“To London?”
“I can clear things up before we go to America. We’ll start a new life in America.”
A dart hit my inflated ego. Foreign man looking for a lonely American woman, his ticket to the New World. For a nanosecond, questions flew through my head, his background, his life abroad, his Swedish ex-wife, his apartment in Germany, the house in London, the IRA brother in a rebel’s grave. Just as quickly, I dismissed such questions. In the silence of the landscape we returned to his little car, then to Dublin.
Bridget did not come to our small wedding. Through the whispered arguments in her makeshift lobby, I learned that I wasn’t to get their mother’s wedding ring or their parents’ marriage bed that night, or any of the essentials a family would bestow on a new bride. I didn’t contact what was left of my own family. My mother had a new husband, and she had long ago tired of my antics, my frivolous lifestyle. In truth, I never once thought I was being impulsive. How easily we discard all sense when love is involved. We’re left with decision-making that is limp, unsupportable, without anchors. No wonder such massive, earthquake-size mistakes are made. No wonder people die.
I relied on Joe to diddle with Catholic rules and regulations and put together a wedding in one afternoon. Both of us were sure of our plan. I felt lightheaded as I vowed to a life with him. He looked smug and sure in his words. As the priest, Tommy Casey, Joe’s old schoolmate, spoke the words, and as I repeated them, Joe put his arm around me and held me tightly. If he hadn’t, I would have fallen.
The next night, a storm arose on the Irish Sea. We went to the dock to board the ferry for Holyhead, then on to London, only to find that gale warnings were in effect. They canceled the crossing. A small crowd of passengers, Joe included, put up a fight. They argued with the dock man, the ticket man, and finally, the captain. The others chose Joe as spokesman. Eventually he convinced the captain and crew to make the crossing and get us all to England.
I saw the danger of the rising storm. I was too familiar with the pounding waves, the rain and cold, the growing winds, the shattered, empty boats returning to shore. I felt the fear my brother must have felt that night he drowned in such a storm. I pulled Joe aside and begged him to return to Dublin.
“You’re a coastal girl, Colleen. This will be nothing.”
“My father and brother were killed in a storm like this. I don’t want to go.”
He pushed my hand from his sleeve. “I can’t think about that now. I have to get back.”
Out on the sea, the waters became even rougher. The passengers retired to the belly of the ferry. I sat with them, my tapestry suitcase at my feet, waiting for Joe, who had not come down with the rest of us.
The ferry bounced and banged against the raging sea for another hour when I finally left my bench to find him. The black sky met me at the door, that ethereal darkness I so hated. The ratty boat, in a sickly pitch, flew into vertical upheaval, crashed down to the white foam of the beating waves and banged hard against the dark sea. It rose again, rested a second in midair, then plunged hard against the waves. I grabbed the handrails and pulled myself forward. I staggered out the door, stood for a moment while the boat rose to the sky, then crashed down. I took that opportunity to get on deck.
Joe was under the awning, his back to me, one arm around a pole. He was wearing a slicker, and for a second, I wondered where he had gotten it, but I discarded the question as immediately as it entered my mind. He smoked a cigarette and leaned to and fro with the rhythm of the boat. A man stood next to him, grasping the railing. He, too, swayed. I yelled to Joe, but the crashing and clambering of the raging sea swallowed my words. I shouted again, to curse that dark being that had taken my brother and father, to apologize for the thoughtless way I had used them to get Joe, to beg them to keep this flimsy junk of a ferry in one piece. Joe didn’t hear me. He continued to shake his head and wave his cigarette at the man. They seemed to be arguing. The man finally noticed me. He alerted Joe, who turned, looked surprised, and motioned the man off. The man lurched away into the rain and darkness.
“Get downstairs,” Joe shouted as he staggered toward me.
“Who was that?”
“Nobody. Just a passenger.”
“But I didn’t see him when we all boarded.”
“What does it matter?”
At that moment, it seemed odd to hear him ask such a question in the middle of a deadly storm on the Irish Sea. The question antagonized me.
“Where did you get the slicker?” I clutched the railing behind me with both hands. Joe removed my hands, turned me around, and steered me down the stairs.
“Go. Passengers are supposed to be below.”
“But you’re a passenger.”
“Colleen, get down there.” At the third step, I lost my footing and caused him to fall. “Shite, Colleen. Don’t bring us both down.” He got up, shook his head, grabbed the hand railing, stepped past me, and found his own way to an empty bench. I struggled, found the railing, and, by small steps and sways, staggered to his side. He scooted over an inch or two as though disgusted by my inability to handle the boat’s pitching and twisting. Unlike the rest of the passengers, either ghostly white or sickly green, moaning and vomiting without embarrassment, Joe sat still, his arms spread across the back of the wooden bench as though he were sitting in a city park.
“I thought you were born on the American coastline.”
“It’s been awhile.”
My upper lip perspired and my mouth felt dry. My attempt at humor, just like my shouting on deck, simply flew through the dank air and found its way out the door and into the storm. Joe stared ahead. I looked in the same direction but only saw a dirty fire hose wound several times on a rusty hook. The sick odor of vomit permeated the stuffy passenger area. I spied the women’s room and stumbled to it. Inside, the toilet water spilled and splattered with every movement of the ferry. I held myself over a sink and vomited.
“Feel better?” he asked when I returned.
“No.”
He looked away.
After two more hours of beating against the sea, of vomiting and nausea all around me, of silent abuse from Joe, he looked at his watch, stood, and rubbed his face. “Come on. We’re docking in a minute. I’m not feeling so well.”
“No one feels well, Joe. In hell, no one feels well.”
“You have no idea of hell.”
He led me upstairs as the boat limped into dock. Dragging my tapestry suitcase, battering it left and right up the stairs, I stopped at the top to catch my breath. Joe stood impatiently, his leather bag slung over his shoulder. He turned and started down the gangway. The sky was jet-black, the rain fell heavily, and my wool coat smelled like dirty, wet sheep. I used both hands to lug my suitcase down the gangway and onto the dock.
On stable ground, it took me a moment or two to find my equilibrium. I dizzily kept pace with Joe. He had not spoken to me since we docked, and now moved impatiently through the small crowd of dock and ferry workers and the few passengers still walking. I followed him out of the waiting shelter. My hair was dripping wet, and I desperately needed a bathroom. When I said so, Joe stopped, motioned to the ladies’ room, and remained in place.
Inside, I went to the mirror. “New husband,” I said aloud. What a laugh. Words can be miles from reality, from correct labels and titles. Joe was a stranger to me. His carefree demeanor, his smiles, his joking manner had all disappeared in the black slicker and rough ferry ride. I looked like hell.