Her Name Is Rose Page 17

  And grace will lead me home.

  He blew a sigh and got out of the car.

  The Barrett house was a Colonial Revival with black shutters sitting on a well-manicured front lawn with a two-car garage on an acre of land. To the left, an old red maple rose from the center of a bed of pachysandra. To the right, an old-fashioned rose bed. Simple and elegant and impressive. The front inner door was open and he could see into a foyer through a screen door. A mound of shoes—a pair each of loafers, boots, and running shoes—were piled inside to the left at the base of a stairway.

  Rowan knocked on the wooden frame and waited.

  A man accompanied by a black Labrador came to the door. He was wearing a Yankees baseball cap and khaki shorts and a black T-shirt. “Who have we here, Bullet?” the man said, looking down to the dog and scratching its head. “Hey, fella?” He turned back to Rowan. “Friend or foe?” He didn’t open the screen door.

  “Hello, Mr. Barrett.”

  As Mr. Barrett studied the stranger standing at his front door, his face transitioned from friendly curiosity to vexation. It only took a few seconds. “What do you want?” Bullet’s back stiffened and his tail heightened as he responded to the tone of his owner’s voice.

  “It’s been a long time—” Rowan said.

  “Seventeen years and a few months. And not long enough.”

  “I have to speak with you … please.”

  “Whatever it is, I’m not interested.” Bullet’s mouth curled and he growled. Jack Barrett was about the same age as Rowan’s father, late sixties. He stood squarely in the doorway.

  “It’s important.”

  “Jack? Jack? What is it?” A tall woman with graying hair tied up in an elegant bun appeared behind Jack. Marjorie Barrett was carrying small pruning scissors and wore one gardening glove.

  “Please, Mrs. Barrett, Jack … I have to know if.… Did Hilary…?”

  “Blake!” Jack Barrett raised his voice. “You—”

  “Jack,” Mrs. Barrett said gently, putting her hand on his arm. “Don’t. Please.” She stepped in front of him. “I’m sorry, Rowan. It’s been a long time.” Mrs. Barrett went to open the screen door. “I know why you’re here.”

  “Is it true? Did Hilary? Did she? Did she have a baby?” The words lurched up from Rowan’s gut.

  Mr. Barrett stayed his wife’s hand on the door handle and stared at Rowan a moment, his lips quivering, and then he stomped off, leaving his wife with her head down, staring at the floor, then she, too, turned and walked deep into her home.

  If there had been a chair or bench Rowan would have collapsed onto it. Instead his head sunk and he clasped his hands over his head. His shoulders heaved up and down and he sobbed. The energy rising in him, like a tornado, was so intense he had to move so as not to fall. He went around in a small circle on the graveled path to regain his balance.

  Inside the house Bullet was barking.

  Because he had to do something, because his world was spinning out of control, Rowan grabbed a fistful of gravel and threw it across the lawn. Pathetic. He bent over with his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath, looking down at the circle of pachysandra around the red maple. He wanted to yank it out.

  Then the front door of the house opened. Mrs. Barrett came toward Rowan with slow steps. In her brown eyes he saw Hilary. He backed away as she advanced.

  “I’m sorry,” he said and let go of the last of the sharp gravel in his hand.

  She extended her hand to him. “I hoped one day you would come. I didn’t know how or why or when. But I’d hoped you would because I wanted you to know. The birth of a child is a miracle. No matter what. It’s a sign that the world goes on, with or without us, it goes on. And you are a part of that.” She put her hand on the side of his face and left it there a moment.

  Rowan pulled awkwardly on the flagged path. “Why didn’t she tell me? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “It was too late. There was nothing you, or we, could have done by the time we learned about the baby. It’s the way Hilary wanted it. I’m so sorry. It was a mistake … not to tell you.” Marjorie’s eyes teared as she watched him take this in, watched as his thoughts crisscrossed his face, reconstructing the past as if he were adding and subtracting all the permutations and reconciling the past with the present.

  “No. I’m sorry. The mistake was mine. I should never have broken it off. Fact is, Mrs. Barrett, there hasn’t been anyone like Hilary in my life … since.”

