The Carnival at Bray (28 page)

“Mom, you're rambling,” Maggie said gently. She put her pencil down. A sick feeling was gathering strength in her gut.

Laura began flapping her hands again and blinking tears away.

“You're right. You're right. I'm just going to spit it out: things
have been shitty for me since the funeral.
Real
shitty. We've talked about it—me and Colm—and we've
tried.
But everything's been so different.
Ireland's
been so different. I miss home. And Colm, he adores you and Ronnie, he really does, but he also misses, you know, his old life. His space. His freedom.” She sat up and bit her lip. “So I guess what I'm trying to say is—we've decided to call it quits.”

There was a silence. “Are we moving home?” Maggie finally asked, in an even, artificial voice, trying to rein in the emotion that was trembling up her throat. She'd only lived in Ireland for seven measly months. And yet, her life in the States sometimes felt like it had been an extended rehearsal for her real life, which was here in Bray. What would a Chicago uninhabited by Kevin even
be
like? A city encased in ice for half the year. A city six thousand miles away from Eoin.

“I thought you'd be happy about this, Mags.” Laura stood up and began to pace the small expanse of Maggie's bedroom. “I mean, I have to sort a few things out first, but my thinking is, you and Ron could finish up the school year here and be home in time for the beginning of the summer. Summer in Chicago, Mags! The festivals! The beaches! Ice cream trucks! Mexican food! God, don't you miss
Mexican food?
I swear I would commit serious crimes just for a decent steak taco and
actual
guacamole.” Maggie picked up her pencil and began tracing a circle in her notebook, darker and darker lines spiraling out from the center in a little lead tornado.

“Maggie, look at me,” Laura went on.
“Talk
to me. We'll be back in our apartment, back to our normal lives, by the end of June. I already talked to Mikey Collins. He said he'd give me my old shifts back at Oinker's, no problem. Nanny Ei can't wait to have us back. The poor woman, you can't believe how lonely—”

“What if I said no?” Maggie asked the question without looking up, scribbling at her tornado until the page ripped.

“Honey—”

“No, I'm serious.” She threw down the pencil and scrambled to her feet to face her mother. “What if I told you I'm not leaving?”

“Maggie, all you've done the past seven months is mope around the place, lying in bed with your door closed and hiding behind your headphones! And now all of a sudden you love it here?”

“Mom, last summer you made this big announcement, and because
you
were in love, me and Ronnie had to pick up our whole lives and move across the freaking ocean. And we did—without even complaining! You told us that even if it seemed crazy, one day we'd see that when you fall in love with the right person, then you do what you gotta do to be with that person. You were so sure that Colm was the one. How do you change your mind like that?”

“It's not just about Colm, Maggie,” Laura said. “You have to understand. Nanny Ei is on her own. The guilt I feel—”

“Bullshit.
Bullshit!”
Maggie shouted. “I love Nanny Ei just as must as you do. But this is about you and Colm and you know it! But guess what, Mom? You brought me here, and I fell in love, too. I know you think I'm too young, but I'm not the one who changes boyfriends every five seconds, okay? I love Eoin, and now you want to take that away from me because
you're
bored with your latest fling? Do you know how selfish that is?”

“Oh, Maggie.” Laura passed a hand over her face. “I thought you said you were done with that boy.”

“I never said that! I only promised not to see him again so I wouldn't get kicked out of Saint Brigid's. Do you really think I wouldn't break that promise in a second if I ever got the chance?”

Laura sat down on Maggie's bed with a heavy sigh. “Maggie, you are sixteen years old. There will be other boys.”

“Well, of course that's what
you
say. But maybe I don't want to grow up to be a slut like you!”

Laura stumbled to her feet, holding her stomach as if she'd been punched.

