“There’s a grant,” he says. “Irish Culinary Advancement. The one you used to mock because the logo looks like a tourist tattoo.”
I snort before I can stop myself. “The shamrock that thinks it’s a triskelion. Yes. I know it.”
“It’s not entirely ridiculous,” he says, with the defensive tone of a man who has already tangled with his mother about something and does not have energy left to be graceful. “It’ll put your restaurant on a global ladder. Plus get you access to a world that’s yours for the taking.”
I put the butter down, smoothly, because if I don’t I will dent it with my opinion. “Good to know.”
His mouth tilts. “I put your name in,” he says. He waits for the explosion.
I don’t explode. The fuse burns, I hear it, the small angry sizzle, but the flame doesn’t meet anything that will catch. I lean on the island and examine his face instead, the little stubborn line between his eyebrows, the way his eyes brace for impact and his shoulders don’t move because he refuses to flinch in front of a woman. “You submitted me to a competition,” I say. “You did not ask.”
“I am asking now,” he says, quiet. “Let me stand behind you once in my life without making a mess of it.”
“It is not help,” I say automatically, and he shakes his head.
“It isn’t,” he agrees. “You don’t need help. I know that. This is me making sure the door opens when you kick it. If you say no, I will withdraw the application and the only thing you’ll hear from me about it again is that I’m an idiot.”
I open my mouth to deliver a sermon about autonomy and men and paperwork and the way women with skill are forever being volunteered for things they then have to buy their way out of, but I look at him and the speech dies. The plea is not for glory. It is for permission to be useful in a way that does not end with someone bleeding. He is not playing legacy chess. He is trying to build me a table.
“Fine,” I say, but the word carries more complicity than I intend. “If it is real. If they accept me on merit. If I can leave atany time. If none of your men ever speak to any of the judges or their cousins.”
He lifts one hand. “On my name.”
“Don’t swear on things,” I say out of reflex. “Just don’t lie.”
“I won’t,” he says, and something in his face—relief, maybe even happiness—makes me want to lean across the island and take his mouth like it’s pastry cream. I don’t. I crack eggs instead and pretend the sound means nothing.
I forget about it. I do not forget about it. It becomes one of those wagers the mind plays with itself in idle minutes, the way a driver hums a song at a stoplight when he knows he should be listening for sirens. The days run, the nights reset them, and in that small, precarious peace I choose to believe in the possibility of something like a future.
A week from there I come to my bedroom to find a white envelope on my pillow. My name is written on it in that anonymous, careful script that institutions use when they are trying to be kind and official at once. My fingers are steady as I pick it up, but something inside me isn’t. I sit on the edge of the bed and slide a thumb under the flap.
Ms. Aoife Kelly,it begins, and though my pulse has already climbed out of sense, the words go on in that bland, merciful way.We are pleased to inform you that you have been selected to compete in the Irish Culinary Advancement series…Cities, dates, expectations, the insistence that I bring my palate and my philosophy and leave my excuses at home. There is a line about travel accommodations that makes me laugh because they have clearly never met a working mother. There is a small shamrock, not a triskelion after all, in the corner of the letterhead.
I hold it a long time. Long enough for the room to cool and the sound of the house to change, long enough for my eyes to go dry and then wet and then dry again. I think about my mother’shands. I think about every burn on my wrists. I think about the way flour blooms when you throw water at it and tell it to become something. I think about men who make choices for you and men who make space.
Declan does not come to the doorway, though I know he knows. He will wait because he has learned that he cannot make the answer sweeter by coming to collect it. He has learned, finally, to stand behind me and not beside me when the light is meant to be mine.
When I speak, I do not raise my voice. I do not rehearse or seek witnesses. I say the word to the room the way you say grace when you have a lot to be thankful for and no time to be eloquent.
“Yes,” I whisper, and the vowel feels like a door opening.
18
DECLAN
Afew days after Aoife received the letter to the competition, I’m in the breakfast kitchen before the house wakes, sleeves rolled, a pan hissing on low flame with oats and milk and the smallest pinch of salt. The room feels different these mornings—quieter but fuller—because their things are here now—Liam’s red wool cap on a radiator, a drawing of a dragon taped crooked to the wine fridge, Aoife’s knife roll against the far wall where she swore she’d never leave it but somehow did. The light is winter-thin and pewter. It paints the marble a cold blue that makes steam look like breath.
I stir clockwise the way my grandmother taught me, because superstition is often just memory served hot. On the island a row of little bowls waits—brown sugar, crushed almonds, a dollop of cream I whisked until it stood up for itself. It’s an ordinary scene and that is why it feels like a miracle. The house has not known ordinary in a very long time.
Footsteps. Smaller ones first. Liam pads in with bed-warm hair and a solemn expression, the heavy dignity children wear in the first five minutes of the day.
“Morning,a laoich,” I say, and tap the wooden spoon to his palm so he can smell. “Tell me what’s missing.”
He leans, sniffs with theatrical care, and lifts one finger. “Honey.”
“Correct.” I reach for the jar. “Boat or airplane?”
“Train,” he decides, and clambers onto the stool, knees knocking the rung.
