Stir-Fry

by Emma Donoghue

“Ah, but the December starfish is rather loveable, look.”

  She shuddered. “Turn back to the harmless seaweed. Now, what I like are your posters, especially the Bogarts.”

  “Do you?” Maria’s face turned in enthusiasm. “He’s nothing special on his own, but with Bacall he’s fabulous. I’ve always had a soft spot for screen couples.”

  “One of my earliest sexual fantasies,” Jael confided, leaning up on one elbow, “involved Greta Garbo, John Gilbert, and a gauzy four-poster bed.”

  “Perv!”

  “It was hot stuff. Unlike the real thing, which I didn’t try till I was in Berlin.”

  “Which real thing?”

  “Three in a bed,” explained Jael. “Take it from me, it’s overrated. Someone always gets left out.”

  Maria was failing to look blasé. “Better put the milk in the fridge,” she said, picking up the grocery bag.

  Jael followed her up the corridor. “Who’s your favourite of them all?”

  “Film stars? Dunno. There was a time I’d have died to look like Audrey Hepburn.”

  “There is a slight resemblance.” Cross-legged on the hearth rug, Jael contemplated Maria’s profile as she bent over the grate.

  “There is not.” Maria struggled with the last match. “She had lovely dark hair, for one thing.”

  “Yeah, but otherwise the urchin look is similar. Same little pointy ears. Are they pierced?”

  “They were, at fourteen, but I’ve let the holes close over.”

  Jael put out one finger to touch Maria’s neat lobe. “Ah, look at the size of them.”

  “Gerroff, that tickles.” She smacked the hand away harder than necessary.

  The firelighter finally sparked into life. Maria dusted her hands and sat back with a cough, watching the flame grow. “I’m worn out now, and all I’ve done is a bit of shopping. Must be PMS.”

  “Lie down on the mammoth’s hide, and I’ll make you a cuppa.”

  Flat on her back, Maria waited for the dizziness to pass. The rug smelt of firelighters. She let go of her muscles one by one and allowed her mind to slide into deep water.

  A thump, a cackle, and she found herself being rolled up in the rug, arms crushed to her sides. She came to rest facedown, her nose tickled by a curl of brown fake fur. As she began to writhe, a thigh came down on the small of her back, and hot breath touched her ear. “Got you now, little girl. That’ll teach you to snooze in the spider’s parlour. Now, what shall I do to your ears?”

  Maria let out a bellow. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Now, that wasn’t very clever. Do you not know by now I never refuse a dare?” Teeth snapped just behind her ear, and the heavy body shuddered with laughter.

  Maria gave a furious wrench and said murderously, “Get off me this minute.” Then, seeing the absurdity of her position: “I surrender, you dirty wee fucker.”

  The bang of the front door relieved her; she squinted up as Ruth staggered through the curtain with a bale of turf briquettes. “Hello there,” Maria panted. “Could you possibly get your evil girlfriend off my back?”

  “Oh, for god’s sake.” Ruth’s voice was cold. “You’ve let the fire out, and we’ve no more matches. Would you ever stop acting like a pair of hyperactive infants and get out of my way.” She stepped over them to poke at the cinders.

  Abashed, Maria rolled out of the rug and stood up. “Is there anything I can be doing?”

  Ruth didn’t answer, and Jael tugged Maria away by the sleeve. Halfway down the corridor, she whispered, “Let’s stay out of her way, she’ll be all right by dinnertime. Why don’t you show me the rest of your posters?”

  “Nah, I’ve got theorems to revise.” Maria shut her door. Her head was spinning. She sat on the bed, her feet sticking over the edge. The gaps between her jeans and socks were goosepimpled. If ab is equal in length to cd—What the hell just happened? Let there be a circle of radius gh. Why was Ruth so cross? Maria put down her pen, dry-mouthed.

  She wandered into the kitchen and filled a glass of water from the tap. Go on, she told herself, you’re meant to be good at questions. “You OK?”

  “Fine,” said Ruth, breaking spaghetti into a steaming pot. “Sorry I snapped at you.”

  “What’s wrong?” It came out less like a question than a statement.

  Ruth sat down on the kitchen stool; her back made the shape of a comma. “I’m not sure.”