“One day,” she said, turning just before she left the room, the tears forming in the corners of her green eyes, “you'll understand how much you just hurt me.” She closed the door softly and Maggie was alone again. She picked up the box her mother had left on her pillow, lifted the dress from the paper tissue and held it in front of her mirror. It was gray wool with a short, flared skirt and round buttons down the chest. It was the kind of dress that Maggie might pause to examine for a moment in the mall and then abandon in favor of something edgier. This fact, more than anything else, was what made her start to cry. It must be hard to be a mother. All those years of knowing everything about your daughter, of dressing her and bathing her and being intimately acquainted with her every need and want, and then one day you wake up and realize you don't even know what kind of dress to buy her at Clery's.

The next afternoon, Maggie walked up the hill to Dan Sean's. She asked him if she could borrow forty pounds, and he gave it to her, no questions asked. “Pay me back soon, though,” he said. “I'm almost a hundred, you know. I haven't got time to charge interest.” Then, she rode Colm's bike into town and went into the betting office. She put the forty pounds on the counter. “You're just in time,” the bull-necked bookmaker told her as he handed her the receipt. “We're about to sell out.”

She decided to wear the dress from Clery's to Dan Sean's party because even though she was still furious at her mother, she felt sick over what she'd said, and wearing a vaguely ugly outfit to the party of the year was still easier than apologizing directly. When she came out of her bedroom, dressed in black tights, black boots, and the gray dress, Laura's lips twitched into a smile, and Maggie was both annoyed and moved at how little it took to make her mother happy. It was exhausting, hating and loving her all at once, but Maggie had not forgotten Eoin's wish: to have a mother
who was well enough to fight with. Laura Lynch, for all her faults, could always be counted on for that. Maggie slipped the letter she had written into her purse, slicked on a deep shade of mulberry lipstick she'd bought at Boot's, and went outside to wait in the car.

The party began with a mass in Dan Sean's honor. Maggie had a hard enough time following along with the readings and the homily and the plodding rituals on an average Sunday, but knowing that Eoin was standing somewhere in the pews of the little stucco church, sharing her atmosphere, alive in her orbit, made it practically unbearable. This was made even worse by the fact that Colm had insisted they sit up near the front, and Maggie couldn't search the crowd properly without turning around and craning her neck. The best she could do was stand up straight, keep her shoulders back, and hope that he was watching her, the thin backs of her thighs, the long sweep of her dark hair.

Afterwards, at the Beaufort, Dan Sean sat enthroned in a large rocking chair next to the fireplace. He still wore his Cossack's hat and three-piece suit, but had a festive red ascot knotted at his neck. A receiving line snaked past a long table stacked high with wrapped gifts. In the banquet room, the men lined up in their dress clothes along the polished mahogany bar, drinking pints elbow to elbow while the women gathered in small clumps with narrow glasses of champagne. Ronnie ran around in her yellow dress, playing games with the other girls from her national school. It would always be a source of envy and pride for Maggie, watching how easily her little sister made friends. There were plenty of girls from Saint Brigid's there too, wobbling around on brightly colored high heels, and on the other side of the room the Saint Brendan's boys congregated in their crisp sweaters and dress pants. As far as Maggie could tell, Eoin was not among them. Both groups eyed each other, but it wouldn't be until the DJ set up his speakers and the liquor had been snuck, later in the night, when they would go to each other. Maggie remembered the gang of teenagers she'd
seen at the carnival a week after she'd moved to Bray—how foreign they'd looked to her, how intimidating. Their faces were now at least familiar, but she felt as invisible to them now as she did then, and even less welcome. She'd had so many chances to start over, to be normal, and she'd somehow managed to ruin it all.

By the time the dinner bell rang, Maggie had seen nearly everyone she knew: Nigella Joyce and the other queens of third class, Aíne and Paddy—still, by the looks of it, madly in love—horrible Paul with his horrible overhanging eyebrows, Sister Geneve and Sister Joan. For a brief, thrilling moment, Maggie was sure that Eoin had finally arrived when she saw Auntie Rosie, decked out in a pale lavender suit and matching hat, enter the ballroom on the arm of her husband, Dan. But it appeared that they had come alone. Maggie watched them as they ordered a drink at the bar, waving to friends, and when they sat down for dinner, she saw with some relief that their table was all the way on the other side of the room. God only knew what Auntie Rosie thought of her: the American stranger, always hidden behind a pair of headphones, whose uncle was a suicidal drug addict, whose family drank and smashed up her bar, who had somehow convinced her handsome, upstanding nephew to run away with her and in the process, managed to upend his future. Maggie slumped low in her seat, hating herself. As soon as the soup course was finished, she excused herself to the ladies' room. Standing before the mirror, she saw that the burgundy lipstick she'd worn had faded, leaving a dark, clownish ring around her lip line. She wiped her mouth with a tissue and wondered why she'd tried wearing that dark, grungy lipstick in the first place. It wasn't who she was. Sometimes, being sixteen felt like one giant looped film of fuckups big and small. But when she was with Eoin, life hadn't felt like that. In a weird way that she couldn't explain, loving him had made her love herself a little more.

