Before the Fall

by Orna Ross

  The Castro men have become like women, Susan says, now their pleasure comes edged with danger too. Women have always known what it is like to live with worms in the sexual bud: unwanted pregnancy, sexual violence, fatal childbirth... That, she says, is why women are responding so generously to their brothers' cause, though the same brothers were so dismissive or even hostile to them in the Castro's heyday.

  Susan daily applies her formidable energies to the crisis, organising fundraisers and aggressively lobbying for political and medical attention. Her indignation is voluble: men like Richard are dying not just because they have a medical condition, but because Ronald Reagan's administration doesn't give a two penny god-damn about a disease that, in the main, kills gays. This homophobia that keeps the government from investing in medical research, that keeps our President from being able even to say the word AIDS: that is what is killing people, every bit as surely as the virus.

  And it isn't just AIDS, she storms. You can see the work of the Republican vandals everywhere: in her project for recovering drug addicts, now failing her clients because of axed funds. In the growing herds of homeless people on the streets, shouting half-crazed at phantom enemies, hustling for money, or food, or some other, nameless need that isn't so easily granted.

  Through all this activism, she and Richard have reached a tentative liking. At a time when he felt he was losing everything — his job, his insurance, his good-time friends — Susan turned up to visit, and to help, and wouldn't be jibed away. Richard accepts services from her, as from me, that he won't take from Gary: grumbling at our "fussing", but acquiescent. Something in him makes him recoil from such solicitude in his lover. We all know that nicety will have to go with time, that he will have to learn to accept his dependence, but for now we are delighted to indulge him.

  The other night, the three of us sat around him, Susan sprawled across the end of his hospital bed, while Gary spoke of how lesbians were so ahead of gay men in so many ways, especially in their sense of cooperation and interdependence. Lots of men are now getting this message, he believed, beginning to look anew at ideas of love and intimacy, beginning to make different choices.

  "The party is over," he said. "The 'Me generation' must be replaced by the 'We generation'."

  Susan was visibly delighted with this, keen to believe that AIDS might have some redemptive meaning beyond the horrors.

  But Richard would have none of it. "Oh, my," he protested, "It'll be the 1950s again. Except now it's going to be gays peddling myths, and getting married for all the wrong reasons."

  The Faggot Mystique, he called it, and even Susan had to laugh.

  He is out, taking pleasure from things that he wouldn't have noticed before, making me stop to look at a garden crowded with primroses and orange California poppies, or a baby crawling across the grass. Everything is dear because soon he won't be able to see them; the virus is chomping at his retinas. Already the light in his left eye is dimming. He leans on me, so frail I feel no burden.

  Back in again, another pneumonia. This afternoon, he is sleeping, or perhaps lying still with his eyes closed. His breaths are short and shallow little sniffs. Beads of sweat crawl like insects down his forehead until I wipe them away. I sit in the chair near the window, reading. Everybody is quiet today. Bill and George are talking to Patrick in the corner bed, acting out for him some bureaucratic drama with hospital administration, trying to cheer him up: he got his results yesterday and the news is the worst.

  Steps approaching from the hall make us all look up: something new has arrived. Steps in an AIDS ward are usually tentative, not this stamping tread. Richard opens one eye when he hears the footfalls.

  "She's here," he says and he begins to haul himself up his pillow. The doorway of the ward fills with a large middle-aged woman in a red pant-suit. Only North America could have produced her.

  Richard's mother. He finally got round to telling her two months ago; now she has finally got round to coming to see him.

  Mothers are moving in their droves to San Francisco, to care for dying sons. Our friend Lucien's mother left a disapproving husband and a job in some upstate New York town to move west. She lived in Lucien's apartment until he died, both of them broke, managing to survive only through the kindnesses of friends who kept them supplied with gifts of food outside the door and money through the mailbox.

  Richard's is a different type of mother. If I had never heard a word about her, I would see this in the way she holds herself in the threshold of the door, taking in the scene. Her umbrage comes to rest on George and Bill, two nurses, engaged in their camp pantomime with Patrick.

  Hurling her eyes heavenwards, she alights on her son's bed. "This is unbelievable, Richard. Beyond belief."

  "Hello, Mother."

  "Who is responsible? That's what I'd like to know."

  "Mother dearest, what are you talking about?"

  She puts her handbag down on the bed. Distress contorts her face. "Can we close this curtain?" she says.

  "Sure. But first let me introduce you to Jo, one of my very best friends."

  I get up from my chair near the window, hold out my hand. She barely takes it, then lets it drop.

  "Is she one too?" she asks Richard.

  "Excuse me?"

  "I think you know what I mean."

  "Jesus, Mom!"

  "Well, Richard, you're the one who said it's no big deal. If it's no big deal, then what's the problem with asking?" Her double chin is half the size of her face, a cushion on which the rest of her face — her pursed mouth, the hard line of her jaw — reclines.

  "Shall I close the curtain for you, Mrs Burke?" I enquire, pulling it across before she has time to answer. I toss Richard a sympathetic face, but he doesn't see me. He is terrified, like an animal on its way to the abattoir. I take my seat a discreet distance away and sit, in case he needs me.

  Inside the cubicle, Mrs Burke whispers loudly. "What are those people doing here?"

  "Who?"

  "I must say, they are the last people I expected to see here."

  "Who, Mom? Who?" Richard's voice is lined with pain. I don't know if he is playing dumb or whether she genuinely has him confused. I know that it's George she objects to and Bill: the two nurses who are so obviously gay. "It's a disgrace. They're the last people who should be here. They did this to you."

