Perfectly Preventable Deaths

by Deirdre Sullivan

  Brian’s accent is strange, a little sing-songy. We thought it would be the way everyone in the village spoke, but they don’t. It’s only him.

  I think about Mamó, about losing everything. My skin feels too warm underneath my coat. I want to go inside, to sit in the kitchen and drink tea. Brian is telling me things I need to know, but my head is swimming a little or something.

  I feel his hand on my arm.

  ‘You look flushed, Madeline. Are you all right?’

  ‘I feel …’

  ‘You must be coming down with whatever Catlin has. And there’s me, walking you around in the cold. Apologies.’

  ‘No, Brian, it’s OK. I’m glad we talked.’

  He grins at me. ‘Me too. And if I’m ever getting ahead of myself with this stepdad business, let me know. I’m new to it. I’m learning.’

  ‘You’re doing fine.’ I hold up my tea. ‘Gold star.’

  ‘Thank you, Madeline.’

  I think of the lonely child Brian was, and the lost woman returning to the village she grew up in. I finger the little packet of salt I keep in my pocket. We all need comfort. Things to keep us safe. The more you get to know people, the more broken it seems we all are. Is that what growing up is? The world hurting you over and over and over again.

  Brian goes up to his office to finish some paperwork. I sit at the kitchen table. Mam is starting dinner, sliding the knife across bright red bell peppers until they’re thin. She puts them in a bowl and dices onions.

  ‘Do you have homework to do, or are you going to help me?’ she asks.

  I tell her yes to both. It feels more normal than I’ve felt today.

  At dinner, I shake a little salt into my hand. Look at it. My finger still feels warm. I could be coming down with something maybe – my fever feeling hasn’t gone away. My heartbeat slows as I hold the white grains in my fist.

  Mam takes my hand. ‘Put that in the bin, love. There’s no need.’

  I do what she tells me, feeling like a freak. Mamó is in the garden, burying something. The body of one of her many enemies, I suppose. I think of what Brian said. I should be kinder.

  Mamó finishes what it was that she was doing, and strides away. Her back is very straight and very proud. I feel the absence of the salt in my hand, and go back to the table.

  I barely taste the dinner going down.

  10

  Aspen

  (bedding, heat)

  Salt. I wake up in a dark room needing salt. The posts of my bed pierce the night like the trunks of skinny trees. I cannot see the branches. Empty nest outside my window waits. I need to look at it. I need to touch it. The shock of the warm floor under my bare feet. Underfloor heating, I tell myself, feeling the faint growls beneath the surface. It’s warm enough to feel as if it’s alive.

  I crack the window open and reach my hand out, feel for the small nest. Inside it is a small, fat egg. Round as a raindrop, cold as a stone. It is heavy to the touch. It’s winter. The mountain wind bites into my skin. I hold the egg in my hand. Pull it to me, close the window. The night can stay outside.

  I look at it. It’s creamy-coloured, splashed with reddish brown. Smeared old bloodstains. I close my eyes. The wind whips against the window. How lonely to be dead here. All alone. You are a person, then you’re just a body. Evidence. Something to be scooped up and examined. The egg is small inside my palm. I reach my index finger out to touch it.

  And it crumbles into dust, like the powdery wings of a childhood butterfly. Before I knew the things you shouldn’t touch. Little particles, small and soft as ash, litter the floor. No clue to what it once was. Life to death.

  The need for salt begins to heighten.

  I can normally hold it in until I wake up in the morning, but there can be an urgency as well. It’s a little like needing the toilet with your whole being. Ignoring it is not always an option. And there’s a danger there that’s very real. Or feels that way to me … if I need the thing and cannot get it. Sometimes bad things happen. Little ones or big. I cut my finger with a sharp knife, peeling vegetables. Lose my footing and fall down a stairs. Or Catlin does. Or Mam. Coincidence, is what I tell myself. Until the feeling wells in me again, reminding me what I already know on some deep level.

  I want to be a doctor, for God’s sake. It makes no sense. The logical part of my brain knows that. But there’s another part. A reptile part, something old and hard and deep inside me. I shake it off. Salt will make me feel much better now. Will soothe me back to sleep.

