Generation

by Paula McGrath

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

'A remarkable first novel' Sunday Times 'She takes a step closer to the mineshaft and it's as if she steps back in time. Her grandfather is standing where she is standing now, a young man not much older than she is, who knows nothing about the future, nothing about her.' Generation is a short novel that contains a huge amount, taking place over eighty years, three continents and three generations. At its heart is Áine, a recently divorced woman in her thirties who wants some kind of escape from her life in Ireland: from her ex-husband and his pregnant girlfriend, her mundane job and unexciting love life. So she goes to stay for a few weeks on an organic farm near Chicago, with her six-year-old daughter Daisy. The trip doesn't turn out as she imagined it would, and that summer will have unforeseeable consequences for everyone involved. Ambitious and gripping, Generation moves effortlessly from the smallest of details to the largest of canvases, as the repercussions of the decisions taken by parents play out in the lives of their children for years to come.

Release date: July 30, 2015

Publisher: JM Originals

Print pages: 256

Sample

Sheets of rain on the windshield. Wipers can’t keep up. The faithful Dead for company. Twisted. Broken. Thick, furred, out of practice, can’t remember the last time he spoke. Some girl on Skype. Vietnam? No, China. Stutters and starts. Non-starter. No English. No connection. Next.

A dirty brown sludge at the side of the road, all that’s left of the snow. The drip-drip-drip from the roof is what brings each spring to him, his wake-up call, his thaw. Get up. Get out. Get stocked up. Hurry. Make a list. Lists. Where’s the list? He riffles through the open glove compartment. He put it right here. Where is it? Now what? What was on his list? Early start. He can’t remember. Late last night he was full of ideas. Murky half-memories now. Goddamn.

He hates the city. City boy, hates it now. Super early, so no one’s on the road. He’ll get in before the wholesaler’s open. Grab a coffee at the gas station on the way. A gnaw somewhere deep reminds him of hunger, led by the body, the real deal. He nods at the recognition, in rhythm with the music; he’s super hungry. It’s been a while. It’s that time of year again all right. He’ll get one of their awesome hotdogs. The right toppings, plenty of the green sauce, hit the spot. Couple of dollars. You can keep your fancy restaurants.

Should be an email waiting when he gets back. Six hours ahead. Calculates, it’s … eleven thirty there, she’s at work. I love the outdoors, nature, growing things, yada-yada. At least she speaks English.

Slap of tyres on the tarmac. Black rain, black sky. No line separating the one from the other. Tell her that. Couldn’t make out where the road ended and the sky began. She seems to like that poetic shit.

Each of her emails sounds like a résumé, with a shitload of flirting thrown in. I love picking fruit. I picked strawberries every summer when I was growing up. I really love that photo where you’re picking peppers. That’s the one where he has his shirt off. They all go for that one. Are your eyes really that brown? Reckon she fits somewhere between wwoofer and online dater. She’d clean up the house at least. It looks like shit. Always does, this time of year. Last year’s woman got it into some kind of order.

He’ll ease off on the weed. He’s out now anyway. Rolled the last joint last night. Won’t let the same thing happen next fall. No way. This time he’ll be ready. He’ll go to the mountains. Take a hike. Start juicing. Get healthy again. Make some changes around the farm. Lose the beard. Meet someone.

He’s pretty sure she’s not the one. But she’ll fill the gap. Someone to talk to. Divorced with a kid. They’re always the neediest, always the top of his list. He’ll ask her. Ask her today. Come on over, check out the farm. Bring your kid. Throw it in, casual.

For maybe a mile he’s optimistic. Hell, he’ll call her up. Surprise her. Get her all set up on Skype. Wonder what her voice sounds like?

He wonders what his own voice sounds like. Winters are hard. Send him down into himself. He can’t seem to help it. Soon as he smells the rot of fall, he’s gone. The woodiness, the mould, it fills him full of holes. When the fall air starts to blow right through him he knows it’s time to retreat. Hide away in his smoky den to hold himself together. He gives a short laugh. Her needy could never match his needy. Driving like this, on his own, sometimes he thinks he’s so full of holes he could just fall apart.

