by Elske Rahill
*
Twenty-two of her father’s paintings are down here, leaning against the mouldy walls and the dust-sheeted furniture. They should be somewhere drier, but at least they are safe from the grubby paws of her nieces. She and Aoife will split them. Perhaps she should feel guilt about that?
Sinéad pulls the oilcloth off the couch. She folds her feet under herself, pulls her arms into her jumper, takes a sip of her drink. It is warming. It is a relief.
The day Cara came to Eileen’s, rubbing her big belly, sprigs of black hair escaping from her ponytail, Sinéad felt the real badness of herself. She was jealous. That was it. How is it that her niece has gone on having children? How is it that her skin glowed that day with all the life it had, and her hair so wild it couldn’t be tied up? And she sat there so pleased with herself, so self-serious, so high-and-mighty it made Sinéad feel nauseous. ‘I’m leaving,’ she kept saying. Boundaries. That generation are all about their boundaries.
She couldn’t have wanted to punch her niece, could she? Right in the belly. She wanted to pull her hair, slap her. She took delight in the way her face turned red and she muttered as Aoife spoke to her, the way she shrank when Eileen touched her hand.
The memory of that soothes her. If she’s wrong, it’s only a little crime. That girl has more than she deserves in life. So what if she and Aoife are taking matters into their own hands? So what? Those two have taken more than their share of Mammy.
It’s only at night, only in the silence, that the thought comes creeping into her – they have done the wrong thing.
She has done a wrong thing, yes; a little wrong thing, but she can’t regret it. Those girls will be fine; they might even find it a blessing, a kind of tonic, to be released from the shadow of inheritance. The tapping will go away, the nagging feeling like something caught in her tooth, the shriek of the wind coming in through all the crevices of this old house.
58
AWIDE-SET GIRL, NOT much older than Freya, moves in behind the nurse’s desk. She puts both hands flat on the desk. A thick, llama-long neck slings low between the shoulders as she raises her face to Freya’s.
‘Sorry. Were you waiting long?’
‘A while. Half an hour.’
Freya left Grandma sitting alone in the Recreation Room, slowly patting her hair, repeating, ‘The state of me,’ and, ‘Wouldn’t you be ashamed’. Beside her, a tiny, very white woman in a black pillbox hat was muttering the Rosary, moving pink plastic beads fervently through her fingers.
The girl nods. Her tongue moves over her teeth. ‘What can I do for you?’ Freya isn’t sure whether the disapproval is meant for her, or whoever should have been at the desk.
‘I’m Molly Kearney’s granddaughter – room twenty-six. She was hoping to get her hair done. Could you tell me when the hairdressers will be open?’
Grandma used to have her hair washed and set weekly in big, soft bubble curls and a blue rinse. But so far, Freya has never seen the ‘in-house salon’ open. It’s a room off the entrance lobby, with a glass front. Inside, it looks like a playset a child might have; all bright plastic chairs and lightbulbs around the mirrors.
‘The girl comes in on a Tuesday. She’ll have to make an appointment.’
‘Can I make it for her?’
‘Room twenty-six, is it?’
‘Yes. Molly Kearney.’
The nurse turns slowly, pulls open a filing cabinet and marches her fingers along the files. She pulls out a clear plastic folder and opens it on the desk.
‘Here we are,’ she says. ‘Molly Kearney. Now, let me see… right, what’s your name?’
‘Freya. Kearney.’
‘I have the executors down here as Aoife O’Carroll and Sinéad Sheriden. They are also the billing names… so you’ll need to ask them to make an appointment for her, I’m afraid.’
‘I can pay for her now, maybe? I could just pay now and make the appointment…’
‘It doesn’t work that way, I’m afraid.’
*
Grandma is still sitting in that chair. She is slowly knitting an uneven strip from acrylic yarn, tomato-red. It makes tiny teeth-screeching squeaks with every stitch. Where did Grandma get that? She always said she hated knitting with acrylic. She chose spun cotton for jumpers, lambswool for socks. She used to take Freya with her to Clery’s to root through the bargain barrels.
‘Well, Grandma,’ says Freya, pulling up a plastic stool and sitting close beside her, ‘we’ll have to wait for Aoife or Sinéad to make the appointment, but I’m sure they can sort it out.’
