My tablespoon of spit, held hostage in a vial like some experiment, was sent off on a Tuesday. I wondered if postal workers knew what they were handling when they saw “Genetime Corp.” on the return label. They were like accomplices, in a way, transporting confidential information that held the power to either dismantle or transform lives.
When I told Pop, he didn’t look at me. I don’t know what I expected, but his lack of response somehow bothered me. He just sat in the booth sipping his cup of black coffee, hiding under his Yankees hat.
His eyes darted across the page over the DNA matched percentile color-coded regions of the world map like a mesmerized child watching TV for the first time, the word ‘Ireland’ screaming out in bold green ink. He was taking too long, and I wasn’t sure if he was in shock, just stalling, or both.
“48% means she had to have been 100%, right? That’s how these things work.”
“This is nothing but a damned government conspiracy,” he said, shoving the report back in my hands, “They’re going to clone you, Bri. I served for forty years and still don’t trust them.”
I slid the paper back to him. “Did you know she was Irish?”
“Can you get your money back?”
“Did you guys meet over in Ireland?”
“No, we met in New York,” he folded the report back up and slid it across the table, “at a Yankees game.”
“So, she was also a baseball fan?”
He took a slow sip of coffee and motioned for the waitress.
“Want some pie? It’s Wednesday, cherry’s fresh.”
“No, Pop, I don’t want pie. I want you to talk to me.”
The waitress danced over with a pen in one hand, notepad in the other.
“Two slices of cherry, Anne.”
She blew a bubble; it snapped. “You got it, Ken.”
My mouth moved in the shape of distaste; the kind of face you’d make watching someone eat mayonnaise out of a jar, the way a scorned lover eats ice cream from a pint.
“Why didn’t you ever remarry?”
He shifted, the faux leather seat squealing under him. “I’m still married, always will be.”
“If you loved her so much, then why won’t you tell me about her? I just don’t get it.”
He threw his hand up in the air, leaning over the table in a hush. “Why now? Where was this urgency after your mother died?”
I froze in place as two mismatched plates of pie glided through the tension in the air and across the turquoise resin like boats on a lake.
“Mom isn’t here, and I can’t ask her. Without her, I feel like part of my identity is missing. Like everyone in the world has answers about who they are except me.”
He reached out and took my hand, his calluses comforting and familiar. “You know who you are, where you come from.”
I let my eyes roll with irritation. “Apparently I come from Ireland.”
“Your mother came from Ireland.”
I took a huge bite, biding my time. I need answers, not more blockades. I wanted to open his heart and pry out the secrets, lay them all out on the table next to our slices of cherry so we could digest each tidbit together. I knew that wouldn’t happen, but my DNA test had let me in on one of those secrets, and his behavior made me want to spill it. So, I did.
“I have an aunt. She’s still over in Ireland. Her name’s Glenna.”
His eyes studied me, and he opened his mouth as if to speak before letting go of my hand to shovel a jellied cherry into his mouth. “Finish your pie before I finish it for you.”
I closed my eyes and tried to envision my mother. All I have left are snippets of things, blurred moments of time I’m not sure are even real. She had dark hair and a soft voice, and I think she used to keep chickens. I remember helping her throw feed out as she shooed away a rooster that ran at me, intent on pecking my little eyes from my head.
The flight lasted only six hours, but between the anxiety palpating my heart and fear firing off neurons in excess, I didn’t get a single moment of shut eye. Breaking out of the clouds and coming in over the water, swirling indigo and turquoise against a rocky black coastline, everything changed. My heart thumped with anticipation in my ears and my eyes danced over cities and pastures as our metallic bird came in for landing, its shadow contorting with the changing shape of the surface below. The hills really do roll ever onward, like blankets of emeralds folding gently over the Earth's bosom. I suppose that's why they call it the Emerald Isle, but now I really believe it.
