A Week in Winter(2)
Her brother Brian kept his head down and said nothing at all. When Chicky asked him what he thought, Brian said he didn’t think. He didn’t have time to think.
Chicky’s friends, Peggy, who also worked in the knitting factory, and Nuala, who was a maid for the three Miss Sheedys, said it was the most exciting, reckless thing they had ever heard of, and wasn’t it great that she had a passport already from that school trip to Lourdes.
Walter Starr said they would stay in New York with friends of his. He was going to drop out of law school, it wasn’t really right for him. If we had several lives, well then, yes, maybe, but since we only have one life it wasn’t worth spending it studying law.
The night before she left, Chicky tried to make her parents understand this. She was twenty, she had her whole life to live, she wanted to love her family and for them to love her in spite of their disappointment.
Her father’s face was tight and hard. She would never be welcome in this house again, she had brought shame on them all.
Her mother was bitter. She said that Chicky was being very, very foolish. It wouldn’t last, it couldn’t last. It was not love, it was infatuation. If this Walter really loved her then he would wait for her and provide her with a home and his name and a future instead of all this nonsense.
You could cut the atmosphere in the Ryan household with a knife.
Chicky’s sisters were no support. But she was adamant. They hadn’t known real love. She was not going to change her plans. She had her passport. She was going to go to America.
‘Wish me well,’ she had begged them the night before she left, but they had turned their faces away.
‘Don’t let me go away with the memory of you being so cold.’ Chicky had tears running down her face.
Her mother sighed a great sigh. ‘It would be cold if we just said, “Go ahead, enjoy yourself”. We are trying to do our best for you. To help you make the best of your life. This is not love, it’s only some sort of infatuation. You can’t have our blessing. It’s just not there for you. There’s no use pretending.’
So Chicky left without it.
At Shannon airport there were crowds waving goodbye to their children setting out for a new life in the United States. There was nobody to wave Chicky goodbye, but she and Walter didn’t care. They had their whole life ahead of them.
No rules, no doing the right thing to please the neighbours and relations.
They would be free – free to work where they wanted and at what they wanted.
No trying to fulfil other people’s hopes – marry a rich farmer in Chicky’s case, or become a top lawyer, which was what Walter’s family had in mind for him.
Walter’s friends were welcoming in the big apartment in Brooklyn. Young people, friendly and easy-going. Some worked in bookshops, some in bars. Others were musicians. They came and went easily. Nobody made any fuss. It was so very different to home. A couple came in from the coast, and a girl from Chicago who wrote poetry. There was a Mexican boy who played the guitar in Latino bars.
Everyone was so relaxed. Chicky found it amazing. Nobody made any demands. They would make a big chilli for supper with everyone helping. There was no pressure.
They sighed a bit about their families not understanding anything but it didn’t weigh heavily on anyone. Soon Chicky felt Stoneybridge fade away a little. However, she wrote a letter home every week. She had decided from the outset that she would not be the one to keep a feud going.
If one side behaved normally then sooner or later the other side would have to respond and behave normally as well.
She did hear from some of her friends, and had the odd bit of news from them. Peggy and Nuala wrote and told her about life back home; it didn’t seem to have changed much in any way at all. So she was able to write to say she was delighted about the plans for Kathleen’s wedding to Mikey, and did not mention that she had heard about Mary’s romance with Sonny O’Hara having ended.
Her mother wrote brisk little cards, asking whether she had fixed a date for her wedding yet and wondering about whether there were Irish priests in the parish.
She told them nothing about the communal life she lived in the big, crowded apartment, with all the coming and going and guitar playing. They would never have been able to begin to understand.
Instead she wrote about going to art exhibit openings and theatre first nights. She read about these in the papers and sometimes indeed they went to matinees or got cheap seats at previews through friends of friends who wanted to fill a house.
Walter had a job helping to catalogue a library for some old friends of his parents. His family had hoped to woo him back this way to some form of academic life, he said, and it wasn’t a bad job. They left him alone and didn’t give him any hassle. That’s all anyone wanted in life.
Chicky learned that this was definitely all Walter wanted in life. So she didn’t nag him about when she would meet his parents, or when they would find a place of their own, or indeed what they would do down the line. They were together in New York. That was enough, wasn’t it?
And in many ways it was.
Chicky got herself a job in a diner. The hours suited her. She could get up very early, leave the apartment before anyone else was awake. She helped them open up, did her shift and served breakfasts and was back before the others had struggled into the day. Chicky would bring cold milk and bagels left over from the diner’s breakfast stock. They got used to her bringing them supplies.