Jael’s mouth twisted up at one corner. “I don’t believe you feel nothing for me.”
“I care about you. I don’t trust you as far as I could throw you. Which wouldn’t be far.”
“So you don’t actually want me at all?”
Jael’s lips were so close, the sound reverberated in her ear, and the scorch of breath made her shiver. “Yes, a bit.”
“Which bit?” Her lips met on Maria’s cheekbone, then landed lightly an inch below and slid downward. Tiny hairs came alive as they passed. The lips paused, just to the side of her mouth.
“All right, quite a lot, to be honest.” Maria’s mouth was itching to turn into the kiss. All at once she angled her head away, so the lips brushed her ear and were gone. “But not enough,” she told the hearth rug.
Jael sat back and crossed her legs.
Maria took this opportunity to fumble for a tissue and blow her nose. She hoped it would have the side effect of making her unkissable.
“You did come back to the flat,” Jael remarked conversationally.
“Not for you.”
“You stayed after Ruth went.”
Maria tucked the folded tissue into her sleeve. “I was sort of sorry for you.”
She had not meant to hurt, but when she looked up Jael’s back was rigid.
“Sorry for me?”
“Because you’d lost her.”
The stony eyes dissolved into puzzlement. “But Ruth left so that we could be together.”
“She what?”
“She wanted to make room.”
“Make room?” Maria’s voice swelled to fill the space. “You’ve lost the best of lovers, and you make her sound like a battery chicken?”
“It was obvious,” retorted Jael. “She told me last night that she’d asked you whether you wanted to stay, and you said yes. So she left.”
Maria swore more colourfully than Jael had ever heard her. After a moment, she gathered her wits. “Have you never a brain between the two of you? I didn’t mean I wanted to stay and replace her. It won’t hurt you to wash your own damn dishes for a while. How could she have thought that? I meant I wanted to stay in the flat with both of you, if I wouldn’t be in the way. I may be only seventeen, but I can make up my own damn mind. Why didn’t she ask me? Why didn’t she stay?”
She put her head down on her knees and cried herself out. By the time she sat up, her face sodden, Jael had moved back to the rocking chair and was studying her whisky glass.
“I’ve been a bit of a gobshite, haven’t I?” asked Jael.
Maria nodded.
“Don’t bother forgiving me now, I’m sure you’ll get around to it sometime. Listen, what do you want to do?”
Her mind was blank. She scrabbled for times, places, names. And then at once she knew exactly what to do. “I have to find Ruth.”
“To tell her all this? You should know, she won’t be coming back anyway.”
“No, not to tell her. Just to find her.”
Jael began speaking, then stopped herself, and realisation crept across her face. “I see. God, I hadn’t even thought of that.”
“Of what?” And then Maria stopped, because she knew.
“That makes sense of a lot of things.”
They looked at each other in bewilderment. “It does, doesn’t it,” said Maria, mostly to herself.
Jael cleared her throat. “How come I never saw?”
“I didn’t either, till now.”
“She’ll be at her mother’s,” said Jael automatically, breaking the silence.
“Oh. I’ll be off, so,” said Maria slowly.
“Do you have the address?”
Maria nodded abstractedly.
“Take the bus from the end of the road, and get off after the fancy bridge. Have you got enough change? They won’t take notes anymore. You’ll find change in the pocket of my jacket, on the back of the door.”
Maria moved like a sleepwalker. Three minutes later she was packed and gloved, her pockets full of coins. The velvet cap was tucked into her coat pocket. She hovered by the fire. Jael got to her feet, rather unsteadily, and planted the lightest of kisses on her forehead.
The bus came at once; Maria knew it was a sign. She sat on the empty top deck, at the very front. The bus bucked and rolled on its speedy journey into the suburbs; it was like clinging to a sea monster. As she rode, Maria played through all the possibilities.
She would be unable to find the Johnsons’ house; would wander and finally curl up on a park bench and be discovered dead of exposure by a gardener the next morning.
She would find the house, but Mrs. Johnson would refuse to admit any stranger with such a haircut and would whip her down the road with giant rosary beads.
She would find the house, but Ruth would not be there; would already have bussed to Kerry, shipped to Scotland, or flown to Lesbos.
She would find the house and wake Ruth with a pebble thrown against her bedroom window, and Ruth would appear in a white nightgown and say, get thee from me, foul fiend.