The drive out of Dublin was frightening. I passed the Ha’penny Bridge, but I was too frazzled to look while busy city-dwellers honked their impatient horns at my imposturous ignorance. There were colorful road signs and words that I spent too long trying to say aloud, like ‘Tallaght’ and ‘Oughterard.’ I encountered a massive round-about the size of my neighborhood; everyone knew what they were doing except me.
When I reached Glenna’s town, I relaxed my grip. The city buildings were faced with various types of stone, squarely protruding in neat blocks along the road with arched doorways. Some had turret-looking protrusions with clocks, lights, or flags that gently rippled in the afternoon breeze. A wide canal stretched through the town’s length, arched bridges and walkways sprinkled with people.
Glenna’s house was down a road I missed twice in passing, across the street from a grocery and restaurant called Taco Kebab. The storefront had bright red lettering and glowed inside with Kermit green walls. Somehow, I don’t think the owners intended patrons to have the image of taco shells on skewers, but that’s what I thought of anyway. It was a place I knew Pop would have loved to step inside.
Glenna’s house was covered in some sort of vine with ivory siding peeking out between the deep green overgrown leaves. The doors were painted an earthy brown to match the roof and a small car port matched the house in miniature, pea gravel blanketing every walkway.
Fear returned instantaneously. The small neighborhood became quieter, the gravel under my shoes crackled louder than I intended up the sidewalk, and I hoped it wouldn’t startle her into opening the door before I was ready.
I stood at her threshold for what felt like thirty minutes. The sun shone on my back as drops of rain came down from a whiff of cloud to prick me awake. Two knocks in, she opened the door; I’m convinced she was waiting on the others side.
“Bridgette? Is tha’ you?”
Glenna stood before me in a rust-colored sweater that poked haphazardly from her high-waisted jeans; the look was complete with a pair of purple knitted slippers. Her hair was short, grazing her shoulders that towered above my own. A smile stretched to my ears, and all I could do was nod like a timid toddler. Before I knew it, she stepped from the threshold and wrapped me in her long arms.
“How are ya?”
She looked down at my trampled blue suitcase and continued, “Is this all ya brought?” She knelt, picked it up, and motioned for me to go inside.
I walked into a small living room with pink throw pillows propped up on a worn beige loveseat. Two white-washed bookshelves sat either side of her TV.
“Chh – you get back, Muppet.” She motioned wildly at an oversized orange tabby, skulking near the crack of the front door. “That cat’s always tryin’ to leave. Ya’d think I never fed him!”
She slid her shoes off, kicking them over by the door; I did the same. “Make yerself at home, dear. I’ll just put this in your room.”
“Oh, I don’t mind. I’m happy to carry my own things.”
“Nonsense. Have a seat in the kitchen and I’ll get us somethin’ to eat before supper. Do you like tea, coffee, vodka, wine…”
I held my hand up, “Some coffee would be great.”
In the kitchen, pictures hung on the walls of people who looked similar, no doubt her family. They looked like me, or rather, I looked like them. That meant they were also my family, but yet I felt unworthy of such an association. Still, I studied them just the same.
One in a simple black frame caught my attention. It was my mother Cara, probably in her teens, next to Glenna and a few other girls. They were sitting on the steps of a stone church with a Celtic cross painted on the arched glass above, joy beaming through their eyes. Another hung on the other side of the room with two string-bean looking girls covered in mud, laughing in an embrace. I recognized one as Glenna, and the other looked like she could have been my mother. A few over, the same girls sat on their knees in front of a faded Christmas tree with some of the other photo’s familiar faces. These were snapshots of my mother’s life—ages that I had never seen before and forgot to have even considered. All I had were battered adult photos of her with Pop, some with infant me.
By the time she returned and powered on her pink single-cup Keurig, I counted thirteen frogs in her kitchen. They adorned small shelves, hung on her fridge, and appeared in nearly every kitchen top knick-knack. Some had hats, some were clothed, but all of them were in some sort of humorous pose or had human-like expressions. They ribbetted at me in a daunting unified chorus, begging me to ask about my mother.
