Landing by Emma Donoghue
On the notice board outside the museum, she pinned up the latest plastic-coated display:
Some Criminal Assize Indictment Records
for Huron County.
Hockey, Hubert; Uttering Forged Note, 1863
Jardine, John; Attempt to Carnally Know a Girl under 14, 1894
Johnston, Marshall; Nuisance, 1861
McKeegan, Malcolm; Bestiality, 1862
Naebel, Doris; Unlawful Disposition of Dead Body, 1923
Pratt, John; Obstructing Free Use of Railway, 1893
Sturdy, John; Unlawful Voting, 1882
Sturdy, that name rang a faint bell. Wasn't one of the Malones married to a Sturdy, a few generations back? Oh well, it was only voting fraud the guy was accused of, not bestiality.
Canada geese went by in arrowhead formation, honking glumly. Mindless birds, didn't they know it was nearly Christmas? They should have been in South Carolina by now. What were they still doing here, flapping back and forth all day; what were they waiting for?
In the mailbox Jude found a letter from the foundation to which she and Síle had made that application, back in July. She ripped it open right there, on the snow-choked steps. Phrases struck her like darts.
In the current climate, the scarcity of resources is such ... Whether there is indeed a pressing need for another small museum devoted to the history of Perth and Huron Counties, given that...
She stared around her at the glittering white that covered everything like a parody of a Christmas card. Her wrist was hurting. She knew she should make some calls, set up a meeting of the board. She could anticipate exactly how Jim McVaddy would denounce her for her failure, how Glad Soontiens would appeal to everybody to just calm down.
The awful thing was, Jude didn't care. Or rather, of course she was devastated about the foundation's refusal of funding, but the thing was, this was the fourteenth of December, and tomorrow was Landing Day. So there really was only room in her head for one thought, which was Síle. Síle coming through the sliding doors at Toronto Pearson Airport, with her cat and her bags; Síle here to stay, somehow; Síle unlimited, miracle made flesh.
No need to tell anyone about this letter yet, Jude thought. I'll call the board in the New Year; we'll come up with something. New approaches to fundraising, appeals to the community ... But already her mind was sliding sideways to Síle in tall fur-lined boots, slinking down Main Street.
Tuesday afternoon, Jude was at Arrivals, hands tightened on the barrier. Her heart ticked like a clock in a room where someone was trying to sleep. She and Síle had left each other phone messages over the past few days, but never managed to speak. Jude had been waiting forty minutes; put another way, she'd been waiting all year. She stood still, as passive as a ghost.
Other passengers from Heathrow emerged and were greeted lovingly. At first, Jude enjoyed watching them. Then she began to resent every face that wasn't Síle's. Gradually the crowd dispersed, and the flow of emerging passengers dried to a trickle. "Excuse me," she asked a man with a briefcase, "have you come from Heathrow?"
A shake of the head. "Bonn."
Jude told herself not to panic. She must be coming, she had her ticket bought a month ago. But that proved nothing, now Jude came to think about it. It wasn't even a piece of paper: Síle always got e-tickets. Just a few letters and numbers somewhere on the Internet, a fragile sequence of code.
She stood where she was for another fifteen minutes, till the passengers from Bonn had all emerged. She clung to rational possibilities. Síle was being grilled by Immigration, having rashly answered "How long do you intend to stay in Canada?" with "Forever!" No, customs officers were going through her bags with probes and sniffer dogs; Jael must have planted some coke on her. Actually, Síle was still at the baggage claim, waiting for a missing suitcase that contained all her favourite clothes. Unless she was ill, locked into a washroom cubicle. Or had come through already and somehow sailed right past Jude.
Jude told herself not to be ridiculous. She waited, stiff-kneed, for another ten minutes. Then she went off in search of a pay phone so she could check her voice mail, in case Síle had left a message.