Grandma looks up at her, open bewilderment on her face. Then her mouth closes sharply and she greets her as though they are strangers, or have had a falling out.
‘Hello.’ She nods, pursing her lips.
‘Hi, Grandma. It’s Freya.’
‘Oh, Freya. It is very nice of you to come and see me here.’
‘How are you, Grandma?’
She sighs, ‘Well, they tell me nothing. I have given up asking because they tell me nothing. I have to wait now. It’s all I can do.’ Then her face softens, and for a moment she recognises her granddaughter. ‘Freya. My Freyalín! Do you have a baby yet, Freya?’
‘Yes Grandma. A little boy, Jem…’
‘Do you have a mirror?’
‘No, Grandma.’
Grandma drops the knitting needles into her lap, brings both hands up to her head and lightly touches her hair. ‘The state of me, Freya. Did you ever?’
The state of her, yes. Unpermed, Grandma’s hair stands up straight off her head – each fine hair an electric filament of steel-cold grey. Beneath it, the scalp glows pink and hurt like the skin beneath a scab. The skull-shape that this reveals makes Grandma’s death easy to conceive of – the eye sockets, the cranium; all the hard and calcium parts becoming more apparent as the flesh retires.
‘You look lovely, Grandma.’
The woman in the hat shouts, ‘HAIL Mary,’ before trailing off into mutters again. She has two perfect circles of blusher on her cheeks.
Freya turns back to Grandma, who is still patting her head with the look of a shamed puppy.
Can this really be the place where all these stuttering lives should slow to a close?
In the space of three days, Grandma is visibly smaller. She seems paranoid, or dishonest, like an addict or an anorexic covering something up. Her face holds a harsh, ambiguous expression – a straight mouth and a frown and a vague jerk of the head that is neither a shake nor a nod.
She has let the knitting needles fall, and the ball of acrylic has rolled off the armchair, trailing a thin red line along the floor.
Freya bends to pick it up, winds it back and places the ball on Grandma’s lap with the needles and the knitting.
‘Will I put this away, Grandma?’ But Grandma is staring into the distance, clucking and shaking her head.
‘Okay, Grandma?’
‘How could you lose him?’
‘I… No, Grandma. He’s fine. He’s at school…’
‘Stupid girl. Well, now what?’
‘It’s alright, Grandma…’
‘That’s all you can say… Ha.’ She is smiling now, suddenly gleeful, as though she has scored a point. ‘You weren’t top of the class, were you? Until I left and then you came first and no one mentioned why it was and now you are going to university… Yes.’
Grandma begins to nod and smile and Freya doesn’t know if the smile is bitter, or pleased.
‘Yes. Well. Congratulations. Now listen, my granddaughter went to university. She brought me to see the library.’ Grandma puts her thumb and forefinger together like someone tasting a good meal: ‘Well,’ she says, ‘well, you have no idea – beautiful!’ and she parts them like a kiss.
Grandma sighs now, a blubbery sigh because things are going all wrong in the workings of her body. Everything is swollen and shrivelling at the same time; everything is obstructed and untempered. She starts to drum her fingers slowly on the padded arm of
the chair.
‘Is it true what they tell me, that you have one man after another and none you can keep?’
‘Who says that, Grandma?’
‘Oh you know, Aoife was here. She says such funny things. But I don’t listen. You know they are selling our house? I told you that, didn’t I? I just hope Daddy doesn’t go there to find me, and I am gone, that’s all I hope. That’s all.’
‘Who sold it Grandma?’
‘Well, I owe a big sum, you know. I have been a foolish old woman. People have been taking advantage of me.’
‘Who?’
‘That’s what they said. Such a stupid old woman I have been. But there is time to put it right. Well, Freya, you should see all the papers I have to sign, but then it will all be done. They are very efficient at that, you know. It is a good thing to have a solicitor in the family…’
She looks suddenly at her palms, turns the hands over and studies the other side. She touches her face very lightly, then pats her hair, mouth lax. She rubs her forehead hard, and sighs.
‘But you have a husband, Freya? It’s not true what she says, that you have man after man and none you can keep?’
‘No, Grandma, that’s not true. Who said that?’
