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"Jaysus. Did you see her?"
"See her? Michael, I think we've just witnessed a miracle."
The Donnelly twins, with their salacious grins and gawking eyes,
were not affected by Layla's bloom in the same way as nostalgic older men. They
were, after all, only eighteen, with the prospects of a whole world of
debauchery and mischief before them (hang what their mother had in mind). The
sight of Layla's long legs, tanned even under her thin stockings, produced the
basic, primitive lust expected of boys their age. On any other day, the twins
would have followed Layla into the shop. But this was Monday. The boys never
stepped into Danny Fadden's mini-mart more than once on Mondays.
As a matter of tradition, and to spite their mother for making
them sit through two Sunday Masses, Peter and Michael Donnelly habitually paid a
visit to Fadden's Mini-Mart on Monday mornings before school. In a ruse that had
started their first year of secondary school, Michael would keep Mr. Fadden busy
at the counter with some obscure mythology question, to which only the grocer, a
devoted fan of Irish lore, would know the answer. Meanwhile, Peter would swipe
two bottles of Beamish from the beer shelf, stuffing them into the pockets of
his large duffel coat. The twins gleefully chugged their beers before school,
passing them among the thick-necked boys who congregated in the woods beyond the
football field. This ritualistic passing of backwashed ale was merely a frothy
afterthought for the twins, though, for it wasn't the beer or the thrill of
stealing it but the rather cruel game they played on poor Danny Fadden that
tickled them the most.
Every time Peter swiped two bottles of beer (always from the
back of the shelf), he left a piece of green felt in their place, along with an
IOU note signed "Finnegan". It didn't take long for Danny (a man who starred in
his own daydreams as a love-struck Diarmuid eloping with a witchy Grainne) to
put two and two together to get five. The green felt, the missing stout, the
name Finnegan. It all pointed to one thing: the mini-mart had its very own
leprechaun. Danny Fadden counted himself supremely lucky to be blessed by the
touch of the little people, and he awaited the leprechaun's Monday morning
visits with barely contained excitement. Of course, everyone in Ballinacroagh
joked of "Fadden's Fairy" and would often ask the shopkeeper, when stopping in
for some milk or potatoes, how his little friend was getting along. Danny's
wife, Deirdre, by contrast, did not find her husband's leprechaun fixation at
all funny, and after nearly five years of his lunacy, she left Danny on the eve
of their thirtieth wedding anniversary.
The shy grocer was softly tiptoeing up to the beer aisle when
Layla walked into the store. Knowing full well the precarious temperament of
leprechauns, with their complete dislike for anything human, Danny was always
careful not to disturb his little friend's hiding place. He steered clear of the
beer shelves from noontime Sunday to eight o'clock Monday morning, lest he
stumble upon his unsuspecting visitor and frighten him away altogether. This
meant, of course, that he never made the connection between the notes and the
Donnelly twins' Monday morning visit. While Layla scoured the produce stands for
onions, Danny was hunched over in the beer aisle, deciphering the meaning behind
the little person's latest note: "I like barley, I like rye, I like stout in
my pie. IOU. Finnegan". Neither of them saw Malachy McGuire standing
patiently at the register counter.
The younger of Thomas McGuire's two sons, eighteen-year-old
Malachy had somehow managed to sidestep the male McGuire DNA of turnip torsos
and butchered complexions. Nor had he taken much from his mother's side, who
along with Malachy's three plump sisters would have given a modern-day Rubens
much to concentrate on. Peaking at six foot one, and slender with the hands of a
pianist, Malachy sported a mop of unruly black hair and sapphire eyes that
sparkled like midnight suns. His luminous youth was something to marvel at
indeed. He was nothing like his older brother, Tom, who at twenty-one was an
almost carbon copy of their father, though without the latter's ambition and
talent for subversion. Tom Junior spent most of his time scurrying between
amateur hurling matches and playing henchman for his father, while Malachy much
preferred the complementary hobbies of football and astronomy, balancing the
terrestrial with the heavenly, and excelling in both equally. Unknown to
Malachy, the cosmos that he pored over so many nights from his bedroom window
was in perfect alignment that Monday morning.
Excerpted from Pomegranate Soup by Marsha Mehran. Copyright © 2005 by Marsha Mehran. Excerpted by permission of Random House, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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