Learning to Swim (27 page)

“Why can’t you come to Ireland?” he said softly.

We’d been over this. About a million times. “You know why,” I said. My eyes were closed. His voice grew to mythical proportions in the blackness of my mind.

“Cora, it’s not about the money, is it?” he said.

I opened my eyes.
How did he know?
I had told him several times that I didn’t have any of my own money to spend as I pleased and passed that off as the reason I couldn’t come with him to Ireland. But he had somehow read my mind that that wasn’t the truth. Not the whole truth. I sat up and looked him in the eyes. He looked back, imploring me to tell him.

“It would kill them,” I finally said. “Leaving them would hurt them more than if I refused to go to college for the rest of my life. Their biggest fear is losing another daughter. I’ll travel one day—when I have my own money, when they know that I’m not running away, that I’ll come back for them.”

Rory nodded understandingly and looked out at the ocean. He bore a striking resemblance to Mrs. O’Leary, the steady gaze, trolling the horizon. It shocked me to notice that. Because Mrs. O’Leary was very much not on my mind in those hours with Rory. We wanted to learn everything about each other that we could in the little time we had. So we talked about ourselves—or didn’t talk at all—learning about each other in other ways.

When Rory walked me home that night, I invited him inside, to the bowels of the Pink Palace. My parents were already asleep, but I showed him around the embarrassingly pink house—my cheeks to match—and ended up on the balcony off my room.

“It’s almost a new moon,” he said, putting his hands on the railing on either side of me so that I was enveloped in his arms.

“Spring tide,” I said.

“Right!” He was proud. “You’ve got a great memory. Let’s hope you remember me at least …
twice
that long.”

This was the last thing I wanted to talk about. “Rory, stop,” I whined. I spun around, flustered, only to find myself quite close to his face. This only flustered me further.

He looked down at me, his lips even with the tip of my nose.

“Promise me that you’ll come visit.”

“My very first paycheck from my very first job, or, uh, ten or thirty paychecks, will go toward the plane ticket,” I said with a grin. Though his words were probably just that—words, mine were not a joke. I’d visit him in September if I could. But I knew I’d never be ready by then. I needed money … and courage. “I’d have to save for a … a very long while,” I said.
Would you wait for me?

Rory brushed his lips across my forehead. “Make sure you keep that all in a safe place. A dictionary or two should do the trick.”

I looked at him sharply. “So you
do
know she keeps her money in a book?” I laughed, delighted to share the secret at last.

“
A
book?” he repeated. “Try
all
her books. What other use are they when you can’t read? I stumbled upon that little gem a few years ago.”

“Do you ever steal a dollar or two here or there for the movies or a burger?”

“What?” he laughed loudly. “No! Did you?”

“No!” I laughed and sighed in his arms. “I’ll just carve up all my books and stash money in there as it comes. A couple full
Harry Potter
books should get me to Ireland. I might have enough in, well, three or four years.”

“So, when you’re done with college,” he smiled.

“Then I’ll have my own small fortune and I can travel the world, or just to Ireland. Provided, of course, that you haven’t fallen in love and married some Irish lass by then. Or without the love—you know, for the citizenship.”

“I think it’s the frat boys at whatever college you end up at that we have to worry about,” he said.

“Stop,” I pleaded again.

The next day was my last in Oyster Beach. I had only two things to accomplish.

First, to go to the little yellow house and say good-bye to Mrs. O’Leary.

Second, to meet Rory at the pier under a black sky and somehow say good-bye to the first boy I’d ever loved.

D'Fhág Sé

He Left

The next day was one of those characteristically windy days I’d come to expect from Oyster Beach. A storm threatened to invade from somewhere down the coast and the birds were active in the sky.

Nobody answered the door at the little yellow house when I knocked. I waited for a long time, sitting down on the rocking chair for a bit. I knocked again and then wandered away, not knowing what to do. I had to say good-bye. I wasn’t going to leave without seeing her.

I wandered toward the pier out of habit. Or maybe out of some other primal urge.

But as I approached, I discerned a shape at the end of the pier. It was a person. There was somebody standing on our pier, and I knew Rory’s figure too well to think that it was him. But I
did
recognize the person …

“Mrs. O’Leary?” I shouted.

Sure enough, it was the hunched form of the old woman standing on the end of the rocking pier. If her presence there wasn’t strange enough, she was acting incredibly suspicious—pacing back and forth, taking a few steps this way, then that, moving about much more than she usually did. The wind whipped at her skirt and at the scarf wrapped around her head. She looked so thin and frail, as though she would flutter away in the slightest breeze, yet these gales seemed to have no effect on her. She should have been torn from her spot and swept away into the water.

Swept away into the water.
A chill ran up my spine. That’s probably exactly what she wanted. She hobbled back and forth on the end of the pier as it swayed precariously in the waves.

“Mrs. O’Leary!” I called again, taking a few tentative steps from the beach onto the familiar wooden slats.

She twirled around with more energy than I would have expected her capable of. Her eyes took a moment to find me, but when they did, they were wild. I was so used to their calm trolling of the ocean, patient yet eager, that today they looked downright insane.

