The Crooked Branch (16 page)

“Murdoch is the agent?” Ginny asked.

Roisin nodded.

“I met him earlier at the gate. What’s he like?”

Roisin looked up warily. “What are they all like?” she whispered. “You’d think he was English, the way he carries on. He doesn’t mind selling out his own people to please the gentry.” Roisin glanced up at the staircase and then shook her head. “Ruthless,” she muttered.

Just like Packet, who’d been the agent at Knockbooley so long that he fancied himself a landlord now. The tenants in Ginny’s parish knew their real landlord’s name was Lord Crofton, but they had never clapped eyes on him. He had never set foot in Ireland. Instead, the absentee landlords in London would hire in these local Irish agents like Packet and Murdoch to run their estates for them, to squeeze out every last drop of profit they could from the land. The agents would rent out the acreage to tenant farmers like Raymond and Ginny for exorbitant prices. And then God help them if they couldn’t pay. God help them. Some families got evicted even if they did pay. The agent might turn a poor punter out for some other reason, on a whim. If a tenant had the gumption to improve his plot of land, for example—to irrigate or build or expand—the agent would seize these improvements for profit. He’d turn the tenant out into the road, and then let his land to a neighbor for a steeper rent because of the effort and ingenuity the first tenant had put in to make it better.

Nobody could blame a man for doing what he must to survive in times like these, but there was a certain class of a scoundrel who would do this sort of work with glee. The Murdochs and Packets of the world seemed to enjoy lording this kind of power over their own neighbors and kin. These agents were a hateful sort of specimen altogether, a wicked disgrace to their countrymen.

“You needn’t worry about Murdoch,” Roisin said, “so long as you keep your head down and stay clear of him. He keeps mostly out of the household affairs. He leaves all that to me. Just be thankful you’re not one of his tenants.”

Ginny sighed, looked at the elaborate spread of food covering the table. “But all of this food . . . it’s just for us, then? Just for five people?”

“That’s right, dear,” Roisin said, hoisting the tray firmly. “It’s not our job to question.”

Ginny cringed at herself, slightly. She’d ventured too far.

“Katie and I will serve,” Roisin went on. “There is fruit and cheese in the larder. Prepare a tray from that for afters, will you?”

“I will, of course,” Ginny said, wiping her hands on her apron.

“I’ll be back to put the tea on.” Roisin and Katie disappeared through the arched doorway, and up the darkened steps.

•   •   •

Ginny took a lantern and went into the cold larder, where she marveled at the store of food. Along one wall were large barrels of salted fish and flour. Some cured pork hung from the ceiling, and everything smelled salty and pungent. The other two walls were lined with shelving from floor to ceiling, and every shelf was neatly stocked, with milk, buttermilk, eggs. Ginny could smell the sharp tang of all the different cheeses, even covered, as they were, in cloth and twine. It was all so rich that she had to breathe through her mouth, in case it would overwhelm her and she’d be sick again. There were fruits she’d never seen before, not even in the shops in Westport, and their skins were so bright they glowed. She set the lantern atop one of the barrels, and began selecting some of the fruits to lay into her apron.

“Hallo!” A man’s voice behind her.

She spun, and her apron came loose from her hand. The fruit tumbled to the ground, and an orange rolled across the floor, where it bumped against the man’s foot. He was standing in the little doorway, and he rightly filled it up. He was grinning at Ginny.

“I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“You didn’t,” she said, stooping to collect up the scattered food. “I mean I just didn’t see you, I didn’t hear you come in there.”

He bent down and picked up the orange that had come to a rest beside the toe of his brogue.

“You must be the new chambermaid.”

She fitted all the fruit back into the sling of her apron, and lifted the lantern back into her hand.

“I must,” she said.

He moved out of the doorway and back into the large kitchen so she could get past. She took the fruit back to the long table, and began to arrange everything onto a copper platter. He went back into the larder, and returned with a small wheel of cheese, already cut. He lumped it up onto the table and fetched a knife from the press. He cut himself a small wedge, and then left the knife down for Ginny. She could feel him staring at her, and she was anxious for Roisin and Katie to return. She glanced at the stairwell, but couldn’t hear any sign of them.

