The Pub Across the Pond (7 page)

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Authors: Mary Carter

BOOK: The Pub Across the Pond
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C
HAPTER
7
Air We Ever Going to Land
Irish Accent Voted Sexiest in the World
A recent poll of thousands of women from all over the world has decided: The Irish accent is the sexiest in the world. Thanks in part to actors like Colin Farrell and Liam Neeson, women from all over the world, even French women, are in agreement. Irish men have the sexiest accent in the world. They even beat out the Italians, who used to make them swoon with a simple
“Ciao, bella.”
Carlene finished reading the article, shaking her head and smiling all the way through. So she wasn't the only one who swooned like schoolgirl at the sound of the Irish brogue. She used to say that she could get turned on listening to Brendan read the “fecking phonebook.” Becca constantly pointed out how much Brendan cussed. Although Carlene couldn't deny it, it didn't bother her. He said the F-word like it was simply an adjective, or a part of speech like “a,” “an,” and “the.” Sometimes, he even said the C-word; not to describe women, usually a fella he was annoyed at. This one completely jarred Carlene's sense of right and wrong, and despite his attempts to defend the way the Irish he knew used it, she begged him to stop. But the difference between how he said “fecking this” or “fecking that” and how Americans said it was huge. It was all in the attitude. He rarely used it in anger—it wasn't a tirade, it was simply an additive, like a food coloring—something to spice up the fecking phonebook.
Or maybe it was just the accent. It sounded fecking good, helped out the rhythm of the sentence—Hamburger Fecking Helper. Sometimes it was with the “eh” sound, and sometimes with the “uh” sound. She questioned him about it once, apparently the “eh” sound was an attempt to be a little more polite. And although not all Irish swore, just like not all Irish people drank, or could Riverdance, Carlene had always wanted to take a year off, travel Ireland, and study the numerous forms and uses of the F-word. Fuck, an in-depth exposé.
At the bottom of the article, Becca scrawled:
Go get 'em.
Unfortunately, she added:
Don't forget Brendan.
It was capitalized and underlined and followed by multiple exclamation marks. For the first time in what felt like hours, Carlene's smile faded slightly.
There she goes again, bringing up Brendan.
Brendan Hayes. As if forgetting him was an option. She could still see him standing in the doorway of the Irish pub in Boston, grinning at her.
“Ten-dollar cover, gorgeous,” he said.
“Oh,” she said. She was just off the plane and had arrived at the pub where Becca had arranged for them to meet. Becca had just met Levi, who was going to Boston University, and she had been visiting him as often as she could. This was Carlene's first time in Boston, and, as usual, she wasn't exactly flush with cash. The gym brought in decent money, but her father was so nervous they would spend it all that most went into savings and bonds and retirement accounts. Carlene was surprised Becca would pick a place with a cover. She knew Carlene's situation with money.
“For the band,” the man said. His smile looked like an apology. He was cute, wearing a soft brown scarf that matched his eyes. She thought he looked familiar, but she couldn't think for the life of her why. And she wasn't going to come out with “don't I know you from somewhere,” so she didn't say anything. When he spoke, it sounded like a thousand flutes.
“I love your accent,” Carlene said.
“T'ank you,” he said. “I've been practicing it a long time.” He winked and she flushed. She dug in her purse and took out a tenner.
“Are they any good?” she said.
“Let's see,” he said. He held the bill up to the light. She laughed.
“I meant the band.”
“Ah right, the band,” he said. “They're fucking brilliant.” A line was starting to form behind her. She smiled again, and then before common sense could stop her, she snatched the money back and wrote her phone number on it before heading into the bar. Becca was already there, and soon they were so caught up in conversation, Carlene didn't even think about the guy at the door until someone asked the bartender when the band was going to start. She'd never forget the look on the bartender's face.