She would … The trill of the bell woke her from her possibilities. The bus swerved to a halt and let off three women with walking sticks. So far so quickly; Maria wondered whether she had been dozing. It was nearly her stop. She got to her feet and swayed down the top deck, touching the ceiling at times when she felt lightheaded. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the bridge come into view and pulled at the frayed bellcord. The steps were deep, lurching as her feet reached for them. For the last few minutes of the journey she stood by the bus driver, balancing by bending at the knees, barely touching the pole with her palm.
He let her off on a patch of soft grass beyond the bus stop. “God bless,” Maria told him, her face serious. She pushed her gloves into her pockets and set off walking along the grass verge. The first crossing she came to was, as she knew it would be, the right road. She counted the gates off one by one, patting their rough stone posts with her numb fingertips.
When she came to the house, the porch light was on. And it was Ruth who opened the door.
Acknowledgments
I want to thank Siobhan Harding, Daniel Levine, Una Ní Dhubhghaill, Lene Rubenstein, Margaret Lonergan, Jenna Roberts, Cris Townley, Debra Westgate, my agent Caroline Davidson and my editors Terry Karten and Alexandra Pringle, for their most constructive criticism.
About the Author
Emma Donoghue, born in Dublin in 1969, is a writer of contemporary and historical fiction whose seven novels include the international bestseller Room–winner of both the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Canada and Caribbean region) and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and a finalist for the Man Booker Prize–as well as Slammerkin, Life Mask and The Sealed Letter. She lives in London, Ontario, with her partner and their two children. For more information, go to www.emmadonoghue.com.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
More Praise for
STIR-FRY
“Maria … would make a fine friend for any young person trying to figure out, not only sexual orientation, but all the profound questions about life and how to live it. For the over-arching theme of Donoghue’s novel is not simply ‘coming out’ but coming into focus.”
—Charlotte Innes, Lambda Book Report
“Emma Donoghue is one talented writer. There are some great one-liners here, and the characters are so perfectly drawn that you want to meet some of them.”
—Sassy magazine
“Delicious … this is a skillfully written and agreeable story; the plot moves, the characters breathe … most decidedly a novel of interest to grown-ups.”
—Off Our Backs
“Donoghue deftly separates her novel from the usual coming-of-age fare with gentle language and a winningly intelligent protagonist.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Marvelously executed … I loved it … Stir-Fry dishes up an experience of sweet romance you’d maybe given up hope of fin
ding in a lesbian novel.”
—Mama Bear’s News & Notes
“Donoghue’s well-written coming-of-age novel shows that the youthful conundrum of sexual orientation is as prevalent in Ireland as in the U.S.”
—Booklist
“Intimate, highly readable … Donoghue’s wry and tender debut tackles the interconnected themes of coming-out and coming-of-age … [and] ends on a hopeful, love-affirming note.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A memorable debut…. Some of the best writers in Ireland now are some of the youngest, and Emma Donoghue, one of the youngest of all, will soon be thought of as one of the most important.”
—Irish Sunday Tribune
PRAISE FOR EMMA DONOGHUE
“Emma Donoghue is one of the great literary ventriloquists of our time. Her imagination is kaleidoscopic.” –Colum McCann
“[Room] presents an utterly unique way to talk about love, all the while giving us a fresh, expansive eye on the world in which we live.” –The New York Times Book Review
“Emma Donoghue writes books that are unlike anything I have ever seen.” –Ann Patchett
ALSO BY EMMA DONOGHUE
Astray
Room
Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature
The Sealed Letter
Landing
Touchy Subjects
Life Mask
The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits
Slammerkin
Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins
Hood
Credits
Cover photo by Olivia Hemingway / Millennium Images
Copyright
Stir-Fry
Copyright © 1994 by Emma Donoghue.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.
Epub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2013 ISBN: 9781443422611
Published by Harper Perennial, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
Originally published in the United Kingdom by Hamish Hamilton Ltd: 1994
First published in Canada by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd in this Harper Perennial trade paperback edition: 2013
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd
2 Bloor Street East, 20th Floor
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
M4W 1A8
www.harpercollins.ca
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication information is available upon request
ISBN 978-1-44342-260-4
RRD 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Canada
2 Bloor Street East - 20th Floor
Toronto, ON, M4W 1A8, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1 Auckland,
New Zealand
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com
Stir-Fry Page 21