My European Summer Vacation

The least bad option seemed to me was to continue what we were doing. Enjoy a special time that was a blessing from God. Make it the very best time I could for Sinead. Then tell her all when we got to Boston, and all hell would break loose.

Full speed ahead! Add more sails! We'd crash hard on that reef in Boston which wasn't on Sinead's map but that I knew was there.

* * * *

We spent our last two weeks traveling around Ireland. We didn't go to Cork, and we didn't see Sinead's family. The vacation that had seemed like it would last forever was winding down. We had stuck to Sinead's budget, so she didn't have to borrow money from me. I knew I should be enjoying Ireland more than any other country, but the fact that the vacation was almost over was weighing heavily on me. I loved Sinead so much, and soon she'd be my sister and not my girlfriend.

All too soon we were flying to Boston. Our jet had three seats on each side and four seats in the middle. The only seats Sinead and I could get together without paying an extra fee were the two middle seats of the middle four seats. The flight would have been over seven hours of misery in the best of circumstances, but this was not the best of circumstances. I tried to sleep, or at least feigned trying to sleep, but my mind raced the whole flight.

The problem with kicking the can down the road is at some point, the road runs out. When we got to Boston, I had to tell Sinead I was her half-brother. All hell would break loose, and our relationship would be over. The only question was how ballistic would she go.

I thought about not telling her, but I quickly gave that up. I was going to go to my Dad's as soon as I dumped my stuff off at my apartment to tell my family about my summer in Europe. All Sinead had to do was to ask my Dad if he knew a Margaret Murphy who arrived in Boston twenty-two years ago. Dad would say yes and that he had married her, then the shit would hit the fan. For a brief moment, I thought about convincing Sinead to move to Miami with me instead of meeting my family, but I gave it up as ridiculous.

I prayed that my roommate would be spending Labor Day weekend somewhere else. That would give me plenty of time to privately give Sinead the bad news. Once I gave her the news, I'd face her rightful wrath. I hoped that I could convince her to embrace being my sister and being a big sister to Erin and Riley. I was close to my cousins, uncles, and aunts, and I thought Sinead would fit in well with them. Yes, she would be disappointed that her mom was dead and that I couldn't be her boyfriend anymore. Hell, I was going to be disappointed to not be her boyfriend anymore. Life with Sinead as a sister wouldn't be as good as life with Sinead as a girlfriend, but I think it would still be pretty sweet.

* * * *

"Doug!" I called out as I opened the apartment door. No response. Fantastic.

"Drop everything here, Sinead. I have something to show you in my bedroom."

We dropped all of our bags and went into my bedroom.

"This is a picture of my mom," I said as I picked up my Mom's engagement photo from my desk. "My mom Margaret Murphy from the Cork area of Ireland." I then recounted word-for-word to the best of my ability my conversation with her dad. Sinead was stunned, staggered.

"So, you've known for the last t'ree months why my mam left me and that she was dead, but you didn't tell me?"

"I didn't. I'm sorry you'll never get to meet your mom, but I want you to be a part of my family, to be a big sister to Erin and Riley. I think they'll love having you as a big sister."

"My Grandmam told me to tell my mam that she misses her, loves her, and forgives her; and you're telling me I'll never be able to give her that message?" Sinead was tearing up.

I sighed. "I'm telling you that." I felt like I was clubbing a baby seal. "Sinead, I know it's disappointing..."

"Disappointing? DISAPPOINTING? You have no fuckin' idea. I've lived my whole fuckin' life for this day, and you t'ink it's disappointing?"

Gotta change the subject. Family. Talk family.

"Sinead, it's not what you were expecting, but you're joining a wonderful family. You're going to love Erin and Riley."

"You're such a fuckin' gimp." I took the return of the Cork accent to be a very bad sign. "You have no clue, do you?"

Clue about what? "I know Erin and Riley are great kids, and you'll have a blast being a big sister to them."

"I don't need any more fuckin' siblings. I have t'ree brothers already. Half-brothers now la. They're gimps, but I love them. I wouldn't travel around Europe with one of them as me fella, fuckin' 'em every chance I could."

"I'm sorry, Sinead."

"Sorry? You're sorry? You're a sorry-ass excuse for a fella! You've ruined my life just when I t'ought I'd have everythin'."