“The picture! Ask about the picture!” a soap holder croaked from the sink.
Suddenly the frogs stopped, and I looked at Glenna who was staring at me expectantly. “I like your soap holder.”
She smiled. “He looks like he’s eatin’ the sponge when I’m not usin’ it. Little Oliver loves it so much he even offers to help clean up.”
“Oliver?”
“My grandson,” she clarified, “yer second cousin. Just turned seven last month.”
I found myself feeling warm then, though I had no idea who Oliver was or who his parents were. I had no reason to feel joy at such news, and yet I did. I tried to ignore it.
She smiled and came with two cups of hot coffee, a bowl of sugar, and lemon cookies on a lily pad plate. She then proceeded to tell me about her other knick-knacks, hopping from story to story. In total, I found forty-two frogs just in the kitchen and prayed none of them would speak again.
I had my father’s eyes, a fact I rejected through my youth. With the same set of deep-set hazel eyes, Glenna looked like a memory of my mother. Glenna had the same clefted chin that was nearly there, more like a dimple—something I also had—but her hair was as dark as my mother’s. A brunette so deep, I bet it only looked any sort of brown in direct sunlight. It was as if I was looking into a mirror, staring at a reflection I should’ve known but couldn't reconcile.
I found my way around in her kitchen naturally, helping cook without hesitation. She asked me about my job, and though I thoroughly hated paralegal work, I told her about it anyway. I wondered if she was thinking the same things about her long-lost niece. We'd lost thirty-one years of friendship and sisterhood.
“I’m sorry we ne’r met when yer mother died. I had no idea --”
“It’s okay, how could you have? She died when I was five.”
“My husband also died in a car accident, almost ten years ago now come June.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, glancing at photos of him on the wall. “What was his name?”
“Eric,” she sighed. “He was the love of me life. A good soul ‘n a better husband than I ever deserved.”
“He looked like a happy man.”
“Tha’ he was.” she gave me a small smile, rolling her coffee cup between her palms. Her wedding ring made a ‘clink’ against the ceramic in an almost rhythmic sound.
The guest room was pink colored everything. The walls were peachy, the bed spread had pink azaleas, the toilet even had a shaggy bubblegum cover on the lid. Muppet sat on the end of the bed and watched me brush my teeth from across the hall. He had a rosy collar on that blended into his fur and made his neck look too fluffy. I think he was wondering why I hadn’t brought up more about my mother, why I dismissed her completely.
“I’ll ask her more tomorrow,” I whispered as I climbed under the crisp sheets.
He shifted his paws underneath his plump body in response. I took it to mean, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
Toast, sunny eggs, and still-sizzling sausage rolled around on our plates as Glenna brought them over to the table.
“What’s yer favorite memory of yer mother?”
My mother sat next to me on our old wooden bench on the back porch, sipping sun tea as we swatted the incessant horseflies and mosquitoes of the summer evening. The stars sparkled through peach-kissed heavens, and she told me the way they reflected in the lake below made them seem closer than they really were. She called them lake stars and said they were easier to catch than the ones hanging up in space. We made wishes on the lake and sky stars, hoping it would double our chances.
She was always running after I went to bed, sweating under the cover of night. I'd hear her outside on the deck, trying to tear a battered blue punching bag apart. The chain holding it up would clang against the metal stand and jolt me awake.
I blinked away the memories. “You know, I haven’t thought much about her in a while.”
"Sean’s Bar is where some o’ my favorite memories were. It's," she licked her lipstick-worn lips, "well, the very last time I saw Cara thirty some years ago."
As we headed for Athlone, she pointed out shops along the way, the best and worst restaurants, and roads that led to friends. But my mind ran rampant; I needed to know why the last time Glenna had seen her sister was in a bar, why she hadn't seen her in three decades.
I swerved ever so slightly, buffering too close to a wall of battered stone along the road. I couldn't get used to their confines, lining nearly every country road off main stretches of asphalt and muttering siren-like whispers. Too close, and the metal of your vehicle would peel away like soft butter; too far and you'd meet another traveler in a head-on collision.
