Ride On, See You

By Ann McGlinn

After Marie O'Dea dies in a plane crash in the Everglades, her husband David Lenihan returns to Dublin, back to where they first met two decades before. Revisiting memories of their life together and confronted by his own role in the tragedy, he finds little comfort even in his beloved circle of friends. Next door, a troubled boy named Emmett cr

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cuidono Press
• Release date: Feb 1, 2022
• ISBN: 9781944453176

Ann McGlinn

Born in South Bend, Indiana, Ann McGlinn has lived throughout the United States as well as abroad, including in Dublin, Ireland, a city that provided friendships and experiences that helped to shape this novel. Her first novel, El Penco, was published by Cuidono Press, and her poems and short fiction have appeared in Art/Life, Cutbank, Poem, Rosebud, Quarterly West, The Flexible Persona, and The Ekphrastic Review. She lives with her family in Chicago, Illinois.

Book preview

Prologue

A shudder and David remembered the green, watery expanse beneath them, the flashes of reflected sun, cypress domes rising like moles from the flat plane of the river.

They had flown west over Shark Valley where they often went on winter weekends to bird watch. They could just make out people, small colorful beads, on the paved path. Marie counted ten quickly moving ones—on bicycles, I assume, she said—before they were out of sight, and David turned south, wanting to show Marie where the river opened into Florida Bay.

Beneath them nests of anhingas. Herons, cormorants and egrets. Over the past five years, Marie had checked off in her field guide the thirty-three species of birds she had spotted in the Everglades.

It’s absolutely thrilling to see it now from their perspective, she exclaimed. God, David, this is lovely. Why did we wait so long to get up here?

As the green gave way to the blue of the bay, Marie asked if they could fly back the way they had come. This time, upstream, she said, smiling. David turned the plane toward the sun and they retraced their path, Marie taking pictures and David enjoying the feeling of again being in the air. It had been over a year since he last flew, and he promised Marie right then that they would make another trip before they went back to Dublin for the summer.

Twenty minutes after turning around from the bay, David thought they had only caught a sudden draft of air—that the engine was compensating for the increased resistance—but in seconds the shuddering sound turned to silence and they glided for a moment. Marie screamed, David! What is it?

It was the last he remembered of that day, his last image of Marie.

David

His wife. Marie O’Dea. Even by the age of sixteen, the scaffolding of a stunning beauty was apparent in her face, her torso, her legs, her hands, her delicately arched feet. When David arrived at St. Christopher’s School at the beginning of fifth year and entered his first-period English class, Marie’s dark eyes were the initial ones he met. And when he was seated next to Darragh O’Raifeartaigh, who was soon to become his best friend, he could smell Marie’s delicate perfume wafting from behind him.

Twenty minutes after school let out that day, David sat with more than a dozen classmates—including Marie—in O’Brien’s pub. It was just down Leeson Street from the Georgian house his parents had rented for the semester, and David had insisted on taking the long way from school so his parents wouldn’t see where he was going.

"Ah, go on! Darragh prodded David’s elbow with his own. Give us your history. Dirty bits and all!"

Well, like I said in class, I’m from Indiana …

For Christ’s sake, we know the boring bits, Darragh cried. You’re a Yank. You’re sixteen. Your father’s on sabbatical from some university and doing some sort of research …

You’ve never shagged a bird, interjected Ciaran, a boy with the habit of periodically thrusting the palm of his hand into his mouth and biting it.

Fuck off, Ciaran, Marie responded, playfully slapping the back of his head. And Darragh, let him talk!

David went hot.

Well, David said. I guess besides that I play guitar and I’m good at math.

Well, that was awfully succinct, another classmate named Paul Gavin responded, laughing. Jesus, get this man another pint.

And so it went for two hours, David relaxing more with each sip, listening to the witty, non-stop banter of his new friends. He occasionally gazed at Marie’s face, wondering if he would have the good fortune of planting his lips somewhere on it.

The only other information Darragh pried from David was that, just before leaving for Dublin, he had taken a piloting course.

Ah, God! That’s brilliant! Darragh exclaimed. Fly us to Paris. We’ll arrange for a plane. Borrow it, or something.

"Steal, he means, Marie added. Don’t mind him, David. He’s a bit thick. Before you know it, you’ll be deported."

That night, David sat at his small desk with his copy of Soundings: leaving certificate poetry interim anthology. He stared at Shakespeare’s Sonnet 55 beside which Darragh had written in black pen Shakespeare was illiterate!! For homework, he was to answer seven questions, including the following: The poet mingles several themes in this sonnet: the immortality of his verse, its durability compared with stone or marble, his service in immortalizing his beloved. Which is the dominating theme? Does the poet, in your opinion, blend the themes into a satisfying unity? He read the poem twice, but found himself drawn most to the first four lines:

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments

Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rime;

But you shall shine more bright in these contents

Than unswept stone, besmear’d with sluttish time.

He imagined a marble statue of Marie, covered in bird shit, her delicate fingers and nose chipped. Garbage strewn at her feet. And then he imagined the poem was written for her. Dominating theme? Immortalizing his beloved, he wrote. Satisfying unity? He wasn’t sure what the question meant, so he simply wrote, Yes, satisfying. An inadequate answer, he knew, but it was the best he could do.

