Dance Lessons: A Novel

4

26 4 The engine grows louder, a revved-up growl, then the fields disappear from underneath the Aer Lingus jet. The plane bumps twice. The head flight attendant announces, “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Ireland. We ask you to remain seated until the plane comes to a complete stop. For those of you traveling on with us to Dublin . . .” Then she repeats the message in Irish. A Cháirde, Failte romhaimh go hÉireann. I’m in Ireland, Ellen announces to herself, staring out the window at the approaching concrete, the low, grey clouds. Just yesterday evening she took a bus to Boston’s Logan Airport. In the departure lounge, she watched the sunlight deepening over the marshes and the town of Nahant across the harbor. While she was dozing in this tiny cramped seat, the world has fast-forwarded to daylight, to morning, morning in Fintan’s country, where people are already standing out of their seats, the overhead luggage compartments snapping open. On the car radio, the drive-time DJ is sending special birthday greetings out to Aisling McIlroy out there in Stillorgan, who, he’s told, from a very reliable little birdie-source, is celebrating the big one today. “Twenty-one today! Wow, Aisling! An’ listen girls, behave yourselves at that party tonight!” Ellen turns the car heater up again. The headlights flash on. Shit. It’s her second time doing that. A car coming in the opposite direction flashes back at her. Damn. She tries another car switch. The night flight has left her feeling chilled and dry-eyed. On the opposite side of the highway, the morning commuter traffic passes in a steady stream. In the cloudy May morning, there’s something Dance Lessons * 27 amusement-park silly about all of it: the cars, the roadside trees, the houses and passing fields. She’s exhausted. Then the highway gives way to a one-lane road and the woman on the car radio is inviting listeners out there to call in after the commercial break. Call with their opinions. About what? Ellen wonders as she speeds along, watching for the green road signs for Galway. * By Galway City she has been driving with the window rolled down all the way. She’s still freezing, but she’s got to stay awake. Everything stands at this strange, televised distance. Even the ocean, a sudden swatch of grey water sitting beyond a housing development. It seems unreal. She drives, shifts gears on automatic pilot. A man on the radio has called in to say yes, their family, his child was a victim of playground bullying. “Absolutely,” the man is saying. “Nearly every day of the week, my son came home telling us about more name-calling, more playground insults.” “But surely you complained about all this to the principal or the board of management?” the radio-woman asks in an inflected, radio-empathy voice. “Well, Marian, my wife and I did set up a meeting with the principal. And she basically told us . . .” Today? Ellen wonders. Should I check into my Gowna hotel, the place I booked via phone two nights ago, just wash up, wake up, and then go find that farm in Knockduff? Find Jo Dowd’s house? “ . . . Marian, we found the best and only approach for the parents of the bullied child, really, in this situation . . .” No. I’ll explore around the village first, get the lay of the land. Play tourist . Will Jo Dowd drive me away? Take a shotgun? A broom? Suddenly, Ellen remembers Viktor’s story. Nine months ago now, and there they were, Viktor and her sitting there on their verandah drinking wine on a warm, fall afternoon. She thinks of those parents and families in desiccated little towns and villages in Guatemala, left with nothing else to do but to beg, to concoct, fill in the blanks of their immigrant children’s lives. So will Jo fall weeping and contrite at my feet, begging for life details of a dead son? 28 * Áine Greaney So what, just what, will she tell Jo Dowd? Or what parts should she tell or leave out? Their fights, their silences, her own poisonous thoughts toward her husband? * She’s stopped at a traffic circle. A roundabout. Here’s Fintan’s voice in her head, telling some story about his days at college in Dublin. So there I was, on me bike coming...