On the way home, Dan stopped the car and asked her to marry him.
“You’re too young—you don’t know your own mind,” Nora said.
“In the forty or fifty good years we may have ahead of us, it would be a huge relief to me if you didn’t have to keep this up the whole time,” Dan said.
“Will they be good years?” Nora hardly dared to believe it.
“I think they will if we could drop the geriatric patter.” Dan was thoughtful. “I can see you interrupting my speech on our wedding day with a few references to weddings you remember with the czars or maybe if it’s a bad day you might go back to the Brehon laws.”
“Wedding?” Nora cried. “You mean a wedding with people looking at us?”
“No, no,” Dan reassured her, “there will be nothing like that. There will be instructions on the invitation that they are to arrive blindfolded.”
They fixed on a day only two months ahead. Nora opened her mouth to say that at her age every minute counted if you were to beat the sell-by date, but she remembered what Dan had said, so she didn’t say it.
Nora gave herself only one hour a day to talk about her wedding plans; she was worried that her work was suffering because she thought so much about Dan with love and hope, and about the wedding day with dread.
Annie was mystified. “It’s only a day, for God’s sake. You look great—what on earth is worrying you?”
“If you could point me to a shop that says ‘Everything for the Aging Bride’ then maybe I’d calm down.” Nora’s face looked tragic. The girls in the office directed Nora to the trendy boutiques. They told her to shut up or they wouldn’t organize an office collection for her. She had to sneak time off to tour the boutiques. They were all staffed by eleven-year-olds. She found herself apologizing and backing out.
“Only having a look,” she would squeak, acting like a shoplifter.
Eventually she realized she would have to come to some decision. The day was drawing nearer and she had reached no conclusion, since she had had no conversations, let alone fittings, in these frightening places.
“I’m looking for something for a wedding,” she said eventually in a high, shrill voice unlike her own.
The young assistant seemed to look at her as if it was a very gross suggestion.
“A wedding?” she repeated doubtfully.
Nora had promised to stop wisecracking about age only to Dan. There had been no agreement that she had to stop making such pleasantries when she was not in his company.
“Not strictly a mother-of-the-bride outfit, but I do have a key role so it needs to be smart,” she said.
“Friend of your daughter’s, is it?” The eighteen-year-old was trying to be helpful. Nora’s heart was like lead.
It was, of course, a nightmare—they kept asking her what the bride was wearing. She kept saying she didn’t know. She had now announced that she was going to be matron of honor, and the bride was her dearest friend.
“Why don’t you ask her what she’s wearing?” asked the increasingly confused assistants.
“I don’t like to ask,” said poor Nora piteously.
They wanted to know if the bride would be wearing white. Nora had poured scorn on that one.
“It’s a pity,” said the boutique manager. “If she were wearing white, you could have worn anything.”
“I think she’ll wear white if I ask her to,” Nora said desperately.
They found this a truly confusing wedding, but they kitted her out incredibly well, considering they had been given absolutely no information and a dozen contradictory signals. The dress and hat were stunning.
“I think you’ll outshine the bride entirely,” said the boutique manager.
“Ah, to hell with the bride,” said Nora and saw that they took rather a long time to verify her credit card. She didn’t blame them for assuming she was barking mad. It would have been the only reasonable explanation.
She collected the dress and the hat and the shoes the day before the wedding. They all stood around admiring her.
“What kind of a bag will you have?” they asked.
Nora had forgotten the bloody bag; she couldn’t carry her huge office shoulder bag, and any evening bags she had at home would be wrong. There was nothing in the shop that suited. Then, one of the assistants lent hers.
“You can drop it in the day after,” she said generously.
Nora opened her mouth to say she would be on her honeymoon and then closed it. Anyway, Annie could bring it back for her.
The day was a blur. Dan’s mother, who had been keeping her distance a bit after the first startling meeting, was full of praise.
“You look absolutely lovely,” she said.
Nora had a remark ready about the picture of Dorian Gray in her attic but bit it back. Her colleagues praised her to the hilt; they had even arranged to have a wedding picture in tomorrow’s paper. Nora was about to help the photographer set it up.
“I can do it, Nora,” he said. “There’s only two of you—I can write the caption.”
And as she looked at the way Dan was watching her, she smiled, her first real smile of the day. It was going to be great, forty or fifty years, maybe; it was something she never thought would happen to her. She sighed a deep sigh of happiness.
Annie took the bag back to the boutique the next day. They were agog in the shop. They had seen the photo in the paper.
“She married him herself!” said the boutique manager in outrage. “I knew there was something fishy about it all. She said ‘to hell with the bride’—nobody with any feeling would have said that.” Annie hadn’t an idea what they were talking about, but she could trust Nora to have got mixed up in a shop where everyone was mad.
“Was there a scene in the church, you know, like Jane Eyre?” asked the girl who looked as if she should still have been at school. Annie was dying to be out of the place; she had a hangover and a nineteen-year-old unsatisfactory marriage to worry about.
“No, no scenes,” she said tersely.
