Saints for All Occasions Read online

  “Be good, Theresa,” Nora said. “Behave.”

  “See? You sound like your old self already.”

  Nora heard them laughing as they went down the hall. Girls who hadn’t been allowed to go into town in the evening unaccompanied, sent across an ocean to a world they’d never seen. None of them seemed in the least bit afraid.

  She had sworn to herself that she would save Oona’s letter for as long as she could. It was far too soon. But still she found the paper, unfolded the page. She felt a pang, seeing the familiar handwriting.

  When we meet each other next, I wonder what you will have seen. You will have had such adventures by then. If you ever feel scared, picture me by your side. With you always, Oona

  Nora wanted to be sitting in Oona’s warm kitchen, or even just picking her up in the early morning for the long walk to work. She looked down at herself, curled in bed, and felt embarrassed, as if Oona were watching her from another room.

  The thought was enough to get Nora to her feet. She would take a short walk, breathe the fresh air, like Theresa had said.

  She went down the narrow corridor, her legs not used to the rhythm of the waves.

  Once on the deck, Nora looked out over the ocean. It was an astonishing sight. No land in any direction.

  There weren’t many people around. She supposed most on board were eating their supper.

  After a few minutes, she was done. That was adventure enough.

  As she turned to go back to the cabin, she crossed paths with a boy about her age. He wore a brown flat cap. When she reached him, he removed it, nodded at her.

  “Evening,” he said, and smiled.

  Nora saw his face go red.

  She pictured Oona there beside her.

  “Hello,” she managed to say.

  —

  After that, she made a promise to herself. Two short walks a day, no matter what. She only ever went as far as she had that first night, as if there were an invisible rope tying her to her bed. She spent most of the day there, pretending to read or write or sleep, but mostly just stewing over what lay ahead. She still couldn’t eat. The thought of food made her ill. Theresa brought her cups of water, and tea, and buttered rolls. She stroked Nora’s hair and sang to her, songs that Nora had sung to get Theresa to sleep when she was a baby.

  Most of the time, Theresa was off exploring with her friends. Every so often, the girls would stop in and tell Nora all that was going on outside the room. There was a swimming pool at the bottom of the boat. In the afternoons, they went for a dip. They watched movies in the theater and sat around in the smoking lounge hoping to meet boys. They reported that there were cables to hold on to in the ballroom, and it was great fun trying to dance around them. Nora felt like her own invalid grandmother. She felt like they were telling her about some faraway place, not the world on the other side of the door.

  —

  On the fourth night, she woke from a nap suddenly famished.

  She put on a plain cotton dress, walked out into the hall alone.

  The dining room was crowded. She searched for her sister, but Theresa wasn’t there.

  Nora sat alone.

  The food was all American—fried chicken, gravy, mashed potatoes, and sirloin. She had never seen so much food.

  A waiter asked the boys at the next table how many inches thick they wanted their steak.

  “Three inches!” one of them cried out.

  “Four,” another said.

  The waiter said he would bring them five. A challenge. They left half of it behind, bloody on their plates.

  Nora was considering this when she heard someone behind her say, “Mind if I sit down?”

  She didn’t think the words were directed at her. But then she felt a hand on her shoulder, and the same voice, a young man’s, said, “Is this one beside you taken?”

  She looked up to see the boy in the cap who had smiled at her two nights earlier.

  “Go ahead,” she stammered. “Sit. I was about to leave anyway.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Stay a minute. Please?”

  She pretended she wasn’t blushing. But he was blushing too, and that made her like him.

  “All right,” she said.

  “Cillian,” he said as he sat.

  “Nora.”

  He told her he came from Coachford and laughed when he saw her face.

  “Never heard of it,” he said. “Guess I’d better get used to that.”

  He said he was bound for New York and homesick already.

  “I’ve been wearing my father’s old cap just to have the smell of him near,” he said. “Doesn’t that sound sappy?”

  She thought of her grandmother’s yellow blanket.

  “No,” she said.