“I know you,” he said to her then, taking a bite of his cheese.

He sat up on a high stool beside the worktop, and she lifted the knife, peeled back the layer of cloth on the cheese wheel.

“Do you, now?” she said, without interest.

“You’re Ginny Rafferty.”

She paused to look at him. She gripped the knife in her hand.

“No,” he went on, “hang on, that’s not quite right.” He was still grinning, showing all his teeth. “You’re Ginny
Doyle
now, aren’t you? Née Rafferty, and then you married that Raymond Doyle, from Knockbooley, didn’t you, around about the time your parents passed away, God rest their souls? Must’ve been ten years ago.”

“Twelve,” she whispered, staring at him. He was tall and broad in the shoulders, with keen blue eyes that were made even brighter by the dusky tint of his skin. He’d a strong jaw and cheekbones, and hair even blacker than hers. She couldn’t place his face. “You must be the jarvie,” she said.

“Seán Lyons,” he said.

“You’re never.” She set the knife down on the counter.

“I am,” he said.

“My God, you’ve changed a small piece since I seen you last.” She stared hard at him, and his smile tapered off modestly while she looked. He’d only been a child then, only slightly older than Maire maybe, when Ginny’s parents died in the same bad winter, and she left her home in Doon to marry Raymond. His mother, Kitty Lyons, had been her childhood neighbor, one of her mam’s dearest friends. Ginny studied the lines of his face for a trace of the boy she had known.

“You haven’t changed a hair,” he said, staring her boldly in the face without smiling. “Still the most beautiful girl in Mayo.” He shook his head, looked down at his hands. “Oh, I was heartbroken when you went off with that Raymond fella,” he laughed.

“Ah, wouldja stop,” she said. “You were only a boy.”

“A boy with a savage heart!” He clutched his chest with his hand, and she laughed at him, she couldn’t help it. She was sure she was blushing. He stood, and lifted the knife out from under her hand, began slicing the cheese for her. “Where is he now, our hero, our dashing Raymond Doyle? I reckoned you’d have a lock of childer and be off in Knockbooley living the sweet life.”

She bit her lip. “He left for New York in September.” She took the cheese as he sliced it, and arranged it on the platter with the fruit.

“Ah, it’s bad times,” he said. “Bad times for dear ould Mother Ireland.”

“It is,” she agreed.

But it was good times for Ginny Doyle, she reckoned. Awful lucky times altogether. “You drive for Mrs. Spring?” she said.

“I do,” he said. “All her messages, her elegant appointments, her step-and-fetch.” There was no small hint of mockery in his voice. “When she sends for new silk slippers from the Continent, I hasten into Westport to collect them for her. I’m vital! Important work, that.” He tossed the cheese knife into a nearby bucket of water, and sat back up on his stool. He glanced at the stairwell before leaning in toward Ginny. “It’s a load of bollix,” he whispered. “But what are you going to do?”

She leaned across the worktable, and looked at him. “Jesus, I’m awful glad you’re here, Seán.”

The quick and earnest blush of his cheek shocked her, but still, she reached over to squeeze his hand. They could hear footsteps coming down the stair.

“Can you meet me tonight?” she whispered.

He took her cue, and whispered back. “In the stables, after the house goes dark.”

She nodded, just as Roisin swept back into the room with the empty dinner tray, trailing Katie behind her.

“Ah, you met our jarvie, then,” Roisin said.

Katie’s whole shape changed when she saw Seán there. She straightened herself, and her face went pink with joy.

“I did,” Ginny said, squeezing a wet rag out over a bucket. She started to wipe down the worktable.

“Katie, fix four plates, then, for us, while Ginny tidies up,” Roisin said, inspecting the cheese-and-fruit platter, picking off a piece here and there that failed to meet her standard. “I’ll bring this up, and then we’ll eat.”

Seán stole a grape off one side, while Roisin slapped at his hand. Katie was stretching to reach some plates from a high sideboard. Roisin turned back to the stairs. Seán swiveled on his stool, caught Ginny’s eye, and winked.

NEW YORK, NOW

“H
ey, honey, look at this.” Leo is at our office desk, clicking around on the computer. He swivels the flat-screen monitor so I can see it through the doorway, from where I’m sitting on the couch breast-feeding Emma.

