DAWN PAINTS THE sky lavender, and I rise with the strengthening sun. I stand at the open bedroom window, enjoying the soft breeze against my skin, absentmindedly picking up a handful of the painted seashells from the windowsill. I admire the intricate patterns, the careful brushstrokes, knowing I could never create anything as delicate and precise. The initials CF are marked inside several of the shells. The name Cora is painted with a flourish inside the larger ones.
Cora.
The name washes through the walls of this house like an echo I can’t quite catch. On the rare nights she spends here, I’ve heard Harriet call out the name in her sleep. In moments of distraction, she allows the name to creep into our conversation, following it instantly with an abrupt pause. A sudden full stop. Whoever she is, or was, Cora is as present here as she is absent, and as with a loose button on a coat, I can’t stop fiddling and pulling to find out why.
Putting the shells down, I pick up the old postcard from the nightstand, running my fingertips over the painting of Ida and Grace. One and the same. Perhaps it isn’t so unusual for two such similar people to become indistinguishable over time; one blending into the other until history forgets that they were ever two separate individuals.
Dressing quickly, I leave my skirt half-unzipped to accommodate my expanding waist. My stomach is clearly rounded now. Although my bump is still neat enough not to be noticed by those who aren’t looking for it, it is undeniably there, especially in the evenings when I swell up like an overinflated balloon.
I stand in front of the mirror and pull the fabric of my skirt taut, turning sideways to inspect my curious new shape. With a sigh, I let the fabric drop, yawning as I make my way downstairs. The regular performance of the child’s nighttime acrobatics keeps me awake long into the night and my insomnia has seen me reading far more of the lighthouse manual than I’d ever intended. What I don’t now know about the operation of Victorian-era lighthouses probably isn’t worth knowing.
I eat a good breakfast, finishing up just as Harriet returns from the lighthouse. Her eyes narrow as she sees me dressed.
“Are you going out again?” she asks. “Shouldn’t you be resting?”
“I can’t lie in bed like a porcelain doll. Anyway, I’m sure fresh air is far better for me than sitting around, ‘resting.’ I feel grand.” I feel vigorous at times. Far from the confined invalid I’ve watched other expectant women become.
“You’ve an appointment with Doctor Miller at four.”
“I’ll be back in time.”
“Hmm. Make sure you are.” Harriet puffs on her pipe and coughs.
“You shouldn’t smoke so much,” I remark as I take my coat from the hook beside the door. “They say it isn’t good for you.”
She scoffs at me. “They say everything isn’t good for you. Life would be fierce dull if we didn’t have our vices.” She takes a long series of puffs on her pipe before blowing smoke toward me. Her point made, she stands up and flicks on the wireless. “Anyway, stop fussing. You sound just like Cora.”
That name again. The same pause. The same friction in the air.
I have to ask.
“Who is Cora? You mention her quite a lot.”
A breath of wind blows through the open sitting room window, ruffling the sun-faded curtains. Harriet stands still, her expression one of almost physical pain. I bite my lip, and wait for the inevitable rebuke.
“Endless bloody questions,” she snaps, turning her back on me, and on whatever memories I have stirred. “It’s always the same with you.” She fiddles roughly with the radio, filling the room with the hiss of white noise between stations.
“I’m sorry,” I offer. “I just wondered . . .”
“Well don’t.”
Taking the last sip from my coffee cup, I push open the screen door.
“Where’re you going, anyway?” she asks, softening a little as she sinks into her chair. “Surely you’ve seen the whole island by now.”
“We’re going to the lighthouse.”
“By ‘we’ I presume you mean Joseph?”
“Yes.”
Harriet looks at me, as if she wants to say something but changes her mind. “Well. Go on then.”
I leave by the back door and head down to the jetty at the end of the boardwalk where Joseph is already preparing his little sailing boat.
He smiles as I approach. “You came, then!”
“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Woman’s prerogative, isn’t it? To change her mind?”
“Well, it isn’t mine. Anyway, I’ve been looking forward to it.”
He beams from ear to ear. “Me too.” He bends down to lift a basket into the boat. “You look pretty,” he adds, without looking up. “Blue suits you.”
I say thank you and turn to face the sea to hide my idiotic grin, glad to have changed out of the green I’d put on first this morning.
Hearing my voice, Captain bounds across the jetty, nearly knocking me over as she jumps up at me. I push her down, afraid she might hurt the baby, or that Joseph will notice the rounding of my stomach. I catch myself doing this now: worrying about the baby, thinking about the baby, imagining what the baby will look like. However much I might pretend not to care, the fact is that I’m constantly aware of the life I’m carrying, and feel increasingly responsible for it. When I make these emotional connections, the reality of it all terrifies me.
After unfurling the sail we step into the boat, Captain jumping in with us, and Joseph sets a direct course around the bay. The wind and the tide are generous and the boat glides easily over the water. I close my eyes, enjoying the sensation of freedom, smiling to myself as I remember clinging so pathetically to the railings on the California with Mrs. O’Driscoll at my side. I wonder how she’s getting on on Long Island. I often think about her and the piece of paper with her address and the word written beneath. Courage.
“So, how are you enjoying America so far?” Joseph asks.
I pull my sunglasses on and lean back, stretching my arms along the edge of the boat. “It’s very nice. The people are friendly.”
“Your folks must be missing you?”
“Not so much. We had a disagreement before I left.”
“Sorry to hear that. But absence makes the heart grow fonder, as they say.”
