Brooklyn

by Colm Tóibín

“It’s a funny place, Brooklyn,” Father Flood said. “As long as the guy in charge is not Norwegian—and in a college that’s unlikely—then I can pull strings most places.

Eilis wondered for a moment what might happen were she to interrupt her mother and say: “I am married.” She thought her mother would have a way of not hearing her, or of pretending that she had not spoken. Or else, she imagined, the glass in the window might break.