All Our Yesterdays Read Free Page B

bent forward he could smell her perfume.
    “Do you know how he was shot?” she said.
    “Shot by a bloody peeler, probably, miss. They shoot our boys as if they were stray rats.”
    “Will he be safe here?”
    “Dublin’s not a safe place, miss, for Irish lads that won’t crap under to the peelers.”
    “But they don’t know he’s here.”
    “Not for now they don’t. We’ll move him soon.”
    He studied the curve of her breast as she leaned over and put the cool cloth on his forehead again. Theroom was quiet. The canted rectangle of sunlight that came through the high, narrow windows moved infinitely into the corner of the room and became more angular.
    “When they do, will you visit me?” he said.
    “When they do?” she said. “When they do what?”
    “When they move me?”
    “Of course I will. How do you feel?”
    He smiled and closed his eyes and felt the coolness of the cloth and smelled her perfume. She changed the cloth again.
    “Fine,” he said.
    She laughed.
    “Do you know how long ago I asked you that?”
    “A bit laggard, am I? Coming out?”
    “A bit.”
    “You wouldn’t be able to put your hands on a dram of whiskey, would you?”
    “You’ve been shot,” she said. “I don’t think you should be drinking whiskey.”
    “What better time?” he said.
    She shook her head.
    “What’s your name?”
    “Conn Sheridan,” he said. “What’s yours?”
    “Hadley. Are you a Volunteer?”
    He smiled.
    “Brotherhood?”
    He held the smile.
    “I guess I shouldn’t ask,” she said.
    “These are times for secrets, Hadley.”
    “I know. Well, I’m for a free and independent Ireland. I want you to know that.”
    He was beginning to feel the pain of his wound. Itwasn’t awful, just a low, persistent jabbing sensation. Whiskey would help it.
    “It’s a fine thing to be for,” he said. “You’re not Irish.”
    “No. I’m American. Boston, Massachusetts. But I’m for the cause and I volunteer every day at the hospitals.”
    “Did you mean what you said?”
    “About being for Ireland?”
    “No, about going with me when they move me.”
    “I’ll certainly come and visit you.”
    “Maybe we can have some secrets of our own,” Conn said, and smiled at her. He had curly black hair, and the kind of smooth Irish skin that would have shown a high color if he were well.
    “I am a married woman, Conn, Mrs. Thomas Winslow.”
    His smile widened.
    “I’ll not hold that against you, Hadley.”

1994
Voice-Over
    T he wind out of the northeast pelted the wet snow against Grace’s window. Motionless at her end of the couch, Grace waited.
    “When I was in Dublin,” I said, “I walked along the Liffey and thought about Joyce. You ever read
Finnegans Wake
?”
    “Not all the way through.”
    “Christ, Joyce probably didn’t read it all the way through. I was thinking about the way it starts, ‘rivverrun,’ no capital letters or anything, like in mid-sentence, and then at the end, you know the ending?”
    Grace shook her head.
    “‘A way a lone a last a loved a long the,’” I said. “No period.”
    “Is this how we do it?” Grace said. “You make obscure literary references and I try to figure them out?”
    “I never understood the damn book, but I always liked the circular trick, the way the end is the beginning. It’s like us, it’s all connected backwards and forwards, past and present, ‘Along the rivverrun, past Eve and Adam’s.’”
    “You may have spent too much time reading, Chris.”
    “Yeah, I know, you’re very concrete. But I’m not. I see things and I think of other things. I’m very—what?—associative, emblematic. You look out the window and see a stormy night. I look out and think,
Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks
. It’s one of the ways we’re different. But it’s not a way that should keep us apart.”
    “It’s not what keeps us apart, Chris.”
    I stood and walked to the window and looked out at the inappropriate lightning flashes in the