Devil's Shore (3 page)

Chapter 3

Two years later

“I told you. I’m not leaving this house!”

A mug flew off the table, missing Declan’s head by only inches. Its handle lodged in the plaster wall.

“Dammit, Orla. Not again.”

“You know I can’t control it.”

Dec pried the mug from the wall. “Well, there are enough holes I’ll have to patch before we let this place out.”

“I’m not letting strangers live in my house and I’m not moving to America!”

Declan put his arms around me but I was still so angry, the glasses in the cupboard rattled. “Calm down, love, calm down.”

I swear, whenever he told me to calm down lately, it had the opposite effect. The sugar bowl slid off the table, crashing to the floor.

Declan took me by the shoulders and shook me, hard. “Snap out of it, Orla. Stop it!”

As I stared into his pale blue eyes my heart rate slowed. The glasses in the cupboard ceased rattling.

“Orla, can we not have a normal conversation anymore without you smashing half the dishes?”

Soon after my mother’s funeral, my “gifts” emerged. Flying cutlery, breaking glass. Initially they freaked both of us out. Now we saw them as an annoyance as much as anything else.

I stepped away from him. “You know better than to get me so upset.”

“We have to go. I’ve passed up two promotions already. If I pass up this one, I’m through.”

“Why can’t you find a job in Dublin?”

“Because it’s an international company and the headquarters are in New York. All the big bosses have spent time in New York.”

“I don’t want to go,” I said, sounding as petulant as a teenager.

He smiled, pulled me to him and kissed me on the lips. “I know. But it will be two years, max. And then we can come home.”

“Two years?”

“Come on, Orla. We’ll come home for holidays, if you like.”

He looked up at me, his face pale and earnest. He’d been so good to me since the day we met. And especially since my mother died. Declan’s never asked a thing of me. Why was I such a bitch? Why could I not give in, just this once? I’m a housewife. I could take care of the boys and clean the house wherever I went.

“I’m afraid,” I whispered. “I’m afraid to leave.”

“Why, love?”

“I don’t know. I swear, Dec, I don’t know. I just know that if we leave, something bad will happen. Something terrible.”

A shadow crossed his face. “Is it because of Bobby?” My brother Bobby, who Dec loved like his own brother, had worked as an investment banker in the World Trade Center and died on 9-11.

“No. It has nothing to do with Bobby. I don’t know. It’s a feeling I have.”

“Questronics isn’t even located in Manhattan. It’s on Long Island. Near the beach. It’s perfectly safe there. I promise, love.”

“I don’t know.”

“A change will do you good. It will do all of us good. You’ll see.”

I looked into his kind broad face and noticed that these past two years had taken a toll on him. There were wrinkles around his eyes that hadn’t been there before and he looked tired, older than his thirty-eight years. Living with the Devlin witch couldn’t have been easy. I owed him. I owed him his chance.

I stroked his thinning ginger hair. “Fine, Dec. We’ll go. But only for two years.”

He smiled then, like a child on Christmas. “Only two years, I promise. You won’t be sorry. It’ll be fun. An adventure for the boys.”

“Sure,” I said, forcing a smile.

An adventure. That was the last thing I wanted.

* * * *

“I’m asking you for the last time. Please move your seat up.”

The bitch Yank wife of the Irish fella sitting in front of us had pushed her seat all the way back for the last hour, and the floral scent of her hair spray was almost choking the life out of me.

“And I told you, I have a bad back,” she said. “I’m entitled to put my seat back.”

“You’ll have more than a bad back by the time I’m done with ye,” I muttered.

Dec placed his hand on my arm. “Do you want to switch seats with me?”

If the seat with Her Highness pushing her seat back was tight for me, it would crush poor Dec and his long legs. “No, love,” I said. “I’m fine.”

He shot me a wary look. “Be good.”

I forced a smile. “Aren’t I always?”

