“Hello,” she said with a smile, her Cork accent still strong despite her time here.
“Hello.” My voice came out as a whisper. I cleared my throat and tried again. I looked down at the list of names on the table before me. I would have to do this twelve times today, and then again with Joan and Bernard. The thought of seeing all these people thrilled me, but the idea of having to discuss such delicate topics so subtly was draining me already. I had asked Helena earlier once again why on earth it was that I couldn’t just let everybody know without having to carry out this charade.
“Sandy,” she had said so firmly that I needn’t have even heard a reason, “when people want to get home they get desperate. For them to learn that you found your way here while looking for them would cause them to believe that they can leave with you. Life wouldn’t be worth living here with a few hundred people trailing your every move.”
She had a point. So here I was, playing the role of casting agent and owner of an acting agency, about to wind a conversation about every member of their family and friends into a Hamlet soliloquy.
I had had one more question for Helena. “Do you think that I can lead the people out of here and bring them home?” I had been wondering if that was my purpose for being here, because I was convinced I wasn’t staying. The typical victim belief: This can’t happen to me, not me of all people.
She smiled sadly, and once again I needn’t have heard her response because her face said it all. “Sorry, Moses, I don’t think so.” But before I dissolved completely she quickly added, “But I think you are here for a reason and that reason is, right now, to share your stories with everyone, to tell them about their families and how much they’re missed. That’s your way of bringing them home.”
I looked up at Orla, who was sitting before me anxiously awaiting my next move. It was time to bring her home.
She was twenty-six years old now and she looked like she’d hardly changed at all. Nearly six years had passed since she had gone missing. Six years I’d spent looking for her. I knew her parents’ names were Clara and Jim and they had divorced two years ago. I knew she had two sisters, Ruth and Lorna, and a brother, James. Her best friends were Laura and Rebecca, who was also known as “Fly” because of her regular forgetfulness to zip up her fly. Orla was studying art history at Cork University when she went missing. Her debs dress was purple, and the scar across her left eyebrow was from when she’d fallen off her bike on vacation in Bantry when she was eight. She lost her virginity when she was fifteen at a house party, to Niall Kennedy, the guy who worked at the local video store, and she secretly crashed her parents’ car when they were away for a week in Spain but had it repaired on time and they still don’t know it to this day. Her favorite colour is lilac, she loves pop music, played the piano until she was fourteen, had secretly dreamed of becoming a ballet dancer since the age of six, yet never once took a class, and she had been here for five and three quarter years.
I looked at her and didn’t know where to start. “So, Orla, tell me a bit about yourself.”
I watched her as though in a trance, watched the lips I’d seen only in photographs open and close, her face animated, alive, and I listened to her words. The singsong tone of her Cork accent, the way her long blond hair moved as she spoke. I was enthralled.
When she got to the part about studying in college I saw my chance to jump in. “Art history in Cork University?” I repeated. “I know someone who studied the same year as you.”
“Who?” She almost jumped off her seat.
“Rebecca Grey.”
Her mouth dropped open. “No way! Rebecca Grey is one of my best friends!”
“Really?” I noticed everything was still in the present. Rebecca was still her best friend.
“Yeah! That’s so weird, how do you know her?”
“Oh, I met her brother Enda a few times. He’s friends with friends of mine, you know how it is.”
“What’s he doing now?”
“Actually, last time I saw him was at his wedding a few months ago. I think I may have met your mum and dad there too.”
She was silent for a moment and when she spoke again her voice was hushed and shaken. “How are they?”
“Oh, they were in great form, I was talking to one of your sisters, Lorna, I think.”
“Yes, Lorna!”
“She was telling me that she got engaged.”
“To Steven?!” She bounced up and down on her seat clapping her hands excitedly.
“Yes,” I said and smiled. “To Steven.”
“Oh, I knew she’d take him back.” She laughed with tears in her eyes.
“Your older sister was there with her husband. She was heavily pregnant, I noticed.”
“Oh.” A tear fell from her eye and she quickly wiped it away. “What else, who else did you see? Did my mum and dad say anything? What did they look like?”
And so I brought her home.
A half hour had passed and Joan coughed rather loudly to let me know another audition applicant had arrived. We hadn’t even noticed Joan enter the hall and I looked at my wrist to check the time, forgetting that my watch was still lying somewhere on the road leading out of the village. The familiar feeling of irritation scratched at my body as I thought of it being somewhere yet not being able to find it. I looked up to see the next person I was due to meet, Carol Dempsey, nervously wringing her hands as she stood by Joan, and my irritation disappeared. I became scared all over again.
“I’m sorry, our time is up,” I said to Orla.
Her face fell and I knew she had all of a sudden been whisked away from home and transported and plonked back to the reality of where she was.
“But I haven’t even auditioned,” she panicked.
“It’s OK, you’ve got the part,” I whispered and winked.
Her face lit up as she stood, leaned over, and grasped my hand in her two hands. “Thank you, thank you so much.”
I watched her leave with Helena, her head awash with a million new thoughts of stories from home. So much to think about now, new thoughts and new memories all raising new questions and a new longing for home.
Carol sat before me. A mother of three, housewife, from Donegal, forty-two years old and a member of the local choir, who went missing while on her way back from choir practice four years ago. She had passed her driving test a week before her disappearance, her husband had celebrated his forty-fifth birthday with the family the night before, and her youngest daughter’s school play was opening the following week. I looked at her mouselike face, timid and shy, her brown limp hair tucked behind pink ears, a purse clasped in her hands on her lap, and I instantly wanted to take her home.
“So, Carol,” I said gently, “why don’t we start off by you just telling me a bit about yourself.”
Later in the day, we all sat around in a circle in the grand Community Hall. I faced the stage and the thousands of handprints decorating the backdrop, “Strength and hope,” I repeated to myself. Strength and hope had got me through today; I was still on a high from meeting my idols, but knew I would quickly become drained. As usual, as soon as everybody had taken their places, I had chosen to stand back and observe, outside of the circle. Old habits die hard. Helena had called out to me and the chorus of fifteen other voices joined in, coercing me to sit down. I took a seat, aware that I was joining a group, something I had run from doing all of my life. I slowly sat down, all the time battling with my legs, which wanted to run out the door, and my mouth, which wanted to make an excuse to leave.
After I had spoken to everybody individually, Helena had come up with the idea of everybody getting to know one another better by sharing the experiences of where and when they had gone missing. She was calling it a team-building workshop, all to help the production, but I knew she was really doing it for me, to help me with my continuous search of understanding where we all are and how we got here.