“I don’t think I can read it from here,” I say, and if he has any response to my sardonic wit, he doesn’t show it. “What is it?”

“There’s a mommy meetup group right here in the neighborhood,” he says, swiveling the monitor back around to face him.

“I really prefer the word
mama
,” I say thoughtfully, adjusting Emma’s weight on the Boppy, and sitting up a little straighter. “Or even
mom
is fine.
Mommy
just sounds so . . . I don’t know. So enthusiastically infantile. Like the mothers have just completely identity-dived into the brains of their bald-headed little spawn.”

Leo leans around the monitor to look at me.

“
Anyway
,” he says, settling back into his chair, “it says they meet up at least once, sometimes twice a month, always at a local venue, usually a playground or a library. And there are like forty-three members.”

“Huh,” I say, tipping my head back onto the pillows behind me.

“You should go to this,” he says, pushing his chair to the side, so he can talk to me through the open French doors. “I really think the hardest part is probably just that you’re on your own, here, and most of your friends are still in Manhattan.”

“And they don’t have kids.”

“Right, and they don’t have kids,” he says.

“And they have jobs.”

“You still have a job, you just have to
do
your job.”

“Ouch,” I say.

“I’m not rushing you,” he says. “But don’t complain about it when it’s your own choice.”

I pick up the remote control and attempt to mute him, but he rolls his chair back to the desk and keeps talking.

“It would be good for you to meet some new people, local people, who are in the same boat as you. Some women who can relate to what you’re going through.”

I close my eyes. “Read me the group description part.”

He scrolls and clicks for a minute, then clears his throat.

“Welcome! I’m Tanya, mommy to Tabitha and Toby, the cutest toddler girl and baby boy in the whole universe, at least to me! Come meet up with other Glendale mommies and our cutest baby boys and girls in the whole universe. We don’t do much, just talk and laugh and play. Who says playdates are just for the kids? Mommies need fun times, too.”
Leo pauses to look at me.

“Shoot me in the face,” I say.

“Just try it,” he says, standing up from the desk, and coming into the living room. He sits down on the coffee table across from me. “If you hate it, what are you going to lose, except an hour of your time?”

I can’t explain why Leo’s painfully reasonable logic makes tears spring up behind my eyes. It’s like when I was in seventh grade, and my dad used to sit with me over my prealgebra homework for
hours
, and I would be so frustrated and angry that even after I’d have the breakthrough to understanding, I would refuse to admit it. I would sit and glower. For some reason, I never could meet an epiphany with joy. How dare he try to steal my despair? I’m entitled to it, dammit. Leo lifts my feet onto his lap.

“They’re having a meeting on Friday afternoon,” he says, massaging my foot, trying to entrap me. “Just think about it?”

I sigh as heavily as I can with Emma on my boob and my stitched-up belly.

“I will,” I say. “I’ll think about it.”

•   •   •

On Friday, Leo leaves early for work. It’s one of his busiest days of the week, so he’s gone by nine o’clock. The lunch chef will do all the early cooking, and Leo won’t even step foot into his kitchen until midafternoon. But it’s autumn now, and the holiday season is approaching. There are banquets to plan, clients to meet, schedules to make, bills to pay. We’re getting close to the time of year when Leo makes his best money. The restaurant will be packed every day from Thanksgiving until January. I lay out one of Emma’s blankets on the thick carpet in our bedroom, and spread some toys around her. I don’t know why I do that, with the toys, because she can’t reach for them yet, but I know there’ll come a time when she can, and I want to be prepared.

I open my closet door bravely, like a mercenary, and I stride up to my hanging clothes almost as if I were not terrified. I choose several of my roomiest prepregnancy outfits, and lay them out on my bed. These were my fat-clothes once, the ones I would reserve for periods of severe bloating or eating at a churrascaria. I pull off my tank top, wiggle a blue jersey dress free of its hanger, and slip it over my head. I step out of my stretchy maternity jeans, and gingerly approach the mirror.

