by Orna Ross
I take them to do all the touristy things I never do: ferries to Alcatraz and Sausalito, sunbathing on China Beach, over-eating in Fisherman's Wharf, snapping Golden Gate Bridge from Marian Green. Richard brings us on a voyeuristic tour of Folsom Street and the Castro. And, at Donal's request, after a book-buying session in City Lights, we go on to an Irish bar so he can have "a decent pint of Guinness."
Another night, I take them to Ice, one of the new café-bars in the Castro. While Donal is ordering drinks, a leering queen gives him the eye. "Don't look now," I smirk, "but I think you've made a conquest." He turns and rebounds in horror off the dissolute, painted face that blows him a kiss.
"Jaysus," he says. "That isn't a woman, is it?"
"Loosen up, darling," Maeve says, delighted to be the cooler one for once.
Maeve decides she'd like to do one of my classes. She has been doing aerobics herself, she says, twice a week in her local hall in Rathfarnam. I bring her to Blues, the premier gym, confident that the best Dublin has to offer will not compete. In our leotards, I see my body is better than hers now, firmer. She still has bigger breasts, and face-wise there's no contest, but the comparison doesn't sting in the old way. She's wrong here. It's not just her clothes and hair, but something in her: the difference between somebody who has lived away from home and somebody who hasn't.
All the way through the class she beams at me, and when we're finished I don't have to ask if she enjoyed it. "It's really different," she says, her face flushed. "Fantastic."
Fantastic is her word for everything San Franciscan, though she's surprised I don't know more Irish people. The 1980s have been tough in Ireland and the Irish are pouring into the States again. There are fifty thousand Irish-Americans in San Francisco, Maeve tells me, and on our trips around the city, she always finds one to talk to. She and Donal get excited when they see the Irish flag hanging from St Patrick's. They buy copies of The Irish Herald. They ask me about the St Patrick's Day parade.
I move away from her chats with these strangers. I don't feel kinship with these immigrants clustering in their pubs or parishes here, any more than I did in London. I don't like that the Irish contribution to American culture is green beer and bigoted parades. I don't like how, since ten IRA prisoners starved themselves to death in Northern Ireland to win political status, an Irish political lobby is growing more vocal in the Bay Area, popping up in bars all over, singing rebel songs and thinking themselves on the cutting edge of The Cause as money for guns and bombs gets dropped in a fund-raising box. And I don't like when another Irish person hears my accent and tries to claim me.
My community is those who think like me, not those who happen to have been born on the same small island. Or in the same small house. I have found people who love me, really love me, not like Maeve — in spite of what I am — but because of it. As I put it recently in a magazine article I wrote, friends are the new family.
But how can I say such a thing to my sister?
To my surprise, Maeve and Richard get on well. He and Gary take us to Troopers, a bisexual club with an indulgent attitude to extra-dancing activities. The four of us spend the night on the dance floor while Donal minds the drinks. As we walk home afterwards, fog swirling white around the streetlights, I link Richard and Gary, and let Maeve and Donal walk on ahead.
"She's fab," Richard says.
"Mutual admiration all round," I say. "She thinks you two are great too."
"You gave her a lousy billing," Gary says.
"She seems different here."
Richard looks at me and I squeeze his arm. "Okay, okay, maybe I see her different here."
"And Hubby coped with Troopers."
"I'd say Maeve spoke to him before we went out."
"I'll never forget his face when Mona gave him the treatment," says Gary. Mona is a butch friend of Gary's who likes to shock: tonight she was wearing nothing but straps around bare breasts under her leather jacket, so she could show off a nipple-ring. She honed in on Donal for the night, as arranged by the guys.
Richard says: "I reckon Hubby would be quite a goer if you could crack the frozen exterior."
"Yeah. Anyone that hung up has got to be repressing like mad," smiles Gary, the psychologist.
Richard nudges him. "Hey, maybe we should see if we can unleash his inner slut."
"Richard!" I warn. "Don't even think about it."