Back at the table, she could barely eat her dinner. Why didn't he come? Maybe it was a practical reason, like a football game he
couldn't miss, or maybe he had to cover at the Quayside while Auntie Rosie came to the party. Or was it more than that? Was he ashamed at his expulsion, did he not want people whispering about him? Or was it the thing she dreaded most of all—did he not come because he didn't want to see her? Because he hated her for selling him out and accepting the terms of her reinstatement while meanwhile, he'd been made the fool by standing by her and getting kicked out of school? She ran her fingers through her carefully straightened hair, the silky strands suddenly superfluous and vain. She'd gotten all dressed up for nothing.

After dinner there was dancing. A band played jigs and reels and ceili sets. The dance floor filled with parents and grandparents shuffling inward and outward, switching partners, and stamping their feet along with the pulse of the accordion while the teenage crowd, still separated by gender, began circling closer to one another. Maggie sat at the dinner table and drank so much lemonade she thought she might puke.

After the band played a final set, Dan Sean, seated at his throne, began to nod off, and Mike and some of the other neighbors carried his gifts out to the car. The DJ arrived to set up his strobe light and fog machine while the older dancers drifted toward the tea table. Fleetwood Mac's “Everywhere” blasted from the speakers.

“I
love
this song,” cried Laura, hopping from her chair, West Coast Cooler in hand. “Who's dancing with me?”

Colm got up without a word and sauntered off in the direction of the bar. She glanced after him, her smile wavering for just a moment before turning back to her girls.

“I will!” Ronnie pushed away her plate of sherbet and grabbed her mother's hand.

“That's my girl! Mags? What about you?”

Maggie smiled and shook her head. “No thanks. You guys go ahead.”

“Suit yourself!” Laura put her glass in front of Maggie. “Watch my drink!” The two of them sashayed off to the dance floor, which had now been taken over by the younger crowd. The young men, ties loosened, pulled the women around in their brightly colored Saturday night dresses, and in the spattering light they flashed past like schools of exotic fish. Maggie sat and watched her mother and sister spin together through the iridescent fog. Laura had squeezed into an old red dress, and even if it strained around the new paunch of her midsection and was spackled across the bosom with spilled champagne, there was a buoyancy about her that drew the eyes of the crowd: the radiance of a faraway citizen who was soon going home. Ronnie, who was as hardy and adaptable as a spider plant, had accepted the news of Laura and Colm's breakup in stride and was now waving her arms and whipping her braid from side to side with joyous abandon. Whereas Maggie had trouble feeling at home anywhere, Ronnie made a home for herself anywhere she went. She had even acquired the edgings of an Irish accent, which, of course, was bound to be a hit when she returned to Chicago to begin sixth grade. As they whirled past, laughing and singing along to the song, Maggie was filled with a grudging pride: this was her family and her people. For as much as they drove her crazy, they were still pretty okay.

“Sure looks like they're havin' fun out there, doesn't it?”

The voice, and the talcum-powered scent that trailed behind it, belonged to Sister Geneve.

Maggie looked up at her teacher. Even though it was the party of the year, Sister Geneve wore no makeup. Her face was as plain and soft as an old baseball glove. She had replaced her usual knit cardigan and shapeless slacks for a cheap pants suit and a dull silver brooch in the shape of an owl.

“You don't look like you're much in the mood for a party,” the old nun said.