Our Homesick Songs Read online

  Not because of me, because of the fish.

  The fish you caught.

  But they’re gone now, said Finn.

  Boats or fish? said Mrs. Callaghan.

  Both, said Finn. Sat like he was, in the rocking chair, Finn’s accordion pressed back into his chest and made each heartbeat hurt.

  •  •  •

  They went back downstairs, took their accordions off and put them away. Snaps and straps and bellows and buckles.

  Lesson at the same time next week? asked Finn. He took his sweater down off the guest hook. The arms were inside out. They always were. He reached down each sleeve and pulled them normal.

  Come half an hour earlier, said Mrs. Callaghan. The sun is setting earlier.

  OK, said Finn. He reached up for his coat next. Sleeves backward, the same.

  But wait, said Mrs. Callaghan. You can’t go yet.

  I can’t?

  No, said Mrs. Callaghan. You can’t. Before you go, I think I need to tell you about St. Patrick and the snakes.

  You do? asked Finn. Now?

  Yes, said Mrs. Callaghan. It would seem that now, right now, I do.

  Finn had one sleeve of his coat on already. He pulled it back off, inside out.

  Sit down, said Mrs. Callaghan.

  OK, said Finn.

  He walked over and sat on the sofa with his coat in a big ball on his lap. Mrs. Callaghan sat down next to him. They faced forward, toward the fire.

  OK, said Mrs. Callaghan. She took a deep breath. Once upon a time in Ireland there were a lot of snakes. Loads and loads of them. So many snakes.

  Poisonous?

  Oh yes. And also nonpoisonous. Some squeezers, too. All kinds. All the snakes. People would want to make a cake and open up the flour jar and there’d be a powder-white snake inside, hissing clouds of flour, or they’d want to go to a dance and would get out their dancing shoes and find small green coils of snake inside each one, with smaller, greener coils at the tips, one where each toe should go. They’d reach out for their husbands or wives in the night, in their beds, and would find a thick black sleeping snake between them. It got so that you couldn’t walk in the streets, couldn’t open your door for all the snakes. And, the whole time, there was a steady hissing sound that grew, in the background at first, and then louder and louder every day, though nobody could tell on which day, exactly, it went from quiet to medium or from medium to loud.

  And then, one night, Patrick, who was older than you, but not by much, maybe eight years, this Patrick, who up until then wasn’t doing much of anything but trying and finding it impossible to sleep, every night more and more, from the hissing and from the dream he had night after night of a pale gray snake wrapping itself around and around his arms and legs and neck, a dream he was half-sure wasn’t a dream at all, one night, when he was just too too tired, heavy with it, near-dead with it, one night he made his way to the center of the central Irish town, right in the very middle of the country, stepping over and between and through snakes, to the central square, where, pulling himself up onto the announcement platform, he cupped his hands around his mouth, as was custom there, to amplify your announcing, and announced: SINCE NO ONE ELSE IS DOING ANYTHING ABOUT IT, I’M GONNA GET RID OF THESE SNAKES MYSELF, DAMMIT!

  And then he did?

  He did.

  How?

  LISTEN! he announced. ALL YOU SNAKES, LISTEN NOW! But, because snakes don’t have ears, they didn’t understand him and just kept slithering and coiling and hissing and squeezing. And this made Patrick pretty angry, because it’s rude not to listen when someone’s addressing you directly, even more so if they’re announcing, and, anyway, he was probably drunk, so, in his anger, he stomped his feet on the platform as hard as he could, making a quite-loud low banging sound.

