I also heard a lot from him about Aidan’s brother, Rory. About the number of people he employed. His head office in Dublin. How much he’d contributed to the Irish economy. His big house. His big car. His success with women. “He’s a catch—I’ll give you that. The one who finally snares him will be one lucky woman. But she’ll have to be pretty special.” I didn’t hear Mr. O’Hanlon ask Aidan anything about his studies or work.
Aidan seemed different there. He was quieter. Distracted. We slept in separate rooms. I reached for his hand once as we sat watching the TV news with his parents and he moved away. We had our first moment of tension that night as we walked down to the local pub.
“Aidan, is something wrong?”
“No.”
“Do you want to break up?”
“Of course not.”
“Are you ashamed of me?”
“Never.”
I stopped walking. “Aidan, please, what is it? It’s like you’re a different person here.”
“I know,” he said, after a few moments. “That’s why I left.”
I felt him relax as soon as we got in the car to drive to Dublin Airport. By the time we boarded our flight he was the Aidan I knew once again. He held my hand the whole way. I was happy, but I was also confused. It wasn’t that I expected everyone to play Happy Families. God knows my own background was complicated enough. Back in London, I asked more questions and got some answers.
“Why didn’t your brother come down on the weekend to see you too?”
“He was busy, I guess. He’s very successful. You might have gathered that from my father.”
“I’d like to meet your brother,” I said.
“No, you wouldn’t,” Aidan answered.
Three weeks later, Aidan mentioned his brother was going to be in London for a work trip. At my insistence, the three of us had dinner together. Rory chose the venue, a Michelin-starred restaurant in Knightsbridge.
“I’ll pay tonight,” he said almost as soon as we walked in. “I know you student types. You’re always skint.”
He was the opposite of Aidan in every way. Well-groomed, dressed in expensive clothes. Loud, his accent a kind of affected American twang compared to Aidan’s soft Irish accent. Confident. Sexist. Dismissive. Opinionated. His father’s son in every way. I tried my best to be friendly but after his fifth joke about Australians, the fourth time he talked over me, and the third time he spoke to the waitress’s chest rather than her face, I gave up. When Rory suggested he and Aidan “party on”—“You can work out the Tube home for yourself, Ella, can’t you?”—I was grateful and relieved when Aidan said no, that we both had to work early in the morning.
“Work!” Rory laughed. “Is that what you call it?”
“Arrivederci!”
he said, too loudly, as we said good-bye in front of the restaurant. “That’s Italian, isn’t it?”
“Was he like that when you were growing up?” I asked as Aidan and I walked to the Tube station.
“Worse.”
But he was still Mr. O’Hanlon’s favorite son. I’d seen that when I was in the house. It wasn’t said, but the intimation was there. Rory’s got a proper job. You just spend your time speaking foreign languages. His mother loved Aidan; I’d seen that. But she was overshadowed by her husband. I imagined most people were.
“I’m sorry, Ella,” Aidan said out of the blue later that night. We were in bed. The lamps were off, the light coming in through the curtain soft, the noise of the traffic a steady, comforting hum.
“What for?”
“My brother. My father. What I was like when we were in Ireland. I’m sorry my family isn’t one of those warm, welcoming, musical, storytelling Irish ones you were probably expecting.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. “Aidan, I’m sorry my mother couldn’t stop flirting with you. I’m sorry my stepfather only wanted to discuss German tenses. I’m sorry my half sister kept up a one-woman show. I’m especially sorry you didn’t get to meet Charlie. He’s the only normal one. That’s why he lives thousands of kilometers from us all.”
He turned over in the bed so he was facing me. He sounded so vulnerable, his voice quiet in the darkness. “I had to get away, Ella. Not from my mother. From my brother, my father. They’ve always been like that. Life’s about money, opinions, prestige, possessions, status. I don’t care about any of those things. Rory thinks it’s hilarious to call me the eternal student; Dad just thinks I’m a waster, that studying for studying’s sake is pointless, that I should come home, cap in hand, and beg Rory for a job. He said I should ask him if I can work at his company’s airport desk, that at least my languages would be useful there, all the foreign tourists—”
It was the most he’d ever talked about his family. Afterward, I told him the truth. I said it didn’t matter to me at all what his father and brother were like. That I loved the fact languages were his life’s work. That I loved him, I wanted to marry him, live with him, spend the rest of my life with him, not with his brother or his parents. I curled in around him and kissed him and told him we’d just have to make our own family, a great big family. We’d have a dozen kids, maybe more, and we would be the most perfect, well-balanced, un-messed-up family in the whole world.