"It's not going to be only Erin, Riley, and me. I'm close to my whole extended family. You have some wonderful cousins, aunts, and uncles who will love having you as part of the family."

"You're such a gimp. Why do you t'ink I left my hometown as soon as I could and then never went back?"

I was confused. I said what I thought was the obvious answer. "Maeve?"

"I was glad to live away from her, but she wasn't the main reason. The main reason was that I was tired of being the punchline of every joke in town." It seemed like Sinead was picking her words, shifting away from the Cork accent to American so she could explain this clearly to me. "Tired of people pointing me out to strangers then obviously telling them the story of my scandalous birth. I was always terrified in Cork that my friends would find out how I was a bastard and that my mam fled the country rather than raise me. I thought I was finally going to put that all behind me. Now, you want me to tell everyone that my dad is my mam's cousin? That she tricked him into getting her pregnant while he was engaged? That a year after I was born, she left me to my grandmam to raise while she moved to Boston? Do you want me to tell everyone that story about your mam?"

Sinead gave me a penetrating stare.

"No. No, I don't." I didn't want anyone to know that story about my mom. I particularly didn't want my sisters to know it. I loved my mom, and I wasn't going to ruin her reputation.

"I can't believe you lied to me the whole summer."

"I never lied to you, Sinead. I kept a big secret from you, but I never lied."

"You told me we were going to live together in Boston. Are you planning on me living with you, brother?"

I sighed. This was going very, very badly. "I agreed to us living together as a couple before I found out you were my sister. Since then, I've always said we'll have to see what my roommate said."

"Are you going to ask your roommate, brother?"

"No," I said weakly. She had me there.

"Then you fuckin' lied to me! You lied to me all summer! I've been planning on how we'll live happily together, and you knew it was never going to happen!"

I'd rather she threw me on the ground and kicked me.

"What am I supposed to tell my friends on Facebook?" Sinead continued. "The ones I've told all summer about what a great fella you are and how I'm looking forward to living with you?"

My plan had been for her to post something like "I'm not going to have time to Facebook in my new life in Boston" and then to stop using Facebook. It was a very bad plan, but I couldn't think of anything else. Probably not the best time to make that suggestion.

"I...don't have any good ideas."

"Because you're such a gimp! You've ruined everythin'!" Sinead was tearing up now. She sat down on my bed. "Everythin' is ruined", she muttered without looking at me. "I t'ought I was going to be so happy, and you've ruined it. I should have gone to Germany." Sinead looked up at me and pointed to the door. "Get out of here! Leave me alone!"

I felt low enough to slither under the door. As I left the room, I could hear Sinead sobbing behind me.

Well, that was a fucking disaster.

I had expected it to be bad, but I had never dreamed it would be that bad. I had held on like a lifeline to the idea that Sinead would be somewhat happy to join my family. I was going to miss her so much as a girlfriend, but I was going to be proud to introduce this beautiful, smart woman as my sister. Now, I realized that telling people she's my sister meant dragging Mom's name through the mud. And if she wasn't going to be my sister, what was she going to be? A friend? Rarely have I seen a couple stay friends after they break up, and Sinead has plenty of reasons to be bitter after our break up.

On the bright side, she didn't try to kill me.

That's about the only bright side. And she could always try when she comes out of the room.

I was sitting on the couch with my head in my hands. I had to do something physical. Something I had learned during my depression was to keep doing and keep moving. When I had done nothing, the blackness had overwhelmed me.

Our bags were in the living room. I hauled them over to the washing machine and emptied them. I sorted our clothes into darks and lights. I put the first load of lights into the washing machine and started it.

As I was organizing the other loads, Sinead came out of my bedroom. "Are there any other secrets you're keeping from me?" The tears were dried, but she was still pissed.

"No." I realized that the primal urge to deny would get me in deeper shit later. "Yes. I always planned for you to live with Dad. That way, I would have honored my promise to provide a place for you to live. Also, I really wanted you to be a big sister to Erin and Riley. They're about to become young women; they're going to be having womanly issues soon; and Dad and I will be of no help with those." I sighed. "Mom started dating Dad three months after she moved to Boston, and, two months later, she was pregnant with me. Dad did the right thing and married her when she was seven months pregnant." I smiled a little bit. "Mom and Dad were embarrassed by how close their wedding and my birth were, so they always told people that they were married a year more than they actually were."

