Shannon has been quiet since I got off the plane. His small mouth is silhouetted by the sun over the lawn furniture and bushes that continue into the hills at a comfortable distance. We find ourselves alone in an Irish woman's breakfast room in Blarney, Ireland around nine in the morning.
While Shannon chews, everything is silent.
"Why do you like Engineering, Shannon?" I ask.
"Because I feel like I can make anything. If a boss asks me to do something, I can do it," he says.
I look down at the table, fascinated.
"Could you make this table? And this spoon! And this sausage!"
"No, I couldn't make the sausage," he says.
"The people are really the ones who kept me in Engineering," Shannon says.
We finish our cafe con leche and orange juice and listen to The Dispatch from Shannon's cell phone on our twin beds while we wait for mom to blow dry her hair. Dad is sleeping. Our room is so pink we are scared.
"I've never been a little girl before," Shannon said as the Irish woman closed the door to our room behind her. "This will be a new experience."
We watch BBC and I become emotionally attached to a boy who makes bricks out of mud on his knees all day. We listen to The Kings of Leon, The White Stripes and Jack Johnson through Shannon's cell phone and spend half an hour looking for a place to eat, arguing outside of the bathroom because, "They should have expected this." Shannon shakes his head throughout the rest of the trip saying, "Babies." I read Eating Animals and become a vegetarian. Shannon and I go for a walk around the river. There is a Burger King next to a McDonalds next to a burger place we have never heard of. All are equally populated. A bathroom in either is equally difficult to find. There is a little sign in McDonalds that says "Bathrooms" leading to stairs, at which case Shannon puts his head against the wall and says, "Fuck my life." We buy chocolate shakes from McDonalds.
The sky in Cork reminds me of chocolate shakes.
We walk along small roads with our suitcases. "Hey!" I shout. "Where are we going?"
"Shannon knows where we're going." Dad says. "He just won't tell anyone."
"He has no idea where we're going," I say.
There are layers of bushes around us.
Mom tells me that I should wear her special socks when I'm pregnant. She develops a rash in Dublin because of the all the sun exposure mixed with her antibiotics she has to take and gets mad at us for going off on our own. "I can't be in the sun," she says.
"Well why are you wearing a tank top!"
Later in the pink room Shannon says, "Fuck my life. You should have seen them before you got here. They're children. Dad can't be happy unless everything's perfect. That's why I almost killed him. Playing golf. I had the golf club in my hand."
"What!" I say.
"He apologized in time and I put it down," he says.
I am resting in the twin bed next to his, "Would you say most of your life, most of your day, was taken up by," I can't finish my sentence because I am laughing so hard.
"I'm going to beat you with my book," Shannon says.
"This is a good question!" I say, "By reading or talking."
"Watching TV," he says. "I'm trying to change that."
"How many times have you thought of the boys with the bricks?" I ask.
"None," he says.
"Did you know there are more slaves today than four centuries ago? Wait, I think I just mis-quoted that," I say.
"Did I just make this up?" Shannon says. "I'm gonna beat you with this book."
Meanwhile, I am so happy every time I read a newspaper in a breakfast place or hotel lobby in Ireland, I can't even finish reading. In my little book I write: "Beneath the relationship lies a nervousness on the US part and they leave nothing to chance." - Irish Independent
We find ourselves in The Natural Museum of Ireland looking up at skeletons of giant Irish deer. Large amounts of Irish children crowd the room, which is full of shelves of bird and ape skeletons, human heads, insects, stuffed models of lions, jared squid. "This is the last place you want to be with a hangover," Dad says. Kids of all ages are screaming. Shannon says something looking up at them like, "Giant Irish Deer, well this is awesome." He does not compare the Natural Museum of Ireland to the Louvre.
In the car, instead of freaking out, Mom and Dad figure out our coordinates like civil residents of the rented car. "Look at how well we've trained them," Shannon says, raising his eyebrows behind his Iphone.
"What wonderful people I created," Mom says. We are no longer allowed to make fun of her because who paid for this vacation?
"Wow, Honey," Dad says.
