Whitethorn Woods (10 page)

   I wrote back saying that I had decided life was mainly an act. There was I, a complete fake, passing myself off as a member of their community. They had been taken in. There was a lesson there somewhere. We must put on a show for people, pretend that we are calmer, happier, more in control than we really are.

   Rivka wrote back to say that she had thought about this a great deal and that I might indeed have found the Secret of the Universe.

   And about a week later, when our camp was playing a series of games against another camp, I met Declan, who was a teacher from a small country place a few miles outside Rossmore, and we fell madly in love.

   So much so that he said he wanted to come and meet my parents the moment we got back to Ireland. And even though he wasn't a doctor or a lawyer, only a teacher like myself, he was everything my mam wanted: a Catholic, from a nice family, and had really good manners.

   By Christmas he said he wanted to marry me.

   I wasn't too sure about wanting to go and live in the wilds of the country and maybe getting absorbed into his huge family network; but they were all very welcoming and in those days no selfrespecting man made any lifestyle changes for a wife or anything.

   So that's what I did—marry him and go to live in the wilds of the country. I kept Rivka informed every step of the way and, as luck would have it, she had met Max, who was not exactly a dentist but was a very successful businessman who owned travel agencies, and
her
mother was utterly delighted with him, and
she
would be getting married too. So she came to my wedding in Ireland first and it was lovely to have her, and my mother was so excited about what she would wear and the fact that Declan had an uncle who was a judge coming to the wedding that she managed not to interrogate Rivka about her odd name, and didn't even notice that Rivka's mother had sent a wedding gift with a card addressed to "Dear Malka."

   Rivka got everything wrong in Rossmore. She kept calling the statue in the church the Holy Heart instead of the Sacred Heart. She was astounded by the length of the nuptial Mass and the papal blessing, and the fact that a lot of the women wore head scarves and mantillas on their heads during the ceremony rather than splashing out on hats.

   She couldn't take in the amount of drink served at the wedding, and the number of people who had songs that they insisted on singing . . .

   But it was all a great occasion and Declan kept squeezing my hand and I had never believed I could be so happy.

   Declan and I went to Spain for two weeks for a honeymoon and then came back to live in his part of the world, which was a sort of mountainy place where nothing much happened. Because I was a married woman I couldn't teach anymore, so time hung heavy on me. Days seemed very much the same except that we went to lunch with his mother every Sunday and his sisters called around every week to inquire whether or not I was pregnant.

   My letters from Rivka were a lifeline in this odd backwater. She told me what books to read, she suggested that I set up a kind of amateur mobile library and drive around to people who were housebound. And everyone liked my doing that. Declan went so far as to say that I was inspired.

   But he wouldn't come to Rivka's wedding with me. It was too far, too expensive, he wouldn't know where to put himself with all these Jewish people and their customs. No, really, he wanted to pass on this one. Well, you know when you're not going to win. I cheered myself up, I told myself that if I were to be Malka there again it would be easier to be without Declan. And indeed it was.

   It was all so different—the canopy in the Fines' huge garden and the singing and chanting in Hebrew, and the smashing a glass, which was something to do with the destruction of the Temple or something, but I couldn't really ask, what with my being Malka and meant to know all this already.

   Max was very cheerful and friendly and whispered to me that he knew my little secret. I had no idea what he was talking about. Did he know that I had gone to a doctor in Dublin to get the contraceptive pill because I didn't want to get pregnant until I had the library up and running? Did he know that I found Declan's mother and three bossy sisters a hundred times worse than my own mother had ever been and that I went to huge lengths to avoid meeting them?

   No, it turned out that he knew I wasn't really Malka, that I wasn't even a little bit Jewish.

   "Rivka and I have no secrets, never will," he said.

   And for some reason I felt a bit uneasy. Which was ludicrous, of course. Why should I be uneasy about Max? He was gentle and kind, he loved Rivka. In fact he was a pussycat.

   Rivka and I still wrote to each other. For a while. Then she began to call me from the office from time to time. She said it was easier, more immediate, one to one. Well, it was, of course, but it was also much more expensive. I mean, there was no way I could afford transatlantic calls. But Rivka said it didn't matter, she could call free from her office, where she was manager. She didn't mind that I wasn't able to make calls from my end.

   I missed our long, rambling letters, but it wasn't that she was keeping anything from me, she told me every heartbeat of what sounded like an exhausting life. Rivka seemed to be permanently on some crucifying diet. She was always wasting a long-distance call telling me about some big benefit night that was coming up and she had to drop twelve pounds in fourteen days to get into a dress. She said she was always tired these days.

   And I told her how horrific Declan's sisters were and that I should be canonized in my own lifetime for not telling him what a trio of mad bats they were.

   "Will you?" she asked with interest.

   "Will I what?" I said.

   "Be canonized in your own lifetime?" Rivka asked. She must have been
very
tired. Even Jewish people should know that was a joke and that you can't be made a saint until you're dead.

   And then we both had a crisis at the same time.

   Rivka's wasn't that big a crisis, as it happens, she was just desperately tired at some travel conference they went to in Mexico and fell asleep when everyone thought she was getting dressed for the awards banquet where they were giving Max a lifetime achievement award, and she had to be woken up and arrived flustered and looking terrible. And it was somehow an insult to Max, and to the travel industry, and to Mexico. God, you'd think the Third World War had begun.

   Compared to what had happened to me it was nothing. Z
ilch.
Nada,
as they say in Mexico.