They come back to my apartment for coffee. Donal goes to bed but Maeve stays up, sitting on the chair opposite Richard and Gary, talking about San Francisco's gay culture. I keep the kitchen hatch open, half-listening as I fix coffee. Maeve's feet are curled under her in the chair and her opinions are coming out harder now she's relaxing. As I listen, I decide I prefer her ill at ease. It keeps that damned certainty of hers at bay.
As I put the coffee down in front of them, Gary is telling her that for the past years, five thousand gays a week have been moving to the Bay Area, the greatest influx of immigrants since the gold rush.
"Freedom," he says. "A bigger prize than any precious metal."
"Tell me," Maeve says, with the air of someone breaking a taboo, "why do gays all dress the same and act the same?"
"Do they?" I try to catch her eye as I hand her coffee, stop her in the track I can see she's about to lay.
"It seems that way to me, like there's a uniform of clothes and —"
"Biker gear for the leather-men," I say, trying to head her off. "And crotch-clutching Levi's, flannel shirts and work boots for the rest."
We all laugh because that is what both Richard and Gary are wearing. "The same thing happens in my women's group."
Richard groans. "Oh, no, not the politico-dykes, Squirrel. Not at this hour of the night."
"It does seem to go that way, though," I say, thinking of Susan. "One minute a woman starts making connections between male power and the events of her own life: next thing, she's getting her hair chopped and buying dungarees."
Maeve nods, sagely, and though I don't believe we're on the same side, I go on. "I have wondered about that sometimes, why so many people swap one set of codes and rules for another. Especially people who've been so bruised by rules."
Gary smiles at me. "Not everyone is brave enough to go it alone, hon."
"It's not just clothes, though, is it?" Maeve says. "It's the way they go on."
Richard's eyes narrow. "And how do 'they' go on?"
"Sorry, you know what I mean. I'm not being bad, I just don't understand the obsession with sex all the time. Like that girl, Mona, tonight. It seems so out of proportion."
"Whoa there, Maeve," Gary says, gently. "Don't you think you're generalising a little?"
"What about the keys and hankies and all of that?"
Gay cruising gear. I told her about this the other day, when she asked me about the bandanas she noticed hanging from rear pockets.
When nobody says anything, she goes on. "And the thoughts of those places where you don't even see the person you're having sex with." She shivers. "I'm sorry, it gives me the creeps. I can't help it."
"It's the Roman Catholic in you," Richard says. "You need deprogramming."
Maeve shakes her head, her mouth tightening over her coffee cup. "Personally, I think it's a male thing. Men are afraid of intimacy."
How can she say that, having met Mona? I wish she could have been here for the last Freedom Day Parade and seen the Dykes on Bykes or the Ladies Against Women, carrying their signs — "Recriminalize Hanky Panky" and "Suffering not Suffrage" — or the leather-women strapped and handcuffed to each other in all kinds of bizarre positions, showing the world something that seems to me to be truer and braver than Susan's brand of one-fits-all, earnest lesbianism. Or Maeve's one-fits-all, earnest hetero-ism.
Like so many straights, Maeve thinks she has nothing to learn from the lessons gay people are bringing back from the sexual front line.
I yearn for her to shut up before she says something even worse. The other night she was quizzing me about "th
e gay cancer" and looked completely dubious when I argued that there wasn't any such thing, that AIDS also afflicted drug addicts and blood-transfusion recipients and Haitian refugees and others. I feel tainted by her ignorance. But I shouldn't. She is not me.
"Are you sure it's not you who's afraid?" Richard asks her.
"Of course I'm not. I'm —"
"Afraid of sex, I mean. Proper sex: the low-down, dirty variety." He runs a look down the length of her body and back up. "Have you ever had it really good, honey? I mean really good?"
My sister blushes and I feel sorry for her, but she asked for it.
"Richard is right, Maeve," I say. "Sex is sex, intimacy is intimacy. It's perfectly possible to have one without the other."
Richard and I have shared a bed, spent nights together on my couch wrapped around each other while we watch TV. I've told him things I haven't told some beloved lovers.