“That’s assuming you have a heart in the first place. My mother? I’m not so sure.”
“That bad, huh?” He adjusts the sail, making a complicated maneuver look easy.
I sigh. “That bad.”
I WAITED FOR Valentine’s Day to tell her, foolishly hoping that a day of love would soften the blow. I should have known better.
For the briefest moment after I said the words I’d agonized over for weeks, I thought I saw a flash of concern in her eyes, but the only thing my mother was worried about was the family’s reputation. Her face crumpled into a picture of disgust and disbelief. I’ll never forget it.
“Don’t be absurd, Matilda!” Smoke wound from the tip of her Mayfair cigarette, the ash curling and dying like the dregs of our already dysfunctional relationship. “How in God’s name can you be pregnant?”
“Do you really need me to tell you?” My contempt for her was palpable.
I sat on the end of my bed, stiff as a tailor’s mannequin, as she walked toward me. Would she hug me? Would she tell me it would all be grand and we would muddle through together? Dropping her gloves onto the dressing table, she walked past me to the window, standing with her back to me, arms folded across her lemon twin set. Beyond the window, the distinctive outline of Cork harbor. In the windowsill, my cherished collection of seashells.
“Who is it?” she asked.
“Who is what?”
“The undesirable monster who got you into this mess.”
“Does it matter?”
Whipping around, she glared at me. “Of course it matters. Your father will want to know who took advantage of his daughter.”
“But nobody took advantage of me, Mother. I quite enjoyed it actually.” I knew I had gone too far. I deserved the slap to my cheek.
“This might all be amusing to you now, Matilda, but your life is ruined. Our life is ruined. What were you thinking? Clearly not about the family’s reputation. Clearly not thinking about anyone but yourself. As usual.” Her hands trembled with rage. “I’ll talk to Sister Murphy in the morning. See what we can do to make arrangements.”
She rifled through my wardrobe, pulling out something for me to wear for that evening’s party before picking up her gloves and tugging them on with brisk purposeful movements.
“Get dressed and do something nice with your hair. Make yourself presentable before your father gets home. He’s very busy at the moment with elections coming up. He could well do without these . . . distractions.”
A distraction. That’s what I was. In many ways, I’d always felt like an inconvenient intrusion in my mother’s life. Her reaction to my pregnancy, the way she so easily condemned and disowned me when I needed her help, underlined everything I’d felt since I was a little girl making up stories about the people in my locket. Even then, when I didn’t have the words to express my emotions, I felt like an unwelcome guest in my own home.
How apt then that it was arranged for me and my little problem to be sent away, discarded as easily as a piece of unwanted furniture.
“PENNY FOR THEM?”
Joseph’s voice stirs me from my daydreaming. “Sorry. I was miles away.”
“Back in Ireland?”
I nod.
“Anything I can do to help? A problem shared and all that?”
I look into his eyes, the color of faded-denim and full of such kindness. “I wish it were that simple.”
“Then make it that simple. Nothing’s ever as complicated as it seems when we keep it to ourselves.”
I smile, despite the secret that weighs heavily on my mind and in my heart.
Dear Joseph. He makes every problem seem like nothing more difficult than a fly to be swatted away. I wish I could find the courage to tell him, but the words dissolve on my tongue and we travel the rest of the way to the lighthouse in silence.
AT THE BASE of Rose Island, Joseph moors the boat. The shells crunch satisfyingly beneath our shoes as we walk up the little path. It reminds me of walks on Ballycotton beach with my father and I think that perhaps all my childhood wasn’t bad.
While Joseph attends to some tasks at the lighthouse, I set myself up with a chair and my box of paints and start to sketch the view, carefully observing the way the light plays on the water in the bay. The scent of the pink beach roses beside me is heavenly. Captain settles at my feet. Joseph sings Nat King Cole through an open window. For a few blissful hours, it is like I have always been here, safe beside the protective walls of the lighthouse, and nothing else matters.
The hours slip away as I paint. I doze for a while, warmed by the sun, my thoughts turning over everything that has happened since I arrived in America. I think about Harriet, so broad shouldered and tall, and how she shrank into herself like a hermit crab when I asked her about Cora, scurrying off to be alone somewhere where people don’t pry or ask questions. It plays on my mind all morning, tugging at me like a persistent child pulling at its mother’s skirt.
As Joseph shucks fresh oysters from the bay for lunch, my curiosity finally gets the better of me.
“Can I ask you something, Joseph?”
He looks up at me, pushing the hair from his eyes. “Sure. Fire away.”
I hesitate for a moment, knowing that if I prize this secret from him, I might not like the truth. “Who is Cora?”
His hands still for a moment before he puts down the oyster and knife. He wipes his hands slowly on a rag hanging from his belt and sits down cross-legged on the blanket.
He looks directly at me. “Why do you ask?” His voice lacks its usual bright buoyancy.
“Harriet has mentioned the name a few times but she wouldn’t answer me when I asked her who Cora is.” I wait for a moment. “She calls out for her sometimes in the night, and there are some painted seashells in my bedroom with Cora’s name on them.” Joseph casts his eyes down at the blanket. It is clear that he is wrestling with his emotions, but I can’t stop prodding and poking. “She’s clearly someone important. So, who is she?”
Eventually, he lets out a long sigh. “Cora was Harriet’s daughter.” He picks up another oyster from the plate before looking up at me. “And I’d hoped she might become my wife.”