Page 44 of Whale Harbor

Mac opened the door for her.

“Oh!” she said when she noticed Thomas.

“I’m his brother,” Thomas said.

“I forgot to say my brother’s coming with us,” Mac said.

“Nice car. Does your brother have a name?”

“Thomas,” they both said. And then Thomas added, “It’s not his car.”

“Well, hello, Thomas,” she said. “It’s a nice car no matter who it belongs to. Do you have sun lotion? You’re very fair.”

“He’ll be fine,” Mac said.

“Put on some of mine,” she said, handing him a tube.

Once they set out, Lillie turned on the radio and found the news. “Madness,” she said. “Did you see the paper this morning?”

Mac noticed her hands were narrow, and she had freckles across her knuckles. She asked Thomas about himself, his age, what kind of work he hoped to get, if he had an American girlfriend yet, if he’d left anyone behind in Ireland. She asked about the other brothers. “Wait. How many are there again? No sisters at all?” Her night had been less active than Mac’s. She and her roommates had all been home—mostly discussing Mac standing her up—and once they realized the power was out citywide they bolted the door and stayed put. She admitted she was glad she hadn’t been out. Who knew what would have happened, how they would have gotten home.

Mac drove next to Nino’s shop, so he could check whether it had been looted and make sure the cat had food and water. Thomas and Lillie waited in the car. The shop was still locked tight, plate glass intact, the van still parked out back where he left it. “Are you all right?” he asked the cat. He pried open a can of food he bought at the market and filled her bowl with cold water. He crouched to put his hand on her belly to check whether she was abnormally hot, but cats were more mysterious to him than other animals. For the most part they kept their problems to themselves.

“All set?” Lillie asked when he returned to the car. She and Thomas had been chatting like old friends. Lillie had a sister who was nineteen, just a year younger than Thomas, but she was still in Ireland. As Mac steered the car onto the highway, she was suggesting a setup, perhaps, once her sister came out for a visit or to stay.

“Do you have a photograph?” Thomas asked.

“I don’t. I’m sorry,” Lillie said, after a quick, amused glance at Mac.

“Well, I dunno. Maybe. Maybe that would work. But I couldn’t wait for her or anything. I might have other options by then,” Thomas said.

Lillie tilted her head back and laughed.

The ride to the beach took forever so they ate their sandwiches as Mac drove. Cars, dozens of them, were pulled over to the shoulder, engines steaming, miserable occupants sprawled out on the scrubby grass. The news described a night full of destruction and violence, with no sign that power would be restored before night fell once again. Be home before dark, the newscaster warned. After a full cycle the stories began to repeat, so Mac turned to a station that played music. It was a day out of time, was all.

By the time they got to Rockaway, parked half a mile away from the beach and found a patch of sand big enough to lay out three towels, it felt like they’d traveled a thousand miles. Mac was thirsty and Thomas was already sunburned somehow. They couldn’t all go down to the water at once because someone had to mind the wallets and the car keys.

“Go on,” Mac said. “You two go first. I’ll go next.”

“Are you sure?” Lillie asked. She glanced around for a moment, as if to see if anyone was looking at her, and then to Mac, who was.

“What’s that?” she asked, pointing at something in the distance. But Mac didn’t see anything unusual, just bodies in every shade, bellies and breasts slick with lotion, rounded shoulders, jutting hip bones. A nearby radio played the top forty. The air smelled of coconut. When he turned back to ask what he should be looking at, she had her dress off and was folding it to place inside her bag. Standing in her bathing suit, her skin was almost blindingly fair. Mac could tell she was trying to make this all feel as normal as possible, standing in broad daylight with so much of her body showing, in front of two boys she hardly knew.

“Shall we?” she said to Thomas as she began walking toward the water. Walking behind her, Thomas was the height of a full-grown man but had the gangly stride of a child, still.

Mac cupped his hand at his brow to see them better, to see Lillie better. Thomas, like any Joyce would, waded in as far as his knees and then stopped, waited for the waves to come to him. They had assumed that Lillie, like them, understood “swimming” to mean getting wet enough to cool off and then getting immediately out of the water. But Lillie kept going, and when a wave approached that looked big enough to knock her down, she waited until the very last moment and then she dove in.

NINE

They dated for over a year before they married, though Mac would have married Lillie the day he saw her at Gaelic Park. He never once wondered if he loved her, he just knew he did. He never felt as if he had to entertain her or muster up the energy to chat with her, like he had sometimes with other girls. They could be quiet together for a long time.

They referred to a future with each other without really discussing specifics, but every time they put words to their private hopes the details turned out to be the same—first, a house in their names that they could pay off over time, an idea that seemed out of reach until they sat down with a pen and paper and wrote out how much of their income they could save if they kept living in the Joyce apartment for a year or so, Mac’s brothers in the next room. It would be almost like living by themselves since Thomas worked nights—he’d been promoted from barback to bartender at the Selkie—and Fearghal and Noel’s schedule changed every few weeks. Often, they were on nights too. Even when the boys were home, the company was nice. Lillie and Mac were both used to living with more than one person. Mac noticed his brothers brightened whenever she was there. They asked her opinion and she drew them out in a way that Mac didn’t or couldn’t.

Mac wanted to leave Nino’s more than ever. There was no way to know for certain how striking out on his own would go until he tried. Nino, who must have suspected he was having thoughts along these lines, started mentioning insurance out of nowhere, something he’d never referred to before. He mentioned how lucky Mac was that his work was covered under Nino’s shop. What if he was out on his own and a horse got maimed and they blamed him? It was a good question, but Mac told himself that if other people had figured out how to do it, so could he. There was a list of phone numbers at the back of the Farriers magazine and he decided to call one to ask how it could be done.

When his nieces had started talking, they sounded Irish for a while but once they began school they started sounding more American. Mac and Lillie both wanted more than one child but not so many that they’d worry about putting together a decent Christmas for them. Enough to be company for one another but not so many that when they needed bigger shoes they’d have to make them wait. They’d keep working, keep moving forward, grab moments of joy where they could. They would be careful about wanting too much, and be grateful for what they had.

“Tell me more about Rian,” Lillie said to him one night, after they got engaged. His proposal wasn’t a surprise to her. He wanted her to pick the ring. She chose one much smaller than he was considering, so he told her to pick another one, it was all right. She stood there and pretended the larger stones wouldn’t look nice on her hand because of the way her fingers tapered above the knuckles. “See?” she said, fluttering her fingers at him. He couldn’t see anything. She insisted that a simple speck of a stone on the narrowest band was her true preference.