  Now. Snakes don’t have ears, and can’t hear words and things like we can and like Patrick had hoped, but they can feel vibrations, and they hear like that, instead, like the way your ribs feel it when you play your low C chord on the accordion. So, when Patrick stomped on the platform, it vibrated out through the wood like through the body of a cello and made a long and low vibration that the snakes could hear, clear as can be. Clear and terrifying. Like something horribly huge must be coming. So all the snakes around the courtyard startled out of their holes and cracks and boots and doorways and cupboards and bread boxes and trouser legs and began slithering away from the platform and the noise as fast as they could. Patrick saw this and stomped again, and more snakes even further off heard and slithered away. By this point people who lived nearby had come out to hear what the announcement and big noise were for and saw what was going on and got up on the platform with Patrick and all jumped together, scaring more of the snakes, who kept moving away from the noise in the center of the central town in giant waves, then more people came and jumped, and more and more, scaring the snakes out and away like the ripples from a rock tossed in water, out and away, out and away until, finally, in great groups slithering over and around and across each other in fear, the snakes hit the shore and, terrified, plunged into the water, some of them sliding in across rock beaches, some of them careening off high white cliffs. This went on until, just as day was breaking on the morning after Patrick had first arrived at the platform, the very last snake, a small yellow boot-snake who was blind in one eye, slid across the hot flat surface of a gray beach stone into the cool water, at which point they were all gone. All the snakes in Ireland, gone. At which point everyone sat down on the platform, exhausted, their legs shaking from a whole night of stomping. Because they were so tired, no one talked, they all just listened and heard, for the first time in years, in whole lifetimes for some of them, silence. No hissing at all. Nothing.

  How do you know this?

  I was there.

  You were?

  Oh yes. That’s why I left.

  Because of the snakes?

  Because the snakes were gone. And I wasn’t the only one. Lots of us did. Many people, most people, were glad the snakes were gone, and stayed and went about their business as before, but some people, a good number of people, really, we couldn’t stand the quiet. The new quiet without the snakes. So we all set off in boats. So we followed them.

  And?

  And?

  And what happened to them?

  The snakes?

  Yes, the snakes. Did they all die? Drown?

  Oh no, no, snakes can swim just fine. They swam and swam and swam away from the island, away from Ireland, they swam for miles and miles and weeks and weeks, making their way west, across the ocean. And, because they were swimming for so long and so far, little by little they became less like snakes and more like fish, growing fins so they could go faster and gills so they wouldn’t have to keep coming up for air. The salt water drew the colors out of their skin until they were almost the same shining silver as the water itself. They swam and swam in silver swarms until they reached the coasts of Newfoundland. But by that point, they had turned completely to fish, and couldn’t climb back up onto the land again. So they stayed there, in the water, in our water. Hundreds of thousands of hundreds of them.

  And you all landed here with them?

  We did.

  It must have been so beautiful.

  It was.

  But they’re gone now.

  The people or the fish?

  Both, said Finn.

  Mostly gone, said Mrs. Callaghan.

  Mostly gone, said Finn. He waited, but Mrs. Callaghan didn’t say anything more.

  It is very important, said Aidan. It is very, very important that you keep up your music, and that’s all we’re saying about that.

  Yes, said Martha, over the phone, from far away. It is important.

  Cora took fiddle lessons with Aunt Molly. She had started when she was three, on a small oatmeal box with strings drawn on in pencil. Finn had started accordion when he was four, on an old repurposed fire-bellows painted red and green like Christmas.

  But Dad, is
it more important than new shoes? asked Cora. Is it? Really?

  It is, said their father.

  It is, said their mother, over the phone.

  Don’t you like your fiddle? asked Finn.

  A fiddle sells for a hundred dollars, said Cora.

  Who do you know who has a hundred dollars? asked Finn.

  To your room, said their father.

  Me?

  No, just Cora. You can go back to your boat, your fishing.

  It makes no sense, you know it doesn’t . . . Cora’s voice got smaller as she walked upstairs, away.

  Hello? said their mother, from the other end of the phone, forgotten over the edge of a kitchen chair’s arm. Hello-hello? Just footsteps and kitchen noise. She stayed on the line anyway, stayed long enough to hear the long, slow violin notes slipping from Cora’s room down the stairs, across the water, and across the country to her. A lament or an air. Made up. Cora never played the tunes Molly gave her. Martha stayed on the line right up until her lunch break was over and it was time to tie her hair back up under her hard yellow hat and go back to work.