“Didn’t they have to read new banns or anything?” These assistants were beginning to doubt that the institution of marriage could survive with people like Nora around.
Thinking that her head was worse than she suspected, Annie started to leave the shop.
“Is that why she didn’t come back herself—she’s actually gone off with him?” they asked.
“Of course she’s gone off with him, on her honeymoon.”
The baby-faced manager was a liberated woman—she said she always liked to see women be assertive—but this was ridiculous. “You should not be assertive at the expense of a sister,” she said. “My one hope when I saw the picture was that they had written the wrong caption.”
Annie knew that she now needed both a cure and an appointment with an analyst. With all the strength she could muster she said, “It was not the wrong caption. Whatever mistakes Nora made in her life, and she made many, including choosing this place to buy her wedding outfit, she was never responsible for a wrong caption in her life.”
She left unsteadily, watched by the staff of the boutique.
“Do you think she was the one who was meant to be the bride?” one of them said as they saw Annie teetering away.
Molly Sullivan said that the new baby was a little star. She was no trouble at all and she was always smiling.
Shay Sullivan said the new baby was a star picker of winners; it pointed its little fist at the horse on the list that was going to win.
So she became known as Star and everyone forgot that her real name was Oona. Star forgot it herself. At school when they read out the roll call they always said, “Star Sullivan?” On the street where she lived, people would shout over to her, “Star, would you do us a favor and mind the baby for me?” or run to the corner shop, or help to fold a big tablecloth, or find a puppy that had gone missing. Star Sullivan had a head of shiny copper hair, a ready smile and a good nature, and she did everything that she was asked to.
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br /> There were three older than Star in the family and none of them had her easy, happy ways. There was Kevin, the eldest. He said he was going to work in a gym, eventually own his own sports club, and he fought with his father about everything.
There was Lilly, who was going to be a model one day and had no interest in anyone except herself.
There was Michael, who spent more time in the head teacher’s office than he did in the classroom. He was always in trouble over something.
And then there was Star.
Often Star asked her mother, would there be another baby coming? Someone she could push in a pram up and down Chestnut Street. But her mother said no, definitely not. The angel who brought babies had brought enough to Number 24. It would be greedy to ask for more.
So Star pushed other people’s babies and played with their cats. On her own.
Chestnut Street was a lovely place to play because it was shaped like a horseshoe and there was a big bit of grass in the middle beside some chestnut trees.
Some of the people who lived there went to great trouble to keep it looking nice. Others just sat there at night and drank lager and left the cans.
There were other children around but Star was shy. She was afraid to go up to a group playing in case they told her to go away. Everyone else looked as if they were having a good time already, so she hung about on the edges and never joined them.
Molly Sullivan was glad that her youngest child was so little trouble. There was too much else to think about. Like Shay’s gambling, for instance. He said he was doing it for them all, for the family. He was going to have a big win and take them all on a holiday. Foolish, decent Shay, who worked in the kitchens of a big hotel and dreamed of becoming the kind of man who could stay there as a guest. As if any of them except little Star would ever want to go on a family holiday, were he ever to afford it!
And Molly Sullivan worried about her work. She worked shifts in a supermarket where they were very busy and she was run off her feet. She had to keep a big smile on her face and be very quick, lest they think she was too old and let her go.
She worried about Kevin. He was grumbling because he was still picking up towels and taking the bookings at the sports club. He thought he should have been made a trainee manager by now.
Molly worried about Lilly too. She worked far too hard, endless hours at a telesales center, so that she could pay for further model-training courses. She was thinner than ever and ate practically nothing at home. Of course she said they had huge lunches in the office, which was odd, as Molly didn’t think they had a kitchen there. But then Lilly wouldn’t say it unless it was true.
And as for Michael! Well, he was a worry from dawn till dusk. His teachers said that he would barely be able to read by the time he left school. He had no interest in any subject. His future looked very bleak indeed.
So it was always consoling to think about little Star, with her eager face. Star, who had never caused any trouble to anyone. Star wore Lilly’s old clothes with pleasure, and even the T-shirts of the two boys. She didn’t ask for anything new.
At school they said she didn’t find the work easy and was always very anxious if asked to read or recite a poem. She was a kind child, they said, and if anyone else fell in the playground or got sick, Star Sullivan was always there to help. Maybe she might be a nurse one day, suggested Miss Casey, one of the teachers. Molly was pleased. It would be lovely to have a nurse in the family after the two dreamers who thought they were going to run a sports club or parade down a catwalk, and Michael, who might well end up in gaol.
Shay said that Star would make some man a terrific wife; she was so interested in things instead of just sighing and shrugging her shoulders like the rest of the family. He would explain the odds to her and the difference it made if the going was hard or soft, and the weights the jockeys had added, and how to do an Accumulator or a Yankee. She would ask bright questions too, and once or twice had prevented him from doing something foolish.
“Only once or twice?” Molly had said wearily.
“That’s what I mean,” Shay said. “She doesn’t make bitter, harsh remarks like you do, like everyone else does. She’s a little treasure, Star is.”
