came to America to work as an au pair and who is scheduled to return to Ireland at the time she and Billy meet. She promises to return. After saving his money and sending it to Eva, she does not return, and Billy learns from Dennis that she has died. Devastated, Billy never recovers. Though he marries Maeve, the union is not really a success, and gradually he descends into years of alcoholism. It could be said that the death of Eva--which is a lie; she actually just took Billy's money and married a man in Ireland--"caused" Billy's grief. But the novel makes clear in the opening pages that alcoholism developed a life of its own in Billy:
Billy had drunk himself to death. He had, at some point, ripped apart, plowed through as alcoholics tend to do, the great, deep, tightly woven fabric of affection that was some part of the emotional life, the life of love, of everyone in the room.
Everyone loved him. . . . And if you loved him, we all knew, you pleaded with him at some point. Or you drove him to AA, waited outside the church till the meeting was over, and drove him
...