Driving out of the airport in the looming twilight, Jude felt cold chew at the back of her neck, slide its claw inside her cuffs, deaden her fingers inside their gloves. She talked to herself soothingly as if to someone standing on the railing of a bridge. The fact that Síle was not on this particular flight, because something must have come up at the last minute, didn't mean that she wouldn't be on another flight to Toronto, another day. Cold feet, it could be that. No biggie. She'll call tonight. But Jude's heart was a pebble.
Outside Stratford she felt the sickening glassiness of black ice under her wheels, and before she could slow down the skid had begun. How slowly, how gracefully the Mustang lost its grip on the road! She hunched over the wheel, shut her eyes in the darkness. The car came to a standstill, and she opened them; she was facing back the way she'd come. When she wound down the window and looked out, her back wheel was at the edge of the snow-filled ditch. The road was still empty. Jude knew she might have been killed, but she was unmoved. She turned the car around and headed on home.
When she got in, there was no message. Jude didn't tap in that familiar number. What could she say? I was at the airport, you weren't seemed redundant. Where were you? was pathetic. Instead, she made herself a pot of espresso and sat on the floor by the wood stove, trying to warm up. The coffee beans had been too long in the freezer, she could taste the burn; she knew the difference now.
Bone tired, she lay down on the sofa and waited. She was hollowed out; she was nothing but longing. There was a line from Jeremiah that kept nagging in her head: "There is no hope: no; for I have loved strangers and after them will I go." But Jude couldn't go anywhere, could only stay where she was, lying like a fossil in the house where she'd been born.
***
For three days Jude hadn't gone out.
Gwen left a message welcoming the new Canadian, and inviting the two of them to come watch her hockey game, as the Stratford Devilettes had reached the quarter-final. Rizla left a ruder one, encouraging Síle and Jude to stop boinking one of these days and join him at the Dive. There were other messages, to do with various Christmas bazaars and fairs that Jude was supposed to attend; she erased them all.
She didn't see the need to tell anyone what had happened. What was there to announce? A nonevent; a failure; a blank. It wasn't divorce till you'd been married. It wasn't moving out if you'd never moved in. Only some kind of breaking off, like the abrupt Silencing of a tune. Only her life cracking in on itself like a rotten tooth.
The predictable feelings filled her—grief, and rage, and fear—but flickered away. Jude found she couldn't even really blame Síle for not turning up on the plane; the whole project had been a fantasy. Síle wasn't calling, but wasn't that exactly what Jude had done to her, back in October? It was all a matter of timing, she supposed. They'd missed their moment; the baton had dropped between their fingers and hit the ground.
To pass the hours, she looked out the window a lot. Ireland had a strange, fictive look to her: an old cracked photo, a creepy ghost town. What am I doing here, still here at twenty-six? Jude felt a sudden nausea. Those pragmatic settlers would have despised her for clinging to home. They carried their nostalgia like their framed photos and heirlooms, but they never let it get in their way.
A place was nothing on its own; it hit her now; it was only people who carved it into meaning. She'd misunderstood the old myths. It was when Sedna tried to come home that she'd lost her fingers; it was when he touched his native soil again that Oisín felt his flesh withering away. You couldn't stay in the womb; you had to go voyaging.
Not that Jude had the energy, right now, to get to the general store for milk.
She had no desire to go to work, either. What difference would it make if the Ireland Museum opened today, or tomorrow, or ever again? It wouldn't break anyone's heart. Perhaps with a great effo
Jude had a bath, to kill half an hour, then lay down on the sofa again and shut her eyes. Síle walked through the crazy architecture of her dreams, her hands indicating doorways or corridors or chutes, her plum-coloured lips moving Silently.
When the phone sent up its shrill clamour, Jude woke with a start in darkness. She had no idea what evening it was. Saturday? The ringing had stopped, but she felt her way to the hall table and listened to the message.
What she heard first was Silence, but she could tell who wasn't speaking; she recognized the sound of this woman's breath in any mood. "Jude? It's me. I—Listen, I'll try you again in a minute, will you please, please pick up the phone?"
