Free The Pub Across the Pond by Mary Carter

for them to keep drowning their sorrows at the pub,” Becca said. Carlene laughed. “Oh,” Becca said. She grabbed Carlene’s hand and put it on her stomach. Carlene pretended to feel the baby kick. “Shane wants to win a pub in Ireland, don’t you, Shane?” Becca rubbed her stomach.
    â€œShane?” Carlene said.
    â€œOr Shania,” Becca said.
    â€œShane or Shania Weinstein,” Carlene said. “What does Levi think?”
    â€œLoves them,” Becca said. She gave Carlene a look. Carlene laughed.
    â€œI would just die. I would just die to win a pub in Ireland,” Becca said. “Wouldn’t you?”
    Carlene wasn’t going to answer. It was probably a rhetorical question. Becca often pretended to listen, when in reality she wasn’t listening at all. And you couldn’t tell by looking at her because she had perfected the I’m-listening look. A slight tilt of the head, index finger poised by her lip, eyes on the speaker, chin up. Often, when Carlene was done spinning a tale or spilling her guts, she would discover Becca had actually been formulating the menu for an upcoming dinner party in her head, or rearranging the seating chart, or mentally grocery shopping, and once she even admitted to listing, in chronological order, every song in Xanadu .
    And Carlene really would die to win a pub in Ireland. Unlike Becca, whose entire family, both maternal and paternal, had come from Israel, Carlene actually had Irish heritage. Her maternal great-great-great-grandmother, Mary Margaret, came to America from County Mayo when she was only sixteen. The Troubles were in full swing when Mary Margaret’s mother passed, and her father joined the IRA. Mary Margaret was sent to Philadelphia to live with a cousin. Carlene’s maternal grandmother, Jane, who lived four years longer than Carlene’s mother, used to sit with Carlene drinking tea and regaling her with stories of far, far-away relatives who were from a magical place the Good Lord had blessed with soaring cliffs that hovered over the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, and rolling hills with a thousand shades of green.
    Sometimes, Carlene’s grandmother would put an album on the record player and sing along with an Irish ballad—“Danny Boy,” and “The Fields of Athenry,” and “The Rose of Tralee”—and Carlene would be transported into another world. A world of fiddles, flutes, harps, guitars, pianos, and tin whistles. Haunted windswept voices sang of life, land, beauty, death, drink, regret, mothers who were still alive, and hills with a thousand shades of green. There were days when her grandmother would refuse to sing because she “didn’t have the pipes” or the pipes were leaking, so Carlene would try to sing along instead. When songs spilled into her grandmother’s tiny, dark sitting room, Carlene’s chest would fill and expand as if it were about to burst. On rare occasions, Carlene’s grandmother would get up and dance.
    Carlene loved these moments with her grandmother, but above all, it was her stories she cherished the most. When it came to hearing about her long-lost relatives, Carlene was a bottomless pit, constantly begging for more. There weren’t nearly enough stories for Carlene to hold on to, so she would often replay the same ones in her head, adding and deleting details, until she could no longer separate fact from fiction. Stories about her great-great-great-grandmother walking to Catholic school and passing Protestant children who would yell out, “cat lickers, cat lickers,” to which they would respond, “prote-stinkers, prote-stinkers!”
    Or stories about James and Charles, the twins. Those great-great-great-uncles were black sheep, her grandmother said, but they still had hearts of gold. They must be something, Carlene thought, for like Mary Margaret from County Mayo, her grandmother said James and Charles