Sing it, Phil. Ah, good ol’ Gerry. That was the Soldier Field gig. ’Ninety-five – or was it six? That was one heck of a gig. ‘Box of Rain’. Which box to put this one in? Works in an office. Seen the photos. Skirts and nylons, that bullshit. Looks a bit lame. Not a worker. Wait. Will she even be home from work when he gets back? She has to be. He needs her to be. Needs someone, anyone. She’s the only one he’s written to this year, if he doesn’t count the Chinese. He only had energy for one. Pulling it out of himself, the lines, through his fingertips into his emails, lines she’ll want to read. It worked. She was hooked. He can tell by now, the ones who’re worth his while. He calculates. He sent his mail before he left. Sent another before he dozed off. And one before that. And … OK, so he sent a few. She must’ve been busy. Sleeping. The kid. Whatever. He checked, um, twenty times, more? No reply. No New Mail freaks him out. His breath gets shorter, fast. Even thinking about it. She should have replied by the time he gets back though. Surely?

His hands prickle with perspiration. He tries to ignore his racing pulse. Least thing sets it off when he quits the weed. One of his hands leaves the steering wheel of its own accord. It’s patting his pants leg, the pocket on the thigh, the hip. The other side. Where he keeps a small emergency stash. Just to get through it. There … There you are, you little beauty. He eases out the plastic coin-bag. Glances down. Sweet. A bit dusty, but enough for one last joint. Make it last. A few more hours, get him over the worst. Roll it at the gas station, he’s thinking, but he’s already feeding the wheel clockwise through his hands and the van is crossing over into the emergency lane and slowing.

His hands are shaking but they are well practised and in no time he has the paper between his lips, the car lighter at the other end, and he is pulling the pungent smoke into his lungs. Already the dirty graveyard-hour has lightened to predawn grey, and now the jagged edges of his mind begin to soften. He sings along with the Dead. Hell, there’s that darn list, over there on the dashboard the whole time. How’d he miss it before?

He chuckles quietly to himself as he pulls back into traffic.

Silvia and his youngest are arguing inside. Tia does not speak with respect. Carlos does not know how to deal with her. His first girl, Rosa, comes every day, she kisses her Mama and her Papa, she helps in the kitchen, she serves lunch, she kisses them again when she goes back to her husband. She is a good girl. I missed you, Papa, she always said when he came back each year. I miss you, Papa, she says still. When she was little she followed him around everywhere, when he was home.

In the middle is his serious Isabel. She always has her head in a book, always studying.

—I want to go to high school, Papa. I want to go to college. I’m going to be a lawyer when I grow up. I’m going to go to the United States and be a lawyer.

—Then I will retire good, he told her. I will retire early and go live with my daughter, the big shot lawyer. But before you become a lawyer, how about you kiss your Papa?

He has to remind this one. She has too many books, too many words in her head. He didn’t believe she would be a lawyer. Children say these things. But here she is, his daughter, a student in U de G, studying law, when he himself did not even finish grade school. It makes him feel proud, like he made the right decision, always away from home, always working.

This time she tells him she will not emigrate. She will stay here, in Guadalajara. She tells him Mexico needs its educated young people. Besides, she wants to be here to take care of her Mama and her Papa when they get old.

—I am old already, he tells her.

—No you’re not, Papa, she says, kissing his forehead. But you work too hard.

Hard work he learned from his father. As a child he went to school for the morning session, then he would take his lunch to the river and sit under a tree in the shade, listen to the frogs and cicadas until their clicks and low rumbles sent him into a torpor, only to stretch himself awake when the main heat of the sun was gone. Then it was time to help his father. No rushing. No panic. Have lunch, then siesta. Then work. Work in the fields until the light was all gone. No matter if the muscles grew tired.

Not like the gringo. He is always rushing, always panicking. The five-year plans, the crop-rotation charts, the accounts. But then, he lies in his bed for two hours after the sun comes up, finishes the day at five o’clock. How does that make sense? He is no farmer, that is for sure. Carlos thinks he is a little bit crazy. Harmless crazy, but you never know. He has dumb ideas: Carlos, do this, Carlos, do that. Yes, sir, he says, even though it is crazy. Fence this, dig that, pipe this, it takes a week, three weeks, six weeks. Doesn’t matter. At the end of each week, he gets a wad of dollars from the crazy hippy gringo, takes it to Western Union in Rockford, and sends most of it to Silvia.

He doesn’t need much for himself. His room: bed, bedside table, a box where he keeps his clothes. He has his pictures of Silvia, the girls. It is always a shock when he goes back and the girls no longer look like their pictures. He feels as if they have cheated him. Do they feel the same? He thinks he is a stranger to them, he tells Silvia. To Tia especially. He doesn’t know how to talk to her. Silvia says it’s because sixteen is a difficult age. She is always at a difficult age, it seems to Carlos. But what does he know. He is never there.