  I throw a towelling dressing gown on and pad downstairs, and downstairs again, and down another stairs and through the kitchen. When our house was left behind, gutted of the things that made it ours, it looked too big. This castle’s layered with stuff, ours and other people’s, and it’s still so empty, still so full of space. Feelings aren’t facts, I tell myself. I’m safe here. The egg was just an egg. An empty egg inside an empty nest outside my window. The small ghost of a bird that might have been. Beady eye and flap of feather dark. I close my eyes. I open them again. I walk along.

  It probably would be better if there were fewer things with eyes here. Portraits and animal trophies and statues of people twisting up like they’re in agony but smiling with it. I think of Nora Ginn, who liked to dance. Her face was like a person that you’d know. Brown hair, blue eyes and freckles. Something ate that girl and spat her out. My fingers brush an elbow as I pass. It’s cool and smooth. Marble starts as limestone, then it changes. We steal it from the earth and carve it into waxy human shapes.

  The moon a slice of something through the window. I keep on moving, weaving through the halls. It takes a while, particularly because I’m being stealthy. Mam would kill me if she knew what I was at. She hates this part of me that isn’t normal. But I can’t help the way I am. I can’t. I’m almost there. The knowledge calms me down.

  Brian’s kitchen is adjacent to the herb garden, which is probably why Mamó was able to ferret her way in so stealthily. Like so much of the castle, it’s a weird hybrid of things that Brian’s dad liked. If a Victorian stately home’s kitchen had a baby with the kitchen in a medieval convent, and that baby were also a kitchen, then it would be exactly how our kitchen is. A pot-bellied stove, a wide fireplace, a massive oaken table. Flagstones and a cauldron. Pots of herbs on the windowsills and burnished copper saucepans hanging up.

  I quietly turn the handle of the larder. It creaks a little as it opens wide.

  Dried haunches of meat and strands of garlic trailing from the ceiling. Smooth white tiles and rows of wooden shelves with little pots. There’s so much food here. Was it always like this? Who did Brian even have to feed before we got here? There are six kinds of jam.

  ‘That’s too much jam,’ I mutter as I poke around for salt. I find it, next to pepper. Brian’s as organised as Mam, I think. No wonder they got married.

  There are several boxes, cardboard ones, red and white and blue, with little metal spouts that slot out of the side for pouring. I take one down and hold it in my hand. Feel the weight of it. The smooth sides and the sharp corners. The feeling doesn’t go. I take a second. And a third. I want all of the salt. Stacks of it. Enough to satisfy my stupid impulse and then some more and then some more again.

  Something smooths inside me as I hold the three boxes in my hands. One for me and two for Mam and Catlin. And not too big a gap left on the shelf. I put them in the centre of the table. I start the kettle boiling for some tea. Tear mint and sage from small ceramic pots and crush them with a spoon into a mug. My body hums with nervous energy. Too keyed up for caffeinated things. When I get collecty, I feel like all of me’s about to shiver, twitch with it or something. There’s energy inside, and not the kind you can exercise away. It’s like your stomach just before a fight. That kind of weight.

  Science. Science. Nothing’s going to get me.

  The glass looks black, the brightness in the kitchen cancels out the night-time. Something moves beyond the windowpane. I turn the light off, look
outside, for ages. It could have been a person or a fox. A ghost that I imagined. The stars are bright. The moon’s a little sliver. Everything in me is stretching taut. The kettle clicks and I turn the light back on. The garden fades away into a smudge.

  I draw the blinds, pour the boiling water on the leaves and blow on it to cool, which never works. My brain is chanting: ‘Salt, salt, salt, salt, salt.’

  I blow again.

  Which is more important – sleep before school or not being a crazy person?

  The second is probably not an option though. A spoon of solid honey in the tea. I crush the leaves some more and stir them round.

  Clockwise?

  Counter-clockwise.

  Counter-clockwise, thrice or seven times.

  Salt in hand, I pad my way upstairs. Across the floor and reaching under the bed in Catlin’s room. I slide the salt in. And then I go across the wing to Mam. The corridors are dark, the cornicing is twisted. I feel the hum of spiders spinning webs. Everything is sharper, more in focus.

  I’m not sure if it’s panic or relief.

  Mam is sleeping soundly, Brian beside her. It feels like more of an intrusion now. That she is not alone. That he is here. The blanket’s half off Brian’s torso, and in the moonlight it looks as if something’s written on his body. He snuffles, and he snuggles into Mam. I crouch down low and shove the salt beneath the bed.

