THE TWO MONTHS I’ve been in Newport could as easily be two years, such is the difference I feel in my heart and see in the swollen lump my once petite body has become. I no longer balk at the smell of the kelp, or comment on how quickly the fogs roll in and out of the harbor. I barely notice the low moan of the fog horn that disturbed my sleep during my first weeks here and I cycle past the grand summer cottages on Ocean Drive as if they were a row of shops in Ballycotton. The extraordinary has become ordinary and Newport no longer feels like somewhere I’m visiting. It feels like home.
As the weeks pass, it becomes obvious that I can no longer conceal my bump. I spend more time at Rose Island, glad to be away from the scornful gaze of Harriet’s nosy neighbors. I prefer to spend my days alone at the lighthouse, sorting through the hotchpotch history of light keepers in the old tea chest, reading and sketching, or walking on the quiet beaches. I can relax there in the comfort of loose-fitting cotton housedresses, and leave my swollen feet bare while Harriet tinkers with some old mechanism or other, unable to shake her nostalgia for the way things used to be.
The only problem is Joseph. Whenever he’s around, I sit at the table, or curl up in a chair with a well-placed cushion. So far, I’ve managed not to draw attention to my expanding waistline, and whether he has noticed or not, he has been diplomatic enough not to say anything.
With time on my hands, I’ve thought a lot about Cora since discovering who she was. Her absence drifts through the rooms of the lighthouse and the house on Cherry Street, sitting like a shadow beside Harriet, walking beside me so that I sometimes expect to see another set of footprints in the sand. Harriet doesn’t know Joseph has told me, but discovering that her daughter tragically drowned only a few years ago has softened Harriet to me. I think about the first day I arrived here, how she stood in the doorway all hard-edged and unwelcoming. Now, I see her differently. I can understand her short temper and her reluctance to open up. What I’d seen as Harriet being snappy and reclusive, I now see as her being vulnerable and heart-broken. A mother grieving for her daughter.
I look at the painted shells in my bedroom, the borrowed dress I’d worn on my first day here, the seashell frames and work boxes scattered about the place, knowing now that they belonged to a much-loved daughter.
“Cora was Harriet’s world,” Joseph had explained after telling me who she was. “I never saw a mother and daughter so close.”
The pain of his own loss was evident when he talked about her, but when I apologized for stirring difficult memories he said it was a relief to talk about her again.
“Harriet can’t bear to talk about her,” he explained, “and I hate to feel as though we’ve forgotten her.” He told me how they’d been childhood friends, but as they grew up he’d started to see her differently. “Cora said I was like the brother she never had. I foolishly hoped she would look at me differently one day.”
“Why foolishly?”
He looked a little bashful before replying. “She was too good for someone like me. Too smart. Too pretty. Too eager to see the world. She’d have gone off traveling anyway if . . . Well. I guess we’ll never know what she might have done.”
The more Joseph talked about her, the more real Cora had become until I imagined her sitting beside us, listening to our conversation, laughing at his memories of her, a little shy to hear how fondly he spoke about her.
“The worst thing for Harriet is that there wasn’t a body to bury,” he explained.
“She was never found?”
Joseph shook his head. “She was carried out to sea in a riptide. Harriet tortures herself, imagining Cora is still out there, crying for help. She still looks for her. I don’t think she’ll ever get over it.”
“And you?”
“I’ve made my peace. Said my goodbyes. What else can I do?”
Like a balm on a wound, Joseph has a wonderful ability to soothe the most difficult situations. No wonder I enjoy his company after so many years of rampant hysteria from my mother. But there’s something else. Joseph doesn’t have an agenda. In a way that nobody else ever has, Joseph really listens to me.
Which is why, in the end, I tell him.
IT’S ANOTHER WARM day and my cheeks are damp with perspiration by the time I reach the horseshoe-shaped beach near the boat landing. I spread out my cardigan on the sand and sit for a while, thinking about my past and imagining my future, idly drawing circles in the sand with my bare toes. I’ve come to love this peaceful little beach. I imagine this is my private island where nobody will ever find me if I don’t want them to.
