The Walking People (35 page)

"It's been nearly a week already."

"A whole week? Why didn't—"

"We wanted to wait and see. We thought she'd be up talking after a few days and tell us what she wants herself. Sorry. I should have called sooner. But I was in Ballyroan for the first two days and you know the phone situation."

Silence, except for the occasional rush of static on the line. Greta had so many things to ask she didn't know where to begin. Where was she when it happened? Was there pain? Did the doctor come out to Ballyroan or did Tom bring her to town?

"And Tom called you to come home?"

"No. It's a strange thing. I was coming anyway for a visit. It happened just before I arrived. I took the bus from the airport to Galway,
and Tom met me there to tell me. I wrote to you right away and dropped it in the post."

Greta heard the locks slide in the door, the door pushed open, Julia drop her bag on the floor. "Anybody here?" Julia called out in a stage whisper once she'd gotten past the closed door behind which Eavan was sleeping. She was a good girl.

"You don't seem surprised I'm in Ireland," Johanna said. "Anyway, we've gotten in touch with the boys. Padraic is tied up, but Jack is going to try his best."

Greta waved Julia away from the kitchen.

"His best to what?" Greta asked.

"To come, Greta. What do you think we're talking about?"

"But she'll be all right, won't she?"

"Well, she might and she mightn't. I think he's coming just in case."

Julia stalled at the open refrigerator and pretended to look for the date on the milk.

"I'm breast-feeding," Greta said. "Eavan's only twelve weeks."

"You could bring them. Bring them both. We'd all love to see them. And Michael too, if he has the time off."

Michael did not have the time off. There was no such thing as time off. Either you worked and were paid for it, or you didn't work and were not paid. He'd taken a week off when Eavan was born, and with the threat of a layoff always looming, he could not afford to take any more time. She flashed to Julia, tugging down her Lee jeans to do her business in the fields just as Johanna and Greta had. It seemed not only out of place, but impossible.

"So you dashed off the letter before you saw her? Then what's all in it? It's thick enough."

"I thought it didn't come yet."

Shit, Greta thought. "It came today, but I'm just after walking in the door from work." Julia turned from the fridge and mouthed "Aunt Johanna?" Greta nodded and shooed her out the door.

"I started the letter on the plane and added to it when I saw Tom," Johanna said. "If it's a question of the fare, I'll be glad to help pay for a ticket. Julia will be an adult fare now. We could half it. Eavan can sit on your lap."

"Wait," Greta said, and leaned against the counter. "Just wait a second. I have to think."

Johanna waited.

"How bad is she?" Greta asked.

"Bad. If she was going to make a good recovery, she'd be partly there by now."

"How's poor Tom?"

"Worried. He was here yesterday but had to go back to feed and milk. He's looking for someone to look after the place for a few days."

Julia came back into the kitchen and poured herself a tall glass of juice. She took a fork off the drying rack and mimed eating, then raised her eyebrows. She rubbed her belly and groaned. Greta picked a dishrag off the counter and whipped it at her until she left.

"Why are you home, anyway?"

"I told you. A visit. Look, things aren't going so well in California anymore. The restaurant closed, and I haven't found anything else yet. I needed a break."

Another failed romance was Greta's first guess. Or maybe she'd just gotten antsy doing the same thing day in and day out. Brush your teeth, rub the washcloth, go to work, make your dinner, go to sleep. It wasn't what Johanna had in mind for herself when the packet boat carried them across Galway Bay to the ship anchored off the shore. Maybe she'd figured out what Greta had already figured out, that even when you find yourself living in a better place than the one you left, the people around you will still want to be someplace else. Listening to her sister breathe into the line, Greta realized that she might be hearing Johanna admit to failing at something for the very first time. She'd failed at being a success in America. In Conch, she'd be the subject of gossip whispered behind cupped hands. Years ago Johanna Cahill had abandoned a sister and a new baby in America, they'd say. And look at her now.

Or maybe she hadn't failed. Maybe she'd just gotten sick and tired of California the same way she'd gotten sick and tired of Ballyroan. Maybe after a few weeks at home she'd set out for Germany or Australia. Or maybe she'd head back to America and start all over again with a better plan.