  Apologies for the fire and the general mess rose to Maria’s tongue, but she stifled them. She took the spaghetti packet from Ruth’s hands and broke the rest into the pot, then turned up the flame.

  “Maria.” The voice was thoughtful. “Have you ever had a suspicion that something was going to happen, but not been able to tell anyone because the effects of the warning might be just as bad?”

  Her forehead furrowed. After half a minute, “No.”

  “Oh, well, leave it, then.”

  Maria found the lid of the pot at the very back of the cupboard. “Hang on,” she said, straightening up. “I once saw a film about an earthquake in Los Angeles, where the mayor was terrified to announce it on the radio, in case there might be a mass panic, which would make everything worse.”

  “But also,” Ruth went on, “the mayor might be afraid that people would think her motives for the warning were selfish.” Noticing Maria’s doubtful expression, she added, “Oh, I don’t know, to influence the share price index or something. Besides, what if some people thought the earthquake was a good thing, and didn’t want to be warned against it?”

  “A good thing?”

  Ruth snapped a strand of spaghetti into one-inch sections. “They might want the earthquake.”

  “How could anyone want an earthquake?”

  “That’s where our metaphor falls down, doesn’t it?” asked Ruth; her eyes were scalding.

  Maria took hold of Ruth’s shoulder, which felt surprisingly fragile under the angora wool. “Then why not drop the metaphors, and tell me what’s the matter?”

  She stood up; rather than letting Maria’s hand fall, she lifted it off her shoulder and gave it a squeeze before letting go. As the pot began to leak white foam, she turned down the flame. “Lots of good reasons why not.”

  “Like?” Maria’s tone was irritated.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to flirt with your curiosity like this. I’m just thinking out loud, I’m tired, I’m sorry.”

  “Just—”

  “No. Because you’d think I was greedy and suspicious and paranoid, and I probably am. And it might not do any good, and really it’s none of my business.”

  Maria growled like a maddened dog and gave up.

  “I’m sorry I brought it up. Ignore me, I haven’t been getting enough sleep.”

  “I just want to help you, woman.”

  The eyes were soft, like peat-browned water. “I know that.”

  “At least let me finish dinner,” said Maria, resigned.

  “If you could—”

  “It shouldn’t be beyond even my abilities to move pesto sauce from the fridge to the spaghetti. Go on, have a wee lie down, rest those baggy eyes.” She watched Ruth move out of the kitchen like a zombie.

  “Have you decided to stick with the job, so?”

  Maria prised the paper clip out of the vacuum cleaner’s nozzle and straightened up. “Might as well, as I haven’t any other. The doctor says I’m doing my back no harm, it’s just tired.”

  “Ah, sure my back’s been hurting for thirty years,” Maggie told her. “You get used to it.”

  “Is that how long you’ve been cleaning offices?” she asked respectfully.

  “God forbid. That’s only the last five years. Before that I ran a B&B, but with the fall of the dollar there just wasn’t the trade anymore.” The woman paused at the door. “I’ll be in the toilet having a fag if you need help shifting that big sofa.”

  “Thanks, Mags.”

  She blew her nose, the sound trumpeting through the empty office. The carpet was str
eaked with mud; it had been raining for five days. Maria pulled the moaning vacuum cleaner backward and forward over the smears until they faded to beige. She remembered a story her mother had told her on the phone last week, about how the town council had tried to house Nelly the Nutter in a cottage beside the chicken factory. One businessman fitted it up with basic furniture; another provided a secondhand vacuum cleaner for her to keep the place nice. A visiting social worker found Nelly sitting on the floor beside the vacuum cleaner, which had been on at full suction for five days. Nelly said she liked the sound. She wheeled her vacuum behind her when she went back to her rug under the bridge. Maria thought it was a lovely story and hoped the council would have to pay the electricity bill. She was always nervous when she came face-to-face with Nelly on the steps of the library, in case the woman would say something unanswerable, but from this distance, Maria remembered her with respectful affection.