And Kevin never said a word against her. She helped him clean his shoes and asked all about the people who came to use the fitness machines in the gym. And she never took any of Lilly’s things, just admired them. She never told her mother that Lilly stuffed uneaten food in the back of the dressing-table drawers in the room they shared.
Even Michael had a soft spot for Star. She didn’t carry horrible news back from school about him. In fact, she told her parents that he was getting on much better than he actually was and sometimes she tried to help him with his homework, even though she was two years younger.
So Star got to the grown-up age of thirteen full of hope and dreams and sure that the world could be all right if you just believed that it was. They didn’t realize at home that this was the way she felt, because 24 Chestnut Street was not a house where there was time for people to sit and think about the Meaning of Life.
And there was always a drama, like when Molly had the money saved for a new washing machine, and Shay put it all on a greyhound that was still hopping on three legs around Shelbourne Park.
Or the time when Lilly had fainted at her telesales office and had been sent home with advice from a doctor that she take greater care of herself, as she was starting to show signs of an eating disorder.
Or Kevin’s latest row with his father about not having had enough money to send him to a proper private school, where he could have learned physical education. And Michael was suspended from school for a whole term and was taken back only because Molly went to the head teacher and pleaded with him.
At Star’s school they were just relieved that Star had a smile instead of the constant sulk and sneer that so many of the girls wore all day. Star did not have a pierced nose or lip, saving endless hours of argument. If someone was needed to help clean up the classroom, or put out the chairs, or change the water in the flower vases, Star would do it without a seven-minute protest, which the teachers would get from the rest of the class.
When Molly came in on the parent-teacher days they told her that Star was a great girl, no trouble at all, which Molly knew already. Star wanted to be a nurse, and the teachers would say, Sure, she would be a wonderful nurse, and with a little extra help there was no reason why she couldn’t do that. Was there a chance she could have private teaching? Sadly, Molly shook her head. Not a chance in the world; the money they had barely covered things as they were.
Could the older children help, possibly? Miss Casey wondered. Molly thought glumly about the three older children and said, Not really, to be honest.
Miss Casey didn’t even go down the path of asking if the parents would help. A neighbor, maybe? They all led very busy lives, of course, but there was a nice neighbor called Miss Mack in Chestnut Street. She was blind—people did go to visit her and read to her, and it was said that she helped and encouraged them, so maybe it might work for Star.
“Tell Star she’d be doing the old lady a kindness—that will make her go to see her,” Miss Casey said.
Star found that Miss Mack was very interested in Star’s school-books.
“Could you read me again the bit about the French Revolution that you read last week? It’s very exciting, isn’t it?”
“Is it, Miss Mack?”
“Oh, yes, we have to think about why those lords and ladies around the court of the king were so stupid that they didn’t see what was going on in the country and how poor the great mass of the people were. Or did they see and not care? That’s what I want to know.”
“I think they were just blind, Miss Mack,” Star said, trying to excuse people, as usual.
Then she realized what she had said. “I mean … I’m so sorry, Miss Mack.”
“Child, it doesn’t matter at all. I am blind. I wasn’t always blind—it’s only a word
—and in my case it has to do with muscles and things in my eyes wearing out. I recall perfectly what you looked like when you were a little baby. But in the case of the nobles, that was a different kind of blindness, where they wouldn’t see what would disturb them.”
Star was so relieved that her blunder had not caused a scene or an upset that she rushed to speak. “I suppose we all do that, Miss Mack—try not to think about bad things, don’t we? You know, try to stop fights and rows and things. I mean, if I had been alive at the French Revolution, I’d have tried to stop them fighting, I wouldn’t have let them have the thing that chopped people’s heads off. And the heads falling into baskets.”
“The guillotine, Star. Say it now, say it slowly several times and you’ll never forget it.”
Star said it obediently.
“Did you want to stop people fighting, Miss Mack?”
“Yes, I did, but I learned that people only do what they want to do. In the end that’s how it is. I think we are stronger if we sort of accept that. It lets us get on with our own lives.”
“But aren’t other people our own lives, Miss Mack?”
“They are, child. They are, of course.”
Miss Mack sighed. Star didn’t have to tell her of all the problems there were at Number 24. Everyone knew. Shay, who would gamble his last cent on anything that was offered. Molly, who was worn out from working and saving. Young Kevin, moody and unhappy, kicking stones around the road. Lilly, who had starved herself to become a model and now had an eating disorder. Michael, who was as near to a criminal as a fifteen-year-old could be. Thoughtful little Star, with the pensive eyes and the long shiny hair, who worried about them all from morning to night.
It was Star’s fourteenth birthday and a lot of things happened that day. The Hale family moved in next door into Number 23. It had been empty for six months because the Kelly family, who had never visited poor old Mr. Kelly, who used to live there, had fought over what should be done about it. In the end they sold it quickly to the Hales. Star watched them arrive as the removal van was being unpacked, hoping there might be a girl her age. She didn’t have many friends at school, as the other girls thought she was a bit boring.