With the gentle lapping of the waves and the warm breeze, I lie back and relax. Here, I can make sense of things. I can think.
Breathe.
Sleep.
The familiar wet nuzzling of Captain’s nose wakes me with a start.
I open my eyes, scrambling to sit up, forgetting that I have to roll onto one side now, unable to maneuver myself as easily as I used to. I throw my headscarf over my stomach as I awkwardly right myself. “Joseph! I didn’t think you were coming over today. Harriet said . . .”
He stands awkwardly in front of me as I sit self-consciously on my knees, both of us waiting for the other to acknowledge what is now very obvious.
I tell him he’d better sit down.
“It’s okay. You don’t have to . . .”
“Please, Joseph. I owe you an explanation.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” he says, flopping down onto the sand and pushing his hair from his eyes. “But if you need to talk, I’m all ears.” He wiggles his ears with his fingertips. “Might not be my most attractive feature, but they sure make me a great listener.”
It’s so typical of Joseph to make this easy for me, to peel away the awkwardness and the fumbling explanations. I’m so grateful that I burst into tears.
Through my tears and apologies, I open up like a clam and tell him everything: about my fraught relationship with my mother, about my lonely childhood, about my sense of never fitting in, about my misguided flirtations with a British soldier, about being sent to America in disgrace. He doesn’t question or judge, just listens patiently as he rubs my back and tells me it’s all going to be fine.
When I’ve blurted it all out he passes me a handkerchief.
I wipe my tears and blow my nose. “How do you do that?” I ask.
“Do what?”
“Always know what to say, and when to produce handkerchiefs and adorable dogs.”
He smiles. “I guess that’s what friends do.”
I explain my mother’s plan for me to give the child up to the adoption agencies before I go back to Ireland.
“Seems like your mother has it all figured out,” he says, leaning back on the sand and propping himself up on his elbows.
“She likes to think so.” I wipe away fresh tears, knotting the handkerchief between my fingers.
“And what about you? What’s your plan? What do you want, Matilda?”
“Honestly?”
“Honestly.”
I hesitate, summoning the courage to be honest with him, and with myself. “When I first found out I was pregnant, I wanted nothing to do with the child. I couldn’t even think about it as a child, let alone mine. The whole thing terrified me. Now though . . .” I place my hands tentatively on my stomach.
“You feel differently?”
I nod, almost ashamed to admit to the emotional connection I’ve felt to the child recently. “It doesn’t make any sense though.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know the first thing about raising a child. I’m only nineteen. I should be thinking about the rest of my life, not settling down and playing mammy. Besides, the thought of being someone’s mother? All that responsibility? It scares me.”
Joseph takes a long sip from his soda. “My mom had me when she was only eighteen and she’s the best mom in the world. You might surprise yourself, Matilda. Mom always says the things that frighten us the most are the things that make us who we are.”
I think of Mrs. O’Driscoll. “Someone else once said something like that to me.”
“Then maybe it’s time you started to listen.”
He jumps to his feet and holds his hands out to me. I hesitate before grasping them and let him pull me awkwardly to my feet. We stand for a moment, holding hands, the glare of the sun silhouetting this kind understanding young man in front of me.
“Thank you for telling me,” he says. “That took some guts.”
I let out a long sigh as six months of tension lifts from my shoulders. “Thank you for listening.”
“We’re all allowed to make mistakes. It’s what we do next that’s the true test of character. And for what it’s worth, I think you’d be a terrific mom.”
He wraps his arms around me in a big bear hug and for a few perfect moments I stop worrying and wondering and let myself be a young woman, wrapped in a friend’s arms, the sea lapping gently at my toes. For the first time since leaving Ireland, I don’t feel afraid.
