At better moments, I fantasized aloud about taking a holiday, and Carol began to ask questions about the place where I’d grown up. I told her that we couldn’t afford transatlantic flights, but in truth my reluctance came from someplace deeper. In three years, I’d been back to Dublin only for two Christmases, and each time I’d found the city a little more unfamiliar, as though upon landing I’d been jolted from a long and restless sleep. My friends had found new partners and routines or moved away altogether, and my mother was becoming ever more the wife of a man who was not my father. I could tell, though, that the idea of the trip had become important to Carol, and I wanted to try and show her that she was important to me.
After my exams, I coaxed a travel grant from the department, promising to spend a couple of days reading manuscripts in the National Library, and Carol put in a request at work for some vacation time. We packed and took the train to JFK and flew for the first time together, Carol jittery with nerves despite an Ambien. We landed at dawn, blearily caught a cab, sailed along the motorway. On the front step of what I still thought of as Eamonn’s house, Carol gripped my hand as a shadow moved behind frosted glass.
My mother answered the door and stood for a moment to look at us. She had cut her hair into a prim old-lady style, had given up squinting and pretending and had bought glasses. She told me I looked thin, told Carol she looked exotic. In the living room, we sat to watch the morning news with Eamonn, who peered at the TV along the full length of his nose as though he were above these events but monitoring them nevertheless. When my mother entered with a clattering tray of tea, he leaped to his feet to take it from her and set it down on the coffee table. He brought her a cushion, her slippers.
‘There you are now, missus,’ he said.
My mother rolled her eyes. ‘He’s a fusser.’
Once Carol and I had unpacked, we took a trip to Marlay Park, and I tried to remain calm as I watched the hitherto separate parts of my life collide. Eamonn and I drifted ahead through the topiaried grounds and the walled garden, chatting without saying much of anything. Every now and then, I’d glance behind at my mother in faded tracksuit bottoms and mud-caked walking boots, Carol in bright leggings and white sneakers she was happy to ruin on the trails.
‘Your mother’s very nice,’ she said that night as we lay together in the guest room.
I stared at the mottled ceiling, smells of strange detergent rising from thin sheets. I reached my arm around Carol’s waist; she rolled towards me.
The following day, we went to help my mother in her allotment. Carol weeded around carrots while I raked and turned the soil and Eamonn lashed new creepers to the trellis on the dividing wall. My mother hovered between us, standing at our shoulders, pointing at our work and making vague but firm suggestions. After we had returned home and showered, Eamonn went to watch a match in the pub and Carol and I went with my mother to an Italian place by the Dodder. We ordered salads and pizzas and a bottle of wine as though we had something to celebrate. I tried to pay, but my mother insisted. We walked back to the house together, my thighs and back aching from the day’s labour. At the foot of the stairs, my mother said goodnight and hugged me far too tightly, her fingers strong on my shoulder blades as though they sought to burrow there.
I was glad to spend the next two mornings and afternoons in the quiet of the National Library. I found a few small things of interest and beefed them up in my notes to keep the department happy. The first day, Carol hung around the house but kept me updated via Gchat on how my mother insisted they bake together, then drink tea and talk for two hours about the weather in New York. The second day, she went sightseeing, and in the evening I suggested a drink at a pub in Smithfield that had been my local as an undergraduate. We took the scenic route along Dame Street, past the Castle and Christ Church, Carol half-listening as I recited history I only half-remembered. We crossed the Liffey at a point too far to the west and got lost in a labyrinth of grey- and red-brick houses. It was quiet. Our steps echoed.
‘It’d be nice,’ I said, ‘to live here some day, wouldn’t it?’
Carol looked up at me, frowning. I smiled and kissed her forehead. We came to a junction and stopped a moment to get our bearings. I looked left and right, then chose what seemed the best direction.
‘You know,’ Carol said, ‘I wouldn’t want to move.’
‘No,’ I said, scanning the street for a landmark. ‘I meant if we ever did. If we ever — you know. Some day.’
The light at last was failing. Carol crossed her arms and rubbed her hands along her elbows. Behind her was a blank wall discoloured from old rain. We cut down an alley lined with shabby flats, depots and yards with broken signs and rusted gates.
‘I feel like you’re not listening to what I’m saying,’ Carol said. ‘What I’m saying is you can’t have some day. You have to make decisions.’
We found the square and walked the cobbled way beneath gas lamps and the distillery’s chimney. Above us, two small red balloons were hurrying towards the Liffey. I watched them hold together, sliding against the dusk, and felt it within my power to reassure Carol — or to deny her.
The pub was just as I remembered it. Its taps ran with flat Australian beer and its rooms were packed and sweltering. Carol and I fell into a rash discussion about the way things were and the way things ought to be. Neither of us, it was clear, had a point or a position — just a gnawing sense of unhappiness, of dwindled expectation, which, as I spoke, I realized I’d felt for quite some time, and which, as Carol spoke, I felt begin to deepen. We left our second drinks unfinished and set off again for a taxi. I walked as fast as I could manage, Carol struggling to keep up.
The driver didn’t know the way. I sat in the middle of the back seat and leaned forward to direct him through the wreckage of a Saturday night and out through the suburbs. We made the M50, went too far and circled back, criss-crossed roads that meant nothing to me and in the end found the estate by chance. Carol stood in the street as I paid the driver, blank windows staring down at her. She looked very small and very strong, and far away from me. In our room, she took her clothes from the dresser wordlessly and packed her suitcase. When she had finished, she plopped down heavily on the edge of the bed.
‘This trip,’ she said, ‘was a mistake.’
I said nothing. I went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth with a trembling hand and stopped for a moment on the way back to listen at my mother and Eamonn’s door. I realized that I wanted them to hear us. The door was open a crack but I couldn’t see their shapes. Eamonn snored like an engine. Back in our room, I found Carol under the covers. I climbed in beside her. She knifed away and pulled the duvet with her. The draught from the window was cold on my skin. I fell asleep and woke sometime later to the sound of Carol crying, her shoulder heaving against mine.
In the morning, we kissed my mother and shook Eamonn by the hand, thanked them both for having us and promised to visit again soon. In the driveway, Carol’s face was pale, my mother’s was knowing. I loaded our cases into the boot of the taxi and looked back towards the house as we rounded the corner, fully expecting to find my mother and Eamonn standing on the step to see us on our way, my mother chewing her nails in worry, Eamonn’s heavy arm slung across her shoulder — but the door was shut.
As we rode in silence to the airport, I willed myself to make some gesture, to do something — anything — that might be the size of love. I kept willing myself as we divided for immigration, as we reconvened to wait at the gate, as we boarded and took our seats. After take-off, Carol passed out, her head against the window. Even in sleep her forehead was creased, her eyes not merely closed but clenched.