I heard a soft laugh, felt a kiss against the top of my head. “Ah, now, Ella. We don’t want to bring up a tribe of goody-two-shoes kids who never put a foot wrong, do we?”
“They won’t be goody-goodies. Our children will be perfect and we’ll be the perfect parents.”
“Of course we will. The ideal parents.”
“With ideal children. They’ll be delightful, quirky, intelligent, well behaved—”
“Grow up speaking ten languages each—”
“They’ll spell before they can walk—”
“We’ll never argue in their presence—”
“Never,” I agreed. “We’ll stay together, devoted to each other, until we are both one hundred—”
“Our children and our children’s many friends will love us for our independent spirit and our open-house policy—”
“They’ll come to us with any problems, secure in the knowledge our advice will be helpful, heartfelt and hands-off.”
“We’ll embrace their partners, their choice of occupations, their lifestyles, their hairstyles and their fashion styles,” he said.
“We’ll be babysitters on demand but we’ll never once be a burden or source of guilt,” I added.
“We will conveniently die on the same day to save them any excess trouble and expense.”
“Having won the lottery when they are all in their thirties, we’ll also have ensured they are secure for life but only once they’re settled in their respective careers and with down-to-earth values.”
We would be everything our parents hadn’t been, we agreed. Of course we would. And then we had kissed and made love and then we had slept. And from that night, that whispered conversation became the secret blueprint for our life together.
We’d had so many plans. So many hopes and dreams. We’d been joking that night, but not completely. That was what we had wanted. Our own big family. Our chance to reverse what had happened to us. We wanted to give our children a happy, secure home. Encouragement. Love. Constant love.
We’d already made a start on our big plan with Felix. We loved being parents so much that we’d been trying for a second child. We couldn’t wait to give him a little brother or sister. We’d been trying for a baby the same month that he died. The same month that everything changed.
The same month our marriage ended.
Standing there in Lucas’s kitchen, I shivered. It wasn’t cold, but I felt like I was surrounded by ghosts.
I thought of Aidan going back to Ireland for the first time since Felix died. Of his mother being in hospital, being sick, and Aidan going to visit her. I tried to imagine Aidan with his father. Would Mr. O’Hanlon have been sympathetic about Felix? Would his brother have made the trip from Dublin to see him? Or would it have been left to his mother to say all that Aidan needed to hear from his family?
I suddenly remembered something. I’d convinced myself that I’d had no contact with them since it happened. But I had. I’d spoken to Mrs. O’Hanlon the morning I left Aidan.
I’d been in our Canberra apartment. My suitcases were at my feet. I had just finished writing my farewell note to Aidan when the phone rang. I wouldn’t have answered but I’d thought it might be Charlie. He usually rang around that time. But it was Mrs. O’Hanlon.
It was the first time she and I had spoken since it happened. Aidan had rung her the day after Felix died. He called from our bedroom. I was in the living room, with Mum and the priest, or perhaps it was the funeral director. Aidan had asked me if I wanted to speak to his mother, but I wasn’t able to.
She had never met Felix. We’d sent her photographs and promised to bring him over to Ireland when he was a bit older, and she had sent cards and presents on his first birthday. But I wasn’t able to talk to her that day. I could barely speak to my own mother.
Since my first visit to Ireland, I’d met Mrs. O’Hanlon again just twice. She’d come to London with a friend to see a musical and we had met for afternoon tea. It had been stilted but nice. Her friend did most of the talking. Aidan and I had also flown back to Ireland for a final weekend before we moved to Australia. Rory had been there that weekend too. It had mostly been about him.
We’d invited the three of them to Canberra for our wedding, of course, but Mr. O’Hanlon didn’t like air travel and Mrs. O’Hanlon didn’t want to leave him on his own. Rory accepted. “Someone has to fly the flag for Ireland!” he e-mailed. He sent a stream of e-mail in the weeks beforehand, asking us to book him into the best hotel, asking for the names of the top car-rental companies in Australia, telling us he was going to use the trip as a tax write-off. The week beforehand, he canceled, citing work pressures. “No recession in my business!” he e-mailed. He sent a dozen bottles of Moët & Chandon champagne as an apology.
After Felix was born, Mrs. O’Hanlon and I had more contact. Aidan and I phoned her once a month or more. Aidan would do most of the talking and then I would have a few minutes speaking to her too. We talked about what Felix was up to developmentally, anything funny he had done, but mostly we seemed to talk about the weather in Canberra compared to the weather in Carlow. Perhaps if she had met Felix, if she and I had spent more time together in person, we would have had more to talk about, but we never got beyond pleasantries. One of us invariably made the remark that it was a shame we couldn’t swap some of that Irish rain for some of our Australian sunshine. We’d laugh, as if we had just thought of the idea, and then I would put Aidan back on.