“Oh good God,” I say out loud at my enormous fun house reflection, and I slam the closet door, almost hoping to hear the mirror shatter to the ground inside, just so I will never have to meet with such a sight again. The mirror rattles, but holds. Emma is startled, and looks up at me, so I smile, but she only blinks back. “Maybe it will be better if I can wash my hair?”

Emma moans.

“Yeah, can’t count on it,” I say. “That’s a good point.” I peel the dress off over my head, and stand over the bed, reviewing the options. I shake my head. It’s better not to even try them on. Trying them on is just an exercise in anguish. I step back to my maternity jeans, and yank them back up over my hips.

“Maybe a cute top,” I say, gathering up all the hanging clothes to go back in the closet. I open a dresser drawer and pull out a flattering purple top from late in my first trimester. I hold it up to me. “What do you think, Emma?” She doesn’t answer me. She’s so unsupportive. I wriggle into it, step back to the mirror. It’s not terrible. I can be seen in public like this. A little mascara, some lip gloss. I’m hardly glamorous, but perhaps I can be presentable, with the right shoes.

Three hours later, I am ready. My toenails are painted, my shoes are open-toed and platformy, but not so tall as to risk falling. My hair is clean, if somewhat damp. Emma is dressed in polka dots, and has extravagant, multicolored ruffles on her bottom. We look good. We are not stained or smelly. At the bottom of the steps, I strap Emma into the car seat and stroller, and then drape a blanket over her. We’re running early, so we stop at a deli on Myrtle Avenue for a coffee. “Half decaf, please,” I say, because I don’t need Emma getting all hopped up on my caffeinated breast milk.

I sip while we walk, and I’m half wondering if Emma can sense my nervousness, because my mom has mentioned that babies can feel their mothers’ tension. In fact she says this whenever I tell her that Emma is fussy. She says, “Well, she can probably sense how uptight you are, and that makes her uptight, too,” which is obviously a very helpful observation.

But now Emma has fallen asleep, so I feel like the babies-feeling-their-mothers’-tension thing is probably horseshit. I’ve left some sticky red lip gloss hickeys on the rim of my paper coffee cup, so I stop on the sidewalk to wipe them off with a napkin, because that’s not the kind of first impression I want to make. It’s a glorious, chilly, blue-sky autumn day, and we crunch through leaves as we walk. Before we reach the playground, I fish my
Food & Wine
magazine
—
the July issue, with my story about pears—out from my diaper bag. I tuck it nonchalantly under my arm as a conversation piece.

I feel like a kid on the first day of a new school—excited and terrified. I hope I meet someone nice. When we reach the playground at Eightieth Street, I try not to appear too eager. I glance through the bars as we skirt the fencing, and I notice that there are already several moms with strollers chatting by the monkey bars. There’s another small group sitting at the benches. I find the gate, open it, and push Emma through. I’m trying to decide which group to approach first, when I notice that all the moms at the benches have fallen silent, and are staring at me. I try a smile.

“Are you going to close that?” one of the mothers asks me, in the bitchiest voice I have ever heard. And holy cow, it
is
like the first day of school—junior high school—when that nasty peroxide-blond Nicole Davis, who was a year older than me, threw an apple at my ass when I bent over to get something from my locker. Before I can even answer the evil mom, she stands up, strides past me, and slams the gate I’ve just come through.

“Forget it,” she says, shaking her head.

My mouth is still hanging open when she installs herself back on the bench among her troop of mean mommy-friends and starts talking loudly about “amateur mommies, whose children,
thank God
, are still too small to run through an open gate and into traffic, because God help that kid when it can walk.”

I am so shocked at this moment that I respond with a sort of reactionary coma, exactly like I did with Nicole and the seventh-grade apple. I shut down completely. I can’t leave yet, not with any degree of dignity. I have to stay at least a few minutes to prove to myself that though I might be a chubby, whiny, angry, despondent, drippy mess of a woman, I’m not also completely spineless. So then why do I mumble, “Sorry,” as I scamper past the mean bench-mommies? Fuck.

I approach the monkey bars, and no one really looks at me. These are mommies of newborns—I can tell. They are disheveled and unsure of themselves. More than one is leaking through her bra. There are spit-up stains and maternity pants everywhere. It feels like an outdoor ward—you can almost smell the desperation. Plus, they all have small babies with them.