  “Here,” she said. “We found this after … after … here…” The words choked her throat. She handed Rowan a neatly folded piece of notepaper. It was inside a sealed plastic bag. “Hilary meant for you to have this. It tells you everything.”

  Thirteen

  When Pierce arrived at the White Horse Tavern in Chappaqua it was empty except for Rowan. He was sitting near the front window, staring at the piece of paper in his hands. He folded it when his brother approached. Pierce came over quickly, sat down opposite. They stayed like that a few moments, Pierce watching Rowan, and Rowan watching three small boys sitting on a bench across the street. They were horsing around and laughing.

  “What’s happened?” Pierce said.

  The bartender, a young woman in shorts and a polo shirt, came to the table.

  “I’ll have another,” Rowan said. And to his brother, “You want something?”

  His brother looked at Rowan’s empty glass, then to the bartender, and said, “No. No, thanks. I’m fine. Maybe water.” Then to Rowan, he said, “Buddy? It’s early for that. Let’s wait till we’re back at Mother’s.” The woman shrugged and went away.

  Rowan didn’t get angry. He might have, but he didn’t. Something was happening to him. He wasn’t sure what. He said, “Allow me to quote the proverbial words of the great Irishman Edmund Burke,” he said, “I may be turning over a new leaf.”

  “What?”

  “It’s a Coke. I’m drinking Coke.”

  “Good. That’s good.” Pierce paused. “Sorry.” And then, as if unable to remain patient any longer, Pierce shifted in his chair and made to get up. Half sitting, half standing, he said, somewhat exasperated, “Are you going to tell me what happened?”

  “Yes. Sit down.”

  “Will I need a drink for this?”

  The bartender laid the Coke in front of Rowan and raised her eyes. When she was out of earshot, Pierce said, “Okay, tell me.”

  Rowan recounted the entire incident. The barking dog, Jack Barrett, the red maple, the American flag, Marjorie Barrett, and the letter. He showed the letter, but didn’t give it to him. “Hilary had written this but she never sent it. Her parents found it among her things.”

  “Oh, Jesus. It’s addressed to you.”

  Rowan looked again out the window where a woman, about the age of their mother, was tying the shoes of one of the little boys. “Yes, it’s addressed to me.”

  After a time he turned back. “She did have a baby. A girl.”

  Pierce might have prepared for something like this, but the look on his face showed his shock and his hand rose instinctively to cover his brother’s outstretched hand.

  “Jack blames me for Hilary’s death.”

  “So they kept it from you? And…” Pierce paused briefly. “I’m so sorry, Ro. But it’s…” He looked at Rowan. “It’s kind of…” He didn’t say more but surveyed his brother’s face to calculate how he was taking this. Rowan was oddly calm. There was a sense of determination about him that hadn’t surfaced for a long time. He’d spent too many years ignoring the insidious way alcohol had crept, like a slowly growing fungus, into his life. He had fooled himself, but all the time there was a part of him that understood if only he could … if only he could kill the rot, his life would be better.

  “I’m going to Ireland.”

  * * *

  The next afternoon, Pierce drove Rowan to JFK for an evening flight to Dublin. Rowan had phoned his office to say he was taking a week’s vacation. It was last minute but h
e’d be contactable by cell phone.

  “I wish I could go with you. Here,” Pierce said. “Mother gave me this to give to you. Put it in your suitcase.”

  “What is it?”

  “Don’t ask.” Pierce rolled his eyes. “Just scatter them somewhere.”

  Rowan registered with a similar rolling-eyed expression. He understood. Burdy’s ashes.

  The only tickets left to Dublin that night were in business, but Rowan didn’t want to wait a couple of days for a cheaper fare. When he’d settled in and was offered complimentary champagne, he chose orange juice instead. One day at a time, he thought.

  Rowan had never been to Ireland. Burdy had always meant to take him on a golf trip and to show him the statue in St. Stephen’s Green of his great-great-great-grand uncle, the Irish patriot, Robert Emmet. But it never happened. Why was that? Rowan had been too busy. That’s why. It was his own fault. Another lost opportunity. The road to regret is paved with inaction. When he stopped long enough to think about it his regrets were many. After it had ended with Hilary there had been other women but nothing amounted to anything lasting or meaningful. He couldn’t say why, really. He regretted that he hadn’t tried harder. He regretted, too, that he hadn’t spent enough time with his mother. For too long all his regrets had been absolved by alcohol.

