Fiadh shook her head no but said yes, as if she were trying to hold two opposing truths—she would leave Ireland and she would never leave Ireland. “Summer and we sail west, never to return. You and our boys will have to go on without me,” she said, her voice dripping with melodrama.
“How can you go?” Gisela couldn’t find words for the rest of her feelings, that Fiadh was both the open door to adventure and the closed gate that made Gisela feel safe. She was the sea and the harbor. Would she and Elisabeth have a home here without Fiadh? It seemed impossible. And to America, of all places.
Hannie appeared in the doorway, wiping her hands on the thick linen smock she wore for housework. “Slow yourself. What’s all this?”
“She’s right behind me. Let herself tell you.”
As if on cue, Jean rounded the corner of the house, out of breath. “Figured you’d run here with the news.”
“So, it’s true?” Hannie asked. She touched Jean’s arm. “You’ve received word.”
“You knew?” Fiadh shouted. “Did everyone know but me? I’ll kick and scream the whole way. I will. I don’t want to go. Once we go, we’ll never come back. I know it.”
“Stop this,” Jean chided. “Of course we’ll return. Of course. Thomas went to fetch Hugh. He can tell you all more.”
Over black tea and biscuits at Hugh and Hannie’s table, Thomas, Fiadh’s father, confirmed. Their papers had come through. His oldest brother, John, who had been in the state of Maine for decades, had died in an accident, crushed by a curbstone that had fallen on his chest. “I wish I’d have gone to see him somehow, had seen his life. But there’s leaving work behind, the journey, the cost, then war, of course—so much more that separated us besides the Atlantic.” Along with occasional money, the brother had sent photographs and postcards of craggy coastlines, pine-spiked inlets and red-striped lighthouses, fishing boats in tranquil harbors, promises of jobs and opportunity if only Thomas would come to America. He said there was a shipyard nearby where Thomas could find work. It was a fine time to come, the brother said. Jobs and more jobs. Houses and farms. Not so much backbreaking in the toil. Opportunity. “He died without a wife or family. His debts are clear. What’s left, he’s left to me. A house, a car. Money for the passage and a cushion for when we arrive.”
They would leave at the end of August.
Gisela was surprised to see tears fill Hugh Flanagan’s eyes. “Don’t know how we’ll get by but seems your mind’s made up. I’d say this calls for a pint. How’s about we walk up the road a spell. Leave crying to the girls.” He slapped his hands on his thighs.
With the men gone to the pub, Hannie, at the stove with the kettle, sighed. “Truly, I never thought it would come about.”
“Will you go to America too?” Elisabeth asked.
Jean, standing to help clear the table, chimed in. “You and Hugh should. Your boys in Dublin never come this way.” She handed Hanniethe chipped plates. “And you won’t have these little ones forever. At some point they’ll want them back in Germany, and what then? Putter around here until heaven calls?”
Gisela’s head snapped. Back to Germany. Of course. Fresh air now, then back to ruin and prying fingers and empty bellies. Nowhere was safe.
“I sprung from this holy ground like a wych elm, and I’ll go right back into it. There’s no going anywhere for me,” Hannie said. She flicked a dish rag at the three girls. “Get yourselves air together while you can. Go.”
Fiadh took Elisabeth by the hand, dragged her out the door. Gisela held back for a moment, watched as Hannie and Jean, their fingers laced like they would play Ring-a-Ring-o’-Roses, rested their foreheads together. “Aye. Aye,” one said to the other.
The Beattys packed satchels with what little they would take, let their friends and neighbors come for the rest. Hannie protested that this was foolish, that when they inevitably hated America and returned to Ireland, no one would give them back what was theirs. Fiadh, still fervently against the plan, teased Elisabeth and Gisela that she would stuff them in a crate and pack them off to America as well. “I’ll miss you both! How can I go on without the two of you? Ack! It’s all so terrible, to be forced to leave,” she moaned. “We must do something big, something so impressive that we’ll always remember it.”
The sun set, and they gathered, the three girls along with the O’Kane boys, to walk the ferny maze of pasture paths to the stone ledge above a tidal inlet. Week after week, the girls had performed rituals for the last time. This might be the last time we take out the punt. This might be the last time we steal Jem’s bicycle. This might be the last time we pick blackberries, until it was the last time and the last day loomed. In two days, the Beattys would leave for Cobh, then on to America.
Denis spat that he wouldn’t miss Fiadh at all. “And your little Germans won’t have big, bad Fiadh to protect them anymore.”
Gisela noted the threat in his voice.
Jem knocked Denis upside the head with his open palm. “Don’t listen to him. Talking shite is all. He’ll miss you plenty, Fee.”
Denis wrinkled his face, jiggled his head until his eyes wobbled. “Yeah, I’m only giving you a hard time. Con’s the one to miss you.”
Conor shoved Denis, who was still rubbing the spot on his head where Jem had slapped him. “Real pity you never worked up courage to row the punt to Carbery,” Conor taunted. He threw a series of rocks into the soft waves, each time harder than the last, jerking his shoulder like he was trying to hit the island itself. In the distance, a kilometer offshore, Carbery Island was a picnic spot for boaters and a lolling spot for harbor seals. “Just as well, I’m thinking. Girls are too soft. Me and the boys, we’ve rowed out there dozens of times, haven’t we boys?”
Fiadh pulled a sprig of toadflax from between two rocks and tossed it at Conor’s face. “That’s it!” she said. “We’ll take a picnic to Carbery tomorrow.”
“Hannie and Jean will never let you,” Jem said.
“Who said we were asking? No one asked me if I wanted to go to America the Beautiful. No, this is the perfect idea. I could kiss you, Conor O’Kane.”
“Why don’t you then?”
Fiadh’s neck blushed like sunrise. She grabbed his cheeks between her hands. “You wish!” she said, dancing away from him, playful as a faery.
Hannie put together a picnic with apple pies and meat pies, wedges of cheese and berries. The girls played innocent as Fiadh instructed, sticking to the lie that they would hug the shoreline, knowing the real plan was to row out into the bay, have their picnic on the island.