“Hi,” I venture, when there’s a big enough gap in the nervous conversation. Several of the moms turn to look at me, and one steps aside to make room for me to join their circle. I want to kiss her, to make a sticky red lip gloss hickey on her mouth.

“Hi,” they all say at once, as if we’re at an AA meeting.

“Is this the meetup group?” I ask.

“Yeah,” one of the cleaner-looking moms says. “I’m Amanda,” and she sticks her hand out to me.

I shake it. “Hi, I’m Majella.”

There are “nice to meet you’s” and a couple of “that’s an unusual name’s.” And then we all just stand around smiling uncomfortably at one another for a few minutes, until I have the brilliant idea to start asking about their babies.

“How old is your little one?” I ask Amanda, who is wearing her baby strapped to her chest like an enormous tumor.

She strokes the top of his head, which is covered by an aggressively striped hat. “He’s eight and a half weeks.”

“Oh, he’s adorable,” I lie, because I can’t really see him in there, but he’s probably cute, right? “Is he your first?”

“Thanks,” she says. “Yeah, little Henri is my first.”

She pronounces it
Awn-ree,
like a Parisian.

“Oh, Henri,” I repeat, “what a lovely name. Are you or his father French?”

“No,” she says, and offers nothing more, so I stop asking.

I pull back the hood on Emma’s stroller a little bit, hoping that the light will wake her, just so I’ll have an excuse to pick her up, to give myself something to do. Maybe she’ll even be fussy, and we’ll have to leave. I have never hoped she would be fussy before. The mom standing next to me leans down to look at Emma in the stroller, but she stands back up without saying anything. Weirdo.

After a couple of awkward minutes, the bitchy mom from the benches stands up, and walks toward us. I’m horrified. What the hell could she possibly want from me now? I haven’t even looked in her direction since the gate incident. Hasn’t she berated me enough already? If she attacks me again, I will stand up for myself. I will let her have it. Fuck her. I square my shoulders. Maybe I can pretend that all these meetup moms are my friends now. Yeah. I have friends, too. Yeah!

There is a blondie kid hanging almost upside down from the top bar of the slide, dangling dangerously. “Tabitha, get down from there,” the bitch mom yells. Then she stands at the edge of our little circle, and her mean-looking cohorts from the benches approach, too. It’s like a scene from
West Side Story
. Like there’s going to be a musical, hyperchoreographed fracas. We’re about to
throw down
. But now she is smiling. A big, fake, ugly, toothy smile.

“Welcome to the Glendale Mommies Meetup!” she says, in a singsong, cartoon version of her bitch-voice. “I’m Tanya, the group leader.”

Holy shit.

“And this,” she says, grabbing the blond monster from the slide as it tries to rush past her, “is my daughter, Tabitha.” She leans down to give Tabitha a kiss, but the kid shrieks and wriggles away, and is back hanging upside down at the top of the slide before I can even blink. “And this is my little man, Toby.”

She produces a stroller from behind her as if by magic, and there is an enormous, pie-eyed, fuzzy-headed baby sitting up inside. He blinks at us like a benevolent overlord. The mommies
awwwwww
respectfully. I feel like I’m going to throw up.
Please wake up, Emma, please wake up. Now is the time to scream.

“I see we have a few new mommies joining us today,” Tanya says, looking at me with her eyebrows pointing up into her forehead, “and a couple of
very
new mommies.”

The newbies giggle nervously and turn to smile at me, as if we’re all in on the joke.
We are totally not in on the joke. This woman is a witch, why can’t you all see that?
My cell phone makes its text-message noise, and I’m delighted for the distraction. I take it out of my pocket and read Leo’s message:
How’s the meetup going?
I type back with my thumbs:
hell hell hell
. But my iPhone corrects me to:
he’ll he’ll he’ll.
Annoyed, I jam it back in my pocket without hitting
send
.

In the short time I was distracted, the women have begun taking turns introducing themselves.

“I’m Rebecca,” says one of the harried new moms. Her red hair is threaded with gray, and it has a moplike quality. She has deep purple rings under her eyes. “My little Jayden is three months old, and I’m a SAHM.”