"Anything else?"

"I am going to buy you the latest and greatest iPad for Christmas and then start using your old one."

Sinead gave me a little smile and shook her head. "I didn't need to know that. I mean secrets I would want to know."

"It's so hard to say. I've purposely not told you much about my parents because I didn't want you to figure out we had the same mom. I'm not purposely holding anything back."

"Did Mam ever say anything to make you suspect she had a daughter back in Ireland?"

"No. She never talked about her life before she came to Boston. Not to me, not to Dad, not to friends."

"Did she leave any letters that could be addressed to me?"

"No."

"I want to talk to your dad and find out if Mam said anything to him."

"Look - it was Dad's idea that I go to Cork to find out about Mom. It had always bothered him that Mom refused to talk about her life before she came to Boston. He told me as a last step before getting divorced, he and Mom had gone to marriage counseling. At counseling, he had brought up that he suspected that she had purposely gotten pregnant to force him to marry her. She had admitted she had. She had been terrified of being picked up by Immigration and being forced to go back to Ireland. But she had refused to say what she was so terrified of. If Dad told me that, he wouldn't have held back on Mom mentioning she had a child in Ireland or she had left a letter to be given to someone named Sinead who stopped by."

Sinead processed that for a moment. "So our Mam purposely got pregnant with your Dad like she did with mine?"

"Yes, though it worked out better for her with my dad."

"Why didn't your parents divorce?"

"What?"

"Why didn't your parents divorce? I'm curious."

Sinead didn't sound so pissed. Was she genuinely interested? Or was she probing to see if she could catch me in another lie?

"Once Mom admitted she had purposely gotten pregnant, she apologized to Dad and promised to do anything to make it up to him. That was the turning point as Dad had always been angry about missing out on so much because he had become a father so soon. Mom's offer made him think about what he really wanted in life. Dad thought about buying a new truck or going out to bars regularly with his buddies, but he wound up choosing to have more kids. It was a financial struggle raising the three of us, but Dad was willing to make those sacrifices for a bigger family."

That seemed to convince Sinead that Dad had told me all he knew about Mom's past. "So there was no point in my coming to Boston. I might as well have gone to Germany."

"With you in Boston, I can show you pictures of your mom. Would you like that?"

"Aye." Sinead brightened. "Aye, I would."

I went to my computer and found my picture folder named "Family". I started at the oldest photo and worked backward.

"Here's one of my family right before Christmas Eve Mass." We were dressed to the nines.

"Mam was pretty."

"She was."

"And your dad is handsome. Like you." Sinead smiled at me.

"This is Mom with Erin right after she had performed in The Nutcracker at her ballet school." Mom was smiling proudly as she clasped Erin.

We went steadily through all of the pictures of Mom, with me providing the story behind each picture. We eventually reached the first picture that I ever took, one of Mom holding Erin minutes after she was born.

"May I look at these alone?" Sinead asked.

"Sure."

"Do you mind if I look at other pictures?"

"Look at anything you want. I'm done hiding things from you."

I left the bedroom and sat down on the couch in the living room. I was glad I had thought of looking at pictures as that seemed to soothe Sinead's anger. I tried to think of things of Mom's I could give Sinead. But how could I justify to Dad giving something of Mom's to Sinead? Then I started thinking about what kind of relationship Sinead and I were going to have.

Do something. Move.

I was hungry. Sinead and I had eaten something light at the airport when we landed. I went into the kitchen and looked into the refrigerator - a to-go box from a restaurant, many condiments from various fast food places, and lots of beer. I opened the freezer to find three frozen pizzas. In the pantry, I discovered a collection of most of the chips known to man. The one cookable thing in the pantry was a box of mac and cheese.

"Dinosaur shapes. Awesome."

I put water on to boil and then opened up the package. I pitched the package of artificial cheese-like powder. I'd come up with something better.

I went back to the fridge and found some spreadable butter. A butter sauce was kind of bland but better than nothing. Then I noticed a little tub of garlic sauce for dipping pizza crust into. While I boiled the pasta, I worked on finding the right proportion of garlic sauce and melted spreadable butter.