  Burdy had warned him that it was in his genes, this alcoholic inheritance, and there was only one way to beat it. “I’ll only say this one time because I know you will find your way. You don’t have to hit bottom with this thing. It’s an elevator going down, you can get off any floor you want.”

  In his pocket, he fingered the Irish coin with the harp and the hare, the threepenny piece, Burdy’s lucky golf ball marker.

  * * *

  Seven o’clock in the morning, steady rain falling, a Turkish taxi driver dropped him at the Merrion hotel in Dublin’s city center. Emerging from the car, Rowan tilted back his head and let the rain fall on his face. He looked around at the pale gray granite columns and gated entrance of a large, lead-domed building across the wide street. Government buildings, the taxi driver told him. Even though the driver was a foreigner he pointed out all the cultural sights. Croke Park. The Custom House. The Liffey. The Bank of Ireland. Trinity College.

  “Good morning, good morning. May I take your luggage, sir?” An elderly porter in top hat and tails said. He’d been standing, waiting at the hotel’s discreet front door.

  Rowan wasn’t normally a guest at hotels with porters in top hats but he’d chosen this one because it was around the corner from the offices of the Adoption Board. His credit card would take another hit. “No, I can carry it. Thanks.” He looked up and down the street but didn’t move.

  “Will I get you an umbrella, sir?”

  “Is Merrion Square that way?” Rowan nodded to the right.

  “Yes. Right there, sir. And the National Gallery is just across the street. But it’s not open yet. Are you sure you’re not wanting me to take your bag, sir?”

  “No. Thanks. I’ll check in now.” Rowan followed the porter into the front room of the hotel, where a tall, blond receptionist named Sabine checked him in and a few minutes later a young man with a middle-European accent showed him into a garden-view suite. (Thus far the only Irish person he’d actually encountered in Ireland was the old porter, whose brogue was strong, maybe by way of compensation.)

  “We have upgraded you sir,” said the young man. “May I show you the room’s amenities?”

  By the time he was shown into the marble-floored bathroom, Rowan said, “Thanks. I think I can manage from here,” and handed him a five-euro note.

  In a tangled mixture of grief, shock, and a jet-lagged trance then, he looked down at the enclosed garden, the reflecting pool, clipped boxwood hedging, the blooming campanula and white calla lilies and a very old magnolia tree. He wished in a way he’d said yes to his mother’s offer to accompany him. But it was too soon after Burdy. He was grateful Pierce was able to stay and attend to her as well as to Burdy’s estate.

  Rowan leaned against the window frame and looked down at the order of the garden, and in his mind he laid out the distorted architecture of what he now knew: Hilary had had a baby, a girl, and placed her for adoption. In Ireland. He was now in the category known as a “natural” parent. He had learned on the Adoption Board’s Web site that he could officially sign up as such, the natural father, with the “National Adoption Contact Preference Register.” In one fell swoop he was a father, if only in the literal sense of the word. He had called the Adoption Board and explained that he was arriving in Dublin from New York the next day and needed an appointment. Urgently.

  * * *

  After a brief nap, mainly to clear his head of jet lag, Rowan accepted an umbrella offered by the gentleman porter and walked out, turning left outside the hotel, into a cloudburst. A few yards farther, he turned right onto Baggot Street. Place names suddenly jumped out at him as he passed along: O’Donaghue’s, Doheny and Nesbitt, Toners. Names on a postcard Hilary had sent him after arriving in Dublin to attend Trinity College. She’d been doing the pub crawl with the other American exchange students, she’d written and invited him to come visit. It panged his heart to think about it now.

  Rowan hadn’t told Hilary before she left for Ireland that their relationship was over.