"Well then, it doesn't sound as if you should be offering to halve plane tickets. Are you strapped?"

"Not at the moment." A pause. "I'll stay here until I think of the next step. Poor Tom, Greta. You should see the cut of him. And the cottage! I barely recognized it. The boys' room and the whole western gable is totally—"

Greta didn't want to hear about the cottage, though she couldn't say why. She declined the information just the same as if she'd plugged her fingers in her ears. "Aren't there loads of restaurants you could work in?"

"We're not talking about me. We're talking about Mammy. Now, what do you think? Will you come?"

"Look. I just don't know. I could bring Eavan I suppose, but Michael works nights, and I don't like the idea of Julia here alone."

"I said bring her," Johanna said. "Please, Greta. Just bring her."

Eavan began to cry and then abruptly stopped. Julia had picked her up.

"I'll call you tomorrow," Greta said. "Four o'clock your time." She took down the number and said good night.

"What was that all about?" Julia asked when she returned to the kitchen carrying Eavan. "Crisis?"

Greta nodded.

"She's always having a crisis. Is that why we never see her?" Julia turned and bounced Eavan out of the room.

It couldn't be a trick, Greta told herself. They wouldn't take it that far. And Lily would never go along. And Johanna would never jinx Lily by making up a story about a stroke. And they weren't a family for tricks or lies. Not toward each other, at least. Okay, once, when Johanna went out to get milk and never came back. And yes, maybe when it came to night fishing or tucking a thing or two into a purse when the boxes in the Bloomie's back room were overflowing. But not when it really mattered. No, the stroke was real. The danger was real. The B and B in Galway and Tom's worry were real. Jack coming all the way from Australia might be real and might not. The most real thing was that Johanna wanted to see Julia. And so did Lily. And now they were together, pulling her in the same direction.

The heat came clanking up through the pipes again. Mr. Ackerman knocked on the door to say that his radiator was leaking. As usual, he stood on his tiptoes to look past Greta and into their apartment. Greta told him to put a towel down and promised to have Michael up there as soon as he woke.

"I don't have an extra towel for that. Why should I use my towel? Then I have to do laundry a day early? Is it my fault the radiator—"

"Hang on a second." Greta let the door close as she rushed down the hall in search of a spare towel. She plucked a damp one from the laundry. "Use this," she said when she returned to the door and Mr. Ackerman's impatient stare.

Eavan started crying again. Greta changed her diaper. In the kitchen, Julia boiled water for pasta. She broke the spaghetti in half before dropping it in and then twisted the cap off a jar of sauce.

"There's salad," Greta said, striding into the kitchen with Eavan tucked into the nook of her left arm like an American footballer.

Julia dove headfirst into the fridge to search for that bright orange dressing she poured over anything in the vegetable family. Her bum wagged under the fluorescent light.

"What's the news with Aunt Johanna?" Julia asked as she pulled a mostly empty bottle of French from the back of the bottom shelf.

"Nothing. The usual. Work. Life." Julia was like Johanna in some ways. She was a perceptive girl. She might notice the similarities first thing if they ever met. Even now Julia was watching Greta as she began to eat. Her fork poised in midair, she chewed her food slowly, her left hand flat against the table, as if feeling for signs of a coming train, some telltale tremor where bodies connected to solid ground.

"Did she want you to go somewhere? You were talking about airfare. Does she want us to go to California?"

"Ireland," Greta said as she arranged Eavan in her carry-seat. Julia's face fell. The prospect of California was more exciting than Ireland, which, as far as Julia could tell, was full of rain and cows. California on the other hand was full of music, beaches, suntanned boys. No one in her class had ever been farther west than Ohio, except for one boy who was born in Colorado but moved to New York as a baby. Outside, a car squealed to a halt. A taxi, Greta guessed. Maniacs. When
they were finished eating, Greta cleared the table and Julia got out her textbooks and the artillery of colored pencils she used to underline and make small notes for herself in the margins. Greta took Eavan to the couch for another feeding. Once Eavan had her fill, Greta burped her and put her down once more, even though she knew she'd pay for it around two o'clock in the morning. She told Julia she was going to for a quick sleep.