Once lunch was ready, I knocked on the door to my bedroom and then opened it. Sinead was sitting on my bed thinking. One of the few pictures I had taken of only Mom was up on my PC. "Sinead, lunch."

"It smells wonderful," said Sinead as she sat down to eat.

I told her about how I had made the meal.

"You're amazing," said Sinead. "Thanks for making lunch and thanks for doing the laundry. If I was your girlfriend, I'd do other chores in return. But now that I'm your sister, I'll just have to say thanks."

"I thought we weren't going to be brother and sister."

"We can be when it's only the two of us. And I prefer sister to former girlfriend."

"Okay." I preferred brother to former boyfriend. "We're transitioning."

I wondered briefly about what chores Sinead had planned on doing. I was certain she had a list of how we would split the chores. But why bother asking about it as we weren't going to be living together?

"Sinead, I just want to say that I love you and..."

"How can you say that?! How can you say that after you lied to me all summer?! When you knew that you'd hurt me so badly today?!"

Sinead was tearing up. She went from zero to sixty incredibly fast. I knew that she had lots of reasons to be angry, but I was starting to hit my limit for abuse.

"Let me finish. I just want to say that I love you, and it's killed me all summer knowing my love for you was going to hurt you today. I knew that the more I loved you, the more it would hurt you; but I couldn't stop loving you more and more. I'm sorry I could never figure out a way to love you without hurting you today."

That seemed to phase Sinead. "I'm sorry that I'm so angry. I wish that you had told me sooner, but I understand why you waited - you had sworn an oath to my dad."

"Don't blame your dad. I had thought several times of telling you this summer, but telling you today always seemed like the least bad option. Perhaps it was because I enjoyed being your boyfriend so much that I couldn't give it up. I wouldn't have told you today if I could have avoided it."

"But at least you told me. That was more than my dad ever did. You don't understand how important my mam was to me. All my life, the thing I wanted most was to meet her and for her to tell me that she had loved me when I was born, that she loved me when I was little, and that she still loved me now; and that she was proud of the woman that I had become. Now that's been taken away from me forever."

"Have you ever considered that you aren't the only one who wanted to put the scandal of your birth behind them?" I knew I shouldn't have said it as soon as the words started coming out of my mouth, but I couldn't stop the urge to push back. "Have you ever considered what Mom would think when you showed up on her doorstep? She had spent her whole time in Boston refusing to tell everyone close to her about her life in Ireland, and you expected her to greet you with open arms?"

Sinead stood up, her face flushed with anger. "I did! And she would have! She would have because...because...because she was my mam!"

Sinead ran out of the kitchen and into my bedroom, slamming the door behind her.

I was disgusted with myself. It had been a cruel thing to say, and what was the point of saying it? So I could feel a little better about crushing her dreams about Mom?

I emptied the dishwasher and put our dishes in. I moved the lights to the dryer and started a load of darks. I then sat back down on the couch.

What was going to happen between Sinead and me? Probably the best thing would be for her to go to Germany. She could stay with some of her friends from college there. She could get a job programming. She could come up with some story about how I turned into a total jerk once she got to Boston. Maybe I expected to be able to share her with my friends? Who knows? I'd pay for her plane ticket. I'd show her around Boston today and tomorrow, and then she'd fly to Germany on Tuesday.

I hoped she would want to stay in touch. I didn't think I could handle being friends on Facebook, to see a steady feed of her being happy somewhere else without me. She'd find a new boyfriend soon enough. Perhaps we would email each other once a month. I really did want to keep in touch.

Do something. Move.

I found a pathetically underpowered vacuum cleaner in the closet. The carpet looked like it hadn't been vacuumed since Doug and I moved in. I was doing my best to suck up chip crumbs when I felt someone touch my arm. I turned off the vacuum.

Sinead said, "Please come hold me."

We went into my bedroom, and Sinead got on the bed. I took off my shoes and socks and got on the bed too. She leaned into me, and I wrapped my arms around her.

"You were right," said Sinead bitterly. "Mam had such a wonderful life - a handsome husband, three wonderful kids, a great marriage, and friends who probably thought the world of her. Why would she risk all that for me? As you said, she had put the scandal of my birth behind her. Why would she want to share it with everyone because I showed up at her door?"