  What would Nelly make of a room like this, four flights up, its wet windows sprinkled with the city’s lights? Maria blew her nose and bent to the switch; silence caressed her ears. At least this work was real. The carpet was definitely cleaner when she had finished with it; the windows let in more street light when her cloth had passed over them. Office workers she would never meet had slightly pleasanter mornings because she had remembered to wash their coffee-stained mugs. Not forgetting the money, of course—little but undeniably real, notes in her palm every Friday, coins for vinegary chips on the way home. Whereas that last essay on Celtic spiral motifs—what good did that do anyone? It might get her a job in the long run, she supposed. Only she was having difficulty imagining a long run. Even Christmas seemed out of sight, at the end of a queue of cold December evenings. Damnation, she was out of tissues now. Maria felt tears welling up as her nose began to run.

  This was ridiculous, she told herself, with a loud sniff. She sat in the director’s chair and spun herself around. What she wanted was someone to walk through the swing doors and hand her a silk handkerchief, a white rose, and two tickets to Jamaica. Or even to the pictures on Saturday afternoon. Maria dragged her feet, halted the chair, and spun it the other way. Her back subsided against the firm leather of the seat. Someone, anyone, to ring her up and ask her out and take these maddening questions out of her head. She pulled up her overall and felt in the back pocket of her jeans until she found a last fold of toilet paper. Her nose hurt from blowing. She dragged the vacuum cleaner into the next office and turned it on.

  Her mother would laugh if she could hear these thoughts. She had been supportive enough about Maria coming up to the uni, but at the suggestion of an M.A. she had raised her eyebrows. In her experience, girls started out as ambitious as the lads, but by the age of twenty they were usually itching to settle down with someone nice and put up curtains. Maria had poured scorn on this argument, she remembered now. She told her mother that this was just one more stereotype of female behaviour that, given enough career guidance, newspaper articles, and flat-heeled shoes, would evaporate. Mam said she would believe it when she saw it, and wasn’t it a good thing girls were the way they were or it would be a cold and nasty world full of careerists crashing into one another’s fancy cars. Maria argued that there would always be some girls who wanted engagement rings and curtains, but personally she would rather a degree and a fancy car.

  And here was the loudmouthed feminist, moping over a vacuum cleaner, wishing she had a date instead of a worksheet on differential calculus. Come on now, ten minutes more hard work and she could go home. Hot buttered toast by the fire with Ruth, gossip and snatches of poems out of broken-backed anthologies—wasn’t that something to look forward to?

  They plodded up the shiny street under Maggie’s broken-winged black umbrella, avoiding the splash of a lorry’s wheels. “Enjoy your walk, so,” said Maggie at the corner.

  “Do you think I’d be walking on a night like this?”

  “Sure weren’t the buses off after nine tonight?”

  “You’re codding me.” Maria’s cheeks were numbed by rain already.

  “It’s a work-to-rule, they’re protesting after that double-decker was toppled by yobbos in Finglas the other night.”

  “That’s right, I heard about it.” Maria pulled up her collar. “I think it’d choke me to spend an hour and a half’s wages on a taxi.”

  “I haven’t so far to go. Have a lend of my brolly.”

  “I won’t, Mags, but thanks for offering.” Maria waved and trudged off into the darkness.

  6

  WAITING

  When the stage crew had nothing to do, they arm-wrestled.

  “What the hell is that?” asked Maria, hearing screeches from backstage.

  Suzette tightened her grip. “Don’t even try to distract me. It’s just the cast having a scream session to loosen up their voices.”

  Maria pressed the flat of her other hand to the grimy boards. Her back was writhing. “Another of Jennifer’s innovations?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Stop moving your elbow in. Ow.” Maria’s wrist was crushed to the floor.

  Suzette sprang to her feet, shaking the dust off her fringed shawl. “If Jennifer could see us now, she’d say our attitude was—what’s that phrase of hers?—‘less than professional.’”

  “Just because she did a theatre course last summer, she thinks she knows it all.” Maria rolled down the mingled sleeves of her three jumpers. “She found me peacefully reading Anna Karenina the other day and told me off for not being busy painting publicity flats.”

  “That’s nothing,” said Suzette, straddling a broken-backed chair. “Last night after rehearsals, right, me and Yves were roller-skating peacefully round the stage singing ‘Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien,’ and she walked in and threatened to kick us out of the crew.”