  “And you?” he said. “Where are you headed?”

  “To Boston. With my sister.”

  She didn’t say any more than that, didn’t add that she was going there to meet the man she would marry.

  “You’re lucky to have your sister along,” he said. “It’s a lonely voyage, being on my own.”

  “You don’t seem shy,” she said with a smile.

  “Well, I am. This is the first conversation I’ve had in days.”

  After he finished his chicken, he walked her to her room.

  “Nice chatting with you,” she said, and before she knew what was happening, he was kissing her softly on the lips.

  “And you,” Cillian said, and walked on.

  A few hours later, there was a loud knock at the cabin door. She was sure it was him. Nora lay in her bed, stock-still.

  Another knock, and this time the door just opened wide.

  The woman in the other bed pulled a blanket over her head and her child’s both.

  A porter stood there, with Theresa and her friends behind him. He had caught them sneaking into a party in first class and brought them to Nora, like she was the mother of them all. They collapsed on the bed around her, giggling, before he’d even gone.

  “They were all so handsome!” Theresa said.

  “That one in the blue sure liked you,” Abigail said.

  Nora didn’t like something in her tone. She had lost control of herself and her sister all in one night.

  “Theresa, get hold of yourself,” she said sharply. “Start acting right or I’ll send you home. I’d do it, too, you know. Not another word.”

  The other girls slunk out of the room. Nora could tell Theresa was embarrassed. She got up and washed her face in silence and then climbed the ladder to her bed. Nora thought of her sister, reading anything she could find back home. Theresa hadn’t picked up a book since they came aboard. She prayed she hadn’t made a mistake.

  In the morning, over the sounds of snoring, Theresa whispered an apology.

  “It’s all right,” Nora whispered back, too worried about her own bad judgment to argue.

  “Come to breakfast with me, just us two.”

  “I can’t.”

  Nora’s appetite had returned. She was hungry. But she didn’t dare go into the dining room, for fear of seeing him.

  “You’re too skinny, Nora,” Theresa said. “Abigail says she doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with you. She thinks you’re just sad.”

  “Is that right?”

  “It happens to a lot of people. Abigail knows these things. I think she’s wonderful. Isn’t she wonderful?”

  “I don’t know her,” Nora said.

  “Her boyfriend’s American. She showed me a picture. He’s lovely. She met him in Dublin. He was just there on holiday, and there she was in a shop when he walked in. Can you believe it? She thinks I’ll find a handsome American too before long.”

  “Ahh.”

  “It’s not hard,” Theresa said. “Abigail has a friend from Cork who met a big shot banker on the boat ride over. She never had to work a day. Lives in a mansion on Central Park and does nothing but go to lunch and read magazines.”

  Nora wondered if it was true.

&nb
sp; “You do remember that the whole point of your coming was to go to school.”

  Theresa ignored the comment. “She asked me what your Charlie does, and I said he’s not as impressive as all that. He paints houses. And she said, ‘Well, you can’t help who you fall in love with,’ and I said, ‘Oh, Nora’s not in love with him. She’s not like that.’ ”

  “Theresa!” Nora said.

  “Are you really going to marry Charlie Rafferty?”

  “Of course. Now let’s please keep our business to ourselves and not go blabbing to strangers.”

  “Abigail’s not a stranger!” Theresa said. She sighed. “I think I would have been alone forever had I stayed. There weren’t many left to marry. All the good ones had gone off to their relations. Speaking of, I hope there will be a handsome American cousin or two among your new relations.”

  “They’re not my relations,” Nora said. “I’ve never met them.”

  “They will be, soon enough,” Theresa said. “I can’t imagine marrying any boy from home now.”

  “With all the worldliness of five days away. I suppose you think you’ll marry a film star and live in Los Angeles.”

  Theresa grinned. “Well, why not?”