"But the two together," insists my sister. "That's best of all."
"Best for what?" pounces Richard. "Best for who?"
She shrugs, her face red and set, defeated by our unity but unconvinced. Gary, kind Gary, tries to ease the tension. "You know, Maeve, I don't think you're acknowledging the reality of being gay. After years of trying to conform, don't you think it's natural that some of us act like kids let loose in a candy store when we're allowed to be truly ourselves for the first time?"
"Maybe," Maeve says, doubtfully.
"All that guilt and self-alienation has to find an outlet," Gary says.
"Oh, puh-leaze," says Richard. "Spare us the psycho-babble. Sex rocks, is all."
* * *
When she's leaving, Maeve packs copies of the Chronicle, Fitness World and Zoe that have articles of mine. "They'll want to see them at home," she says. "Mammy will be delighted. They all will."
Ah, here it comes. I was wondering if we were actually going to get to the end of her visit without it. I'm leaning on her suitcase, while she tries to fasten the clasps. When I make no response, she says, without looking at me: "Have you any message you want me to pass on?"
"Did she send one to me?"
She sighs, shakes her head. "God, but there's a pair of you in it." I make a face at that.
"Look, Jo, I know she wasn't the easiest of mothers, but I find it hard to imagine what she could possibly have said or done to you that you could cut her off completely like this."
"Maeve, don't —"
"To just walk away like that, and never come back...Not even to write..."
I'm not going to have this conversation, because she doesn't really want it; she only thinks she does. Nobody in Ireland wants to look too closely at why so many leave and whether it's really about jobs. Those who can bear living there don't want to know the truth about those who can't. At Christmas, I'm told, they make a great show of welcoming the emigrants "home", Dublin Airport doing itself up with Céad Mile Fáilte signs. "A Hundred Thousand Welcomes." So long as you're gone again in the new year.
Maeve would like me to be one of those, but she asks too much. It's too lop-sided.
If Gran had written...I'd have done it for Gran. But she made her choice all those years ago and I don't blame her. Mrs D. made it impossible for her to do otherwise.
Perhaps I should tell my sister the truth: I left to have an abortion, Maeve. And I never went back because, well, I couldn't, could I? I couldn't pretend to you and Mrs D. and everyone else that the biggest thing in my life had never happened. And I couldn't tell you the truth, you all made sure of that. So I — like hundreds of thousands of others — came away and stayed away.
"Was it that she broke up your relationship with Rory O'Donovan?" Maeve asks. "Was that it?"
I make my face blank.
She tries again. "I don't know what went on that night you left, Jo, and maybe Mammy did say or do something so terrible that you just can't forgive her. But what I can't understand...what I really can't understand...is why do you never write to Gran? Why do you never ring me back? I often feel if I didn't contact you, I'd never hear from you again."
"Maeve, leave it. Please. Let's not ruin everything on your last day. We've had such a good time."
She sighs again, folds the magazines away in her suitcase. "We have had a good time, haven't we?"
"We have," I say, meaning it. "We really have."
1923
Diary 12th November.
We were hardly out of the beds this morning when Mrs O'Donovan called, sand all over her boots. She'd come the back way up the strand like Norah used to when sneaking down to us. Wariness had her hunched, her black shawl was drawn in around her. The look on her face said she'd rather be anywhere else in the world than at our back door.
"How is she?" the old woman asked, not saying her daughter's name, and I invited her in to see for herself. Both of us were full of the memory of the last time we faced each other like this, when the boot was on the other foot. I was determined to treat her better than she had treated me and felt a need to warn her before she opened the kitchen door. "You'll find her quiet in herself."
"She was always a quiet girl."
"Not like this."
Norah was in the fireside chair that used to be mine, before all the changes to our household. The chair was in the middle of the floor, looking like a raft in the middle of a pale linoleum sea. She had a blanket across her knees and beside her, on a small table, were a blank copybook and a pen. I had provided this: after talking to the doctor about the way she liked to scribble, I thought it might be some comfort to her. So far, however, she hasn't picked up the pen.
