He grinned. “Ah, yeah. I’ve to stop the war with my important papers, like.”
“Well then, I won’t keep you. Go save the world.”
He leaned forward. “I can reveal that it’s actually a petition related to Temple Bar rubbish removal, but if it makes me seem more exciting, I’ll go with top-secret papers.”
“Good choice.” I smiled back at him. “Good luck.” He started to go, but I blurted out, “I … I’m sorry about … when I came into the café. I was tired and I thought Erin had just gone somewhere … It isn’t the first time I’ve had to go looking for her like this and I kind of took it out on you.”
“No worries,” he said. We stared at each other. “Well then, stop by sometime.” I nodded. “See ya.” I didn’t turn to watch him go, even though I wanted to.
I found a phone booth and called my dad at his office. He sounded tired and sad and when I told him about the bed-and-breakfast, he said, “Oh, sweetheart. I should have gone. What a mess for you to deal with.” I told him I was fine and to take care of himself and when I hung up I leaned my face against the cold metal of the phone as the scent of his shaving cream rose in my sinuses and I missed him so much for a moment, it actually hurt. Then I wandered Dublin some more in a cold, gray mist that hovered just above the rooftops, taking the wide O’Connell Bridge across the Liffey. This was ground zero of the Easter Rebellion, I remembered from my Irish history seminar, where a small group of men and a few women holed up and tried to direct an assault on the British in the streets of Dublin. It didn’t work, but the execution of sixteen Irishmen turned once ambivalent Dubliners against the British.
A terrible beauty was born.
But it was that song about being too sexy for your shirt that was blaring out of a shop on O’Connell Street, and Yeats faded away as I walked the streets north of the river. They seemed smaller, tighter, leading to an outdoor market not far from the bridge, and I wandered for a bit, listening to old ladies shouting over their produce, browsing the vegetable sellers and used book stalls. I walked under a big clock hanging out over the sidewalk in front of a department store, then crossed the street and strolled past the gray columns of the General Post Office.
The day had run away from me. It was nearly dinnertime now.
A little fish-and-chips shop on O’Connell Street beckoned and I got mine to go, taking the greasy newspaper down to the quays. The fish was crispy and hot, the chips tender and with just the right amount of bite. The sky was full of gulls. They called across the river, flew back and forth from north to south. I was halfway through my dinner and full when a thin, wobbling old man stopped to look at the river.
“It’s lovely this evening, isn’t it?” he slurred.
“It really is.” The sky was pale blue, washed with blurry gray clouds. A hint of pink crept in, crisping the edges of the clouds. A gull landed on the quay, looking up expectantly at me.
“Cheeky little bugger,” the old man said. “He’d like your chips, so he would.”
“Well, he can’t have them.”
“You tell him,” the man said, stumbling. I looked at him again. His clothes were shabbier than I saw at first, his shirt yellowed and frayed. He was drunk, but only for maintenance. His eyes were yellow, too, his nose red with broken capillaries. We watched the sky for a few moments.
“You ’merican?” he asked. “Or Canadian?”
“American.”
“I lived in New York for fifteen years. Worked as a crane operator. It was grand, New York, but it never felt like home. Never home.” He was off somewhere in his head, thinking about New York and home. I could see that he had been handsome once.
“I’m all done,” I told him. “There’s a piece of fish I haven’t touched and a lot of chips left. They’ll go to waste otherwise. Or to the gulls. Sit down.”
“Ah, now, I think I just might take you up on that.” He sat down next to me on the bench and took the bag from me. When he bit into the fish, he sighed with pleasure. “That’s lovely, so it is.”
“I know.”
He smiled at me. “Life’s little pleasures, isn’t that right.”
I left him to the pleasure of the fish and chips.
Erin in her red bathing suit, her arms and legs tan, her nose burnt and peeling, her little body rushing into the waves. Her hair is hard at the ends where it touched her Popsicle. Her hands and arms are covered with a fine layer of sand that glitters in the sun. A summer Sunday at Jones Beach. The constant crashing of the waves. People shouting across the beach. Suntan lotion runs in my eyes and I cry. Erin and I play on the sand where the waves are breaking, digging holes, building walls. First the holes fill in and then the walls get swept away. Erin has her back to the ocean and when a wave creeps up and washes over her, she screeches and jumps up, running away into the sea of people on the beach. I look up. She was there and now she’s gone. I squint into the sun. Everyone looks the same on the beach. Their faces stare at me. I get up and walk straight back, find my mom, who’s lying on her towel and reading a magazine.
“Where’s Erin?” she asks me. I point to where she was. My mom jumps up, runs to the sand, looks up and down the beach. Her bikini slips away from her skin. I can see a white line over her breasts. “Erin!” she shouts. “Erin, honey!”
Another mom hears her and comes to help us look. The two moms ask people if they’ve seen a little girl in a red bathing suit. People get up, help us look. Someone says we should find a policeman.
My mom’s eyes are scared and wide. She ignores me when I try to take her hand.
And then someone’s shouting. My mom is running toward the sound. I follow and I see her kneeling, holding Erin. Erin’s crying. A man is gesturing with his hands to my mom. I wait there, watching them. My mom brushes Erin’s hair out of her eyes, holds her against her body.
A seagull calls overhead. The sun seems to drop as we walk to the car. Little pools of water appear in the parking lot, between the shiny cars, then disappear as we get close. The asphalt burns my feet. My mom gets us strapped into the back and Erin reaches over and takes my hand, clinging tightly to it as we pull out and head for the North Shore and home, as though the waves that threatened to carry us away on the beach are coming for her now, even though we’ve left the beach behind.
15
SUNDAY, MAY 29,
2016
Niamh Horrigan’s parents have great faith in the Garda Síochána.
That’s what they say on the news when the anchorwoman asks them if they believe the Gardaí are doing everything they can.
I’ve barely slept, waiting for Roly to call, and now I’m out of bed, showered, room-service oatmeal and coffee half-finished on a tray at the end of the bed. It’s 7:10 a.m. and he still hasn’t called, and my mind is going a thousand miles an hour trying to imagine what that means. Maybe there was a mistake and it is Erin up there. Maybe Roly doesn’t know how to tell me. Maybe it’s like he said, it wasn’t Erin, but in the meantime, they’ve found her, buried nearby.
“We just want her home,” Niamh’s father says, looking into the camera in a way that I know means someone has coached him. He’s a tall, good-looking older man, with graying hair and a beige outfit that was probably a recommendation of the coach, too. If the guy who has Niamh is watching, they don’t want the dad to push any buttons for him. He needs to be neutral, loving, concerned, but not angry or challenging or possessive. The mom is pretty, blond, subdued, but I don’t like the royal blue blazer they chose for her. It’s too masculine, too businesslike, the color too strong. Her voice rises as she says, “Please contact the Gardaí if you know anything that could help bring our daughter home.” I feel like swearing. They should have had her say “Niamh” to humanize the victim. I give them a five out of ten.