‘Oh, you know, she can be a funny one, my Fifi. She can be jealous. But you know I had no milk for her. There was a knot in the cord. You should have seen her back when she was born, roundy like a little pink piggy, and the nurse – oh, big as a tank – she says, “Has your mammy been starving you?” and she meant to be kind but I still remember her voice Freya, a voice can get you like a punch, and the other nurse put her fist in my belly, in a hurry like, to push the afterbirth out, and her face a sort of revenge in it, but why? And the kinder one, colossal yoke of a woman, telling her “I’m watching you – easy, Nan!,” and then looking again at the baby – well, Cara, a squeal out of it like I’d never heard. “Poor little thing,” said the nurse, “has your mammy been starving you?” The cord was knotted and the milk didn’t come then because I knew he was gone and I was cold. “A beautiful baby girl,” said the nurse, “and you crying there over a child that’s lost,” and the other one nodded and gave me a look I’ll never forget, ready to spit, like, and she says, “Sinful.” I wasn’t the first mother in the whole world to lose a child. But where did I get her from? So you are married, Freya? And you will have children? And you are happy, darling, are you?’
‘Yes, Grandma.’
‘You can’t leave where you’re needed and expect life to go rosy.’
‘Leave where, Grandma?’
‘Mam’s chest was bad, and we would boil the linseeds up in a big pot. We would boil it and boil it and then we would dip cloths in the stuff – a very dirty black syrup it made, you know the stuff – very dirty… My sister sent me a cold letter then, when Mam died. Very cold. And she was right, she was right… my sister Kat, after all she did for us all and for Ireland.’
Grandma rubs her forehead too hard, so hard Freya flinches, worried that she will scrape away the thin sheen of skin protecting her skull. She takes Grandma’s hand away from her head. The fingers are tense and hooked into their task, but she concedes. Freya puts her palm to Grandma’s palm, but she can’t make the hand unbend. There is a blackish-green stain peeping from under Grandma’s ring. She scratches her finger and pulls weakly at the band. ‘This stupid thing!’
‘Maybe we should take that off, Grandma?’
‘But we are too tough on my Fee, you know,’ she says. ‘Daddy always says. He says there is something in that girl that is hard to see. You know they were walking back from school. Raining and raining. Cats and dogs. And suddenly doesn’t Daddy notice he is walking alone. He looks back and there he sees Fifi, facing the rain with her mouth open, and when she looked at him she was smiling. “Come on now, Aoife, we’re getting wet,” he says.’
*
Freya checks her phone. She has been here for two hours. That must be enough time. Grandma is drifting in and out of sleep with a rumbling, unsteady snore that sounds like she is drowning. Her head is cocked back and her mouth is open. She must be comfortable enough if she can sleep. But just as Freya rises to go, Grandma snorts and winces, frowns and shakes her head as though there is a pain somewhere she can’t locate. Her eyes snap open, round with knowledge, then narrow with shame.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘Sorry, darling. Am I a terrible old woman? Tell me, chicken. Am I tootle-loo-loola?’
‘No,’ says Freya, and laughs heartily for no reason at all except that she thinks it might make Grandma happy. ‘No, Grandma, you’re not tootle-loo-loola!’
‘You are kind. Wouldn’t you be ashamed?’
‘Grandma, do you know I saw some snowdrops this morning? I thought it was early for snowdrops. They’re beautiful, snowdrops, aren’t they…’
‘You know what Mrs Breteton said, when I told her about him? She said there’s more to that, Molly. A child doesn’t choke so easy. He had walking pneumonia, or something. When Aoife came I couldn’t speak to her. I couldn’t speak. It was like that choking on and on, like it was there all the time, happening. Still happening and there was nothing I could do. Too late. Daddy was in his studio all day, and I was in that little house with her and when the lodgers went out I was silent. Not a word. Not a smile – could it be I didn’t even smile?’
‘That must have been a very hard time, Grandma. I’m sure you were better than you think.’
‘No.’
‘Well, I’m sure Aunty Aoife doesn’t even remember…’
‘Children know.’
Grandma jerks her hand away from Freya. She plucks at the ball of crunchy, tangled acrylic.
‘You know we buried him, but there was a feeling that went on, like everything was a dream; nothing was real and nothing mattered. Not really.’
‘Well… it can be very tiring, can’t it? And on your own. Do you remember how you minded me, after Jem was born? Bone broth, you used to make me bone broth all the time.’
