'The Mountains Wild' Chapters 13 & 14

“You’re an excellent detective,” he calls after me. “You got that psycho guy on Long Island. Shouldn’t they be using you to find Niamh Horrigan?”

I keep walking until I’m through the hotel’s revolving door and safe in the elevator heading up to my room. It’s not until the elevator doors close that I realize I’m still holding my breath.  

Chapter 14

1993

WHILE ROLY BYRNE AND BERNIE MCNEELY searched the bed-and-breakfast in Glenmalure and questioned neighbors and possible witnesses, Emer and Daisy went to classes, and at home Uncle Danny smoked too much and tried to get in touch with Jessica Friedman’s mom, I walked the streets of Dublin.

Over the Grand Canal, past the building painted with the words Bolands Flour Mills as the chilled wind whipped my face, fast up Pearse Street, past gray shops and around the back of Trinity College on Westland Row and onto Nassau Street, where I could see boys in striped shirts running back and forth on green lawns, around the black gates to College Green, where it felt like all of Dublin opened up before me, a wide avenue reaching across the Liffey, and the big round fortress of the Bank of Ireland.

From this side, the pale gray facade of Trinity rose above the street, the blue clock and huge bronze statue of Edmund Burke. I had seen them before, on a poster and in a brochure in the Notre Dame career counseling office. I had imagined myself walking beneath the archway, heading to classes.

I stood there in the forecourt, wondering where exactly Conor Kearney studied the history of Ireland in the twentieth century, and then I wandered the city some more, taking shortcuts down little side streets, finding my way back to Grafton Street, Dame Street, Nassau Street. Dublin was a city of lanes and alleys and gray cobbles, of pubs and old men and teenagers. Everywhere I looked, I saw them, boys in leather jackets, talking, smoking, watching people walk by, girls in jeans and sweatshirts or school uniforms, laughing and grabbing hands as they dashed across the street to bus stops.

By lunchtime I was back to Temple Bar, not far from the Garden of Eating, and I ducked into a little pub called the Raven, painted a bright yellow, and ordered a cup of coffee, enjoying the warmth and the cozy interior. I recognized the décor—if it wasn’t exactly the same as Flaherty’s, it was what Uncle Danny was going for: tin ceiling, stained glass, dark wood bar with bottle-lined mirrored shelves behind it, old photos of Dublin on the walls. It was a little touristy; there was a line of backpacks just inside the front door and I picked out Australian and American accents in the orders being shouted up to the bar.

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I downed the coffee and ordered a Guinness, taking a long sip and sighing in pleasure. The bartender, an old guy with a gray moustache and a kind smile, grinned and said, “That’s the best review I’ve had all week.” Tat’s.

I grinned back. “My uncle has a bar on Long Island. We have a sign up over the bar that says, ‘Best Guinness Outside of Dublin.’ ”

He laughed. “Is it?”

“It might be, but it’s not this good. Don’t tell him I said so.”

At the end of the bar, a tall guy with bright red hair in a thick ponytail was switching out a keg. He looked up and stared at me for a minute. I smiled, thinking that maybe he knew Erin, but he just looked confused and went back to switching the keg.

“I used to know a man had a bar on Long Island,” the bartender said. “It was in a place called Smithtown. Do you know it?” We talked about Long Island geography and Irish bars for a bit and then he left me alone. I watched him unloading glasses from a tray and suddenly, with an intensity that surprised me, I missed Uncle Danny. When I left, I told the bartender goodbye and that I’d be back for another one of those pints.

I was crossing Essex Street when I looked up to find Conor Kearney walking toward me, his head down. “Hey,” I said. He started, the way he had when I’d walked into the café, and I could see his brain processing my face. Not Erin.

“Hiya.”

“Maggie,” I said.

“No, I knew. I just—Maggie.”

We stared at each other awkwardly for a moment. Finally he said, “Is there anything new on Erin? The Guards were round to me. They told me they’re looking down in Wicklow.”

“No, nothing.”

He was wearing a leather jacket and jeans. He had a manila folder under his arm. A woman holding the hand of a small child in a raincoat came up behind him and he stepped to the side, bumping my hip. “Pardon,” he said, then, “It must be torture, waiting. Seemed like the Guards thought maybe she’d come back to Dublin.”

“I think they don’t know what to think.” I pointed to the manila folder. “You look like you’re on an important mission. Top-secret spy stuff?”

He grinned. “Ah, yeah. I’ve to stop the war with my important papers, like.”

“Well then, I won’t keep you. Go save the world.”

He leaned forward. “I can reveal that it’s actually a petition related to Temple Bar rubbish removal, but if it makes me seem more exciting, I’ll go with top-secret papers.”

“Good choice.” I smiled back at him. “Good luck.” He started to go, but I blurted out, “I ... I’m sorry about ... when I came into the café. I was tired and I thought Erin had just gone somewhere ... It isn’t the first time I’ve had to go looking for her like this and I kind of took it out on you.”

