DECEMBER, 1995
There was wrapping paper strewn over the front room of the cottage, and Moira was sitting happily near the fire playing with a rag doll and a chess set. Caitlyn had given Gary a short-sleeved shirt woven from the wool of their sheep. “You don’t exactly seem to need a sweater,” she told him. “So I thought . . .”
“It’s lovely,” he told her, and the way he looked at her made the smile widen on her face. “Here,” he said, handing her a package. “This is for you.”
He set the small box on her lap. Awkwardly, she opened it—her elbows had tightened severely since the onset of winter, and she could barely move them. She stripped away the bow and the paper, and opened the lid. She could feel him watching her.
Inside, in a nest of tissue paper, was a pocket watch. She could hear it ticking. She stared at the watch, shimmering through sudden mist in her eyes. “Where did you get this?” she asked. It was all she dared to say.
“I found it, out in the back shed when I was looking for some tools. I cleaned it up, took it apart. I traded Motormouth down in Church Bay some work on his cycle in exchange for ordering the parts I needed from a repair shop in Dublin. They said it was an expensive watch, an old one. Gold over silver on the casing, and well worth the time and money to fix it. The inscription said ‘To Patrick, Love Shannon.’ I showed it to Moira; she said she’d never seen the watch before, but that you’d told her that Shannon and Patrick were the names of her grandparents. So I thought . . .” He paused. His head cocked inquiringly toward her. “Do I do something wrong?”
Caitlyn tried to shake her head. It moved slowly left, then right. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s . .” She stopped. She still hadn’t touched the watch. She didn’t dare. “It’s a long story.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” He sat cross-legged on the floor in front of her. “Is it your watch?”
Another slow nod. “Aye. Patrick was my da; he drew the black queen and died in ’62; Máthair gave him the watch on their first anniversary. The watch came with us to Rathlin after . . . after the Relocation. Funny, it worked fine in Belfast, but once we got here, it never did. Something broke inside it, I guess, jostled loose.”
“The mainspring,” Gary said. “It snapped. Probably wound too tight, or it had gotten rusty over the years.”
Caitlyn reached down and touched the face of the watch. “I took the watch with me when I left Rathlin, after she died. He . . . Moira’s father, that is-”
“Does this man have a name?”
“Robert,” Caitlyn answered. It had been ten years since she’d spoken that name. It still hurt. The word was an incantation, summoning up all the pain and anger she’d felt, and she could feel muscles pulling uselessly at the smooth expanse of her face. She let out a breath, trying to exhale the poison within the memories. “The watch . . .” Another exhalation. “It was another broken promise in a long string of promises: the promise that he loved me, the promise that he’d stay faithful, the promise he wouldn’t drink, the promise that he wouldn’t hit me, the promise that he’d take care of our child, the promise she wouldn’t have the virus . . .” She stopped, hearing the bitterness rising in her voice and hating the sound of it. “He had an ace, the ability to enchant with song, and when you heard his voice, you couldn’t move or leave and he could twist your emotions about, make you cry or laugh or shout or fall in love. But the talent was wasted on him, lost in the drink, the temper, the skirt-chasing and the ego. He knew what the watch meant to me. I gave it to him, not long after we became lovers. He said ‘Sure, Caitlyn, I’ll be getting it fixed for you.’ I kept asking him about it afterward, for weeks that turned into months, and he’d always tell me that, aye, he’d taken it to the jewelers, but that some part or another was on backorder and that he’d be going to check on it tomorrow . . .”
She laughed, a sound as bitter as her words. “After he left us for his pub floozy, I found the watch when I was packing to come back here. It was in one of his dresser drawers, still in the cardboard box in which I’d given it to him. He’d probably forgotten to take it with him that first time—it wasn’t really important to him, just as I wasn’t really important to him. And rather than tell me the truth, it was easier for him to make up the lies. Maybe he didn’t even remember where the watch was anymore. When I came back here, I couldn’t stand to look at it. It didn’t remind me of my parents anymore; it reminded me of him.” She wrapped the chain of the watch around one finger. She held it up to her ear, listening to the steady metronome of the mechanism inside.
