Learning to Swim (21 page)

“I know them,” I said cryptically.

“Then you know that they were adopted?”

“Yes,” I said defensively. Though, in all honesty, I hadn’t considered that Aidan was adopted, as well.
Of course
. He was the spitting image of Rory. “Why is this relevant?”

“Seamus arranged it all,” Mr. Hall explained. “He knew the girl that gave birth to both of the boys. She couldn’t raise them herself. First the older lad. She couldn’t raise him herself and the O’Briens adopted him. Then it happened again, and the O’Briens took the younger one, too. Poor, unfortunate girl or naïve, dumb girl, nobody could agree. It was a time of great scandal for the city.”

“I still don’t see how this is relevant,” I said, getting a bit annoyed.

“Do you know, people talked, as people do, and many came up with some very outlandish conjectures. People wondered why Seamus cared so much, about this baby born of some unknown girl. When it happened a second time, during a period where times were even harder with his marriage, well, many people said that it must be—it
had
to be—his child. Why else would he care so much?”

I laughed outright. Rather loudly. “Are you trying to say that people thought Mr. O’Leary cheated on his wife and fathered Rory and Aidan with some girl?”

“It’s not as crazy a tale as you’re making it sound. It was quite strange, Seamus caring so much about an unknown girl’s illegitimate children. And his own marriage so full of tragedy. Not having any of his own children to raise. And Lia being so depressed in those days. It was considered a natural progression that he should find love elsewhere.”

“
Natural
?” I demanded with disgust.

“Well. One can at least see how it was thought that perhaps Seamus was the father of those boys.”

But, but Mr. O’Leary would have been …
old
when Rory and Aidan were born. But of course I knew it was still
possible
, biologically speaking. And I wasn’t about to bring up the topic of aging sexuality with Mr. Hall. So instead, I asked, “If Seamus was their father, then why would he not raise them himself?”

Mr. Hall was silent.

“If they were his own kids, why would he just dish them out to the most willing neighbor and never say anything about it?”

Again, the man was silent.

I realized with a jolt that I was actually buying the logic of this theory. A cold began crawling up my back. Was the boy who was helping Mrs. O’Leary every day actually the son of her unfaithful husband’s lover? Was the husband Mrs. O’Leary still yearned for, still waited for, actually a cheating jerk?

“You were his best friend!” I shouted. “Don’t you know whether it’s true or not?”

“Friendship has its limits.”

I couldn’t tell if he was talking about his friendship with Seamus or the beating I was giving our flimsy acquaintance. But I was nowhere near done.

“What happened to Seamus?” I asked.

“He disappeared.”

“I know that.”

Mr. Hall looked at me sharply. I stared right back. The way he had of implying things about Mrs. O’Leary, things I didn’t like, made me courageous. I could stand up against this man. For her.

“He was alone,” Mr. Hall finally said. “He used to go out to fish alone. One day he never came back.”

I remembered what Rory had said once, about what the townspeople thought. “Was it suicide?”

Mr. Hall appraised my face, apparently impressed that I’d done my homework. “I don’t think so.”

“Did they find his body?”

“It’s not every day that fishing accidents yield tangible evidence.” He paused. “You experienced a rare exception to that rule.”

My face reddened. A giant merman reared up in my mind, swinging a giant, iron cage around his head. The cage held the souls of Jen Johnson’s brother and Seamus O’Leary, and now Mrs. O’Leary was in there, too. Nothing made sense to me anymore.

I rubbed my throbbing head and raked through my confused thoughts for another question to settle this mess. But my mother returned then.

“I think we need more mirrors,” she announced, oblivious to the sea of emotions in the room.

I excused myself as politely as I could muster and ran upstairs, as if the faster I ran, the farther I could get from the heartache I was feeling for a young Lia O’Leary.

Stoirm Mhór

A Great Storm

Though it felt like ages, in reality it was only a few days after the party at the resort that I ran into Owen again. I had started the morning at Mrs. O’Leary’s and, unable to find her or Rory, I began to wander back down the beach. I had been left with too much to think about by my conversation with Mr. Hall. All along I’d thought Mrs. O’Leary was the crazy one—but was it possible that Mr. Hall was actually the one losing his marbles? Could Rory actually be the son of Mr. O’Leary? And moreover, could Mrs. O’Leary
know
? Surely Rory didn’t know. I just knew in my heart that he would have told me had he known. It felt wrong for me, an outsider, to be holding all this knowledge—or conjecture—that Rory didn’t seem to know. I carried the blue pail, full of shells, but my mind was a million miles away in an Oyster Beach that existed decades ago.

“You coming out with us tonight?”

I was startled out of my reverie and looked up to find Owen standing a few feet away, having just come down from the boardwalk.

After collecting my wits, I shook my head.

“So you’re still angry?”

The bimbo and the Huston kid stood awkwardly behind Owen up on the boardwalk, and some boys I didn’t know waited impatiently behind them.

“Cora, come on, there’s only a handful of days left,” Owen said. “There’s no point spending them being angry.”

“I think I’ll spend them doing what I like, thank you,” I said curtly.

He rolled his eyes. “We both know you’re going to get over it in like two days.”

My mouth was open to protest, but Benjamin did it for me.

“Jesus, Owen, why do you care? If she’s going to be frigid, forget about her.”

I was seething but too full of potent anger to form any real words.

“Dude, come on!” one of the strange boys on the boardwalk called. Benjamin grinned at me and moved off after the other boys. Owen watched him go.

