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By the same authorFICTION The South The Heather Blazing The Story of the Night The Blackwater Lightship The Master Mothers and Sons BrooklynNON-FICTION Bad Blood: A Walk Along the Irish Border Homage to Barcelona The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe Love in a Dark Time: Gay Lives from Wilde to Almodóvar Lady Gregory’s ToothbrushPLAY Beauty in a Broken Place

Copyright © 2011 by Colm Tóibín

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Tóibín, Colm, 1955– The empty family : stories / Colm Tóibín. Also issued in electronic format. eISBN: 978-0-7710-8434-8 I. Title. PR6070. 044E46 2011 823. 914 C2010-904116-X

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

“One Minus One” and “The Colour of Shadows” were previously published in The New Yorker; “The Pearl Fishers” and “Barcelona, 1975” in the Dublin Review; “Silence” in Boulevard Magenta, published by IMMA; “Two Women” in the Financial Times; and “The Empty Family” in Vija Celmins: Dessins/Drawings, published by the Centre Pompidou. “The Street” first appeared in McSweeney’s and is also published in a limited edition by Tuskar Rock Press.

McClelland & Stewart Ltd. 75 Sherbourne Street Toronto, Ontario M5A 2P9

v3. 1

For Anthony Cronin

Contents

Cover

Other Books by This Author

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

One Minus One

Silence

The Empty Family

Two Women

The Pearl Fishers

The New Spain

The Colour of Shadows

Barcelona, 1975

The Street

Acknowledgements

One Minus One

The moon hangs low over Texas. The moon is my mother. She is full tonight, and brighter than the brightest neon; there are folds of red in her vast amber.

Maybe she is a harvest moon, a Comanche moon. I have never seen a moon so low and so full of her own deep brightness. My mother is six years dead tonight, and Ireland is six hours away and you are asleep.

I am walking. No one else is walking. It is hard to cross Guadalupe; the cars come fast. In the Community Whole Food Store, where all are welcome, the girl at the checkout asks me if I would like to join the store’s club. If I pay seventy dollars, my membership, she says, will never expire, and I will get a seven per cent discount on my purchases.

Six years. Six hours. Seventy dollars. Seven per cent. I tell her I am here for a few months only, and she smiles and says that I am welcome. I smile back. The atmosphere is easy, casual, gracious.