I couldn't imagine a more scenic route; a trail encased by guides of stone, canopies of leafy greens ensuring shade from the sun that skulked above. I imagined how easy it would be to pull the car over next to the moss-clad stone. I'd leave the engine running, the heat on our toes in my used metallic shoebox. She'd be unable to open her door, unable to crawl away from the truth I demanded of her. I murmured an apology, causing her to glance at her watch as we peddled onward down the road and onto the backwards highway.
Soon we were upon more stone—a masterpiece—each rock tucked neatly into the other to form an impenetrable bond, save for the patches off moss that nuzzled in the cracks. Never had I seen a castle that looked so damp and demoralized for the masses to gawk over. There were modern windows installed, calling out to the onlookers below for attention like a jester crying out in a vicious court of royal animals. The stones were caked in tones of whitewashed oxidation, encrusting each oblong surface with acid-like murals and rippled trails of time.
Shackled into its side hung a metal sign, laser cut to read Caisleán Baile Átha Luain, a silhouetted mural of the castle itself in a shade of vermilion -- a halfhearted attempt at flattery. Right next to it sat a small parking lot requiring €2.40 for a 2-hour maximum stay, a fee I gladly paid in hopes that a restoration might be underway for the disheveled beast before me. Supposedly, this is where one of my ancestors lived for a time; I felt remorse for someone whose memory I was glad I did not share, even if I shared threads of bloodlines in an unfinished and dusty tapestry somewhere.
Sean’s Bar sat in a row of other shops across the parking lot, its toasted red door flushed against a bubblegum blue painted stucco. The sign was underwhelming to me, and I found myself wanting to stand in the cobbled street to stare at its simplicity. There was no denying or pretending: my mother had been here.
We would walk in and see her nestled in some corner with a cheery disposition. She’d be wearing her favorite frayed jean jacket with bug-eye sunglasses sitting on her head. There would be a story, a whole fantastical misunderstanding, and wrong-place, wrong-times. The reality was a fairytale at best, and yet I still drowned my thoughts in the idea with both hands.
I exhaled my anxiety. “Glenna,” I began as I crossed the street to her outstretched, waiting hand, “why is this the last place you saw my mother?”
She feverishly glanced at her watch. “Give us a moment, all in good time.”
The door groaned open, revealing a space smaller than my apartment. Wooden benches lined the corners, wainscoted in wood to give an illusion of a full piece of furniture. Round, scuffed tables stood on top a black and white checkerboard, patrons sprinkled like pawns in everyone’s walking path that wound begrudgingly through cries of laughter, frustration, and desperation. Fake ivy hung from the ceiling, intermittent lights twinkling the way faint stars peek through an overcast sheet of cloud. Somehow, the ceiling seemed lower as we waddled our way forward and I felt like Alice trying desperately to see the bar, unable due to my gargantuan size.
“Nenna!” A man called.
Glenna let go of my arm to hug an older gentleman in a blue button down. “George, this is my niece, Bridgette. She’s visiting from New York.”
“Nice ‘ta meet ‘ya!” he nodded at me and then to the bar, “Get yer a Guiness?”
We eventually meandered to a corner table when it emptied and I became sandwiched between Glenna and George, my head on a swivel between them. A sign hung above, encased in a large plastic shadowbox. Inside was a tablet of cracked rock with an inscription: wattle wall, 900AD. A black piano sat adjacent, the painted peeling fallboard sheltering the keys beneath.
I don’t drink, but I gracefully drank the dark, ruby red liquid the same way I’d take an old friend’s arm in an evening stroll. It was dark, earthy, and disgusting, the froth so dense it tried to choke me on my first sip. I reveled in every drop of it.
George looked at Glenna. “I don’ remember you havin’ family in the States. Come to think a it, I don’ remember you havin’ a niece.” He lowered his voice, “Is she a stray o’ Eric’s?”
