MICHAEL FOUND HIMSELF IN bed, the same bed where he had slept the night before, and that had to be some comfort. The pale glimmer of the street lamps bled through the windows and next to him the woman—his benefactor, his caretaker—slept serenely, her back to him. He thought that if she could roll over and throw an arm around his shoulder, that might make the night a biteen more bearable.
Da was dead and there was no one to console him. Francis had been in the church, he remembered that now, and of course Martin had to know. They must have assumed that he remembered the funeral, if nothing else, and that explained the duration of the embraces he’d received from Martin and Rosemary. Here was Michael, the youngest, battered in some terrible way, and he had lost his father. The sight of him smiling like an idiot through dinner must have confirmed that he had gone simple—Michael, who had spent so many years alone with Da, the two of them ticking like the gears of a watch, barely touching but always in concord. How many hours had the two of them passed together, each with a nose in a book and rarely a word exchanged, yet each happy in his own way. Hours? It had been years. A lifetime, really.
Michael had called an end to those slow, quiet hours. After Eileen broke his heart, he looked for the surest way out of Ballyrath. He wanted to be rid of the place, and Da was part of that bargain. When he first heard that Eileen was to marry Old Doonan, he concocted wild plans of escape: they would run off to Dublin, to London, even America, if necessary. He begged his father to speak to Mr. Casey, to propose Michael as a better match for Eileen. His father had been reading and he kept his eyes on the page—Aeneid, book VII—all through his son’s plea that he talk some sense into Eileen’s father. How could he force his daughter to hitch herself to a slatty-ribbed, toothless bachelor coming up hard on his fiftieth birthday? There had to be a reason that such a man had never found himself a wife.
Michael’s father put the book in his lap and told Michael not to waste his time. His own, for thinking he could put a stop to this marriage, and his father’s, for hectoring him about such a futile mission.
“Casey is a peasant farmer,” his father had said, “and the only language he understands is acres and cattle. How many acres will you be gifting to your new father-in-law when the deed is done? And how many bulls?”
“He wouldn’t sell his own daughter,” Michael said.
“He already has, and for a price you could not match.” Da lifted the book from his lap, ready to return to Aeneas, last seen trudging through the underworld in search of his own father. He stared at the page, seemingly unable to find a toehold in the text. “Michael,” he said at last. “She’s a fine girl but you’re too young to get married anyhow.”
“But Da,” he said. “I love her.”
His father’s eyes were back on the page, scanning lines. “If only that were all it took.”
Michael waited for his father to say more, to look at him again and tell him that they would take this matter in hand. Go to Mr. Casey and talk some sense into him: Couldn’t he see that Michael and Eileen were meant for each other? They were young, but they could wait. Michael would someday soon go out into the world. His father had promised him a university education, and who knew where that could lead? Give him time to get established and he could do more for Eileen than Doonan ever could. A man like that was likely to leave her a widow before too long, and then where would Eileen be? But Michael already knew the answer, and he knew that Mr. Casey had made the same grim calculations. Eileen and however many babies Doonan could get from her—the thought of it made him sick—would inherit all that he had piled up in his mean existence, and Casey would add these holdings to his own meager scrap.
Was this why Eileen had been so cold to him in recent days, had refused to listen to his plans for escape, for an elopement that would prevent a union with Doonan? “For the family, Eileen.” That’s what her father had told her when he broke the news of her engagement. “You’ll do this for your family, you selfish girl.” Maybe Eileen had always known that this would be her fate. Maybe she had known for years; had known that her time with Michael—walking through fields and sitting among the stone walls, rock upon rock, and those few quick eternally burning kisses—was limited. She was snatching happiness where she could. What was the point of burdening Michael with that same foreknowledge of doom that hung over her? She knew that he’d rail against the marriage and her father and the world in a way that she no longer could. The effort had exhausted her long ago. She knew that Michael would also rail against her, for not refusing, for not running off with him toward happiness and away from the ruin of her family.
He could not live in that place any longer. He wanted to be out of Ballyrath before the wedding, which gave him little time to act. Martin was in New York, but with America closing itself to newcomers, it could take years, he now realized, to emigrate. Francis had recently landed in Mountjoy, and wouldn’t be hosting visitors anytime soon. Father Hogan had been telling Michael for years that the door to the priesthood was always open. With no other means of escape that he could see, he marched away from his father and his Aeneid and straight to the rectory, where the old priest was reading an American detective novel. When Michael told his father that he was bound for St. Columbanus, it was Da’s turn to rail: an infantile decision, he told his son. Mooning over a country girl was no reason to make a mistake that would ruin the rest of his life.
Michael had never seen him so animated. He had certainly never had so much attention directed his way. But he was resolute. “I have a calling,” Michael said.
“Bollocks,” his father said.
“Am I supposed to stay in Ballyrath the rest of my life? Is that it?”
“You’re giving up the whole world over a rash, stupid decision.”
“The world?” Michael said. “What’s that? Something I only know from my brother’s letters.”