False Mermaid

She understood on a rational level her father’s reluctance to condemn Peter Hallett—or anyone else, for that matter—without proof. Watching him wrestle the cork from a wine bottle, she tried to imagine the place he’d been reared, the wild, wind-whipped west coast of Clare, where bleak history and compounded misfortune had fed a general faith in forces beyond the known world. From an early age, he had rebelled against that upbringing, rejecting all the old beliefs, demanding a rational explanation for everything. After Tríona’s death, Nora and her mother had watched him retreat deeper and deeper into his research, taking refuge in his orderly, microscopic universe. He delighted in the abstract beauty of individual cells, in cracking open their inner workings, unmasking invisible chemical changes. In her own work, she had followed her father a long distance down that path, but had come to see the fault in hewing too closely to scientific method. Where human behavior was involved, there was often no rational explanation.

The conversation that had flowed almost normally as they’d moved about the kitchen suddenly slowed once they sat down to the table. Nora sensed her mother trying to coax the conversation forward, but one gambit after another faltered and failed, and they finished their meal in silence.

“You haven’t told us how long you’ll be staying,” her father said abruptly. “I hope you haven’t left Trinity for good.”

“They’re expecting me back for fall term.” That much was true, at least.

A few moments later, Tom Gavin rose from the table. “I’m sorry to leave you, but I’ve got an early presentation tomorrow, and I’ve a few things left to prepare. Forgive me.” As he passed by the back of her chair, Nora felt her father’s hand hover briefly above her shoulder. Five years after Tríona’s death, and here they were, still in limbo.

When he had retreated into the study, Eleanor Gavin said: “There’s no presentation tomorrow. He’s just having a difficult time.”

Nora began to speak, but her mother hushed her. “I know—the past five years haven’t been easy for any of us. But your father’s been waiting out on the porch almost every night since you phoned. Now that you’re here, he doesn’t know what to do. He’s completely exhausted. I’m not saying any of this is your fault, love—please don’t misunderstand. I’m just telling you what’s going on. He did the very same thing before you were born. Couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t concentrate. And when you finally did arrive, he was a complete wreck. He’s missed you terribly, Nora. We both have.”

“Is he all right, Mam? He looks so pale—and I know doctors make rotten patients.”

Eleanor let out a breath that at once signaled her frustration, and her relief in having someone to talk to. “He’s been driving himself too hard—his way of coping.”

Nora studied her mother’s face, moved by the subtle changes she read there: the etching of fine worry lines was more pronounced, the eyes even more deep-set. Her mother’s hair had gone completely white as well. Seeing the changes the past three years had wrought, and imagining her parents alone in this house, the silences between them growing by a few seconds each evening—it was almost more than she could bear. “If you’d like, I could have a word with him—”

Her mother shot her a wry look. “And you think that might help? You know how he dotes on you, sweetheart, but you have to admit you’ve never been the most calming influence. You’re too much like him—it’s that Gavin stubborn streak. No, you worry about yourself. I’ll have your father in hand, even if I’ve got to grind up the beta-blockers and dissolve them in his tea.”

Nora couldn’t help smiling. “You’ve got some neck, calling other people stubborn. You look as if you’ve lost weight, Mam. Are you eating? Remember what Mrs. Makabo said—”

“‘No man likes a skinny wife, Missus Doctor,’” Eleanor said, echoing the musical accent of one of her longtime patients. They both smiled faintly, remembering the saucy wink that had accompanied the remark, and the chorus of giggles that erupted from the other patients in the waiting room.

“How is Mrs. Makabo?”

“Thriving—fourteen grandchildren. Number fifteen coming along any day now.”

“Will you tell her I was asking for her?”

“I will, of course. She and the other ladies still ask after you.”