Where Old Ghosts Meet - Kate Evans [1]
“My God.” Maureen sat forward in the big chair. “Do you remember the day he took the bread knife to the new sideboard because it was an inch too big for the alcove?”
“I thought Mammy would have a heart attack.” Nora could hardly get the words out with the laughter. “And the day he headed out to the back garden with a brush and a gallon of bright green paint, hell-bent on painting the concrete wall around the garden. He was going to ‘expand his boundaries,’ so he said.”
“I think there might be a ripple of lunacy in the lot of us, not enough to count, mind you, but enough to make us difficult.” Maureen settled back in her chair satisfied that she had just made a critical statement.
“You speak for yourself. I’m sound as a bell.” Sparks flew as Nora threw another sod on the fire. The yarns became more outrageous, and the louder the laughter, the better was the telling so that in the end it was hard to distinguish truth from fiction. But the stories were there nonetheless, both real and imagined, stories that had never before found voice under their own roof, stories that sometimes brought the unexpected sting of tears. Of course the old story of the Da’s da, and his disappearance so long ago, surfaced and the same questions about his mother, their grandmother, and her total absence from their lives were asked. But there were no answers. It was all a mystery and neither one of the sisters seemed to care that much anymore.
Eventually Maureen went off to bed but Nora lingered behind, reluctant to let the night end and simply feeling the need to be alone. Being an emigrant made things different. Maureen would go back home to her family in Dublin and she, Nora, would return to Montreal to her job and her small rented apartment, and from then on she would be a visitor to Ireland, staying with Maureen or whoever could accommodate her at the time. This was the end of home as she had known it, she thought as she glanced around the room. The Molloys, the model church-going family, law abiding, talented and successful, were moving on and with them all the inner tensions and uncertainties created, in large part, by a father who frequently distanced himself from those he loved and who believed, with an unfailing conviction, that he alone knew what was best for everyone. Tomorrow she would speak with Maureen about selling the house and furniture. There were a few items she would keep: books, family papers, photographs, small treasures wrapped in tissue paper. There was little else.
Nora went to the kitchen, made cocoa and wandered back into the sitting room, clutching the hot mug, absorbing its comforting warmth. She surveyed the room and decided to empty the ashtrays but otherwise to ignore the mess. The cardboard box containing her father’s papers sat in a corner. She had taken it from behind the wardrobe in her father’s bedroom a few days before, looking for her father’s birth certificate, and had then put it aside. Nora pulled the box towards her and found a comfortable spot on the floor in front of the fire and began to sift through the contents. Her father had been a meticulous record keeper. Old receipts and bills from years back, guarantees, certificates of births, marriage and deaths, all kinds of old documents, were neatly filed. That was his way. There was a slight catch in Nora’s throat as she unfolded the faded hire purchase agreement for her mother’s first Hoover washing machine. It was dated July 14, 1959. Nora remembered well the day it arrived and how her mother’s eyes had sparkled, lighting up a face grey with exhaustion.
She picked up a thick wad of faded newspaper cuttings tied together with a brown string and carefully unfolded one, then another and another. Many of the articles had minutely scripted annotations and comments written in ink in the margins. She read rapidly, skimming from one to the next until finally, feeling overwhelmed, she decided to set them aside for another time.
At the bottom of the box she found a plain sealed envelope. She hesitated for a moment then turned the envelope