  •  •  •

  Martha didn’t go right away; she didn’t put the phone down right away. She stood, with the hat proven safe to eight hundred and fifty pounds of impact, to minus thirty degrees of cold, on her head and the phone still in one hand. She watched the flashing amber light of a reversing excavator, on-off-on, its rhythm almost biological, on-off-on, almost comforting.

  Your hand is clenched, said the boy. He was twenty-five, maybe. Blond. Fairer than her son. He’d come to use the lunchroom phone, once she was done. This was the first time Martha had seen him there, waiting. It always is, he said. Whenever you’re not using it for work. I, I’ve noticed.

  Oh? said Martha.

  Yes, said the boy. And that can’t be good. The tension. Up from there to your wrist. From wrist to shoulder, from shoulder to neck, to head . . .

  Really? said Martha. She looked down. Her left hand, the one with the ring, without the phone, in a tight fist. A hard, safe ball. Oh, she said.

  Yep, said the boy. Something to look out for. Worth mentioning. Anyway, I’m John.

  The lunchroom was really just a trailer. Walls and floor cheaper than the plastic in kids’ toys. Something heavy drove by and for a minute it was too loud to talk. Then,

  I’m Martha.

  From out east?

  Yes. You?

  From here.

  Here? I didn’t think anyone was from here.

  I am.

  Huh . . . it’s nice.

  No it’s not. But it was. It has been nice. What time you on dinner break, Martha?

  Eight p.m.

  I’m eight fifteen. Maybe I’ll see you then.

  Maybe. His hair like honey in the sun that strained through greasy Perspex windows.

  (1972)

  Something shifted.

  Something changed.

  Something with the nets or the water or the wind. Before, often, the nets would come up bursting silver-green, more fish than the boats could hold, so many fish that they’d carelessly throw small or strange ones to the shore cats when they pulled in. But this year something shifted, something changed. Some nets started coming up only three-quarters, only half-full. Once Jim Darcy pulled up a net with nothing in it at all but itself. There are good years and bad years, Aidan told his mother. This year is not the worst, it’s just not the best, either.

  Of course, she said. She was tying up a pudding bag, lowering it into their deepest pot.

  But I really don’t think it’s anything we should worry about, he said.

  No, no, she said, as the bag broke the stew’s surface and released a cloud of steam around them.

  His voice was lower now, more like his father’s than he was comfortable with, but he still sang. Still chose the Solitary Confinement boat whenever he could.

  •  •  •

  She’s like the swallow

  He sang to keep himself company,

  That flies on high

  and to distract himself from thoughts of Sophie McKinley

  She’s like the sunshine

  and others like her

  on the lee shore

  and of what might happen

  I love my love but

  if his net came up empty.

  My love is no more

  (1992)

  Hey, Finn, said Cora, before bed, after looking for lights.

  Yeah?

  Are you going out fishing tomorrow?

  Yeah.

  Come with me first. I want to show you something.

  Tomorrow morning?

  Yeah, tomorrow morning. Come with me first.

  •  •  •

  Like at the Ryans’, they climbed through the front window of the other neighbors’ instead of using the door. This time they had no choice, as the front door was locked and they had no key. They won’t mind, said Cora. They were nice. And anyway, they’re gone now.

  This time everything was blue and red and white and gray. Union Jacks on the walls, a beautiful big clock tower taller than Finn all the way up the side of the fireplace.

  That’s Big Ben, said Cora.

  A gray-stone castle wrapped around the hall to the stairs.

  And that’s Edinburgh Castle. Technically, it’s in Scotland, not England, but they’re close. That’s why it’s in the hall, and a red phone-box facade on the door leading to the kitchen, so that it looked like you’d be going into that instead of into the kitchen. The couch was done up to look like a double-decker bus, also red.

  Is this all library pages? asked Finn. Cut from the books?

