Page 80 of Whale Harbor

“Will they see it?”

“I think so,” Mary said.

He’d had her write a note to say they were going to the city for the day so Mary could see the whale’s bones in the museum where they were displayed. He told her to write that they were stopping in to see Rose and staying the night because Vincent was coming from Dublin. By the time they figured it out, Cathal and Mary would be in Montana.

“You know you’re not the one who’ll be in huge trouble for this,” Mary said.

She thought he’d say something smart, as quick-witted as he still was, but instead he clasped her shoulders. “I know it, a ghrá. I know it. I’m sorry.”

FOR THE FLIGHTS, CATHAL HAD brought nothing to read, and he was not interested in the movies they played. Every time Mary looked over at him he was simply staring at the seat in front of him. The flight to Amsterdam was quick, just over an hour, and Mary looked wistfully at the world below her, wishing she could spend a day exploring. Amsterdam to Minneapolis was the main slog.

“You have to sleep,” Mary said. “You’ll be wrecked when you get there.”

“Do you find it very loud?” he asked. “Is it the wind?”

Mary liked the white noise on planes, it helped her to relax. “It’s the air system, I think.”

“I don’t like it,” he said, putting his hands over his ears.

She asked him if he needed the restroom, but he did not. When his meal came he peeled back the foil and stirred it around, but he didn’t eat. He said his legs felt strange from sitting so long. She told him he could walk up and down the aisle, she’d go with him, but he didn’t want to do that. He told Mary to ask for a cup of tea for him but the flight attendant must have forgotten. By the time she brought it the tea was cold and he wouldn’t drink it. The cabin was very dark but every time she glanced over at him his eyes were open. She tucked his blanket around him. She gave him her small pillow but he only held it in his lap. He said something to her, she assumed a request to pass on to the flight attendant, but when she asked him to repeat it he asked if she thought the dead were always with them, if she thought they followed the living from place to place or was it more likely they were tied to a single spot? Would they be on an airplane, for example, if they’d never been on an airplane in their living years?

“Oh,” Mary said, but he didn’t seem to want an answer so she didn’t give him one. When they finally got to Minneapolis, Cathal was very stiff. She took his bag. They walked slowly to their next gate so he could loosen his joints, get the blood moving. She asked if he was hungry, if he wanted to browse the shop for something to distract him for the last part of their journey.

“How much longer?”

“Just a bit,” she said. She was tempted to ask if he had regrets but what would be the point? He wanted a cup of tea.

When she went and got one for him, and returned to the seat where she’d left him, he was not there and her stomach dropped. Where had he wandered off to? What if he fell? Then she spotted him, standing at a large window, watching a plane roll up to the gate.

“You’re going to be disappointed,” she said when she handed him the tea.

He took a sip and then with shaky hands pried off the cap to look inside.

“So this is America,” he said, looking around.

“Yep,” she said. “Are you all right?” She wondered if her uncles in the Cuan had found the note by then, if they’d figured it out.

“Stop asking me that,” he said.

By Bozeman he was stoic but wiped out. At some point Mary decided now that they were truly in it, the door to their decision sealed shut behind them, she had to just go along with what Cathal asked, be positive, and make sure he was all right. He’d wilted at some point in the journey, lost in reflection or memories, it was impossible to know which. When they touched down in Montana he asked if this was Minneapolis, even though their last stop had been Minneapolis. “No, we’re here!” she said in her brightest voice, as if her enthusiasm might energize him, as if he’d jump up and down and clap hands. In Ireland, he said they should plan on going straight to the address Mary had copied from her father’s notebook, but now he said they needed to rest first, that they should find a hotel. Mary discreetly asked for a wheelchair to get him through Customs and he didn’t object.

“Is he all right?” the Customs agent asked Mary as she pushed him through. He put a red light on in his booth and walked around. “He doesn’t look good.”

“He’s fine,” Mary said. “Granda?” she shook him gently. “He’s just very tired.”

“You’re Macdara’s girl,” Cathal said to her, studying her face as if they were alone in Connemara and not at a plexiglass booth with fifty people waiting behind them.

“Yes,” Mary said gently. “You know me.”

“You visited me before,” he said.

“Yes,” Mary said, knowing what he meant.

“Sir?” The agent crouched down to get a better look at him. “Are you feeling all right?”

Cathal nodded, but he looked a little scared. And seeing that worried Mary. The agent asked if he’d been ill in the preceding weeks, if he’d shown any signs of a fever—aches, pains, chills—before their departure. He asked if they’d traveled to any other countries before their flight from Ireland. Mary insisted he was not ill, he’d not been anywhere else, it was just the journey that had made him tired, maybe confused him a little. The agent said the elderly often avoid water when they travel because they don’t want to deal with going to the bathroom midflight, and then end up dangerously dehydrated.

“Sir,” the agent said. “Your travel originated in Ireland sixteen hours ago. Did you drink enough water in flight?”