‘And it wasn’t that I wanted to frighten little Lily. It’s only that I wanted to see if I cared. She was screaming crying, you know how a baby can, wanting to be picked up. And I had the other two in the bath and Daddy’s dinner on the stove. It was only for a moment, long enough to know I would never do such a thing. Did I really do that?’
‘I think you are better than you remember, Grandma.’
‘I took the pillow away, you know, as soon as I heard the silence from her. Her eyes were like his. Panic. But still, did I feel anything, I wonder? Would I have cared?’
‘Oh.’
‘My handbag.’ Grandma pats around herself – the armrest, the seat – and roots her handbag out from under her hip.
‘There it is, Grandma. Will we go back to your room? Will you let me help you?’
‘That’s it now. That’s it now.’
She pulls the handbag onto her lap, strokes it like a pet and unzips it with her lips pursed. She pulls out a folded sheet of paper. ‘Now read this for me, Freya, will you? And keep it safe for me then.’
‘Okay.’
Freya unfolds the paper.
This is the last will and testament of Molly Kearney of Belarmine Assisted Living in the City of Dublin. I hereby revoke all previous wills and testamentary dispositions made by me. I appoint my daughters Aoife and Sinéad as executors of this will and direct them to pay my just debts, funeral and testamentary expenses.
To my granddaughter Cara, I leave all the paintings remaining in my husband’s studio.
All the residue and remainder of my property of any nature and description and wherever situated, I leave to my great-great grandson, Jem.
Dated 20th December 2018
Signed
Molly Kearney
Signed by the testator as and for her last will and testament in the presence of us, both present at the same time, and signed by us in the presence of the testator
Davitt Dunlin
Leanne Keough
‘N
ow,’ says Grandma, and she nods, winks, nods again, ‘you keep that safe.’
‘Do you want to go to your room, Grandma?’
Grandma lifts her hands. She brings her thumbs towards her fingers, pinching the air. ‘I can’t hold anything, Freya. I can’t hold anything anymore.’
Freya takes the hands, draws them together, kisses them.
‘Tell me this,’ says Grandma, tugging her hands free, ‘tell me this now… did I do that? Did I really?’
But she has fallen back asleep, each hand landing on an armrest, head back, mouth open. Freya kisses her cheek and rubs her hand uselessly. She picks up the rough woollen blanket from where it has slumped at her feet, puts it over her knees and tucks it snugly around her. It is already warm in here – too warm – but what other gesture of love can she offer?
59
FRUIT OF THY… FRUIT of thy… pray for us now and in the hour… That’s all you could hear, all the way to the street; the murmur of private rosaries, the clean slide and clack of the beads. As soon as the word flew out that old Mags Breen was dying, the wake was started right there in her front room just like that. Everyone from the street was in, filling up the little house. Sometimes the whisper-prayers all fell in together, and then it was the hissing parts you heard, the trespasses, trespass, trespass against, like steam over the bowed heads. The women took turns sitting with her, and old Mags sent down for anyone she wanted to talk to.
Molly and her friend Jackie hung about the feet and got given bits of bread with jam. They weren’t expected to say the Rosary. Someone tied a rope up for them on the lamppost outside Mag’s front door, and they took turns swinging on it.
Probably no one sent word up about two little Ard Rhí girls wanting to see Mags, and if they had, maybe Mags wouldn’t have known them from any of the other Cow Town children. But the thing is, they had something important to tell Mags, some message she needed to bring into death for them… Molly can’t remember what it was now. But old Mags sent down for Molly’s sister, Kat, who had to be fetched from Viking Road, where she was helping the seamstress sisters. She was called up and sat a long time with old Mags. It was a great thing to be called up to the bedside, for old Mags was the grande dame of the whole of Cow Town. Everyone thought Kat was a great girl, and their brother Mick too, and Molly’s dada. A Black and Tan threw Kat against the wall when she was only three years old and everyone thought she was a great girl on account of she got back up, her hand to her bleeding head, and said, ‘Bad man.’ But Molly was born after, so she missed all that terrible business. For a time, Dada kept a gun up the chimney, which Molly was allowed to clean with Vaseline, but he got rid of that after Mam cried about it one night.