I was near suffocating for the next hour but I held my tongue. The air wenches served us the usual slop. Chicken or beef? Why not be honest and say “inedible” and “more inedible”? But I choked the beef concoction down, as did my three lads. They’d eat anything that didn’t moo back. Dec, the only fussy eater in the house, ate an apple he’d packed himself.

Once the spray-tan orange air hostess took my tray, I slammed the tray table back into the bitch in front of me.

“Ow! My back.” She turned to me and snarled, “Why did you slam the seat so hard?”

“Sorry, but I’m entitled to put my tray back up.”

“Orla,” Declan said.

“I didn’t do anything to her. Honest.”

Declan chose to believe me and said nothing more. And I smiled with satisfaction as that bitch hobbled to the bathroom. She’d be hobbling for quite some time.

There are some advantages to being the Devlin witch.

* * * *

Three weeks in and the sun hadn’t stopped shining. “Not like home, is it?” Declan must have announced at least one hundred times a day. If he said it one more time I would drown him in the Great South Bay.

My sons took to Long Island beach living like ducks to water. Dec fitted them with new American-style swimming trunks and boogie boards, which I managed to trip over every time I walked into the garage. Drizzly Dublin was a distant memory for the Cahill boys.

But not for me.

Still, I wasn’t about to rain on Dec’s parade, so I tried to put a good face on it and I didn’t complain too loudly when the lads tracked sand onto my clean kitchen floor. I packed sandwiches, drinks, sand toys, umbrellas, sun cream and tried to be a good sport when Dec dragged us, again, to the local beach.

Jesus, I never thought I’d say it, but the winter couldn’t come fast enough for me. Surely then the blasted sun would stop shining.

I had to admit it, though, Dec found the perfect spot for us. I’d resigned myself to living in a faceless suburb in some enormous box of a house, like we’d seen in the cinemas. But Sayville was a historic town, old at least by American standards. The house he found for us was a vintage Victorian on a tree lined street. Restored to perfection, it was all anyone could wish for.

So then why, after three weeks, could I still not settle? Why did I miss our cramped three-bedroom semi-detached in Rathfarnham?

I didn’t know. But I knew enough that I was being unreasonable, so I smiled and for the most part, didn’t complain. Not too much, anyway.

Summer finally ended and we enrolled the boys in the admittedly good local school. Dec settled into his new role as head engineer for the software company. Everyone was happy.

But besides shepherding the lads back and forth to school, I hadn’t much to do. The estate agent had suggested a cleaner. Dec insisted we hire her, so I didn’t even have cleaning to keep me occupied. There was no neighborly chat over the garden gate in posh Sayville. No weekend ladies rugby team to join. Nothing but the goddamn unending sun.

Since my mother died, I’d lost close to thirty pounds, not as a result of diet or extra exercise. I’d always been into sports–not that most people could tell, given the stubborn extra pounds that had plagued me up until two years ago. But after my mother died, my appearance gradually changed. Neither Dec nor I noticed the changes until one day when I was shopping for new jeans, I looked in the mirror and instead of my usual fat spotty face staring back at me was a beauty with clear fair skin, high cheekbones and blue, almost aquamarine eyes. My hair, my lank dishwater blond hair, shone like gold and framed my new heart-shaped face in soft curls. I was startled by my new appearance in the dressing room, but not shocked. I had changed in more substantial, and frankly frightening, ways since my mother’s death, so a complete physical transformation didn’t shock me as much as it should have.

And now, in my enormous American master suite, staring at my impossibly small, pert bottom encased in Lycra running shorts, I could barely remember the shapeless tracksuits that had been my uniform in Dublin. I pulled the long blond hair I now took for granted into a tight ponytail and popped the plastic white buds of my smartphone into my ears. I had hours to kill before school let out, so I figured I might as well enjoy all the wonderful American sunshine Declan insisted on admiring every fucking morning.

Besides, since my Devlin “gifts” had appeared, exercise was the only thing that quietened the buzzing in my head and the tingling in my extremities, almost as if my body were an overcharged battery that needed to be drained by exercise. Without my daily run, my powers were even more uncontrollable. As it was, in the past three weeks Declan replaced two windows and about ten burst lightbulbs.