  —

  When the Statue of Liberty came into view the day they arrived in New York, it seemed every person on board was lined up at the rail to get a look. Nora wondered if the boat might tip right over. She regarded the people around her, the Americans returning from vacations with Irish lace and crystal in their suitcases. Heading home to familiar houses. As the ship sailed up the Hudson River to Pier 54, she looked for Cillian. She half wanted to see him and half prayed that she would not. She couldn’t find him in the crowd.

  They waited in line to disembark, taking in the sight of a high-roofed pavilion at the end of the gangway, the words CUNARD and WHITE STAR printed above the entrance.

  Charlie was meant to borrow his cousin’s car and drive from Boston to meet them at the boat. Nora hadn’t imagined there would be so many people.

  “What if he can’t find us?” she said. “What if he has to turn back?”

  “He wouldn’t leave you,” Theresa said.

  They waited hours in a line marked FOREIGNERS. They shivered in the early morning cold. Nora could smell her own sweat coming through her clothes. There was a small washbasin in the private bath but no shower or tub. She had cleaned up as best she could, but still she felt filthy. She wished she could sink into a bath before talking to anyone. Theresa had borrowed perfume from one of the girls and sprayed it all over to try to cover her scent. But this only made her smell worse.

  She wouldn’t shut up. Nora wished she could have just a moment’s peace to sort herself out, as if there hadn’t been enough time to think on the boat.

  At some point, she caught sight of the familiar black trunk, the stickers she’d been staring at for days, wondering what they said. There was the little boy, crying. His mother, exasperated, alone. Nora wanted to go to them, but a moment later the crowd had shifted and they were lost to her. She hooked her arm through Theresa’s, held her close.

  —

  Charlie was right there waiting when they got to the other side, just as Theresa said he would be.

  He tried to kiss Nora. She felt herself harden but attempted a smile.

  She wondered if he could sense her misdeed on her skin.

  “It’s good to see you,” she said.

  In the car, Theresa couldn’t stop talking about the girls on the ship, the music in the ballroom. Charlie told them the story of a man he’d met, who took the boat from Cobh to Quebec. He rode second class, and he and his brothers had drained the ship’s bar by the end of the journey.

  “They were as drunk as anything when they pulled into port,” he said. “The first thing they saw was a billboard that read Drink Canada Dry.” With each of the three words, he thrust a hand into the air in front of him for emphasis. “These guys turned to one another and said, ‘Don’t mind if we do!’ ”

  He laughed at his own joke, chortling on and on.

  Theresa laughed too, but Nora felt uneasy, bashful, like he was a stranger.

  Her sister was so familiar, the one familiar thing. Nora couldn’t stop looking at her. She could not imagine if it was only herself and Charlie here.

  When they stopped at a restaurant for tea, the most elegant girls she’d ever seen filled the booths, pretty and polished and made up. They wore bright new dresses, the colors of springtime, gathered at the waist and wide at the bottom. Nora looked down at her simple dress, a thin white cardigan buttoned over the top.

  Charlie pointed to a girl passing by in the highest heels she’d ever seen. He said loudly, “It’s a wonder she doesn’t topple right over.”

  “Shh,” Nora said.

  “I think they’re beautiful,” Theresa said.

  The waitress brought over three china cups of boiling water, perched on white saucers. A tea bag and a lemon slice rested on each plate. Nora took the bag from her plate and tore it open, shaking its contents into her cup.

  Charlie laughed. “What the heck are you doing?”

  She looked down to see the tea leaves floating at the water’s surface.

  “The bag is meant to be dunked straight in,” he said. “Like this.”

  As he demonstrated, Nora felt her face grow hot. “Oh!”

  During the war, when tea was rationed, one of the Raffertys sent tea bags from America home to Charlie’s grandmother. She had shared them with Nora’s gran. None of them had ever seen a tea bag before that. Her grandmother ripped the bags apart and shook the leaves straight into the pot as Nora herself had just done.

  She thought she might cry and blinked to keep the tears back. What a ridiculous thing to cry about.

  When Theresa went to powder her nose, Charlie said, “It’s just me, Nora. The same old Charlie.”