"I don't want anyone else to make fun of me," Mom says.
Shannon hits his head against the wall. I fill up my cheeks up with air and make Shannon hit it out.
"You're so dumb," he says.
I laugh and cry at the same time.
Shannon reads Jailbird on the plane to Madrid. His response is this: "At first it was kinda sad, but then it got really funny!" In Madrid, Shannon and I reflect on Ireland. "We were so close to finally doing something cool," Shannon says, looking down at his suitcase. The stoop of the Hostel I booked in Puerta del Sol was occupied by a drunk by the time we rolled our suitcases through the mass of protesters and their tents. Mom blows out the electricity with her hair dryer the next morning and bangs on our door, telling us to get up because we are going to find someplace else to stay.
"Was there construction out there last night?" I ask Shannon in fear of construction dust coating all my underwear I hung out the window to dry.
"No," he says. "The drummer was under the window."
I start cracking up.
We begin to refer to the protesters as the tent people. There are "No Mas Violencia Contra los Animales" signs and lottery tickets and a mariachi band, which, to Dad, seems the most out of place.
"We'll just tell the tent people it'll only cost them 3 euros to use our shower!" Dad says. "We'll pay for our room!" and I become annoyed because Dad keeps saying, "Hey Rachel, get a picture of that."
"I don't want a picture of it," I say.
"I think it's worth a picture," he says.
"I don't want to look at that Church all day," I say.
"It's pretty impressive," he says.
I have to show them how the light comes into the camera so the pictures they take of me aren't too bright.
"We have to take more pictures of Rachel," Mom says to Dad behind me on the bus.
Dad is amazed the kids are out so late and our waiter looks at his wrist when we tell him we are just going to share two Paella, agreeing to make the food only after I throw out "compartir." Just then, a bunch of attractive-sounding Americans sit down behind me and Dad says it's no wonder everyone's still out this late! More kids run past us. "There's no structure!" Dad says. "Catholicism failed!" The paella is gross and no one wants to eat their crawfish. "Those girls were smarter than they looked," Shannon says as they leave the table behind me for someplace else.
Shannon against the railing saying, "Fuck my life. You guys think you have problems? Do you have to walk around with your parents all day to try to find something to eat?"
I sit on the bed.
"All around the world it's the same problem," I say.
"How many days do we have left?" Shannon says.
The man playing the accordion for the line of people waiting to see inside the Royal Palace of Madrid is too happy. It makes me love him. Mom is using her umbrella for shade and Shannon is looking past us at the Palace.
"Look at those clouds," I tell him. "They're beautiful."
"The fucking clouds are prettier," Shannon says, looking over at the accordion player whose face has begun to seem less composed.
"He's so hot. No one's paying him," I say.
"It can only be you, Rachel," Shannon says.
Walking past the metal collectors and rows of jean jackets and parrots on the side of the road.
Inside the Palace Dad exclaims, "This was worth the whole trip!"
Shannon says, "Time to play Guess That Asian! Japanese, Chinese, or some kind of Pacific Islander?"
"Chinese" I say.
"Correct!" He says.
"How do you know?" I ask.
"They were speaking Chinese," he says.
I take them to a place called Caixa and we look at an exhibit of Russian architecture. "Why is this exhibit about this?" Mom asks.
"You don't have to be sarcastic with me, Rachel," she says.
"Why not?" I say.
"It all looks pretty bleak," Dad says.
Out the window someone spray painted: "I remember and I miss you," on a white wall.
The pattern of my pajamas and the curtains in the mirror of the hotel room. Another accordion player mouthing, "Hola," and how much money we're losing on the dollar. Mom undressing, "I'm so impressed with the Moors and so unimpressed with the Catholics. Whenever my patients tell me they're going to Europe I'm going to say, Great! Take a tour!" And I couldn't believe how beautiful she looked putting lotion on her legs and hands after she changed into her peach night gown--how her face looked so soft and warm, and she smiled. I wasn't even surprised when she discovered the lump a month after she got home, or afterwards, when the doctor took it out and told me that it didn't look malignant at all.