“No worries,” he said. We stared at each other. “Well then, stop by sometime.” I nodded. “See ya.” I didn’t turn to watch him go, even though I wanted to.

I found a phone booth and called my dad at his office. He sounded tired and sad and when I told him about the bed-and-breakfast, he said, “Oh, sweetheart. I should have gone. What a mess for you to deal with.” I told him I was fine and to take care of himself and when I hung up I leaned my face against the cold metal of the phone as the scent of his shaving cream rose in my sinuses and I missed him so much for a moment, it actually hurt. Then I wandered Dublin some more in a cold, gray mist that hovered just above the rooftops, taking the wide O’Connell Bridge across the Liffey. This was ground zero of the Easter Rebellion, I remembered from my Irish history seminar, where a small group of men and a few women holed up and tried to direct an assault on the British in the streets of Dublin.

It didn’t work, but the execution of sixteen Irishmen turned once ambivalent Dubliners against the British.

A terrible beauty was born.

But it was that song about being too sexy for your shirt that was blaring out of a shop on O’Connell Street, and Yeats faded away as I walked the streets north of the river. They seemed smaller, tighter, leading to an outdoor market not far from the bridge, and I wandered for a bit, listening to old ladies shouting over their produce, browsing the vegetable sellers and used book stalls. I walked under a big clock hanging out over the sidewalk in front of a department store, then crossed the street and strolled past the gray columns of the General Post Office.

The day had run away from me. It was nearly dinnertime now.

A little fish-and-chips shop on O’Connell Street beckoned and I got mine to go, taking the greasy newspaper down to the quays. The fish was crispy and hot, the chips tender and with just the right amount of bite. The sky was full of gulls. They called across the river, flew back and forth from north to south. I was halfway through my dinner and full when a thin, wobbling old man stopped to look at the river.

“It’s lovely this evening, isn’t it?” he slurred.

“It really is.” The sky was pale blue, washed with blurry gray clouds. A hint of pink crept in, crisping the edges of the clouds. A gull landed on the quay, looking up expectantly at me.

“Cheeky little bugger,” the old man said. “He’d like your chips, so he would.”

“Well, he can’t have them.” “You tell him,” the man said, stumbling. I looked at him again. His clothes were shabbier than I saw at first, his shirt yellowed and frayed. He was drunk, but only for maintenance. His eyes were yellow, too, his nose red with broken capillaries. We watched the sky for a few moments.

“You ’merican?” he asked. “Or Canadian?”

“American.”

“I lived in New York for fifteen years. Worked as a crane operator. It was grand, New York, but it never felt like home. Never home.” He was off somewhere in his head, thinking about New York and home. I could see that he had been handsome once.

“I’m all done,” I told him. “There’s a piece of fish I haven’t touched and a lot of chips left. They’ll go to waste otherwise. Or to the gulls. Sit down.”

“Ah, now, I think I just might take you up on that.” He sat down next to me on the bench and took the bag from me. When he bit into the fish, he sighed with pleasure. “That’s lovely, so it is.”

“I know.”

He smiled at me. “Life’s little pleasures, isn’t that right.” I left him to the pleasure of the fish and chips.

_______________________________

Erin in her red bathing suit, her arms and legs tan, her nose burnt and peeling, her little body rushing into the waves. Her hair is hard at the ends where it touched her Popsicle. Her hands and arms are covered with a fine layer of sand that glitters in the sun. A summer Sunday at Jones Beach. The constant crashing of the waves. People shouting across the beach. Suntan lotion runs in my eyes and I cry. Erin and I play on the sand where the waves are breaking, digging holes, building walls. First the holes fill in and then the walls get swept away. Erin has her back to the ocean and when a wave creeps up and washes over her, she screeches and jumps up, running away into the sea of people on the beach. I look up. She was there and now she’s gone. I squint into the sun. Everyone looks the same on the beach. Their faces stare at me. I get up and walk straight back, find my mom, who’s lying on her towel and reading a magazine.

“Where’s Erin?” she asks me. I point to where she was. My mom jumps up, runs to the sand, looks up and down the beach. Her bikini slips away from her skin. I can see a white line over her breasts. “Erin!” she shouts. “Erin, honey!”

Another mom hears her and comes to help us look. The two moms ask people if they’ve seen a little girl in a red bathing suit. People get up, help us look. Someone says we should find a policeman.

My mom’s eyes are scared and wide. She ignores me when I try to take her hand.

And then someone’s shouting. My mom is running toward the sound. I follow and I see her kneeling, holding Erin. Erin’s crying. A man is gesturing with his hands to my mom. I wait there, watching them. My mom brushes Erin’s hair out of her eyes, holds her against her body.

A seagull calls overhead. The sun seems to drop as we walk to the car. Little pools of water appear in the parking lot, between the shiny cars, then disappear as we get close. The asphalt burns my feet. My mom gets us strapped into the back and Erin reaches over and takes my hand, clinging tightly to it as we pull out and head for the North Shore and home, as though the waves that threatened to carry us away on the beach are coming for her now, even though we’ve left the beach behind.

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