Page 3 of A Merry Irish Christmas
‘It is fun,’ Mary said wistfully.
‘Well, if it were me, I’d happily go to Dingle with you every year and never spend another Christmas with my folks.’
Mary smiled sympathetically. She knew Gina’s parents were constantly at war, and family occasions were marked by endless bickering, shouting matches and tense atmospheres.
‘That’d work for me. Such a shame you’re not my type.’
‘I know! We’d be so great together.’
‘Wearegreat together.’
‘But not in the sack.’ Gina drummed her fingers on the table. ‘We could give celibacy a go?’
They looked at each other for a long moment, then burst out laughing simultaneously.
‘Nah.’
‘Nope. Not happening.’
‘I’m afraid we’re stuck with trying to make a go of it with men. But you definitely have to come to Dingle sometime.’ Gina, a freckle-faced Chicagoan, had been Mary’s first New York friend. They’d started in the same week at the recruitment agency where they both worked.
‘I’d love that,’ Gina said as their food arrived.
‘So you and Greg are… good?’ Gina asked warily when the waiter had moved away.
Mary nodded. ‘Yeah.’ She toyed with her glass, considering whether she wanted to tell Gina what she’d found at Greg’s apartment the other day. She dreaded admitting it out loud – she didn’t even like acknowledging it to herself in her own head. But at the same time, it would be a relief to tell someone. It might make it feel less of a big deal if she could casually tell Gina about it over lunch – just a funny anecdote she could share with a friend.
‘I found something the other day when I was looking for a phone charger at Greg’s place.’
Gina raised her recently sculpted eyebrows questioningly.
‘It was this poem he’d written. About her. Juanita.’
‘Apoem?Greg?’
‘Yeah, I know,’ Mary said with a wry smile.
‘But… Greg’s a lawyer!’ Gina spluttered. ‘What business has he got writing poems?’
Mary shrugged. ‘I guess love does funny things to people.’ She did a double take as soon as the words were out of her mouth. Had she just said that her boyfriend was in love with someoneelse? But no – she’d simply acknowledged that heusedto be in love with Juanita. Which was fine. Everyone had history at their age.
‘Oh my God!’ Gina placed a flat palm on her chest. ‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing. I mean, it’s not as if it was recent. It was in an old notebook that obviously hadn’t been used for a long time.’
‘What was it called? “Ode to Juanita”?’
Mary took a sip of wine and cleared her throat. ‘It was called: “Reasons to Stay”. Her name wasn’t in it at all, but it was obviously about her.’ There had been references to her dark eyes and hair, her foreign accent, and a litany of memories that could only have been moments they’d shared.Because of dancing under the stars on the Staten Island Ferry, had been one line that stuck in Mary’s head. Greg had never danced on the Staten Island Ferry withher. It had obviously been written when Juanita had decided to return to El Salvador and he’d been trying to persuade her to stay in the US… to stay with him. The last line was:Because I’ll be lost without you. The most disturbing thing about it for Mary was that she didn’t recognise the Greg she knew in it. She couldn’t imagine him writing something so romantic and heartfelt, so full of yearning.
‘Wow, that’s…’ Gina shook her head expressively. ‘It’s pretty crappy of him to leave it lying around like that.’
‘It was buried at the bottom of a drawer. He probably doesn’t even remember it’s there.’
‘Was it any good?’
‘I don’t know.’ Mary twisted linguine around her fork. ‘I was too busy being creeped out by it to do a critique.’
‘But it was old, right?’ Gina said, clearly trying to minimise it. ‘Like you said, love makes fools of us all.’