“What band?” he said. “There's no band tonight.” As his comment echoed down the bar, a rush of people, mostly men, headed straight for the Irishman at the door. Carlene got to the window in time to see him bolting down the street with at least five men after him. When the men came back to the bar, still fuming, she knew they hadn't been able to catch him. To this day, it made her laugh. If only it had been the last time she'd ever laid eyes on Brendan Hayes. If only she hadn't given her phone number to a con man. If only she hadn't remembered why he looked familiar. If only, when he called her a few days later, she had hung up.
Carlene put the article back in her purse and looked out the window. She wouldn't think about the past. Although she was dying to tell Brendan Hayes that she'd just won a pub in Ireland.
Some craic, eh Brendan?
Just to see the look on his face. Just so he knew that something so wonderful had happened to her that even the worst memories of him couldn't wipe the grin off her face.
Her seatmate, a man in his fifties, leaned over. “Do you mind me asking what you're so fecking happy about?” The question startled her.
“What?” Carlene said.
“I'm sorry to intrude,” he said. “But ye haven't stopped smiling since takeoff. At first I thought maybe there was something wrong with ye. You know, like off in the head. But I'm starting to think there's more to it, and for the life of me I've never seen someone smile for five hours straight, especially on Air Lick Us or Kill Us, and it's kind of annoying me, if you don't mind me saying.” Carlene laughed. He shook his head. “Are ye on drugs?” he said. “I've never been a fan. But I might make an exception for whatever you're on.” Carlene looked at him.
“I won something,” she said. “I've never won anything in my life. I mean anything.” She leaned into him. “Until recently, I was the unluckiest girl you could ever meet.”
“So what'd you win? The lottery?” he asked. She didn't want to rush her story. It was too fun to tell. So she told him how whenever she reached for pennies dropped on the ground, someone else would get them first. She told him she never won the milk-line lottery in kindergarten, where you'd get to line up first on break and get the chocolate milk before they were all gone, and how in the third grade she entered a raffle to win a giant, ugly stuffed rabbit.
Yes, he was bright orange, and wore a blue suit, and he was absolutely twelve feet of hideous, but she was madly in love with him. She scraped up twenty dollars—a fortune in those days—and she bought as many tickets as she could. Bobby Meijers, a ninth grader, won the rabbit. He immediately placed Mr. Orangey (as she had already named him) on the wheel-a-round on the playground and set him on fire. Carlene would never forget the smell of stuffed flesh burning. It even prompted her to start KETSA, Kids for the Ethical Treatment of Stuffed Animals. Nobody joined except Becca. Good old Becca. Her seatmate's eyes were glazing over; apparently, he didn't care what an unlucky girl she used to be.
She could have told him the real bad luck she'd had in life. Her mother's death, her father's obsessive-compulsive disorder, Brendan Hayes, the things he'd done to her, the things she'd done for him—
“I won a pub in Ireland,” she said.
“What now?” Her seatmate was interested again. So she told him about the Irish festival. She told him about “CmereIwancha” and the table with the little white box and how she almost kept walking. She told him how when the call came that she'd won, she didn't believe it. She made the man give her his number. She hung up. She called him. His story didn't change. They'd just held the drawing in Ballybeog, and hers was the name they picked.
“Didn't I tell ye luck could change like the weather?” the man said. She still didn't believe him. She called Becca. Becca didn't believe her. She told her father. He didn't believe her. She Googled Ballybeog, and sure enough she found newspaper coverage on the raffle, and the drawing, and there it was again, a teensy, tiny picture of her pub. It was adorable. White with blue trim, and an actual thatched roof. She saw her name. Carlene Rivers from Cleveland, Ohio.
Then the call came in from the pub itself. She could barely hear the girl—it was hard to understand her accent on the phone, and there was so much noise in the background. She started to believe it. The girl said she would receive paperwork in the mail from their solicitor. It would take some time, and there were forms she had to fill out, including the application for the work visa, but the solicitor had done as much of the legwork as he could on their end and they would talk her through every step, and would she mind doing a few interviews for RTÉ? And then, then she started to think it was real.