We head back to the lighthouse for lunch, after which I take a nap. When I wake, the sun is low in the sky. Before I head downstairs, I lift a conch shell from the windowsill, pressing it to my ear as I remember my grandfather telling me all the world’s seas and oceans were kept inside. I’d laughed, imagining it to be another of his tricks like the coins he pulled from my ear, and yet there it was, held inside the creamy white shell: the unmistakable rush of the ocean. It was the most magical thing I’d ever known.
I listen to the sound now, breathing in time to the rush of the waves. Standing in this peaceful room, a path of sunlight stretching across the ocean beyond the window, a sense of calm washes over me as I consider my options. I can either accept my mother’s plan to give the child up for adoption and go back to Ireland like a good girl, or defy her and raise the child alone, here in America.
What I have, who I am, and who I will become may be far from perfect, but as I rest my hand on my stomach I finally trust myself to find the courage to do the right thing, whatever that might be.
DUSK, AND I sit at the window of my bedroom at Cherry Street, watching the sweep of the light across the water as a fog rolls in, understanding now how the lamp turns, the detailed mechanisms that keep it turning and flashing. And I understand more about the people who have lived here. I understand that a deep pain lingers in the walls, passing between me and Harriet like light through glass. I feel it as clearly as the sand between my toes. A source of friction, rooted in some other place, but carried here, disturbed now by others who walk these rooms.
Harriet remarks on my excursions with Joseph over dinner. “Joseph Kinsella may be a fine thing and a pleasant distraction, but you can’t ignore the child forever.”
I rest my fork on my plate and take a sip of iced tea. “What do you mean?”
She rolls her eyes. “You know very well what I mean. I see what you’re doing. Carrying on as normal. Having fun with your new friend. Ignoring the fact that you’re six months pregnant.”
I know she is testing me again. Provoking and prodding as she likes to do. “He’s a good friend,” I say. “And I have to do something to pass the time.”
“Fair enough, and I can’t say I blame you. But the fact remains that we have to start making plans. For the birth.”
I tell her I don’t want to talk about it and take my plate into the kitchen, but I know she’s right. I pour myself a glass of water and take long thoughtful sips.
Harriet leaves me for a moment before standing quietly in the kitchen doorway where she watches me and waits for me to acknowledge her.
“What?” I snap, turning to look at her.
And for the first time since I knocked on the screen door that May morning, Harriet Flaherty smiles. Properly smiles, and I see real compassion in her face. “You’re not the first woman to be afraid of giving birth, you know. But being afraid won’t make it go away.”
I think of Mrs. O’Driscoll’s lovely turf-scented hug on the ship and I so desperately want this to be the moment that Harriet wraps me in a warm embrace of her own and tells me it will all be okay, but I stand rigid beside the kitchen sink because I’m afraid that if I admit to my fears, I will drown in them.
“I’m not afraid,” I say, and wish I sounded more convincing. “I’m tired and I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
I march upstairs to the cold little bedroom and lie on the bed, staring numbly at my swollen belly, watching my skin ripple and bend as the child dances impatiently on. I turn onto my side, my gaze settling on the old postcard of Ida and Grace. I think about their acts of courage and selflessness, and how, were it not for Grace putting her own life at risk, I most probably wouldn’t be here at all. I think about Sarah losing her two children, and yet here I am, a spoiled selfish girl, regretful of the perfectly healthy, vigorous child I carry.
I cradle my stomach protectively with my hands and close my eyes, and in the rose-tinted light of a perfect sunset I allow myself to admit to my greatest fear of all. Not of giving birth, but of having to give up my determined resilient child for someone else to raise. It is that which scares me most of all.
Finally I realize that to raise my child alone isn’t something to fear, but to embrace with the same courage shown by those who came before me: my great-great-granny, Grace Darling, Harriet, even. I take the locket from my neck and read the words on the back: Even the brave were once afraid. And in a quiet moment in a small house in Newport, Rhode Island, I let the fears of a young Irish woman turn to courage, and I know what I will do.