Colm Tóibín - Brooklyn

Eilis marvelled at the different ways each person had expressed condolences once they had gone beyond the first one or two sentences. Her mother tried too, in how she replied, to vary the tone and the content, to write something suitable in response to each person. But it was slow and by the end of the first day Eilis had still not gone out into the street or had any time alone. And less than half the work was done.

The following day she worked hard, saying to her mother a number of times that if they continued talking or going over each letter received they would never complete the task in front of them. Yet not only did her mother work slowly, insisting that she and not Eilis would have to write most of the letters, but wanting Eilis to look at each one she completed, but also she could not resist making regular comments on those who had written, including people Eilis had never met.

Eilis tried to change the subject a few times, wondering to her mother if they might go to Dublin together some day, or even go to Wexford on the train some afternoon. But her mother said that they would wait and see, the thing was to get these letters written and sent and then they would go through Rose's room and sort out her clothes.

As they had their tea on the second day, Eilis told her mother that if she did not contact some of her friends soon, they would be insulted. Now that she had begun, she was determined to win a free day, not to have to go straight from writing letters and addressing envelopes under her mother's sharp and increasingly cranky supervision to sorting out Rose's clothes.

"I arranged for the wreath to be delivered tomorrow," her mother said, "so that's our day for the graveyard."

"Yes, well, I'll see Annette and Nancy tomorrow evening, then," Eilis said.

"You know, they called around asking when you were coming back. I put them off, but if you want to see them, then you should invite them here."

"Maybe I'll do that now," Eilis said. "If I leave a note for Nancy, then she can get in touch with Annette. Is Nancy still going out with George? She said they were getting engaged."

"I'll let her give you all the news," her mother said, and smiled.

"George would be a great catch," Eilis said. "And he's good-looking as well."

"Oh, I don't know," her mother said. "They could make a slave out of her in that shop. And that old Mrs. Sheridan is very noble. I wouldn't have any time for her at all."

Walking out into the street brought Eilis instant relief, and, as it was a beautiful warm evening, she could happily have walked for miles. She noticed a woman studying her dress and her stockings and her shoes and then her tanned skin, and she realized with amusement as she moved towards Nancy 's house that she must look glamorous in these streets. She touched her finger where the wedding ring had been and promised herself that she would write to Tony that evening when her mother had gone to bed and work out a way of posting her letter in the morning without her mother knowing. Or maybe, she thought, it would be a good way of letting her mother gently into the secret, in case she had not seen the letters that Eilis had written to Rose, that there was someone special for her in America.

The next day, as they walked out to the graveyard with the wreath, anyone they met whom they knew stopped to talk. They complimented Eilis on how well she looked but did not do so too effusively or in too frivolous a tone because they could see that she was on her way with her mother to her sister's grave.

It was only as they walked up through the main avenue of the graveyard towards the family plot that Eilis understood fully the extent to which she had been dreading this. She felt sorry for how much she had been irritated by her mother over the previous days and now walked slowly, linking her arm while carrying the wreath. A few people in the graveyard stood and watched as they approached the grave.

There was another wreath almost withered that her mother removed, and then she stood back beside Eilis, facing the headstone.

"So, Rose," her mother said quietly, "here's Eilis, she's home now and we've brought fresh flowers out to you."

Eilis did not know if her mother expected her to say something too, but, since she was crying now, she was not sure she could make herself clear. She held her mother's hand.

"I'm praying for you, Rose, and thinking about you," Eilis whispered, "and I hope you're praying for me."

"She's praying for all of us," her mother said. "Rose is up in heaven praying for all of us."

As they stood there silently at the grave, Eilis found the idea that Rose was below the earth surrounded by darkness almost impossible to bear. She tried to think about her sister when she was alive, the light in her eyes, her voice, her way of putting a cardigan over her shoulders if she felt a draught, her way of handling their mother, making her interested in even the smallest detail of Rose's and Eilis's lives, as though she too had the same friends, the same interests, the same experiences. Eilis concentrated on Rose's spirit and tried to keep her mind from dwelling on what was happening to Rose's body just beneath them in the damp clay.

They walked home by Summerhill and then past the Fair Green to the Back Road because her mother said that she did not want to meet anybody else that day, but it occurred to Eilis that she did not want anyone to see Eilis who might invite her out or cause her to leave her mother's side at any point.

That evening, when Nancy and Annette called Eilis noticed Nancy's engagement ring immediately. Nancy explained that she had been engaged to George for two months now, but she hadn't wanted to write to Eilis about it because of Rose.

"But it's great you'll be here for the wedding. Your mother is delighted."

"When is the wedding?"

"On Saturday, the twenty-seventh of June."

"But I'll be gone back," Eilis said.

"Your mother said you'll still be here. She wrote and accepted the invitation on behalf of the two of you."

Her mother came into the room with a tray and cups and saucers and a teapot and some cakes.

"There you are now," she said. "It's lovely to see you both, a bit of life in the house again. Poor Eilis was fed up with her old mother. And we're looking forward to the wedding, Nancy. We'll have to get the best of style for it. That's what Rose would want."

She left the room before any of them could speak. Nancy looked at Eilis and shrugged. "You'll have to come now."

Eilis worked out in her head that the wedding was four days after the planned date of her departure; she also remembered that the travel agent in Brooklyn had said she could change the date as long as she notified the shipping company in advance. She decided there and then that she would stay an extra week and hoped that no one in Bartocci's would object too strongly. It would be easy to explain to Tony that her mother had misunderstood her date of departure, even though Eilis did not believe that her mother had misunderstood anything.

"Or maybe you have someone waiting impatiently for you in New York?" Annette suggested.

"Such as Mrs. Kehoe, my landlady," Eilis replied.

She knew that she could not trust herself to begin to confide in either of her friends, especially when they were together like this, without letting them know too much. And if she told them, she would soon find that one of their mothers would mention to her mother that Eilis had a boyfriend in New York. It was best, she thought, to say nothing, to talk instead about clothes and her studies and tell them about the other lodgers and Mrs. Kehoe.

They, in turn, told her the news from the town-who was going out with whom, or who was planning to get engaged, adding that the freshest news was that Nancy's sister, who had been going out with Jim Farrell on and off since Christmas, had finally broken it off with him and had a new boyfriend who was from Ferns.