Now here she was, a month later, on a flight to Shannon, and she couldn't stop grinning. Her father said she was breaking his heart, and Becca teased that she was entitled to a percentage of the pub because of the two dollars Carlene had to borrow. And it was still in the back of her mind that this just couldn't be happening to her, because she wasn't that lucky, but even through her doubts, she couldn't stop smiling. Her jaw was starting to ache. The overhead speakers crackled and the pilot's voice filled the cabin.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we're beginning our descent into Shannon. If this is home, welcome back. If you're just visiting, allow us to fill up your hearts and empty your pockets.”
If this is home.
Carlene turned away from her seatmate and placed a hand on either side of the little oval window. Through a parting of the clouds, she caught sight of the ground below. Not as green as she'd imagined, but real Irish ground. Iconic images of Ireland flooded her mind. Majestic cliffs rising above the ocean, her grandmother leaning back to kiss the Blarney Stone, ancient castles (the only castles they had in Ohio were White Castles), soaring cathedrals, Barry's tea, Father Ted, and sheep.
She saw the Claddagh ring her grandmother bought her when she was seven, her first birthday without her mother. She saw lines of people Riverdancing, she saw pubs, she saw edgy young musicians in need of a dollar and a shave playing on the street, she saw drunken fisherman singing at the top of their lungs. Even bars of Irish Spring soap floated through the conveyor belt of her mind. She'd be seeing leprechauns on the wing of the plane next. Before she knew it, her eyes had filled with tears. She could feel her grandmother and great-great-great-grandmother, and those wickedly handsome twins, and her mother sitting beside her.
Welcome home,
something inside her said.
Life had finally done it, it had finally surprised her—in a good way.
They were landing. They were landing in Ireland. Where her pub awaited. It was astounding. And she would not ruin it with doubts, or worry, or fear. Becca would not show up at her doorstep demanding a share of the pub, her father would not die without her, and she would never, ever speak to Brendan Hayes again. She wondered if she would ever be able to think of Brendan without seeing him in her underwear. Shortly after he disappeared, a man named Trent sent her a picture of Brendan. He was standing in a hotel room with nothing but a pair of her Victoria's Secret panties. They were red with little white hearts. He looked deliriously happy and better in the panties than she ever did.
Were Brendan and this “Trent” lovers? There was no return address, but the postmark was from Tampa, Florida. Was it just a drunken joke? Did Brendan even know she had the picture? She'd never know. When it came to Brendan there would probably always be a million unanswered questions. Maybe meeting him was a way of the universe foreshadowing her upcoming adventures in Ireland. Toughening her up so she knew what she was dealing with when it came to Irish men. Not that she would suspect all of them of secretly wearing women's panties, but she knew always to expect the unexpected. She was armed.
The airline she was flying wasn't so bad despite what her seatmate called them. Air lick us or kill us. She'd heard it called other names while waiting in line to board: Air Fungus. Air, what's that noise? Air we going to crash? Air kiss my ass. Air we going to linger in limbo after we crash? Now, why did she have to go and think such negative things? She'd had a perfectly nice flight with a quirky seatmate, and a private television with strange British sitcoms, and some kind of thick, meaty stew with bread and butter, and more offers for cups of tea than she'd ever had in her life. The attendants all had the required intoxicating accents, and big smiles. Now they were landing, and soon they'd be on the ground, safe and sound.
Please, God, please don't let the plane crash before I ever get to set foot in my little pub.
She instantly tried to wipe the thought away. The Law of Attraction said that whatever thought you held in your mind would be drawn to you, and here she was focusing her powerful energy on crashing. Even if she repeated to herself, “We are not going to crash,” she was still projecting crash to the universe. She had to send out the opposite energy. She imagined the plane floating gently to the ground on a four-leaf clover. She hoped it would be enough. She turned to her seatmate.

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