“Thank you,” she said. “Now it will remind me of my parents again.”
She reached toward him; he leaned forward so that her hand touched his cheek, and he pressed it tight between head and shoulder, holding her. “You’re welcome,” he said. She was crying; she could feel the tears rolling hot down her cheeks, and he reached forward and blotted them away with a thumb. “Hey, it wasn’t that much,” he said.
“You can kiss her.” That was Moira, bounding across the room and wrapping her arms around Gary’s neck from behind as he sat in front of the couch. “She’d like that.”
“Do you really think so?” Gary asked her, though his eyes were on Caitlyn. “I wouldn’t want to do anything that you or your mom would regret.”
“Oh, no,” Moira answered. “You can. She likes you.”
“Moira,” Caitlyn said reflexively. Gary was still watching her, his hands on the cushions of the couch on either side of her. She could feel their heat on her legs.
“Well, you do,” Moira answered. “I can tell. I’m not stupid.”
“Moira, I think that the decision to whether or not to kiss should be your mom’s, not mine.” He reached behind and pulled Moira around until she was sitting on his lap. “But I will kiss you,” he told her, and gave her a comically sloppy kiss on the forehead as she squirmed and giggled on his lap.
“She’s asleep?” Gary asked.
“Aye,” Caitlyn said softly. He was standing near the fireplace. She’d placed the watch there on the mantel, where she could see it and hear it ticking. She limped over to stand in front of him. “She says what she thinks, I’m afraid.”
“I never thought that was a bad thing. Keisha, my niece, she’s the same way. Adults should do it more often.” One corner of his mouth lifted. “I’d never make you a promise I wouldn’t keep,” he said. His head leaned down toward hers. His lips were soft fire against the slick ice of her skin, and she opened her mouth to him, the embrace suddenly urgent as his fingers tangled in her hair. His touch was a flame along her breast, a heat between her legs. “I don’t know,” she said, suddenly frightened. “It’s been so long, and my body . . .”
“Hush,” he’d told her. “I’m scared, too. Sometimes, the women I’m with, they say it’s too hot, that they don’t . . . and I . . .”
This time it was her touch that stopped his words. “We’ll go slow. We’ll help each other. We’ll figure out what works. If you want.”
“Caitlyn, the one promise I can’t make to you is that I’ll stay. I need you to understand that before anything happens. I’ll be your friend and lover, I’ll help you with Moira, I’ll never try to deceive you. But if and when they let me go home, I’m gone that same day. If that changes things, then let’s stop now. I don’t want to ever hurt you.”
“That’s not a promise I’d ask you to make,” she told him.
“Then this is what I want,” he answered. “I want it very much.”
MARCH, 1996
“Oh, God . . . Arnie, no, no . . .”
The sudden catch in Gary’s voice made Caitlyn hold her breath. “Yeah, yeah, I understand . . . When did it happen? How? . . . Uhhuh . . . Wasn’t there anything they could do, something . . . ? How’s Serena and Keisha taking this? You called Uncle Carl yet? Is there anything I can do . . . Yeah . . . No, let me see if I can arrange . . . No, not a lot of hope for it . . . I’ll call you back, and Arnie—I love you. Be strong, man . . . Yeah, see ’ya.”
Gary stood there after he put the receiver down, staring vacantly. Moira, reading a book by the fireplace, looked over at him also. “Gary?” Caitlyn asked. “What’s wrong?”
“My mom,” he said. “She died.” He blinked, and tears rolled from his eyes. They steamed and sizzled as they reached his cheeks. “She died and I wasn’t there, and they’re burying her on Saturday, and I’m here. I’m fucking here.”
