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Eilis Lacey Series #2
by Colm Toibin
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"How do you know my name?" she asked.
"That husband of yours is a great talker. That's how I know your name. He told my wife all about you."
If he had been Italian or plain American, she would not have been sure how to judge whether he was making a threat he had no intention of carrying out. He was, she thought, a man who liked the sound of his own voice. But she recognized something in him, a stubbornness, perhaps even a sort of sincerity.
She had known men like this in Ireland. Should one of them discover that their wife had been unfaithful and was pregnant as a result, they would not have the baby in the house.
At home, however, no man would be able to take a newborn baby and deliver it to another household. He would be seen by someone. A priest or a doctor or a Guard would make him take the baby back. But here, in this quiet cul-de-sac, the man could leave a baby on her doorstep without anyone noticing him. He really could do that. And the way he spoke, the set of his jaw, the determination in his gaze, convinced her that he meant what he was saying.
Once he had driven away, she went back into the living room and sat down. She closed her eyes.
Somewhere, not far away, there was a woman pregnant with Tony's child. Eilis did not know why she presumed that the woman was Irish too. Perhaps her visitor would be more likely to order an Irishwoman around. Anyone else might stand up to him, or leave him. Suddenly, the image of this woman alone with a baby coming to look for support from Tony frightened her even more than the image of a baby being left on her doorstep. But then that second image too, when she let herself picture it in cold detail, made her feel sick. What if the baby was crying? Would she pick it up? If she did, what would she do then?
As she stood up and moved to another chair, the man, so recently in front of her, real and vivid and imposing, seemed like someone she had read about or seen on television. It simply wasn't possible that the house could be perfectly quiet one moment and then have this visitor arriving in the next.
If she told someone about it, then she might know how to feel, what she should do. In one flash, an image of her elder sister, Rose, dead now more than twenty years, came into her mind. All through her childhood, in even the smallest crisis, she could appeal to Rose, who would take control. She had never confided in her mother, who was, in any case, in Ireland with no telephone in her house. Her two sisters-in-law, Lena and Clara, were both from Italian families and close to each other but not to Eilis.
In the hallway, she looked at the telephone on its stand. If there was one number she could call, one friend to whom she could recount the scene that had just been enacted at her front door! It wasn't that the man, whatever his name was, would become more real if she described him to someone. She had no doubt that he was real. What she wanted was someone to offer an interpretation of what had happened that would give her some consolation. At the moment, she herself could see none.
She picked up the receiver as if she were about to dial a number. She listened to the dial tone. She put the receiver down and lifted it again. There must be some number she could call. She held the receiver to her ear as she realized that there was not.
Did Tony know this man was going to appear? She tried to think about his behavior over the previous weeks, but there was nothing out of the ordinary that she could think of. At the very least, he had come home some days having been with this woman, pretending that everything was normal. At the most, he also knew what the threat was, and he was aware that the man intended to visit Eilis and he did not warn her.
Eilis went upstairs, looking around her own bedroom as if she were a stranger in this house. She picked up Tony's pajamas from where he had left them on the floor that morning, wondering if she should exclude his clothes from the wash. And then she saw that that made no sense at all.
Excerpted from Long Island by Colm Toibin. Copyright © 2024 by Colm Toibin. Excerpted by permission of Scribner. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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