He pounded on the ladies’ room door. “Come on, Colleen. I need to get going.”
By the time we were in the parking lot, I had enough. “Wait, Joe.”
He turned.
“Why are you doing this?” I shouted over the rain and wind. I dropped the suitcase and kicked it toward him, each kick moved it an inch or two across the muddy parking lot. “Why are you being so awful to me?” The words sounded ridiculous, like a pathetic housewife begging for attention or a useless girlfriend who knows the relationship is over — silly, pleading, and naïve.
Joe picked up my suitcase.
“I’m not moving until you tell me why you’re doing this!”
He threw the suitcase to the ground and kicked it several times. “Doing fookin’ what?”
“This — ignoring me, being rude to me, not talking.” Thin, elementary words that represented nothing of substance or need or importance. “Are you mad you married me? Are you embarrassed for bringing me to London? Embarrassed for me to meet your friends?”
“I don’t have time for this, Colleen.” He stopped at a small white car and pulled out his keys.
“Where did you get this car? You didn’t tell me you had a car here. Why do you keep a car in Dublin and one here? Where do I fit into all this? I should know these things.”
“Are you coming, woman?”
“Woman!” I marched up to him. “Don’t you ever call me that. I’m your wife, whether you like it or not.” More asinine, foolish words that simply voiced naïve, needy emotions that would have been better left unsaid.
He picked up my suitcase, dragged it across the mud, and shoved it into the backseat. I continued to shout at him like an old fishwife — this was wrong, this was a mistake, I don’t know what I was thinking, how do we get a divorce, was it a legal marriage... on and on I went.
He slammed the car door. “I’ve got the fookin’ flu, Colleen. I want to get home.”
“You’ve got the fookin’ seasickness, Joe.”
He put his head to the top of the car. “You haven’t a clue. Get in.”
I opened and slammed the door, but I did not get in — a stupid gesture, overdramatic, adolescent behavior.
He leaned across the top. “Damn it, Colleen. I’m sicker than a fookin’ dog.”
I got in, plopped onto the seat, and folded my arms. What a pathetic sight. He needed someone strong at that moment, and I proved weak. He needed some support, and I proved selfish. He needed a woman on whom he could rely. I proved useless and needy.
We drove in silence through the wet English countryside. After an hour or so in the dark and rain, I settled down. The sights and smells around me — pine woods, moist soft grasses, the earthy fragrance of wet dirt — were comforting, like home. A warm excitement about seeing his home, my new home, my chance for a new, clean, clear life changed my bad humor. I pictured myself introducing Joe to my friends: This is Joe Donnelly, an international computer specialist. A man with a home in London, an apartment in Germany, an ex-wife in Sweden, a sister in Dublin, an IRA brother in a rebel’s grave. My self-image puffed up with every thought of him.
Eventually, Joe left the highway and drove toward the lights of a big city. He drove slowly, squinting through the windshield. A mile or so on side streets and we came to a downtown. We stopped in front of a drugstore.
“There’s a hotel around that corner. We’ll stay there for the night. I can’t drive on.”
“Aren’t we in London?”
“No, we’re a couple of hours from London.” He rubbed perspiration from his upper lip, pushed his hair from his forehead, and opened the door. “I’ve got to get to bed.”
Disappointed, estranged but too tired to fight, I opened my door, pulled up my seat and struggled to remove my suitcase. The suitcase was caught on a small metal case sitting upright on the floor. When I finally dragged the suitcase to the curb, Joe got his bag from the trunk, locked the door, and led me around the corner to the front of the hotel.
“Wait right here. I forgot something.”
Both our bags at my feet, I watched as he jogged down the street and around the corner. He disappeared for several seconds, returned quickly.
“What’s the matter?”
“Never mind.” He took my arm and steered me into the hotel.
The shabby hotel reminded me of the other side of Grays Harbor — the dankness and musty smell of seaside buildings. Joe registered us as Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Donnelly, which affirmed our marriage. He led me up a dark, narrow stairway and down a stale-smelling hall, rattling his keys all the way. Our corner room, covered with flowered wallpaper, had worn shades and torn curtains.
“Not much of a honeymoon suite,” I said.
Joe fell onto the bed and buried his face in the pillow, covered it with his arms. Used to the silence between us, I simply pulled the shades and curtains and peeked into the WC. Both the toilet and sink were clean but old-fashioned. I hated chain-pull toilets and detached bathtubs, coin water-heaters and old sinks — more small-minded chatter in a brain that should have been active, inquisitive, and alert.
Joe raised his head. “Get me that waste bin. I’m going to retch.”
I quickly did as I was told. He leaned over the bed, choked and splattered into the basket. Attempting the role of the dutiful new wife, I sat next to him, stroked his head, helped him remove his shoes. He shook me off and tried to stand up, but fell back onto the bed. I emptied the wastebasket into the toilet and washed it out. When I returned, Joe was back in bed, his head buried. I opened my suitcase.
When Joe spoke again, he said something that sounded like “Stay away from the window.”
“What did you say?” As I stood, I was flung hard onto the bed by an unnatural force, as though shoved from behind by a giant fist. The window shattered, an explosion lit the room, a blaze of fire rose up then receded. Instinctively, I threw myself onto the floor and buried my head in my arms. My heart pounded, a loud, thumping rhythm. I blocked out the sirens and human screams. A familiar panic overtook me — fear of the dark, horror of strangers in a window, of dark corners, manic behavior, endless black oceans, loose limbs and bodies. Neither of us moved. I dared not speak. I heard Joe say over and over again into the pillow, “Fook, fook, fook.”
He grabbed the wastebasket and vomited. This time I didn’t move to help him. When finished, he scooted onto his back. I watched through the corner of my eye. He stared at the ceiling, like he was counting the tiles or waiting for something, killing time. In the moments that followed, sirens blazed toward our hotel, but even then I couldn’t hear them — the room was so silent. I sensed the heart-beating shock of death, of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, of two worlds, edges of two planes, teetering between two modes of living, a darkly lit future, fear of ghosts and of the dark. God had found me. I was scared to death of Joe Donnelly.
It took all of twenty minutes for them to start banging on the door, the landlord shouting, “There they are, the two Irish ones.” Three policemen stood above us.
“Joseph Donnelly?”
Joe nodded but didn’t move. One of the policemen pulled him up. “Get to your feet!”
“I’ve got the fookin’ flu. I just want to sleep.” He plopped back onto the bed.
The policeman looked at me. I quickly stood. “Who are you?”
“She’s my wife,” Joe answered.
Joe must have guessed back in the ferry boat that I would be speechless at this point. I’d be useless. I’d be stunned. His plan would backfire. His smart and urbane woman would fail him. A strong worldly, defiant type was what he needed, not some weak, confused thing.