Since she arrived, she's done nothing but sit silent in this armchair, either turned towards the fire to look into the flames, or in the opposite direction to look out the window towards the sea. She will come to the table when bidden or do any small chore she is asked to do. Otherwise she sits, still and silent.
She didn't get up, or even turn her head, as we entered.
"Your mother has come to see you, Norah," I said, while Mrs O'Donovan squeezed herself into the chair opposite.
Silence.
"You're looking well," Mrs O'Donovan was half-shouting for some reason, as if it was Norah's ears that were affected.
Silence.
"Looks like they fed you enough anyway."
I marvelled at how still Norah could hold herself, not even the movement of her breath in her chest to be seen. After receiving neither gesture nor reply, Mrs O'Donovan looked across to me.
I knelt in front of Norah, trying to look her in the eye. "Norah, are you not going to talk to your mammy?"
Nothing. Just pale, set eyes in a pale, set face.
Mrs O'Donovan frowned. "Maybe, if you were to leave us on our own?"
I wasn't a bit keen on this idea, but how could I refuse to leave her with her own mother? I looked to Norah. If she objected, wild horses wouldn't drag me from that room, but she gave me nothing to go on. Not a flicker.
So, reluctantly, I moved towards the door. Go easy on her, I wanted to say, but of course I couldn't.
"I'll be outside if you want me," I said instead.
I stood right outside the door, leaning my forehead against it, but I could hear nothing. I knew how Mrs O'Donovan was feeling. It's hard to see the girl so. My hope is that once the baby comes, things will improve.
The sound of a voice raised came through the door, breaking my thoughts. "Answer me, won't you?"
I went back in. Mrs O'Donovan was standing over Norah like she was a badly behaved child. "Surely to God you'll not let me go without a word? After I coming down here to see you?"
Underneath Norah's bright hair, her face was as washed out as a bleached rag. I knew what a mine of stubbornness lay under that weary surface, so I drew Mrs O'Donovan away, towards the door. "It's not meant personal. She talks to no one at the moment. It's part of her trouble."
She looked at me, like a bewildered animal. "What should I do?"
"Give her time."
"I can't come again."
So we were still forbidden territory. "Let's see how we get on," I said. "Everything should get easier with time."
She drew her shawl tighter in around herself.
"I'm sure Norah is grateful you came. Aren't you, Norah?" I didn't really expect an answer and I didn't get one.
"Grateful, is it?" said Mrs O'Donovan. "Grateful, by God."
She turned to go and noticed for the first time the big black perambulator that I had brought down from the attic the day before. This is the pram that wheeled me about, as a child. And Barney too. It's old-fashioned and a bit battered, but clean and well-polished after the work I put into it, and it's well up to the job. Mrs O'Donovan looked at it like it was a weapon and, without warning, her head dropped into her shawl and she started to cry. I didn't know where to look.
"May God forgive her is all I can say." The shoulders under the shawl were shaking. "May God forgive you, Norah."
Later.
Since her mother left, Norah has been non-stop writing in the copybook I bought her. The doctor in the asylum had told me about her doing this. "It's pure gibberish she writes," he'd said. This was my first time to see her in action. The concentration she brings to the task is ferocious, her whole self gathered up in the physical act of writing. Her face looked clearer as she wrote, more like herself.
All through the day she kept this up in fits and starts. While we were having our meals, she kept the notebook on her lap the whole time and, afterwards, when we were sitting round the fire with Mammy and Daddy, she sat on top of it. Later when Mammy and Daddy had gone off — one to bed, the other to work — I spoke to her about the way she keeps hiding the book.
"You don't have to worry that anybody will read what you write, Norah," I said. "Nobody in this house would go near it." She didn't reply and didn't change her behaviour either, keeping the book close, bringing it with her whenever she went out of the room and upstairs with her at bedtime, no doubt to sleep with it under the pillow.
It does no harm, but I wish she had more trust in me. I, of all people, would never read somebody else's private writing. I know how I'd feel if somebody read mine.