  “I know,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?”

  He reached across the table for her hand.

  She felt seized by a desire to run. For a year, she had been corresponding with a ghost, a void. Now here was the flesh and blood man in front of her. If she loved him, she wouldn’t have talked to a stranger that way. She wouldn’t have let him kiss her.

  She felt too frightened even to look at Charlie.

  “I know it’s a lot to get used to,” he said. “We’ll go back home as soon as we can. But it’s good for us to earn some money while we’re young. See new places. And Mrs. Quinlan has a lovely home. You’ll see.”

  She didn’t believe him, that they would go back for good. She had staked her life on a plan that would never come to pass.

  The whole ride to Boston, Nora only wanted to arrive, to know how it would be. But once they were there, she felt nervous. It was dinnertime. She counted eight people sitting around the table. Their chatter quieted when she and Theresa entered the room.

  Mrs. Quinlan got up and gave them each a stiff hug. She was a thin woman, bony, with an angular face. She carried herself tall and confident.

  “Charlie, leave their things by the door for now,” she said. “I’ll show them to their room after we eat.”

  Nora was surprised to hear an American accent. She had imagined her being from Ireland. But now she thought she remembered from Charlie’s letters. Mrs. Quinlan was one of the first in his family to be born here.

  She guided Theresa to a chair beside an old lady with a large silver crucifix around her neck and then motioned for Nora to sit in the empty spot between two women who might have been thirty or forty, older than her, but not old.

  “My nieces,” Mrs. Quinlan said. “The two Elizabeths.”

  The women said hello.

  “How was the trip over?” one of them asked.

  “Good,” Nora said.

  They smiled, nodded. It seemed they were waiting for more, but she couldn’t think of a thing to say. An idea would come to her and she would reject it, try to come up with something better.
She wanted to ask if they were married, but it seemed rude. She wondered how long they had been here but didn’t want to pry.

  The two Elizabeths returned to their conversation.

  Nora noticed the wallpaper. It looked like green velvet, with a print of ivy swirling this way and that. There was a bowl of oranges on the sideboard and an electric chandelier overhead.

  Theresa was chatting with the old lady. Laughing already.

  From across the table, Lawrence Rafferty grinned. “Hello there,” he said. “Remember me? Do I look handsomer in this American light?”

  Of course she remembered Charlie’s older brother. Half the time back home, he wore a Pioneer pin in his lapel, a tiny image of the Sacred Heart, a sign that he had taken the pledge to abstain from alcohol, with the good Lord’s help. The rest of the time, Lawrence was the one falling out the door of the pub, landing in the street, where they’d still be stepping over him the next morning.

  “Meet my bride-to-be, Babs McGuire,” he said. He leaned over and kissed the cheek of the woman beside him. She swatted at him with her napkin and laughed.

  “The future Mrs. Lawrence Rafferty!” he shouted, and Nora wondered if he was half drunk now or merely energized by the prospect of matrimony.

  “If you play your cards right,” Babs said. She winked at Nora to let her know that she was joking. “So nice to finally meet you.”

  Nora tried to remember what Charlie had written about them. Lawrence was a bus driver now. Babs was from Tipperary. She cleaned houses. She lived in another town but came often for dinner without warning, a habit Mrs. Quinlan said she could do without.

  Lawrence would be her brother-in-law one day, Nora thought, trying it on. This girl, Babs, would be her sister-in-law.

  On Lawrence’s other side sat a man of about the same age, whom she didn’t think she had met before. His bald head gleamed like marble. He smiled to reveal the most enormous teeth Nora had ever seen in a person’s mouth.

  “Bobby Quinlan,” he said. “Welcome to Boston. Hope the car ran okay.”

  “My son,” said Mrs. Quinlan. “And there’s my husband, but don’t be thinking you’ll be getting any conversation out of him. Lord knows I haven’t in the last thirty years.”

  Nora glanced down to see an open newspaper at the head of the table, held aloft by an unseeable man. The fingers on one hand wagged hello.