  “I hope you told her where she could stuff herself.”

  “More or less,” said Suzette evasively.

  Maria blew her nose, trying not to hurt it. “If I’d known backstage work meant sitting round in arctic conditions waiting for Jennifer’s orders, I’d never have signed up.”

  “You know what, you should volunteer to help that malnourished American with lights. I’m sure he could do with some company.”

  She peered across the theatre at the dimly lit sound box. “Hey, I know him.” Clambering up the ladder, she had only time to call “Hi, gorgeous” before giving her head a blinding crack off a speaker.

  A bony hand reached down from the darkness. “Everyone does that once,” observed Galway.

  “Since when have you been a technical wizard?” She climbed through the trapdoor and slumped on a chair.

  “Picked a bit up here and there; it’s easy enough if you keep your eyes open. Like, for example, that’s a light filter you’re sitting on.”

  “I give up.” Maria wriggled out of the way. “I came to volunteer my services, but all I seem to do is smash things.”

  Galway patted a backless swivel chair beside him. “Nice to see you, Maria. Sit. Now there’s just one thing you’ve got to keep in mind: If you bring a switch up too fast, you’ll blow the bulb.”

  Her hands flinched from the lighting board.

  He reached past her for his plastic cup of coffee and a photocopied sheet of cryptic diagrams. “There’s the lighting plan; watch me once and you’ll have no problems.”

  “Could we have a little hush, people?” inquired Jennifer from below.

  “… goin’ to Scarborough Fair … sage, rosemary and …”

  Maria could hear the faint pattern of the guitar chords as she sprang up the stairs; that must be Jael singing, much too low, so her bottom notes were barely audible. Opening the front door softly, she laid her rucksack of books by the coat cupboard. The music halted for a moment when her face divided the beads. “Hippie nostalgies!”

  Ruth gave a vague smile and continued massaging the guitarist’s neck in time with the chords. Sighing with pleasure, Jael let her head slump so far forward that her sheaf of hair obscured t
he strings, and the song trailed off. “Don’t mind us,” she said through her curls, “we’re ever so slightly stoned.”

  Maria put the kettle on.

  “So, what has you looking so perky?” called Ruth, taking hold of Jael’s hair by the curls and swinging it from side to side.

  “We got the bathrooms done by ten this evening,” said Maria cheerfully.

  Jael shook the hair out of her eyes. “Come off it. I bet it’s that mystery man we heard about a few weeks back.”

  “Well, yes, as it happens, he did go without his pool game today to buy me lunch. And he told me I should always wear purple.”

  Jael giggled into her collarbone. “Do you know what that means, the colour purple?”

  “No, and I doubt I want to.”

  “Suit yourself.” Jael let her neck roll back into Ruth’s lap.

  “Don’t mind her,” said Ruth sleepily. “It’s just the traditional queer colour. You know—purple, lavender, nowadays pink.”

  “I should have guessed.” Maria rushed to turn off the kettle. After a minute, she called over, “And he said we must go to the pictures sometime.”

  “So you said, ‘Yes please, when?’”

  “Ah, give the girl credit for some subtlety,” protested Ruth, plaiting Jael’s long fringe.

  “I just said, ‘That’d be lovely,’ like my mammy taught me.” Maria carried over the tea tray laden with mugs.

  “Sounds like you’ve got it made,” said Jael, pulling herself upright. “Who is this boy-germ, anyway? Is he worthy of you?”

  “If I tell you his name, will you promise not to laugh?”

  Jael brightened. “Is it something really poncy like Edgar?”

  “Worse.”

  Ruth reached across Jael for the milk jug. “If she laughs, I promise to twist her vertebrae out of joint.”

  “Well, it’s Damien.”

  After a pause, Jael asked, “He wouldn’t happen to be a big guy with a beard? And a plait? And a boyfriend?”

  Maria could feel herself heating up. “Will you stop playing games with me? You don’t even know him.”

  “I do,” Jael insisted. “Or at least I know a friend of a friend of his. Swear to god, Maria,” she went on. “I wouldn’t joke about it, not if you’re really into him. But the guy’s had a scene going all term with some Frenchman.”