Her Name Is Rose by Christine Breen Read Free Book Online Page B

phantomlike pain, her blue Wellies tossed on the floor in the sitting room, the poppies with their still-turgid stems, that she was going to make the promised phone call. She believed this was the right thing and only thing to do, she believed this more than anything. That yes, she must find out if Hilary, her daughter’s birth mother, was somewhere out there.
    All this and more Iris thought about as she stood frozen by the sink with Tess watching her. It had been many years ago, in the summer of ’90, but Iris remembered: It’d been raining the day they met her at the Adoption Board offices. Steady gray rain falling all over Dublin. Streets gleaming. Hilary had kept her khaki raincoat on over a print skirt and white T-shirt. Her legs were bare and her loafers wet from walking. She was twenty-one or twenty-two. Iris remembers feeling sorry for her yet strangely elated that Hilary was choosing them. (That’s how it happened in those days.) Hilary had her pick of five couples. She didn’t say very much. She didn’t mention the birth father, or why she’d decided to place her baby up for adoption in Dublin. All they knew was she was an American student doing her master’s degree in Irish literature and the baby she’d given birth to just a few weeks earlier was already in the care of a foster mother. She was tall, Iris remembered. Tall and thin with dark shoulder-length hair that had a bit of curl to it. But that’s all she could remember. The encounter had been too brief to remember anything else. As their meeting was coming to a close, Luke asked, “Is there anything you’d like us to do?”
    â€œJust one thing,” she’d said. Iris looked at her. What color were her eyes? They were light. Were they blue or gray?
    â€œYes?” Luke said, reaching for Iris’s hand.
    â€œHer name—”
    Luke and Iris looked to each other. They’d already picked out a name.
    â€œWould you keep it?’
    â€œWell…” Luke started, “we actually picked—”
    â€œHer name is Rose.”
    â€œYou all right, pet?” Tess asked again and reached across the table.
    Iris came back from the memory. “Yes. Yes. I’m fine.”
    *   *   *
    Your life can change in a moment. In a moment you’re living or you’re dying. I’m afraid it’s not good news. Immediately after Tess left, Iris rang the Adoption Board in Dublin intending to explain her situation—all of it: Luke’s death; her upcoming callback to the Breast Clinic; Rosie alone in London and that she was coming to up to Dublin the following morning, but a recorded voice apologized. The office was closed. What was she thinking? It was nearly midnight.
    That night she tossed and turned in the too-big bed. When she came down to make herself hot milk in the small hours she saw that one poppy, but only one, had dropped its petals on the granite counter.

 
    Four
    The next morning was Tuesday. Feeling the particular kind of heaviness that comes with no sleep (and a little too much wine), Iris boarded the train for Dublin at Limerick Station armed only with a gardening magazine and a bottle of sparkling water and the notion that what she was doing was the only option. Dressed in what Rose called her “uniform”—smart olive green trousers with a camel-colored cardigan twin set—she’d even put on eyeliner and brought her lipstick. Where she was going she wanted to make a good impression.
    After twenty minutes the train left the outskirts of Limerick city and began its passage into the deep, green middle of the country, past the silver mines, into northern Tipperary, and into rich, horse-breeding farmland. Hedgerows of whitethorn blooming squared off green fields. She thumbed through Gardens Illustrated and read about treatments for a new strand of boxwood blight. She learned how applying cow dung to the base of plants would give