“Cora,” she said excitedly. She moved a few steps toward me and then retreated to her position, looking anxiously over her shoulder at the water.

“Mrs. O’Leary,” I gulped, “what’s the matter?” I approached her hesitantly. “I was just coming to visit you. But no one was at your house.”

I couldn’t help noticing what a stark contrast was before me. The Mrs. O’Leary that had soothed my mother—calm, loving and helpful—to this woman who would paint a not-so-surprising portrait in a mental institution.

“Cora, I couldn’t find it.” She was wringing her wrinkly, spotted hands.

I thought for a moment. “Your sweater?” I asked.

Mrs. O’Leary looked as though about to burst into tears. She shook her head slowly. “I looked everywhere. I looked in his shed. He hid it, Cora. I loved the man, but he never understood me.”

“Who? Mrs. O’Leary, what are you talking about? Why are you out here?”

She just shook her head and looked back out at the ocean, as if expecting to find something there.

“Have you come out here before?” I asked, confused.

“It’s my fault,” she said. “I chose this life. It’s all my own doing. All my fault. Mine. All of it.”

This hauntingly echoed things she’d said to me the very first time I’d had a conversation with her on her porch. About leaving her mother. Choosing a different life. It was fine under the comfortable eaves of her porch, but here, in her present state, it unsettled me. “Mrs. O’Leary, let’s go inside,” I suggested gently.

But she moved away from me, closer toward the edge of the pier. I backed away a few paces, afraid of her falling in. Or, more realistically,
jumping
in.

“Mrs. O’Leary, you can talk to me about it—whatever’s bothering you,” I said desperately. “Let’s just go back to the house.”

“I can’t find it,” she said again, this time softer, as though all hope was gone. “I looked all over that house. I went to his shed.”

It took two admissions from her for it to dawn on me. It came washing over me like a tidal wave. “Mrs. O’Leary,
you
broke into the Ritzes’?”

“And it wasn’t there. Everything was in boxes.”

My mind was reeling. This little old woman was a burglar? I spun through as many ideas to get her away from the water as I could. “Mrs. O’Leary, I think I know who can find it,” I said quickly.

I was bluffing. I had no idea who could help her at this point. But I couldn’t do this alone. She looked as though she was going to jump right off the end of the pier. Not jump, exactly, but just slip happily away into the waves, and despite my recent pseudo swimming lesson, I would be quite unable to save her then.

She looked at me thoughtfully, as if weighing my merit. “I’m ready to go, Cora.”

And I knew she wasn’t talking about going back to the house. “I know, Mrs. O’Leary. But first we have to go back to your house. I know who can help.”

I repeated the lie, but I didn’t know what else to do.

Miraculously, she let me take her arm and lead her back to the boardwalk. She walked slowly and stopped often to look back at the ocean. I let her look; I didn’t press her to move on until she was ready, for fear that she might turn back.

When we got to the house I did the only thing I could think of. I didn’t know anybody’s numbers in Oyster Beach, but surely 911 could yield some sort of help.

Captain Harville was there within minutes. And he was accompanied by a local doctor.

Mrs. O’Leary was standing quietly in the middle of the living room, staring out the window at the water. She looked frightened when Captain Harville came in.

“What happened?” he asked me.

Mrs. O’Leary looked from the doctor to me with big, round eyes. Somehow, this had been a betrayal. By calling for professional help, I had betrayed her. We both knew that. To avoid the crushed look in her eyes, I turned to Captain Harville and quietly explained to him how I’d found her.

He nodded, and we both watched silently as the doctor gently tried to persuade a protesting Mrs. O’Leary to lie down.

The doctor finally had to take her arm, and though his touch was soft, she reacted violently, jerking her arm free. I tried to tune out her protestations.

“Cora, why don’t you go home?” Captain Harville suggested gently.

I would have said no, I would have stayed with her, but I was too scared.
Too weak
. I nodded absently and stumbled outside.

Just because I couldn’t be with Mrs. O’Leary didn’t mean I wouldn’t try to help her. Every time I’d seen her over the past weeks I’d become more and more confused. And there was one person who I was sure knew more than he was letting on.

Not knowing where he lived, I went straight to the antiques shop.

Luckily, it was open, and didn’t appear to be busy. I barged in, setting the tiny bell on the door into a frantic high-pitched frenzy. “Why don’t you go to see her anymore?” I demanded, bearing down on the counter.

Mr. Hall, turning away from a display case he’d been bent over, looked wildly around the store. Belatedly, I realized there was a little old woman near the back, perusing quilts. But I didn’t care.

“She’s going crazy all alone in that tiny house, why have you abandoned her?” I demanded again.

Mr. Hall shot another look at the woman, then back at me, begging me to be civil in front of the customer. But the woman seemed to understand a violent argument was looming, and she made a quick exit.

“She needs someone, and you know her the best—”

“Cora,” Mr. Hall interrupted. He went to the door and flipped the cardboard sign around to read “closed” to the outside world. I waited for him to explain, taking the moment to catch my breath. But he didn’t seem to have anything else to say.

“Well?” I demanded. “You called Seamus your best friend, and he loved her, and you treat her like she’s already dead!”