through all of this, Greta stayed rooted where she stood. Then, as she knew he would, she saw him looking for her. "Greta?" he called over the tops of his friends' heads. "Has anyone seen Greta?"