  When I rise, things look like they’re supposed to. A trick of the light. I make my way down the corridor, feeling exhaustion leach the tension from me. I could sleep for a week. I have three hours, and that will have to do. I climb into my bed and pull the covers over me.

  I hear the night-time sounds of Ballyfrann. The rustle of leaves, the clanking of pipes, the screams of cats or foxes having sex. Catlin thinks it’s funny, but I hate it. I always wonder What if it’s a child? A child outside in pain and somewhere, lost.

  When we were little, we had a book of stories from our dad. It had been his when he was very small. And some of them were cool, but some were frightening. There was this witch, her house had chicken legs. Her face melts to Mamó’s while I curl up in bed.

  She used to lure young girls inside her house. And sometimes she would help you. And sometimes she would eat you. It was up to her. She had the power.

  Until you ventured in, you couldn’t know.

  Baba Yaga, Aoife from the children of Lir, Mr Fox, even the Virgin Mary. Scary folk, the kind you should appease. They all had secrets. Like here. It feels that way. Like everyone’s a door.

  We should be careful.

  11

  Alder

  (diagnosis)

  Catlin isn’t in her bed when I get up. I’ve slept through my alarm. I’m so late. I throw my horrid polyester on and run downstairs. Catlin and Mam are sipping coffee at the kitchen table, like two women in an ad for espresso. Their hair is sleek, their faces are made up. A shaft of sunlight caresses their beautiful heads. I have a hole in my tights, I realise. Visible leg hair furzing through it.

  ‘What took you?’ asks Mam. Her tone is off. There’s something forced about it. Over-happy. Catlin’s face is casual. They have been talking about me, I realise. My mouth is open. I need to say something.

  ‘I didn’t sleep,’ I tell her, and leave it at that. Mam butters me a slice of toast. I stuff it in my mouth, and grab my bag. ‘Maybe I’m coming down with whatever Catlin had.’ My voice comes out more bitchy than I mean.

  ‘I feel much better,’ Catlin says to me. She’s dressed for school as well. Her uniform looks tailored on her body. Mine has an actual leaf sticking to it. I don’t know where it came from. Mam peels it off and puts it in the bin.

  ‘The state of you.’ I amn’t in the mood. Her face is softer though. ‘Maybe you aren’t well. We might have to give you some of Mamó’s special tea.’

  I snort and shove my lunch into my bag.

  On the walk to the bus stop, I ask Catlin what Mam and her were saying.

  ‘Nothing,’ she tells me, but she has a mask on, so I ask again.

  ‘Look,’ she says, ‘I think you know. She found it and she’s angry. But we have school, so you can’t get upset right now, OK?’

  ‘I can’t control when I get upset,’ I tell her. ‘That’s not a thing.’

  ‘I know,’ she says. ‘But it’s the usual nonsense about making a mess and being weird and do you need to see a counsellor and stuff. We’ve heard it all before.’

  ‘We have.’ I sigh, and Catlin’s eyes meet mine. The same shape and colour, but very different souls that live behind them. I can see her worry about me. Not the salt stuff – she doesn’t really judge me for that – but the conflict.

  I hate the knowledge that a difficult conversation is coming. It’s like a handful of copper coins shoved down my throat. The weight inside my stomach, the tang of something awful coming soon. I swallow hard. I need to change the subject. Happy things, before I start to cry. I tell Catlin about Oona. How pretty and sound she is, and how she swims.

  ‘She sounds painful,’ Catlin tells me blithely.

  ‘Well, she’s not,’ I say. ‘I actually spoke to people around her. And they listened!’ It is sad that I say this so triumphantly. But here we are.

  My twin glints at this.

  ‘Progress! I’m proud of you. Anything strange?’

  ‘Apparently Lon runs a youth club. With trampolines and drink?’ I screw my mouth into a very, very small mouth indeed, trying to communicate how excited I am not about the youth club.

  Catlin is checking her phone. All her friends in Cork are fighting now that she is gone. Catlin was the cool glue that stopped everyone getting with each other and/or becoming enemies, apparently. Factions have emerged, and they’re all trying to get her onside. It’s like her Christmas. I watch as her fingers swipe and tap and press. She takes a picture of her outraged face. There is a pause.