Late September and the air was still hot, still balmy, tinged with salt from the nearby shore. My oldest, Brendan, informed me this morning we were in the midst of an Indian summer, whatever the hell that was. Brendan, like his father, now reveled in all things American. Indian summer. Well, whatever it was, the endless humidity made me yearn for a cold Irish mist.

But I mustn’t be negative. This morning I’d endured yet another lecture from Declan about how my bad attitude would affect the boys. Sayville was a wonderful place, a paradise really, Declan said. And besides, we were stuck here for another two years so I might as well “suck it up,” yet another Americanism Declan picked up at the office. What he left unsaid was that after the last two years, I owed him.

So with classic rock blasting in my ears, I ran through the quiet streets of Sayville, my new shapely legs tearing past the luxury sedans and manicured lawns, racing past my elegant exile.

An hour later, my legs like jelly, I walked into the Sayville Coffee Shop on Main Street and ordered an iced frappachino. I do have to give it to the Yanks, they make nice coffee. As I waited for my coffee, I noticed a flyer by the cash register.
Sayville Yoga Center
, it said.

I picked it up and read the class schedule. Yoga classes. Probably full of manicured mammies killing time while the cleaning ladies did all the housework. God, what a nightmare. Was this really my life?

I was putting the flyer back, when a woman behind me said, “You should check it out. The first class is free.”

“Ah, no. Not for me.”

The woman, a tall willowy blonde, mid-thirties I’d say, smiled, a Madonna-like beatific smile. She touched my arm, and a slight buzz of electricity emanated from her hand. “I think it would be good for you. It’s very calming, comforting. My next class is in a half hour. Please join me, the studio is only down the street.”

I deliberately avoided the toxic mammies at the playground. Their harsh Long Island voices set my teeth on edge. And I had to hear from at least half of them about their great-great-grandmothers from Mayo or some other Godforsaken culchie place. So they have a drop of Irish blood flowing through their American veins. What did they want from me, a medal? They made me feel like an alien, a freak, and I avoided them as much as I could.

But this woman was calm. Soothing. Her voice soft, melodious even. Before I knew it, I heard myself saying, “All right. Why not?”

She rewarded me with another smile. “Great. I have a feeling you’ll love it.”

The yoga studio was on the first floor of a large clapboard house painted a robin’s egg blue. Wooden steps adorned with pots of black and yellow pansies led to a small covered porch with two white deck chairs covered with soft pillows.

The woman, Claire, unlocked and opened the door. A wall of cool air greeted us. Claire kicked off her shoes. I struggled to take off my sweaty trainers but Claire didn’t seem to notice as she glided around the studio, lighting candles, arranging pillows. She went into a back room and soon soft chanting music wafted from it.

The studio, lit only by the candles and the diffuse sunlight that made it through the studio’s colored stained glass windows, felt like a chapel. Claire took my coffee cup from me and handed me a purple rubber mat. Her voice low, as if she were in a church, she said, “The others will be here in a few minutes. We usually start with meditation. Why don’t you sit on the mat and reflect on what you hope to achieve in the class?”

I must have looked confused, so Claire smiled. “Sit quietly, Orla, and we’ll start from there.”

I sat on the purple mat and imitated Claire’s lotus pose. My now lithe body sank into the pose with ease. I thought ruefully of how I’d struggled to sit on the floor when I took Brendan to his first baby tumbling class. My former thick body and its awkward movements seemed like a lifetime ago.

Thoughts and images, like mosquitoes, skittered around my head: my kitchen in Rathfarnham, my brother Bobby’s face, my mother’s long red cape. I closed my eyes and forced my face to assume a mask of serenity. For some reason, it was important for me not to fail Claire. A few moments later, Claire came up behind me and placed her hands on my shoulders. They tingled with that same strange electric current and my shoulders, which were in their usual place up near my ears, relaxed, the muscles now liquid, like melted butter.