“Whatever,” he finally said. “Let me know when you get over it.” And he stalked off after them.

The bimbo stood awkwardly, drifting off toward the boys, but her eyes were on me and they looked sympathetic. I wanted to shout something mean to her, to make her run off after them and stop staring at me, but my brain was still addled with anger.

To my utter astonishment she stopped. And then with one look thrown over her shoulder, she came toward me. “I don’t know if it means anything to you, but I think they’re assholes,” she said.

I was stunned. “Thanks?” I said, unsure of the sincerity of the claim.

“Especially Benjamin,” she said quietly. That was certainly a heavy accusation coming from his formerly simpering number-one fan.

“I thought you liked him,” I said lamely.

She shrugged. “I guess I didn’t really know he was a jerk.” It was an answer too simple for my taste, but for the present moment it would have to do. Neither of us were exactly great conversationalists.

“Well thanks for letting me know,” I said.

“And Owen’s not too bad,” she added.

I snorted. The last thing I wanted was a defense of Owen Carlton.

“I mean it,” she said. “He just gets caught up with those guys, and, I don’t know, everybody gets caught up in it sometimes.”

I don’t
, I wanted to say, but I bit my tongue.

“I think he means well.”

“We can agree to disagree,” I said diplomatically.

“I think you’re cooler than any of them.” She said it as though it was the highest of compliments. I knew it was intended to be.

“Thanks,” I mumbled. I didn’t mention that I didn’t care what my “cool” factor was anymore.

There was an awkward silence. She finally asked what I was doing, indicating the blue bucket.

“Collecting shells,” I replied.

“Can I help?”

“Don’t you have to catch up with them?” I nodded toward the group in the distance that seemed to be making its way toward Main Street.

She watched them for a second and then shook her head. “I think I might qualify as frigid, too.” Her face broke into a smile, and I couldn’t help but return it.

That afternoon I learned more about her than I had all summer. She asked a lot of questions about my family, and so I asked a lot about hers. I felt uncomfortable at first, divulging my stories to someone so obviously at the inner ring of that world I was completely consumed with hating at the present moment. But before long I had forgotten that she lived north of the Pink Palace and when we parted on the boardwalk at dinnertime, I was in a legitimately good mood.

I looked over my shoulder and watched her pad softly down the boardwalk, flip-flops in her hand.

“Louisa?” I called. She turned around. “Thanks,” I said.

She smiled and waved and continued on her way.

When I went inside, my parents were in the kitchen, which was odd in itself. My mom preferred to eat in the dining room, and Dad didn’t normally stand around chatting while she fixed dinner. But they seemed to have been in the middle of a pressing conversation when I walked in.

Mom was dicing tomatoes rather sloppily, and Princess sat at her feet waiting for a misguided chunk to hit the floor.

Dad looked up from the dining room doorway when I walked in. He pulled his hands from his pockets and crossed them over his chest.

“Cora, will you sit down a minute?”

My blood immediately grew hot, indignant already at whatever outrageous conversation was about to befall me. But I sat obediently. The kitchen table was cold and clean, rarely used. The chair was chilly and unfamiliar, and the ceiling fan whirred softly, methodically. Except for a cursory glance at my entrance, Mom’s eyes were trained on the tomatoes.

“What’s for dinner?” I tried.

“Cora, we need to talk about this year,” Dad said. “We’ve been letting it go, but it’s gone on long enough. The simple fact is that I’m not telling my acquaintances that my lovely daughter is a college dropout. George Arnold—”

“Well, you won’t have to, because one has to start college to drop out.”

“Cora, you’re acting like an idiot.”

Mom stopped chopping but remained silent. Dad remained perfectly still in the doorway, not moving, nothing but his jaw and the angry vein in his neck working furiously.

“I talked to George Arnold today—”

“Dad, I’m not—”

“What
exactly
do you envision yourself doing this year?” he shouted. Princess watched him, ears alert, head cocked in confusion. He normally deferred rule of the house to my mother. Yelling was reserved for very serious occasions. I had learned to avoid these as I was growing up. But at the present moment, I was glad he was yelling. I wanted him to yell so that I could yell right back.

“You know what I want to do!” I said shrilly. “I want to travel, I want to see the world! We have the money to do it, what is
wrong
with you? Other people would die for the chance,
die
for the chance to travel like I could! We have the money,
you
have the money! I would work; I would pay you back! You have the means to give me that chance and you won’t! You should be thankful we have that chance!”

“You’re talking like a spoiled brat,” Dad said.

“I
am
a spoiled brat!” I shrieked. It had never sounded so true. “You’ve given me everything, except what I actually want! You don’t even understand what I want—you never have. I want to take a year off because I don’t know what in the hell I want to do with my life! I don’t want to major in something as ridiculous and boring as
business management
so that I can hate my life for the remainder of my years after graduation!”

It was out in the open now.

“It’s a major, Cora, it doesn’t determine the rest of your life,” Mom said softly.

“Oh, you’re
exactly
the person I want to be hearing advice from!” I yelled. It was mean and it was low, but I was feeling too strong to stop myself. “
Please
, let me follow in your footsteps! I so need to learn the art of finding someone eager enough to run a
shoe company
that he will
condescend
to marry me!” Neither of them stopped me. I don’t know why neither of them stopped me. “That way, I won’t have to stick to my B.S. in business management, which I never intended to actually use, and I can spend the rest of my days organizing parties for old women who have seen so little of the world that they’re content to sit and talk about their husbands and their children and businesses they know nothing about so long as they’re plastered by four p.m.!”