“My husband was a honest n’ faithful man George McCorrim and yer know tha’.”
I didn’t know George well enough to pour the contents of my life into his now empty draught glass. I felt for the keys of my rental in my jacket pocket.
“She’s Cara’s.”
I scooted towards Glenna who held up a shaking hand at me. “Let me out.”
George cocked his round face to the side, beaming at me in the same way as a grandmother who pinches cheeks for fun. “This was yer big surprise, Nenna?”
My tongue poked the inside of my cheek as I stared towards the door, now an eon away. “Either you tell me what’s going on, or I’m leaving.”
“Bridgette,” Glenna shifted to me. “George knew yer mother. We helped her escape.”
“Escape?” I threw my hands up. “You’re not making any sense. This was a mistake.”
“Wait, wait.” She fanned her hands at me as if to cool me off.
I folded my arms across my chest and raised my brow, the weight of my rental car keys even heavier than before. I’d have to repay the parking meter at some point.
Glenna took a deep breath. “His name was Arthur. He didn’t treat ‘er well. He saw that she had pretty eyes on ‘er and that’s all he ever cared for. Always goin’ after ladies and comin’ home drunk. She came over with many bruises and just as many excuses. I didn’t know ‘ow else to protect my sister, so I helped ‘er run.”
Tendrils of shame crept up in the back of my skull, anger prickled the tiny hairs of my neck, and relief drained the blood from my temples. I felt nauseous, not entirely capable of comprehending what I had heard and even less able to catalog it. All I knew, suddenly, was my mother had a reason to run and probably never stopped.
George cracked the silence, “When she left, we opened a missin’ person’s case just so e’d think we were a handful o’ fools with no idea where she’d gone off to. But we ‘ad no idea she was with child.”
The longer I looked at Glenna, the faster the pub became a blur of noiseless motion. The same clefted chin moved as she talked, but my own felt like a weighted stone. No, we did not share the same eyes – my eyes were my father’s. They weren’t Pop’s though, or at least, that’s what I was now told to believe. Whose eyes were they, really? Were they even my own?
My small blue suitcase was stuffed to the brim, a frog figurine wrapped in a woven cardigan Glenna had bought me in a small shop near Portumna Castle. We had driven all the way to Waterford where I had purchased a crystal rosary, also rolled inside a sweater, and stopped in Kilkenny to do the Smithwick’s beer tasting experience. There was an old graveyard and church there, St. Canice’s Cathedral, where I lit a candle for my mother. At the very bottom of my suitcase were bundles of copied photos we’d spent the last two nights making. Most were of my mother, even a few baby photos, but I had also asked for some of Glenna and her life. Last night we’d gotten takeaway from Taco Kebab, ironically one of Glenna’s favorites; two scoops of taco mince later, it had become one of mine.
Glenna gently lowered the trunk of my rental until a soft click indicated it was closed. “Well, there’s only one ting for it,” she placed her hands on her hips. “Ye’ve got ta ask ‘im or accept what is and will be.”
“I don’t know if I’m strong enough for either,” I sighed.
She reached out, straightening the collar of my jacket before giving my cheek a soft pat. “Oh I beg ta differ.”
After having driven around the country with Glenna, visiting various ancient sites and geographic wonders for two weeks, my way back to Dublin wasn’t as traumatic as I expected. My flight was on time, something I was both excited and disappointed about.
As the jet glided through the puffy clouds of the Atlantic, I bit my nails, shook my legs, and shifted around in my small aisle seat. Eventually I felt the landing gear extend beneath the floorboards, the sound of the gear actuating into place telling me reality was still inevitable.
Pop was waiting for me in passenger pickup, leaning against the bed of his truck and ignoring the threats of a plump woman in a highlighter vest. When he saw me, he pointed and the woman threw her hands up, walking off to find another offender. He shook the altercation off like a dog does rainwater before his arms closed around me.