Marie was the most talented English student in fifth year: she organized the school’s bi-yearly literary journal Ramblings, which was more than two-thirds filled with limericks bordering on the obscene, and volunteered to lead summer literary tours of Dublin for foreign high school students. She had memorized over fifty poems by Irish poets, and she could provide a range of dramatic performances from Irish plays. She had also landed several major roles in productions with Dublin Youth Theatre. Mr. Dooney, the mild-mannered English teacher, would often call on her to read for the class, stating, Now boys, never directing his subtle scolding toward their female counterparts. Listen to how it’s supposed to sound. Marie would smile and, before beginning, shoot an innocent look at Neil Ryan, who sat beside her and spent most of each class tossing torn bits of paper into her hair.

One Friday night, David went out with Darragh and some other classmates, including Gareth Montgomery, Cathal Dundon, and Fergal Rochford. They headed first to Abrakebabra, where Darragh told David that after eating they were all to meet Marie and her friend Aoife Foley at Kehoe’s pub downtown.

"Aoife’s gorgeous, David, Fergal exclaimed, turning to him. If only all the girls looked like her. No thick knees. No moustache."

She is a nice piece of work. She’s a bit slow, though, wouldn’t you say? Darragh responded before lighting a cigarette. I mean, I sometimes feel like I’m talking to a plank.

Maybe, Fergal conceded, but so she’s a gorgeous plank!

They wolfed down doner kebabs at an orange plastic table beneath fluorescent light and within half an hour they reached the already packed pub. Darragh looked the oldest, so he went to the bar for drinks while the rest went in search of seats. They found Marie and Aoife holding a corner table, sipping gin and tonics.

Fergal and Cathal positioned themselves on either side of Aoife, and David sat beside Marie. She wore a black scoop-necked sweater and a silver pendant of two interlaced swans.

Hiya, David, Marie said, smiling. This here is Aoife.

Hi, Aoife, David responded, extending his hand. It’s nice to meet you.

Good to meet you, too, she said.

Aoife was good looking, dirty blonde hair piled into a loose chignon and striking green eyes, but to David she paled in comparison to the girl he had already imagined into a poem.

Help yourself, Marie said, holding out her cigarettes and lighter. David took one and lit it, and when he gave the lighter back to her he let his fingers rest momentarily in her palm. He tried to remember the poem’s opening lines but couldn’t. Only the word marble came to mind.

After several hours at the pub, Darragh announced his older brother Gavin had agreed to buy them a bottle of vodka at an off-license.

So let’s go to Paddy’s bench, he said.

That would be Patrick Kavanagh’s bench by the canal, Marie explained. It’s near your house, so we could drop you home afterwards.

Where do you live? David asked.

Dalkey. About ten miles out of town. But I’m staying at Aoife’s tonight. She lives on Baggot Street. Above The Waterloo pub.

Isn’t that near school?

It is.

Then why doesn’t she go to St. Christopher’s?

Her parents insist she go to an all-girls school until college. They think it will keep her focused. Marie smiled. I think it’ll make her a right she-devil.

When they reached the canal, Fergal sat on the bench with Aoife while Marie motioned David to read its stone side. On it was chiseled a poem, which Marie began to recite:

O commemorate me where there is water,

Canal water, preferably, so stilly

Greeny at the heart of summer.

I could do the remainder of the poem, but I’ll spare you for now, Marie said, pointing to Darragh uncapping the bottle of vodka. There’s drink to be had.

Marie

It’s been two days since you and Darragh took off with the rest of the boys for your country excursion to Dungarvan. I hate to think of the state you’re in at the moment as it’s nearly half-one (in the afternoon) and I suspect you’re trying to peel yourself out of bed. Needless to say, Aoife, Kate, and I were more than happy we weren’t invited. We’ve better things to be doing than lying around, lamenting that we’re knackered and too old for this sort of thing and promising ourselves at week’s end that we’d never again find ourselves in the same terrible state.

Your absence has prompted me to write a memory-book of sorts for you so that when you are, to quote Yeats, old and gray and full of sleep you can take down this book and remember the bits of our youth that will come to my mind as I write these pages. Of course, I have many, many memories of us. I could write forever and not get them all down, so I will write whatever comes to mind, deemed somehow most important by my subconscious. And as memories often have the habit of emerging without any chronological structure, I won’t impose upon them a narrative cohesion. Instead, I will let them come—messy, unlinked, and factually flawed as they may be.

This morning, after a hot bath, I stepped into the hallway and found myself staring at the painting we bought in Inis Meáin during our holiday there four summers ago. It brought to mind the dinners you cooked for my friends who had performed in plays during the week’s Synge festival and stayed with us those two nights. I remember one dinner in particular; you had made homemade baguettes and a roasted garlic and goat cheese spread followed by a pasta dish. Everyone ate too much and we all ended up scattered around the rug in front of the fire, drinking wine and discussing the week’s performances and how great it was that we had all ended up together, in a cottage by the sea. How Synge would have loved the rural gathering of friends who, through the stage, were a family of sorts. The darkening evening outside and the fire casting shadows about the room. I sat across the rug from you, beside Tommy Moylan, and I clearly remember thinking that I hoped one day I would write a play that would bring such a group of people together—that I would be able to move people in such a way—but then I felt egotistical. That I should enjoy the moment and appreciate the group that was there, right then. I put my hand on Tommy’s arm and he turned and smiled at me. He had always called me his Marie and treated me as a daughter. Walking me home after performances. Bringing me cups of tea during rehearsal breaks. As it grew darker, Tommy