The O’Hanlons sent flowers to Felix’s funeral. A huge bouquet, with a card from the three of them.
Our prayers are with you.
Mrs. O’Hanlon had also had a mass said for Felix in their local church. I heard that from Aidan. She had phoned several times, but I still hadn’t spoken to her myself.
Until that morning when I was leaving. After an awkward minute of weather conversation we both fell silent. It was as if neither of us could bear to mention Felix first. As the quiet stretched out, I realized I wanted to tell her the truth.
Mrs. O’Hanlon, I’m leaving Aidan today. I have to. We’re destroying each other. I’m so sorry.
I imagined trying to explain to her why. How there wasn’t enough room in this small apartment for all our pain, for the guilt, the blame, how our sadness was pressing against the walls, how his tears, my tears, were like poison, that we couldn’t console each other, couldn’t even begin to console each other, when all we could feel ourselves was such sadness, such—
I took the coward’s way out. I said nothing. I pretended someone was at the door. I said good-bye, telling her in a strangely bright voice that I’d be sure to tell Aidan she’d rung. As if it was a normal day, we were a normal couple, that we did normal things like tell each other about missed phone calls.
But I didn’t tell him. I’d already written my farewell note. How could I add a P.S. now?
Your mother rang. Please call her back.
I left with one suitcase. I took some clothes, some books, my share of photos of Felix, and that was all. I knew I had to keep moving, I couldn’t carry much with me. And in the first days and weeks afterward, whenever I would wake in the middle of the night, I would tell myself it wasn’t because I’d left Aidan that I felt so bad. I somehow managed to convince myself that the reason I was feeling so guilty was because I hadn’t told him his mother had rung.
Dear Felix,
So many things happen that I wish I could show you. Not just normal things, like dogs and cats and cars and trains. I’d have shown you all of those things, but I’d also have taken you to galleries. Museums. Even really boring ones, with steam engines and old cars, if that’s what you’d have liked. Today I was out walking and I saw a little boy about your age, on a kind of a tricycle thing with a long stick attached. His mother was pushing it along, so she was doing all the work, but the little boy either didn’t know that or didn’t care. He was smiling so widely, with such a look of triumph as though he was Evel Knievel, a stuntman, a daredevil, not a little boy being pushed along a city street on a plastic bike by his mother. And I realized in his head he was that stuntman. You could see it in his eyes, in his expression, in his smile.
And I had to forget my walk and go home and I cried like I haven’t cried since the early days. It’s not going to get better, is it? I thought it might, that time would eventually help me, help us all, but now, today, I am frightened that it won’t. Because there will always be a hole your exact size in our lives, and we can never fill it because you are not here anymore.
I miss you so much, Felix. I loved you so much and I miss you so much every single day.
From: Charlie Baum
To: undisclosed recipients
Subject: It’s Been a Noisy Week in Boston
The latest report from the Baum trenches is postponed. All troops are down with stomach bugs. Trust me, you DON’T want the details.
Normal transmission will resume as soon as possible.
In the meantime, stay sane. We’re staying close to the bathroom.
Charlie xx
From: Charlie Baum
To: Jessica Baum
Subject: re: I’m in LONDON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
London!! Wow. Big news indeed. Excuse this hasty one, down with a stomach bug here, will write again properly soon as have recovered. Give Buckingham Palace a pat from me.
Love Charlie xx
From: Charlie Baum
To: Lucas Fox
Subject: unexpected development
L, Jess is in London. I don’t know all the details, why or for how long. Just got one line from her, mostly squeals. Have e-mailed Dad for more info. It’s a big city. I hope it won’t affect us. I’ll let you know if I hear any more. C
From: Charlie Baum
To: Lucas Fox
Subject: re: unexpected development
You’ll recognize her. Small, lots of hair, singing, dancing. We might need to move faster on the A question. If E knows she’s here, she might take off again.
From: Charlie Baum
To: Lucas Fox
Subject: Update on J
Spoke to Dad. Jess in London funded by him. She’s wanted to go for years, auditions, West End etc., long as I can remember in fact. Dad & M gave in, felt she was in need of change of scene. Many ups and downs recently. More downs. Understandable. They’ve given her credit card, hotel etc., to find her feet, but expect her back within a month or two. Hotel is in Covent Garden. Dad says she has been very fragile, but they hope this will give her a lift. I’ve e-mailed her again but no word back yet.
From: Charlie Baum
To: Lucas Fox
Subject: re: Update on J
No, don’t think she has your address. More asap.