   My beautiful sister-in-law felt that she had to tell Declan what she found in our medicine cupboard in the bathroom, where she just
happened
to be looking. Poor Declan wouldn't have known that these pills I was taking were
abortifacient
. That was her word: they prevented conception and killed the incipient baby. They wouldn't tell their mother—she would be too shocked, she might not survive hearing the information. Declan was very upset and said I had been holding out on him. I said my fertility was
my
business and he said, no, it was
our
business and he should have been consulted, and what kind of fairness and equality in marriage and the future did we have if I behaved in this secretive way?

   And there was a bit of me that agreed that he had a point, but sadly I didn't say that: I said instead that his sisters were a pack of interfering hyenas and that I hated them with a passion almost equal to that which I felt against his mother. This was not a sensible or good thing to say, and things were very cool between us for a long time. The sisters smirked all over the place. I threw the pills into the fire but Declan said he didn't want to force a child on me so we didn't have sex and the sisters seemed to guess this and smirked even more.

   So I spent more and more time driving the mobile library up into the mountains, and Declan spent more and more time talking about hurling and firing pints into himself down in Callaghan's with that awful fellow Skunk Slattery, and to be honest, times weren't great at all.

   And I tried to tell Rivka about all this, but she thought with some reason that Declan's sisters were from the funny farm, and even though she tried to understand, she just didn't.

   And I tried hard to understand why Rivka simply had to go to all these functions when she was so tired. It was a rule book that I had somehow missed, and I knew she wanted to explain it but there weren't any words.

   When we talked on the telephone I just kept on advising her.

   "Tell him you're really tired."

   And she kept advising me.

   "Tell him you're really sorry."

   Eventually Declan came back to our bed. It wasn't the same as before but it was less lonely and the atmosphere wasn't hanging around the house anymore. Meanwhile Rivka found some marvelous vitamin supplement that gave her more energy, and amazingly we both got pregnant at the same time.

   They had a girl called Lida, after Max's mother, and I hoped we would have a girl too and we would call her Ruth and that she and Lida would be friends forever. Declan said it was a bit far-fetched as an idea, and anyway he'd prefer a son who would play hurling for the county.

   Brendan, named after Declan's father, was born two weeks after Lida, and now that Rivka wasn't in the office anymore she and I began to write to each other again about breastfeeding, about disturbed nights, about tiny fingers and toes. We seemed in a veiled way to be telling each other that life wasn't quite as good as we had hoped it might be.

   But we never said that. Why would we say such a thing? We had our children.

   I suppose I
should
have noticed how late Declan came home at night and how he wasn't drunk, which he ought to have been if he had spent four hours in Callaghan's, and I
should
have noticed that Skunk Slattery often asked me how Declan was, which was odd since he was meant to be drinking every night with him, but I didn't because I was so taken up with little Brendan, who was an angel. I spent busy days putting toddler Brendan into the mobile library van and driving him round to meet all the readers in small villages and to be admired. I was also concentrating very hard on keeping him well away from his awful aunts.

   The months went on and on. We still went to see Declan's mother every Sunday, each of us bringing a dish as she became more frail. It made her happy to see all her children around her, so I went along with it. Rivka often sent me recipes from America. When Declan's mother eventually died it was very peaceful and she sort of slipped away.

   On the evening after her funeral Declan told me in a very calm voice that of course I must know he was seeing someone else. Her name was Eileen, she was the school secretary and they were going to England at the end of term. Brendan was seven then. Quite old enough to come and visit his dad regularly, Declan said casually. And he added reassuringly that Eileen would be like a second mother to Brendan.

   I looked at Declan as if I had never seen him before. It felt very unreal, like fainting or the sort of shock you get if you bang your head suddenly. I said that Brendan and I had to go to Dublin on the train the next day and we could talk about the visits and everything when I came back. I had put Brendan on my passport two years ago, when I thought we might be going to America to see Rivka and Lida, but Max had something on that time and we couldn't go.

   I left a note for Declan saying that I had taken enough money from our bank account to go to New York and for a little spending money when we were there; he could make the arrangements about the house and telling people about the situation. He wasn't to think I was taking his child away forever, I would be back.

   No need to call Interpol.

   I didn't mention what a rat he was, how upset I was or even a word about the lovely Eileen.

   Rivka had said she would be delighted to see me.

"What about Max?" I asked fearfully.

   "He's hardly ever at home, he won't notice if you are there or not," she said.

   We cried in each other's arms when we met, big heaving sobs. It was the first time I had cried since the night that Declan had told me. I wept for all that there might have been. But no, I wouldn't take him back now even if he were to beg me. Possibly he was right, it was over, long over.

   The two seven-year-olds played happily with Lida's toys. My blond boy and her beautiful little girl with the dark ringlets. We gave each other advice, as we had always done: Rivka said I must get him to sell the house, and I should move. My father was dead now, Rivka said I should live with my mother.

   "But I can't go back to her house, I spent so long trying to get out of it," I heard myself bleating.

   "Well, you can't stay
there
in that place outside of Rossmore, with all the sisters, and the dreadful Eileen, and the whole place talking about you. This is the time for courage, Malka, up and out. Go back to Ireland, you could even move to Dublin, and take your mother, find a place of your own. Start again."

   Yes, it was all very well for her, Americans are accustomed to doing that, new frontiers and covered wagons, but not in Ireland. Living with my mam and all the I-told-you-sos? Not really.

   I advised
her
to throw in the job at the office, which was cutting across her busy social life, and to go into the travel business like Max, build up an aspect of the holiday business that he hadn't yet done. Let her mother help more in looking after Lida. Her marriage wasn't over yet but it could be, the way she was going.

   Of course she resisted that terribly too but we laughed over it.

   As the days went on, I felt stronger and better than I had for years. Brendan loved it all there.

   "Why do they all call you Malka out there, Mammy?" he asked on the plane coming home.