Brooklyn (30 page)

"I will be going back to the United States," Eilis said.

"Well, yes, of course," Mr. Brown said. "But you and I will speak again before you make any firm decisions."

Eilis was about to say that she had already made a firm decision, but since Mr. Brown's tone suggested that he did not need just now to have any further discussion on the matter, she realized that she was not expected to reply. Instead, she stood up, and Mr. Brown did too, accompanying her to the door and sending his regards to her mother before he saw her out to the care of Maria Gethings, who had an envelope for her ready with cash inside.

That evening Eilis had promised to go to Nancy 's house to look at the list of people invited to the wedding breakfast and work out with her where they should be seated. She recounted her interview with Mr. Brown with puzzlement.

"Two years ago," she said, "he wouldn't even see me. I know that Rose asked him if there was any possibility of a job for me and he just said no. Just no."

"Well, things have changed."

"And two years ago Jim Farrell seemed to think it was his duty to ignore me in the Athenaeum even though George had practically asked him to dance with me."

"You have changed," Nancy said. "You look different. Everything about you is different, not for those who know you, but for people in the town who only know you to see."

"What's changed?"

"You seem more grown up and serious. And in your American clothes you look different. You have an air about you. Jim can't stop trying to get us to find more excuses to go out together."

Later, as Eilis had a cup of tea with her mother before they went to bed, her mother reminded her that she knew the Farrells, although she had not been in the house, which was over the pub, for years.

"You don't notice it much from outside," she said, "but it is one of the nicest houses in the town. The two rooms upstairs have double doors between them and I remember even years ago people used to comment on how large it was. And I hear that the parents are moving out to Glenbrien where she's from, to a house that her aunt left her. The father loves horses, he's a great man for the races, and he is going to have horses out there, or so I heard. And Jim is getting the whole place."

"He'll miss them so," Eilis said. "Because they run the pub when he wants to go out."

"Oh, it'll be all very gradual, I'd say," her mother replied.

Upstairs on the bed Eilis found two letters from Tony and she realized, almost with a start, that she had not written to him as she had intended. She looked at the two envelopes, at his handwriting, and she stood in the room with the door closed wondering how strange it was that everything about him seemed remote. And not only that, but everything else that had happened in Brooklyn seemed as though it had almost dissolved and was no longer richly present for her-her room in Mrs. Kehoe's, for example, or her exams, or the trolley-car from Brooklyn College back home, or the dancehall, or the apartment where Tony lived with his parents and his three brothers, or the shop floor at Bartocci's. She went through all of it as though she were trying to recover what had seemed so filled with detail, so solid, just a few weeks before.

She put the letters on the chest of drawers and decided that she would reply when she returned from Dublin the following evening. She would tell Tony about all the preparations for Nancy 's wedding, the outfits that she and her mother had bought. She might even tell him about her interview with Mr. Brown and how she had informed him that she would be returning to Brooklyn. She would write as though she had not yet received these two letters and she would not open them now, she thought, but wait until she had written her own letter.

The idea that she would leave all of this-the rooms of the house once more familiar and warm and comforting-and go back to Brooklyn and not return for a long time again frightened her now. She knew as she sat on the edge of the bed and took her shoes off and then lay back with her arms behind her head that she had spent every day putting off all thought of her departure and what she would meet on her arrival.

Sometimes it came as sharp reminder, but much of the time it did not come at all. She had to make an effort now to remember that she really was married to Tony, that she would face into the sweltering heat of Brooklyn and the daily boredom of the shop floor at Bartocci's and her room at Mrs. Kehoe's. She would face into a life that seemed now an ordeal, with strange people, strange accents, strange streets. She tried to think of Tony now as a loving and comforting presence, but she saw instead someone she was allied with whether she liked it or not, someone who was, she thought, unlikely to allow her to forget the nature of the alliance and his need for her to return.

A few days before the wedding, when Eilis had been working a half-day at Davis's office and Jim Farrell had collected her there and they had gone for a meal in Wexford and then to the pictures and were now on the way home, he asked her when she planned to go back to Brooklyn. She had received a letter from the shipping company suggesting that she contact them by telephone when she wished to arrange her return passage, but she had not been in touch with them.

"I still have to phone the shipping company, but it will probably be the week after next."

"You are going to be missed here," he said.

"It's very hard leaving my mother on her own," she replied.

He said nothing for a while until they were passing through Oylegate.

"My parents are going to move out to the country soon. My mother's people came from Glenbrien and her aunt left her a place out there and they're doing work on it at the moment."

Eilis did not say that her mother had already told her this. She did not want Jim to know that they were discussing his living arrangements.

"So I'll be on my own in the house over the pub."

She was going to ask him in jest if he could cook but realized that it might sound like a leading question.

"You must come for your tea some evening," he said. "My parents would love to meet you."

"Thank you," she said.

"We'll arrange it after the wedding."

It was decided that Jim would drive Eilis and her mother and Annette O'Brien and her younger sister Carmel to the wedding reception in Wexford after the ceremony in Enniscorthy Cathedral. That morning they were awake early in Friary Street, her mother coming into her bedroom with a cup of tea, telling her that it was a cloudy day and she was hoping now that the rain would keep off. The night before, both of them had left their clothes out carefully for the morning. Eilis's costume, which she had bought in Arnotts in Dublin, had had to be altered, as the skirt and the sleeves were too long. It was bright red and with it she was wearing a white cotton blouse with accessories she had brought from America -stockings with a tinge of red, red shoes, a red hat and a white handbag. Her mother was going to wear a grey tweed suit that she had bought in Switzers. She was sad that she had to wear plain flat shoes, as her feet hurt her now and swelled up if there was any heat or if she had to walk too far. She was going to wear a grey silk blouse that had belonged to Rose not only, she said, because she liked it but because Rose had loved it and it would be nice at Nancy's wedding to wear something that Rose had loved.