At the start the gringo wanted Carlos to live at the farm, sleep in one of the bedrooms. Bad idea, the worst of ideas, but the gringo did not see this. Great idea, he says. It’d be great, my man. Save rent, save gas. Bring your family here. He talks fast. Drive anyone crazy, like him. My man. Bring your family. Carlos’ mouth tightens. Silvia would not like what she would see there. It is filthy, everywhere filthy. The idea of bringing his wife, who will not sit until everything is scrubbed white, swept clean. It is an insult, telling him to bring his family. The man lives worse than a dog. Alone. Never sees his own family, but wants some other family to live in his house with him. The gringo’s father, he comes out to the farm in his fancy car. Money there. An only child, too. He tries, he asks how things work. What’s new? he asks. It is hard, talking to your children when they grow up. They do not want to talk to you anymore. The gringo ignores his father, acts like he’s insulted, like his father is spying on him. What’s new? the father asks, and the gringo turns his back, walks away to the hoophouses, leaves his father standing there, helpless, a man trying to be a father to his son.

An invisible band around Carlos’ chest tightens. No, he does not want to think about fathers, sons. Not today. Not when he is about to leave again. He will deal with that another day, every other day.

Inside the house the voices are raised.

—It is your father’s last night …

—He won’t care.

—I care, Letitia.

A door slams.

Silvia is the one who holds the family together, keeps everyone on track in school, at home, at church, keeps them fed and healthy, makes all the decisions. She is a strong woman. She has to be, when he is not here. When he is here, she tries to act like he is the head of the house. He tries to go along with it, but they are not good at pretending.

She comes out to the porch and sits beside him.

—Tia wants to go to the Spring Break dance with her school friends. Some boy will be there.

—It’s tonight?

—Mm hm. Tonight.

—It’s OK, Silvia – he begins.

—It’s not OK, Carlos, Silvia interrupts. It’s not OK for your daughter to go out with her friends when her father is leaving for six months. Besides, I don’t like the sound of this boy.

He hears in her voice that she is thinking about another time, another leaving. She is thinking, is this the last time? Is this the time he won’t come back?

Antonio did not want to stay in Guadalajara, become a drone for IBM or HP. He wanted to travel, see something of the world. He wanted adventure.

—Come to Chicago, Carlos told his nephew Antonio when he complained about school. He had turned seventeen the week before, same as Rosa. They celebrated their birthdays together, Antonio and Rosa, always letting Tia cheat with the piñata. Already seven years ago now.

Already, he’d had adventures with the graffiti, and a gang of boys his father, Carlos’ brother Ramón, did not like. Ramón was worried Antonio was falling in with a bad crowd. Today it’s graffiti, tomorrow it’s drugs, gangs, guns. Come to Chicago. There is plenty of work. Why, why did he encourage him?

Silvia was unhappy.

—What is wrong with clean, easy work, good pay? Here, near his family.

—Let him get it out of his system, Carlos said. Some good hard work in the fields, or in the factories. It will make him happy to work for the IBMs.

He was pleased with himself, with his plan for his nephew.

Antonio. He could have stayed, with Ramón and his mother and his brothers. He would be safe there now, if Carlos had not encouraged him.

—Why, Papa, why did you take Antonio away? the then nine-year-old Tia demanded when he came back, when he told them what had happened. Why did you take away my cousin?

She was pounding on his chest, tears and snot running down her face.

The desert, scrubby, dry, the sky a searing white-blue. The air hums with heat. A lizard darts under a rock nearby. They must wait, in whatever shade they can find. Carlos knows how the boy’s heart is pounding, that it is adrenaline alone that keeps it pumping. It is dangerous, but Carlos has done the crossing several times by now, knows how much you have to pay the Coyote, knows if you play by their rules they will get you there safely. Fifteen hundred each up front, fifteen hundred when the job is done. Don’t make trouble, and you don’t get trouble. They might be gangsters, but they are also businessmen. He tells Antonio this while they wait.

—It’s cool, Uncle, Antonio says. But his eyes are darting, his muscles tensed.

It will be good for him, Carlos thinks, this border crossing. It is dangerous, but let him call it adventure if he wants adventure. Then the hard work, the dull, hard work. He will return home and go straight into a college course before summer ends.

They wait until the sun makes red gashes across the darkening sky, then they make a run for the river.

Carlos has a visa now. The gringo fixed it for him. This evening he will take the fad. . .