Page 47 of Whale Harbor

“Oh my god,” she said, flipping a page back and forth. “Oh my god. How did this happen?”

“I’m very sorry, Missus Joyce. I should have explained before now. Didn’t you grow up on a farm?”

“Oh, very funny,” she said. But then she walked over to him and tucked herself in beside him. “Are you ready for this?”

“I am,” he said, drawing her closer.

“Me too,” she said.

THEY FOUND THEIR HOUSE AFTER seeing so many that they lost count. Every week, Lillie was getting bigger. It felt urgent to get their own place now and have time to settle in before the baby arrived. Finally, just as they were wondering if they should give up and rent somewhere for a year or two, they went to one last open house on a lark, mostly because the boys were home and they wanted to get out of the apartment. It was not the nicest or the ugliest house they’d seen, not the cheapest or the most expensive, but Lillie liked the way the light came in. She liked the tree in the front yard. She said there was something friendly about it, something that made her think it was a home. The windows were drafty and there was moss growing from the roof, but Mac was confident he could figure out how to address those problems. So just before the baby was born, they moved from the Bronx apartment to a sunny little house in the Crestwood section of Yonkers. The first thing Mac did was give it a coat of paint, inside and out, a clean bright white that Lillie picked. For the shutters she chose black, and a glossy black door.

THE APARTMENT THEY’D ALL LIVED in at different points was rent-controlled, something the friend who’d helped Barry and Fearghal find it in 1967 had pointed out at the time, but it was a detail no Joyce appreciated at first because they didn’t know what it meant. Rent was rent, and who cared about raises ten or twenty years from now when there were problems to be overcome today. But over time, as brother replaced brother and all anyone talked about was the cost of living, they came to understand how valuable it was. When Lillie and Mac moved out and Fearghal became engaged to his girlfriend, Peg, there was room for Seamus and Eamon to join them. The building was looking more beat up every year, and the super never responded to any problem, but if fixing their own toilet was the price to pay for such low rent, it was well worth it.

Eamon and Seamus arrived in 1980, the same year Mac and Lillie’s daughter, Mary, was born. Noel and Thomas took one room, Eamon and Seamus the other, and if they talked and laughed when it was just the four of them, Mac couldn’t tell when he came around. They were quiet around the eldests, especially Mac, who had not been back to Ireland to visit and whom they hadn’t seen for seventeen years. Eamon claimed to remember him a little, but Seamus did not. They’d come on tourist visas and simply overstayed. That the eldests had come legally and had green cards now was fascinating to them, and they discussed it as if the world had been an entirely different place less than twenty years earlier.

They referred to Cathal as Cathal like the rest of them, but Nuala they referred to as Mam. “Mam will be worried she hasn’t had a letter,” Seamus said to Eamon one day when they were newly arrived, sitting around Sean’s backyard. “Will you put a few lines at the end of mine if I write to her tomorrow?” Barry looked at Mac as if to warn him not to say a word.

“Is she worried about you being in New York?” Barry asked.

“Is she ever,” Eamon said. “Warnings about the subway, about where to keep our money when we’re walking the streets. Warnings of people scamming us and locking our door even when we’re at home. She spent a long time in Chicago, you know. I think she lived in a bad neighborhood.”

Seamus was quiet, somewhat guarded, but Mac figured that would change once they got to know each other better. He was neat, Mac noticed. He folded his clothes and stacked them on a chair. His bed was always made. He was never late. He was dependable. But Eamon seemed to regard time and responsibility with a haphazardness that worried Mac. He lived in a state of defensiveness, at least around his older brothers. There was an undercurrent of anger in most of their interactions, especially when they were one on one, and Mac couldn’t figure out the root. If Mac asked about his work, Eamon asked why he wanted to know. If Mac asked if he’d had a late night, Eamon said he thought he left his father at home in the Cuan. Coleman was the only topic that put everyone at their ease. “Does he still sing?” Mac asked when they were all over at the house, admiring Mary. Mary started fussing, so Seamus, who was holding her, started humming a song that their mother used to ask Coleman to sing. It all came back to Mac so completely, the way he’d tip up his sweet face and close his eyes as the tune came through him.

“He does,” Eamon said, looking at Mac with surprise. “He has a lovely voice. You’ve heard him?”

“Of course,” Mac said. And then added: “It was our mother’s favorite thing. Listening to him.”

That detail hung in the air for a moment. “Do you remember her?”

Seamus shook his head.

“Do you hear anything from Vincent?” Mac asked. “Does Cathal?”

“You’d never know when it comes to Cathal,” Eamon said. “But we’ve seen Vincent a few times at GAA matches. He’s considered pretty good, right, Seamus? One time he was walking through Galway town with a group his age. Mick Sullivan said to us that’s your brother, Vincent. His mam told him, I guess, and he knew him to see him. He asked us if we were going to go over to say hello and we just said we’d talk to him later on. Strange that all the old ones in the Cuan kept track of him, you know they did, and there’s us not having a clue. Of course, we didn’t let on to Mick that we didn’t know it was him.”

“We’d hate him having that over us,” Seamus added.

“Yeah,” Eamon said.

THOMAS GOT MARRIED IN 1982, leaving a vacant spot in the apartment. He found a house near Crestwood, a five-minute drive from Mac and Lillie. Shortly after, Cathal sent a letter addressed to Sean, Mac, and Barry, asking if there’d be a place for Vincent in New York. He was nineteen and had done one year at university, but there was still so little work that Rose and Cathal thought he might be better off in New York. Barry, speaking for all of them, wrote back to say of course Vincent could come, they only had to figure out how to get him there, but once they did, there was a place to live and help from his brothers.

“What?” Eamon demanded when the others were told. “Why were you three consulted and not the rest of us?”

“Because Cathal knows we speak for all of us,” Sean said.

“The fuck you do,” Eamon said.

“We’re the bosses,” Barry said, smirking.

“Stop,” Mac said to Barry. “You’re worse than they are.”

“Well, you’re not speaking for me,” Eamon said. He folded his arms. “And not for Seamus either.”

Seamus stayed quiet as he followed the conversation, but they all knew his loyalty was to Eamon.

Thomas, the peacemaker, spoke next. “Look. It’s just that we don’t know him. I’m not saying he shouldn’t come. I’m only saying it’ll be different. We should have been consulted.”

Eamon spun around and looked at him. “What do you care? You won’t have to live with him.”