It had been arranged that if it were raining Jim would collect them and drive them to the cathedral but if it were fine he would meet them there. Eilis had written several letters to Tony and had opened one that had told her about a trip to Long Island with Maurice and Laurence to look at the site they had bought and to divide it into five plots. There were strong rumours now, he said, that services like water and electricity would soon be coming very cheaply in their direction. Eilis folded this letter and put it in the drawer with Tony's other letters and the photographs from the day at the strand in Cush, which Nancy had given her. She stood now looking at the picture of herself and Jim, how happy they seemed: he with his arms around her neck, grinning at the camera, and she leaning her head back, smiling as though she had not a care in the world. She did not know what she was going to do with these photographs.

As her mother watched the weather, Eilis knew she was hoping for rain, that it would please her more than anything for Jim Farrell to come in his car to collect her and Eilis and take them the short distance to the cathedral. It was one of those days when the neighbours, because of the wedding, would feel free to come openly to their doors to inspect Eilis and her mother in all their style and wish them a nice day out. And there would be neighbours, Eilis thought, who already were aware that she had been seeing Jim Farrell and would view him in the same way as her mother did, as a great catch, a young man in the town with his own business. Being collected by Jim Farrell, she thought, would be for her mother the highlight of everything that had happened since Eilis came home.

When the first drops of rain hit against the glass of the window, a look of undisguised satisfaction appeared on her mother's face. "We won't risk it," she said. "I'd be afraid we'd get as far as the Market Square and then it would spill. I'd worry about the red running into that white blouse of yours."

Her mother then spent the next half-hour at the front window watching in case the rain eased off or in case Jim Farrell came early. Eilis stayed in the kitchen but she made sure she had everything ready were Jim to come. Her mother came to the kitchen at one point to say that they would usher him into the parlour, but Eilis insisted that they should both be ready to leave once Jim came in his car. Eventually, she went to the window with her mother to look out.

When Jim came, he opened the driver's door and emerged briskly with an umbrella. Both Eilis and her mother moved fussily into the hall. Her mother answered the door.

"Don't worry about the time," Jim said. "I'll drop the two of you straight in front of the cathedral and then I'll park. I think we have plenty of time."

"I was going to offer you a cup of tea," her mother said.

"No time for that, though," Jim said, and smiled. He was wearing a light suit, a blue shirt with a striped blue tie and tancoloured shoes.

"You know I think this is just a shower," her mother said as she made her way out to the car. Eilis saw that Mags Lawton next door had appeared and was waving. She stood at the door waiting for Jim to come back with the umbrella but did not return Mags's wave or encourage her to make any comment. Just as she closed the door and went towards the car, Eilis saw two other doors opening and knew that, much to her mother's delight, news would spread that Eilis and her mother in all their style had been collected by Jim Farrell.

"Jim is a perfect gentleman," her mother said as they walked into the cathedral. Her mother, Eilis noticed, moved slowly, with an air of pride and dignity, not looking to her left or her right, fully aware that she was being watched and fully enjoying the spectacle that she and Eilis, soon to be joined by Jim Farrell, were making in the church.

This was nothing, however, to the spectacle of Nancy in a white veil and a long white dress walking slowly up the aisle with her father while George waited for her at the altar. As the mass began and the church had settled down, Eilis, with Jim beside her, found herself entertaining a thought that had come to her in the early mornings when she lay awake in her bed. She asked herself what she would do if Jim proposed marriage to her. The idea, most of the time, was absurd; they did not know one another well enough and so it was unlikely. Also, she thought that she should do everything possible not to encourage him to ask, since she would not be able to say anything in reply except refuse him.

She could not stop herself from wondering, however, what would happen if she were to write to Tony to say that their marriage was a mistake. How easy would it be to divorce someone? Could she possibly tell Jim what she had done such a short while earlier in Brooklyn? The only divorced people anyone in the town knew were Elizabeth Taylor and perhaps some other film stars. It might be possible to explain to Jim how she had come to be married, but he was someone who had never lived outside the town. His innocence and his politeness, both of which made him nice to be with, would actually be, she thought, limitations, especially if something as unheard of and out of the question, as far from his experience as divorce, were raised. The best thing to do, she thought, was to put the whole thing out of her mind, but it was hard now, as the ceremony went on, not to dream about herself being there at the altar and her brothers home for the wedding and her mother knowing that Eilis would be living in a nice house just a few streets from her.

When she came back from receiving communion, Eilis tried to pray and found herself actually answering the question that she was about to ask in her prayers. The answer was that there was no answer, that nothing she could do would be right. She pictured Tony and Jim opposite each other, or meeting each other, each of them smiling, warm, friendly, easygoing, Jim less eager than Tony, less funny, less curious, but more self-contained and more sure of his own place in the world. And she thought of her mother now beside her in the church, the devastation and shock of Rose's death having been softened somewhat by Eilis's return. And she saw all three of them-Tony, Jim, her mother-as figures whom she could only damage, as innocent people surrounded by light and clarity, and circling around them was herself, dark, uncertain.

She would have done anything then, as Nancy and George walked down the aisle together, to join the side of sweetness, certainty and innocence, knowing she could begin her life without feeling that she had done something foolish and hurtful. No matter what she decided, she thought, there would not be a way to avoid the consequences of what she had done, or what she might do now. It occurred to her, as she walked down the aisle with Jim and her mother and joined the well-wishers outside the church, where the weather had brightened, that she was sure that she did not love Tony now. He seemed part of a dream from which she had woken with considerable force some time before, and in this waking time his presence, once so solid, lacked any substance or form; it was merely a shadow at the edge of every moment of the day and night.