  Nor had he told her straight off when she came home for Christmas, even though he had several occasions to. They’d gone out a couple of times. Muscoot’s, the White Horse, once to Nino’s. He hadn’t told her it was over until just before she returned to Ireland after the holiday. He’d met someone else. He was sorry. It was just the way it was. He wasn’t ready to get married. They were parked outside her house, the car running. Snow covered the lawns and white lights decorated the bare tree outside the Barretts’ house, he remembered. She got out of the car without a word. Midway up the path, she turned and came back. She opened the door and dropped the engagement ring on the seat and walked the path to her parents’ house.

  Remembering now the look on her face, Rowan felt sick. There was something about the way she reacted. He’d been too indifferent to consider how deeply it might affect her.

  Along the north side of St. Stephen’s Green he passed the Shelbourne Hotel, crossed the street, and walked along the outside railings of the great square, which, the porter had told him, was once the oldest urban space in the world. Opposite the top of Grafton Street, Rowan continued along the edge of the green and within a few yards pulled up short. There, posed as if in midspeech, stood the tall, thin statue of Robert Emmet, arms free at his sides, one palm open and turned toward the sky. Rowan was struck by the likeness to his grandfather. It was in the nose.

  Rowan walked around the green and back past the hotel. The old porter waved a white-gloved hand as Rowan passed. When he reached the address on Merrion Square just before two in the afternoon the rain had eased. He stared at the blue door, its glass fanlight reflecting a bit of sky and marshmallow cloud and a little green from the trees in the gated park across the street. People passed as he waded in a pool of uncertainty, anxiety, and immense regret. He drew in a long, deep breath, like a swimmer on the starting block. He sucked and held his breath and, in one long whoosh, let it out: Whoosh.

  Inside, a tall, thin woman in a black cardigan sat at a desk. She was on the phone and motioned with her hand for him to wait. His breath quickened.

  She soon hung up and stood. “Mr. Blake, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Rowan put out his hand.

  “Sonia McGowan,” she said, taking it lightly. “Come, this way. Please.” She started walking and Rowan followed. “You’re just arrived from New York? You must be tired.” Without waiting for him to answer, or looking back, she continued. “How was your flight?”

  She led him through an open door into a small room with a corner window that looked out onto a gray wall, and indicated an old armchair. Rowan sat and the woman took the seat opposite. There was a small table between them with a box of
tissues, a pen, and a clipboard holding paper. The linoleum floor was so polished his shoes squeaked when he shifted position to recross his legs.

  “How can I help you?” she said.

  Rowan thought she sighed before reaching for the clipboard. He didn’t think he could begin.

  “Go on, please.”

  “Well…” He ran his fingers through his hair. He looked around the room a moment. “I think I’ve just become a father.”

  She didn’t say anything right away but a minor smile softened her face. It was brief. “Tell me whatever you know. You’ve requested a meeting with the Adoption Board, presumably because there’s some connection to us—”

  Rowan interrupted and spoke quickly, “I found out two days ago that a young woman I was dating over twenty years ago had a baby, and she gave her baby…” He paused, searching for the right words. He didn’t want to say them.

  “She placed her baby for adoption?”

  “Yes.” Rowan nodded. “That’s right. I believe.” He sat back in his seat and let out a long, soundless whistle. He put his hands on his knees and clasped them and shifted his weight forward.

  “I see,” Sonia McGowan said, “and just to be clear, Mr. Blake, you’re questioning whether the baby was adopted here? In Ireland?” She was writing on the form held by the clipboard.

  “I’m not suggesting it, Ms. McGowan. I know it to be true. I have a letter from her, the baby’s mother, telling me that she did.” He reached into his pocket and withdrew an envelope and eased the letter carefully from it. He looked once more before handing it over. It was folded in four and well creased.

  She read it.

  Dear Ro,

  A year ago I had a baby. A girl. She was born in Dublin. I gave her up for adoption a couple of weeks after I gave birth. She was placed with a very loving couple in the west of the country a few weeks later. I’ve had confirmation from a social worker at the agency that an adoption order has been granted to her new parents. So now it’s legal. That’s why I’m writing.

  Our daughter is now someone else’s. I met them, Rowan. They will give our baby everything we couldn’t. A home, and parents. Plural.