Moira’s eyes widened at the profanity—Gary was always so careful around her, but he didn’t seem to have noticed. “Oh, Gary . . .” Caitlyn started to rise—slowly, the only way she could—from the chair to go to him, but he waved her away.
“Just . . . just leave me alone. I need to take a walk.” He strode out of the house, then, without looking at either of them, steam wreathing his face.
“Máthair,” Moira said as the sound of the closing door seemed to echo through the room. “You should go with him. He needs you.”
“I walk so slow, Moira,” she protested.
“He needs you,” Moira repeated, but Caitlyn was already rising, moving as quickly as she could to the door, taking her shawl from the peg as she left. The sun was setting in the west, obscured by driving gray clouds, and fine mist dampened Caitlyn’s face. For a moment, she didn’t see Gary, then she caught sight of a dark figure, walking over the rolling hills toward the cliffs. She hurried after him. “Gary!”
He turned. She saw him wave at her, gesturing her back. Then he turned again and continued to walk on. She hesitated, then followed.
He was standing near the edge of the cliffs above Bruce’s Cave, staring out over the water. The sun had set, the edges of the clouds behind them tinted the color of blood, though ahead the sky was unrelenting black and dark gray, streaked with squall lines out over the water. Waves broke a startling phosphorescent white on the rocks far below. He hadn’t turned as she approached, though she knew he had to have heard her. She put her arms around his waist from behind, pulling him into her; it was like embracing a woodstove, but she continued to hold him. “Gary, I’m so sorry . . .”
“Arnie said that she must have had the stroke some time in the morning. He came to check on her when he couldn’t get hold of her on the phone, and found her unconscious. By the time they got her to the hospital, she was in arrest, and they couldn’t bring her back.” He spoke without looking at her; she felt more than heard his voice, her head on his back. “She wasn’t real good about taking her meds. I used to call her every morning just to remind her.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“Maybe not. Or maybe it was.” He turned in her arms. “I’ll never know, will I?” His eyes were narrowed, eyebrows lowering above like thunderheads. He pushed himself away from her. “I won’t be there for the funeral, won’t be able to grieve with the rest of my family. The business I spent most of my life trying to build is gone along with my savings, and what little I had left I’ve spent trying to get out of here. I’ve written or talked to every damn representative, to every paper from the Times to the goddamn Jokertown Cry, and I’m still on Rathlin!” The name was a shout as he flung his arms wide. “This isn’t fucking jail; it’s worse.”
The words cut, lancing deep into Caitlyn’s core. She was crying, unable to stop the tears, cold against her cheeks, salt mingling with the fresh water of the mist. “Gary . . .” She could say nothing, only stand there stricken and numb like the lifeless statue she was inevitably becoming, her arms still spread in the end of the embrace.
He was steaming in the mist, like a living cloud, and she couldn’t tell whether he were also crying or not, his features half-obscured. The droplets hissed on his skin like water spilled on a hot griddle. “I have to get out of here,” he said. “I’ve lost so much, and there’s no way I can ever, ever get it back again . . .” He stopped then, looking at her. “Caitlyn,” Her name was a sob. “Oh God, Caitlyn . . .”
His hands were on his head, his face lifted to the sky. She saw his chest swell in a long, ragged breath, then slowly relax again as he sighed. “It hurts,” he said, simply.
“I know.” Caitlyn took his hand, ignoring the heat. “Gary, I see you in pain and it makes me hurt, too. I wish there was something I could say or do to help. I’m so sorry for your loss, for the way you’re trapped here . . .” She stopped. His fingers pressed hers.
“You’re all that makes it bearable,” he told her. “You, and Moira, too.” His hand cooled; the rain no longer steamed as it touched him. “I never had the chance to tell her goodbye. Now I never will.”
“I know. It’s not fair.”
He nodded. He pulled her to him. For a long time, they stood that way, until the light had left the sky and the hard rain began in earnest.