  No, said Cora, not enough there, else there’d be no books left. Perry McNeil, who used to do the day care, left stacks of construction paper, still new, still in plastic. And there was some old wallpaper here, so I used that. And ferry timetable leaflets, loads of those. I figure paper’s one of the fastest things to break down, ecologically, so it’s OK to use it. It won’t last anyway.

  I guess, said Finn. OK.

  She led Finn into the phone-box kitchen. All the teacups were out of the storage unit and were laid out, along with the teapot and sugar bowl and cream pitcher, all out on the table. Beside each cup was a small, triangular sandwich.

  You want some tea? said Cora.

  Sure, said Finn. Thanks. And then, It’s not as hot this time.

  Nope, England has a very similar climate to here.

  Neat.

  So that part was easy, this time.

  It’s still really good.

  Thanks.

  And then it was November and Finn’s mother came home and his father left. More people left with him, saying, We’ll be back, we’ll be back. Leaving trucks and cars and curtains and boxes of cereal. We’ll be back, they said, walking onto the ferry with just suitcases and plane tickets, with just backpacks and heavy boots. The wind pushing their voices west, away.

  There were twenty-two empty houses in Big Running now and six full ones, including Finn’s. Three-quarters full, said Cora. Ours is just three-quarters. As the winter pulled up and over them she moved through each, one at a time, some for weeks and some just for a couple days. China! Texas! The Philippines! South Africa! Italy! Finland! Egypt! and so on.

  Using her telescope and lists, Mrs. Callaghan helped Finn draw a map of them, of all of the Big Running houses, with color coding for which were empty and which weren’t. Finn drew little flags beside each of the ones Cora had been in. You should really come see, he said to Mrs. Callaghan. Some of them are really good; she’s really good. Finland has a sauna in the bathroom, even.

  Sounds super, said Mrs. Callaghan.

  They both knew she’d never actually go. What happens when you leave the place you love, she said, is you immediately grow old and die.

  So Finn just told her about them all and they used the telescope and worked on the map and on “The Ballad of the Newfoundland Black Bear” and some of the other son
gs too.

  And then it was December and his father came home and his mother left.

  And Finn still went out fishing whenever it wasn’t too cold or too windy to hold the rod, carefully pushing his boat out around the ice chunks, breaking them up with the paddle if they encroached while he sat there, hoping the banging wouldn’t scare away swimming things underneath, whispering, Please, please, please.

  (1974)

  Martha’s oldest sister, Minnie, got married. To Robert Keane, whose family had the best-producing potato trenches in Big Running. He was a little bit soft in the face and round in the body, but Minnie liked that. He’s warm, she explained, when she told her sisters she’d be marrying and then going to live with him. I never feel cold with him.

  The morning she left, the morning after a sleepless night of ceilidh and brandy cake and shoes thrown off and some lost altogether, Minnie gave each sister a heavy, rectangular package. They’re all the same pattern, but different colors, she said. I’ve got one too. The quilts inside had a mosaic of diamond shapes slotting into more diamond shapes. They were made from all the clothes they had grown out of.

  As Meredith unfolded hers to show them all, Martha noticed, for the first time, a large purple bruise on the inside of her arm, just above the elbow. Meredith saw her looking and closed her arm up again.

  •  •  •

  Because Minnie had been the oldest and because she had almost always been working inside, in the main room, even when the others were out in the garden or onshore or on-boat, the house developed a kind of hollowness once she left. Not as acute as when their parents had drowned, but a subtle, low, long ache instead. It was nothing too dramatic, nothing that got in the way of their lives carrying on.

  And then Meredith came down with a cold that turned to flu. She slept in their parents’ old room now, and Martha and Molly brought her shallow bowls of golden broth and braced themselves for when the virus would hit them too. But this time, neither Martha nor Molly fell ill and Meredith didn’t get any better. The bruise Martha had seen before, on her arm, spread up and across Meredith’s shoulder and chest and neck. The tissues in her dustbin crumpled red like carnations. She was leaving more and more of her broth uneaten in the bowl, where it would skin over and grow cold.