In bed, Michael barely stirred as Greta climbed in next to him. If he had woken, Greta would have told him. Instead, she decided to let him sleep. Sometimes it was difficult to keep track of what Julia knew and what she didn't. It was not strange to Julia that she had a grandmother and an uncle in Ireland whom she never saw. The few times Julia had mentioned it, all Greta had to do was name all the people in the building, or people they knew from the block, who were from Germany and Poland and Korea and many, many other places, but who hadn't been home in twenty, thirty, sometimes forty years. Sometimes more. Julia was not the only girl in her school who had a grandparent living across the ocean whom she'd never met.

Even having two uncles in Australia that she knew nothing about didn't faze Julia. She often forgot their names. In stories, Greta referred to all three brothers as "the boys," and when Julia asked about them, it was always "the boys." Australia was a long way away. At twelve going on thirteen, she didn't seem interested in how they ended up there.

What did strike Julia as very strange was having an aunt in California who never came to visit and who never invited them out. Greta pointed out that California was the same distance as Ireland, but Julia kept insisting it was completely different. It was the same country, after all. There were trains that went all the way to California. There was even the Greyhound bus for those who could stick it.

Greta watched the lights from the street play across Michael's legs. One day, if Johanna returned to the States, she might call the apartment while Greta was out, and Julia might answer. They'd get to talking. Johanna would mention the outdoor markets, the trolley cars, whatever else made San Francisco different from New York. And then she'd invite Julia directly. She might even send her an Amtrak ticket.
All this, she would do in innocence. There was no harm in getting to know each other, she might say.

"America has made you paranoid," Johanna once wrote in a letter to Greta. "You never used to think people were scheming all the time."

I don't think everyone is scheming, Greta thought, her attention diverted for a second by the sound of Julia's chair scraping against the kitchen floor. I don't think that at all. But I'm no fool either. It was one of the first kind things Michael had said to her after he began living in their hay shed in Ballyroan. "You're no fool, are you, Greta?" he'd asked, not needing an answer. Something in his voice told Greta that he'd come to this conclusion despite what he'd been told.

 

Greta's grumbling belly woke her at one
A.M.
and she remembered that she'd hardly even touched the spaghetti Julia had made. She opened her eyes to find Michael's face an inch from hers and his sleep-stale breath taking over her air. She turned, counted on her fingers one, two, three, four, five hours ahead. Six
A.M.
in Ireland. She sat up, pushed off the bedcovers, and stood.

The letter was still sitting on the cushion of the couch. Greta tucked it into the pocket of her robe and then looked in on Julia and Eavan, both sound asleep on their backs with their arms over their heads. She went to the kitchen and turned on the flame under the kettle. She propped the letter against the sugar bowl and looked at it as she waited for the water to boil. It was exhausting, all this writing back and forth. Maybe Michael's people had the right idea when they put an end to it early on. What could be in a letter so thick? All that time on the plane, Greta supposed. Nothing else to do. Greta had never been on a plane, but she imagined it like a long bus ride—nothing but staring straight ahead and thinking any thought that presented itself.

I could go, Greta thought as she moved the squealing kettle to one of the cool burners. I could bring Eavan and go and be back in a week's time. Two at most. I could tell them Julia has school she can't miss, because America isn't like home in that way. In America you can't pluck a child out of school for a week here and a week there. And it would be a good time to miss work, because if Bonnie mentioned
Mr. Halberstam, that meant the hunt was still on for those hats and scarves. Yes, she and Eavan could go alone, and that way Julia and Michael would be here to come back to. That way I would have to come back.

Well of course I'd come back, she scolded herself in the dark kitchen, lit only by the stove bulb. What an odd thing to think.

Or I could stay right where I am, she thought. She looked again at the letter and began to resent its thickness. Does Johanna think I've all the time in the world to be reading and writing letters of that length?

And Lily would be fine, Greta decided. People recover from strokes all the time. She didn't know the year Lily was born, but she certainly didn't seem old enough to be put down by a stroke. It was impossible to imagine Lily any older than she'd been when Greta and Johanna left Ballyroan. And if she waited until the summer, they could go as a foursome, a family. Michael could get the time from work in a couple of months, provided there was no layoff. In the summer, maybe, when the days were long and the weather was fine.