Jude put the receiver back in its black cradle and stood very still, holding her breath. She was dizzy, and her mouth tasted foul. When the phone rang again she snatched it up so hard she thumped her cheekbone.
"You must think I'm a monster," said Síle, so near, so clear.
It seemed a year since Jude had heard this voice. She was speechless.
"I hadn't been sleeping," said Síle. "I kept telling myself it would be all right once I was with you. I was all ready to go, on Tuesday morning, I'd booked a taxi. And then I just ... couldn't."
"I know," Jude whispered.
A release of breath. "Sweetheart," said Síle, and the word was like crushed strawberries. "I've missed you. I'm sorry I didn't turn up, I'm so sorry."
A giddiness filled Jude from her toes to her scalp. "That's okay," she said, still hoarse. And then, to stop the call from ending, she rushed on: "You know, I never meant to rush you into this whole emigration thing. We can let it go."
"Let it go?"
"For now, anyway. I'm thinking of moving."
"Moving?" squawked Síle. "Moving where?"
"The museum—there's a distinct possibility it's not going to last much longer," said Jude. "A while ago my former boss said there's jobs coming up in Toronto, she'd give me a great reference." She was improvising, but it was all true. "So what do you think—is there any chance that would make the leap possible for you, if we split the difference? Between Dublin and here," she explained when Síle didn't answer. "Could you imagine living in Toronto?"
"Yes, but—are you serious?"
"Why not? I guess I could get used to a city if you can get used to a new country." Jude leaned her face against the cold wood of the bannister. "Síle, are you still there?"
"Yeah, I'm right here."
"But I'm getting ahead of myself; let's drop it for now. It's enough just to hear your voice. The thing you have to understand is," Jude went on, the words tripping over themselves, "I feel the same about you no matter where in the world you happen to be."
"Really?"
"From the day I met you"—her voice was uneven—"from the very first day, you've been, you're the only, I mean—"
Quiet laughter.
Jude never knew what small sound made her turn and glance out the glass panel in the front door but there coming up the drive, out of the dark, was Síle, gizmo pressed to her ear. Her suitcase cutting a trail, her cat in a small cage, snowflakes snagged in her hair.
Acknowledgments
Portions of "Home Base" appeared as a short story in No Margins, edited by Nairne Holtz and Catherine Lake (Toronto: Insomniac Press, 2006).
For conversations that have left their traces on this novel, I want to thank friends in London, Ontario (Judy Core, Helen Fielding, Alison Lee, Chantal Phillips, Cecilia Preyra, Aniko Varpalotai), Toronto (Kelly Gervais, Tamara Sugunasiri, Marnie Woodrow), Montreal (Hélène Roulston, Wendy Adams, Nairne Holtz), Kingston (Catherine Dhavernas, Helen Humphreys), Vancouver (Philippe Roulston), Rochester, New York (Claire Sykes), Vermont (Sandy Reeks), Boston (Anne Habiby), Los Angeles (Dana Lawrence, Debby Leonard), Sydney (Cris Townley), Dublin (Susan Coughlan, Turlough Downes, Helen Stanton, Katherine O'Donnell, Maria Walsh), County Leitrim (Miriam Crowley, Mel Howes), County Carlow (Deborah Ballard, Carole Nelson), Cardiff (Grâinne Ni Dhiúll, Debra Westgate), Cambridge (Janie Buchanan), and London (Sinéad McBrearty, Fiona McMorrough, Diane Gray-Smith). Yana Petronis and her son Josha appear in "Heavy Weather" as a little fundraiser for London, Ontario's Lesbian Film Festival (fifteen years and going strong!).
Big thanks to my friends Arja Vainio-Mattila and Ali Dover for advice on my plot; Ali also took the trouble to trawl through the manuscript for un-Canadian phrasings. My brother-in-law Jeff Miles was my source on all manly things, from cars to fist fights, and kindly critiqued an early draft. Finally, for insights into Dublin today, as well as for inspiring several strands of this story, I want to thank my beloved friend Margaret Lonergan.
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Emma Donoghue, Landing
(Series: # )