  ‘Drink?’ she asks. My sister is predictable.

  ‘Drink, Catlin,’ I confirm. ‘Look at you. All gagging for the sauce.’

  ‘The hot, hot sauce,’ she says. And does a little dance. We have a hot-sauce dance. It is very graceful.

  ‘We need to join this … What’s it called?’ She looks at me.

  ‘The youth club.’

  ‘Urgh,’ she says. ‘It needs a better name. Like, something edgy.’

  Oh, Catlin, I think. Please do not be the worst.

  ‘Yes,’ I tell her, ‘because Mam will love us going to the Doom Doom Hell Orgy Association.’

  ‘That’s not a very good name. Too many words.’

  ‘We could call it the Doom Doom Room for short,’ I snap at her.

  ‘That’s almost good.’ She grins. ‘We definitely have to join though. Unless there are, like, matching hoodies. Because those are terrible.’

  Charley won’t like that, I think. It’s weird what a difference a few days make.

  ‘What have you got against hoodies?’ I ask her. ‘You have, like, four of them.’

  ‘I like the zippy ones,’ she says, making a zip with her hands, as if I don’t know what a zip can do. ‘But we wouldn’t get to pick the colour. Plus I hate being like everybody else.’

  ‘You really do,’ I tell her. ‘I like a hoody, me. It makes me feel all warm and safe like a fleecy tortoise. Ballyfrann could do with being cosier.’

  ‘I hate this stupid frost. Look at these, like, ice-trees. What even are they? WHAT ARE YOU, TREES?’ She gives a tree a kick. It’s pretty rude.

  She looks at me. And in that moment I know that we are going to join the youth club. And that I will probably hate it.

  I sigh. ‘The trees are fine, Catlin. They’re just being trees. Don’t mind her, noble oak.’ I rub its trunk. We’re almost at the end of the driveway.

  ‘I know they are,’ she says. ‘We kind of have to join, Maddy. We can’t just languish in the castle. Like ghost brides.’ She tosses her hair. ‘I don’t have the right nightdress to be a ghost bride. You can’t phone that shit in.’
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br />   ‘You have a point.’ I shove my hands deeper into my pockets. ‘It just seems like so much work. All this, with people.’ I gesture at Layla’s back. ‘Like, look at this. LOOK AT IT.’

  Layla turns. ‘What?’

  Catlin distracts her with Cork drama. Layla listens politely to tales of people she doesn’t know making each other very unhappy but pretending to each other’s faces that they’re OK. In case they offend anyone.

  When Oona gets on the bus, I am sitting beside Catlin, so she sits in front of us, leaning over the back of her chair until the driver growls at her to put on her seat belt. She rolls her eyes and obeys.

  Catlin mouths the word painful at me and I mouth the words shut and up back at her. I wonder how she missed how great Oona is, like did she not see her face and hair and hear her voice and words? Oona’s hair is damp, and I see her running her fingers through it, and then wiping them off on her school skirt. It doesn’t really matter what Catlin thinks of her. I don’t like everyone Catlin likes.

  A lanky case in point is lurking like a spider at our stop as the bus pulls in. Catlin smiles and nudges past everyone to get to him, like he’s made of concert tickets and chocolate cake. The way they look at each other makes me feel uncomfortable. It’s very hungry or something. And, no more than my morning-time anxiety, surely that kind of thing is private. She doesn’t even notice me filing past her with the rest of them. I sigh, and save her the seat beside me anyway. It’s fine.

  The kind of fine that’s pronounced fiiiiiiiii‌iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine.

  Classes pass without much drama, and when lunchtime comes, Catlin runs out the door to Lon, who is waiting at the school gates for her like an actual paedophile. I am not party to their chats, but they must be good because she comes back looking all flushed and grinny. He’s there again when school lets out, and he gives her a big, long, lingering hug before she gets on the bus. They maintain eye contact as the bus pulls away and it’s oddly sexual and thoroughly off-putting. I sacrifice a seat beside lovely Oona to sit beside Catlin, and she messages Lon all the way home and barely says two words to me. I take out my book, and try to focus on the words thorough a cloud of grumpy. Oona catches my eye between the seats, like, You OK?