Stepping back, he held my shoulders square to him. “So did you find yourself?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you’re just as stubborn as your mother.” He bent down to pick up my battered suitcase. “You had to fly halfway around the world just to find out what I had already told you.”
Before every soccer match in high school, my father would give me a pep talk. Things about trying my best, not letting the game become more than a game, about having the confidence to lose as much as the pride to win. Like the righteous teenager I was, I’d promptly roll my eyes and chalk half of what he said to parental gibberish. He’d always end things with “You know who you are, Bri. Remember where you come from.” He did the same thing long-distance when I played for Penn State. I thought back to our conversation in the diner, to the words that I desperately discarded in pursuit of something better, some truth that seemed worthy.
Tears trickled from my already stinging eyes. I pulled him in for another hug, gripping tightly to the smell of worn leather and peppermint Altoids.
He dropped my bag to cradle the back of my head, muffled in his collar. I felt the brim of his Yankees hat graze my hair. “You alright?”
I wanted to pour my heart out to him in the churning sea of La Guardia arrivals, the rolling of suitcases and chatter of frequent fliers watering down my voice. No one would know why I was emotional. They’d expect I was happy to see this man or heartbroken to be leaving. I’d be nothing more than a passing glance, a thought of curiosity, before onlookers would move on. The silence of his truck, of my apartment, of any other space would be too demanding of me.
“Can we go see her?”
Her creamy white stone was smooth to the touch, warmed from the sun’s afternoon dance in the heavens. The curve of it fit perfectly in my palm and I let my fingers dangle down to feel the top of the lettering below. I didn’t need to read her name to know this was her grave.
An American flag waved overhead and behind me, its folds flapping against one another over the sound of Taps from a distant corner of the cemetery. Surrounding me were rows upon aisles of other white headstones, endlessly echoing one another as if I were locked inside a box of mirrors. I couldn’t see myself in any reflection, only my mother. She hummed and crackled like the sound of vinyl given life.
She crouched down, nodding to her name. “Do ye remember when tha’ happened?” her voice rang out just like Glenna’s.
I traced a familiar divot the size of a pebble, remembering when I had made it. It was months after she had passed, right after my seventh birthday. I had thrown a rock, angry with her for missing my special day and for promising to miss all the rest. Pop was disappointed with me for defacing her grave, and so was I, but he never said anything about it after that.
“I was so angry with you.”
“And are ye now?”
“Yes,” I scoffed.
She looked up at me through slick eyelashes as a strand of her hair tumbled in the breeze.
I squatted down to meet her height. “No,” I said. “Not really.”
She studied my face, lingering on my chin, my nose, and my ears. When her eyes found mine, they seemed to deepen in clarity and color, like watching leaves blend from green to gold in the peak of autumn. I saw myself in their reflection, distant but still there.
Her voice was quieter now, but just as warm, “And why’s tha’?”
“I’m glad I met your sister; I think we’ll be friends for the rest of our lives. I have a whole family now if I want them.”
She laughed, and I remembered how crooked one of her front teeth had been, jutting out like a fjord.
I looked down at the dew dropped grass. “I don’t know if you really knew who my father was. I’m sure you had an idea. I don’t care about knowing Arthur, but I wish you would’ve told me. Now I don’t even know if Pop is my father and I’m afraid to ask him.”
“What do ye tink?”
I looked up only to find her small, humming frame gone. The back of her stone was just as absent, and it suddenly occurred to me that one day Pop’s name would be there, etched into eternity. That’s how military graves worked if you were buried in a national cemetery, spouse on one side, veteran on the other.
I stood and filled my heavy lungs. Pop’s truck was still parked at the visitor’s center, but he was walking down a row of graves further on, leaving loose change on the top of each curved piece of stone.
“That’s my Pop.”
Natalie Gramer is a commercial pilot and ground instructor holding a Bachelor of Arts in English Writing with a minor in Anthropology and a Bachelor of Science in Aviation & Aerospace Science from MSU Denver. Natalie has been published in the Shot Glass Journal and enjoys mythology, history, and photography.
Related
