Page 18 of Whale Harbor

“Take Coleman,” he said, when the old man passed again. “Not for good, but for now.” Coleman was just a year younger than Noel, so it made sense for him to leave home, too, but since he was Coleman it made better sense for him to not go too far.

Unlike his brothers, who all seemed stunned when told they were leaving home, Coleman couldn’t hide how happy he was. He gathered his few things and stood by their grandfather, who put an arm around his scrawny shoulders. “We’ll have a great time, won’t we?” Grandfather asked, and Mac felt a wisp of envy. “And we’ll be back and forth as often as you like.” Coleman was out the door before Grandfather. He ran ahead once they got to the lane.

Sean and Barry in England. Vincent with Rose. Fearghal and Noel in seminary school. Now Coleman on the island. Five, Mac thought. Now we’re only five. The cottage was strangely quiet. Eamon and Seamus kept looking at the loft stairs, as if expecting one of their brothers to climb down.

FOUR

One day the woman called Nuala came home with Cathal. It was September and had been raining for a week. The stone had been placed on their mother’s grave and the grass had grown back where it had been turned up at the funeral. Nuala was wearing a patterned green dress, a matching hat, thick tights. She had curly blond hair that was more like fluff. She looked nothing like their mother and was in fact several years older than their mother, several years older than Cathal.

“She’s not one bit pretty,” Rian said as she climbed down from the trap. Cathal usually came and went unannounced, but he had warned them the day before that he’d be gone for one day and to have the cottage looking shipshape when he returned. He hadn’t said why, but Mac suspected. He kept his suspicions to himself, but when they were cleaning up Rian had asked, “Has he gone to get that woman?”

When Mac got close enough now to shake her hand, he saw that the skin of her cheeks had the texture of an orange peel.

“Hello,” she said to all of them generally, her eyes skimming their faces. Cathal led her into the cottage and the boys followed. They watched her looking up at the loft, at the little mirror that hung on the side of the loft ladder. She cast her eye into the corner where cans were stacked. She made a slow spin, looking at everything.

“When I lived in Chicago I had an apartment with an electric stove,” she said finally. Odd to hear English spoken inside their home. “It had a place for four pots. I shared with another girl. We each had a bedroom and there was a small sitting room. You’d flip a switch and there were lights, which is the way it is all over Ireland now, too, by the way. The stove was pure white and when you turned it on there were rings that glowed red.”

“It was a pleasure to clean that stove,” she added when no one said anything.

Nuala looked at Cathal but he didn’t move, didn’t touch her, didn’t put his hand on the small of her back or the nape of her neck like he used to do to their mother when he wanted to tell her something only she would hear. They’d sleep side by side until one of them died, Mac thought. She’d take the spot his mother had occupied. It was his mother’s room even more than it was his father’s. His mother’s dresser. His mother’s trunk of linens.

“When will you marry her?” Mac asked in Irish, which he could tell Nuala would not understand.

“We were married yesterday. You and Barry go out and carry in her suitcases.”

Mac felt his brothers looking at him, as if to ask whether this was really true. Nuala smiled at all of them expectantly.

“Talk in English, please,” Nuala said. “All I hear when you do that talking is agus agus agus. It’s almost as bad as riding the elevated train in Chicago, no one speaking good English. And we have to get to know each other.” She stepped up to Rian with her hand outstretched, but Rian crossed his arms tight.

“Tell her your names,” Cathal said. Mac introduced himself first, and then Thomas, Eamon, and Seamus, who was in his arms. When he got to Rian, Rian dropped to tie his shoe. She paused for a moment, like she was about to say something to him, but then she made faces at Seamus and Eamon and next thing Seamus was wriggling to be put down and they were up against her skirts. She laid a hand on each of their heads, and Mac could see they craved that touch like the dog craved his belly rubbed. Thomas, age six, stepped toward her, too, though he was shy about it at first. Mac thought he’d done all the tender things his mother did, small things, drawing them close, but it hadn’t been enough, he saw now. They were thirsty for affection.

“I came home from America to nurse my mother until God took her home. So I know what it’s like to lose your mother,” Nuala said.

“And what age was your mother, missus?” Rian asked.

Cathal shot him a look just as Mac put his hand on his shoulder, but Rian shook him off. Her mother had no doubt been old and sick. She didn’t sit down and die one day for no reason at all. She didn’t have a baby in a cradle who needed to feed from her body.

“We won’t speak of past sadness now,” Nuala said. She squared her shoulders and walked over to the mantel, which displayed some of their mother’s most precious things: a miniature silver teapot she polished every Christmas, a figurine of a man and a woman dancing, a small Waterford vase.

“We’ve six more brothers,” Rian said, disgusted at the youngest boys for accepting her so fast. “Will they be coming home now you’re here? There’s Sean and Barry in England. Baby Vincent is with our cousin Rose. Coleman is only over on Illeaneeragh with our grandfather. Noel and Fearghal are in Limerick at the seminary and it would be easy enough to bring them two home in particular.”

“That’s enough, Rian,” Cathal said in Irish.

“What about the—” Nuala asked Cathal. “Where will it go?”

“Ah,” Cathal said, striding toward the small back room where they hung any meats or fish in need of drying. “It’ll go back here,” he said. “I’ll knock this wall and extend back a bit.” He twisted his eyebrow.

Rian looked up at Macdara as if to ask what he could mean.

A toilet, Macdara realized, and was amazed. Cathal would never do it. Not ever. She should have gone back to Chicago.

BARRY WAS A BETTER LETTER writer than Sean in terms of detail but he wrote just as infrequently. He said their landlady was Irish and must be in league with the boss on the job site because some of their wages were deducted and sent straight to her before they even saw them. Sean made a big stink because he and Barry were charged the same as everyone else as if they each had their own room. Between them should be the price of one room, he argued, but if he made too much of a fuss she’d toss them out of the house and their job was tied with the place they lived. The gangerman was Irish, too, and if he didn’t like your face or if he knew your uncle was a Fenian or whatever the case may be, then you wouldn’t be among the men he’d choose for the day’s work. Sean and one of the others had bundled Barry to look bigger. His papers said he was eighteen but no one believed it. Still, he was getting work and once he was given a chance could hold his own. The landlady didn’t like any of them around in the evenings so most nights everyone headed to the pub.

It’s not real, Mac thought when he finished reading. None of it was real.

They saw Coleman regularly, but as for Vincent, as for Fearghal and Noel, only Cathal knew. Not being able to picture their days felt to Mac as if he were in the middle of an important conversation and the other person had just walked away. All day, thoughts of his brothers were there in his belly and his throat. He dreamed that they were in fires, drowned in the sea, hit by a lorry while crossing busy streets they weren’t used to. He dreamed that one was deathly ill and while he was rushing to him another died somewhere else.

Whenever Grandfather came through the Cuan, he always asked if there’d been any word from Fearghal and Noel.