  Light dawns for Richard. He raises his voice, addresses us outside the curtain. "Ladies and gentlemen," he says. "My mother."

  "There's no need to get fresh, young man." She scrapes the curtain open again and steps out. "I don't want you here," she says to George. "Or you," to Bill.

  Their faces freeze.

  "You needn't stand there smirking. I'm going to see what can be done. I am his mother, you know."

  She walks out.

  "Oh, God," Richard groans. "Why did I ring her? Squirrel, get in here."

  I go into the cubicle, try not to laugh at his crumpled expression. "Poor Richard."

  "What did I tell you? See, mine wins."

  He means our mother competition. I try to imagine Mrs D. here and find I can't. I don't know how she'd be: lost, I think.

  I take a tissue and wipe his forehead.

  "I can't do this, Squirrel," he says. "She didn't even say hello."

  "She's upset. She'll come round."

  "What's she trying to do down there?"

  "Shhh, Richard, it's okay. Nobody's going to pay her much attention. They're going to realise she's upset."

  He groans. "You have the right idea, Squirrel. Cut off. Don't look back. I should never have rung her. Why did I? Why?"

  * * *

  Dear Jo,

  Surprise! I hope you haven't fainted away with amazement to see this letter arrive on your mat. I ran into your sister in Dublin last week and she wrote down your address for me. I'd often wondered where you got to, but didn't know how to go about tracking you down — there wasn't much point in ringing your mother, I knew that much. So it was great to meet
Maeve. She had the little one with her, she's lovely. I'm an auntie myself, four times over.

  Anyway, what's the crickety crack? Maeve says you have it made out there. Things are the same as ever here i.e. boring as hell. I finally finished my PhD and I've got a job offer from an agricultural research centre. It's a good job, and good jobs are pretty scarce in Ireland these days, as you may or may not know, but the way I feel is that I've had enough of microscopes and white coats and root nodules for a while. I want to take a year off and see a bit of the world before I sign my life away.

  My mother is having kittens — after all those years of impoverished studenthood to turn down a good permanent and pensionable job! Her plan after I finished my BSc was that I should do a teaching Dip. Mine was a Master's and a PhD. I won, but not without major ructions. Now I've gone and done this to her. I'll never earn a crust, she says, after all her investment.

  I have to say I do feel a bit guilty. As you know, it wasn't easy for her to scrape the money together to send me to college in the first place, not with what Daddy left in the pot after he'd finished in the pub. But (BIG BUT...) it's my life — and the way I see it is, once I start working, that's going to be it until retirement (or maybe maternity leave, but the way the love life is going, retirement looks closer ). Mammy doesn't understand where I'm coming from at all, so I've given up trying to explain.

  All this is, of course, a roundabout way of inviting myself over to you for a visit. I'd love to see you and "Sin City" too. Is it true they have orgies in the streets over there? If so, I might stay on for a bit.

  Anyway, one way or the other, write to me, Jo. I'm dying to hear what you're up to. I've enclosed a couple of pictures so that if I do come, you'll recognise me when I get off the plane!

  Love,

  Your old pal,

  Dee

  * * *

  She stays in my spare room for two months, until she gets a job in the Silver Tassie, and a place of her own in The Mission. Before long, she has amassed a crowd of party-loving people and is always asking me out. Sometimes I go along, but they're a hard-drinking crowd and my orange juice or mineral water keeps me separate. It amazes Dee that I don't drink any more.

  "What made you quit?" she wanted to know.

  "Aerobics. Alcohol really interferes with your fitness level. I gave up smoking back then too."

  "Not even take a glass of wine with a meal?"

  "No."

  She turned a wide-eyed look on me.

  "Really, I can't be bothered any more," I shrugged. "It just doesn't interest me."

  She doesn't buy this and I tease her, tell her not to be so Irish. I can't tell her the truth. "Alcoholic" is a word I have never spoken aloud and I certainly can't say it to Dee. To her, it spells her father, her nemesis, who still makes her spit hate when she's had too much to drink herself. It is not a word for people like me.

  Or her.

  She shies away too from Richard and Gary and their world of other unspeakable words: lymphadenopathy, mycobacterium, pneumocystis, Kaposi's sarcoma. I don't blame her, I'm tired of it all myself.

  In a dark corner of my mind I often find myself wishing it were already over for Richard. Because I want to spare him what's ahead? Oh yes, yes I do. But I also want to spare myself.

  1923

  Tipsy couldn't take his eyes off the child. Typical of him, he had given no thought to the reality of her at all, not until she was wriggling and squirming in his arms. After they had done all the paperwork and the nun brought her in and placed her in Peg's lap, he looked set to fall off the chair. Pure astounded. But then she was astounding, the dote, with her dark tight cap of hair and her straight little back and her two big eyes, like blobs of dark ink, staring them out of it. Wondering who they were, probably.

  Her nose was full of snuffles and tiny flakes of dried mucus powdered her nostrils. She had a bit of a head cold, Sister Margaret said, but nothing serious. Nothing to worry about.

  Peg squirmed at Tipsy's stare, nervous that he was about to say or do something he shouldn't. Any thought that came into his head registered across his face and, as often as not, came hopping out of his mouth. At home, he was easy enough to manage — the poor chap was as aware as anybody else of his shortcomings and her pity usually outweighed her irritation — but it was a mite more embarrassing being out and about with him. Especially in Dublin. Especially here.

  You couldn't dislike Tipsy. There was not one ounce of badness in him, but...she felt as if she were a twig caught at water's edge, pulled and pushed and turned over by the waves. The only way for her to keep bobbing back up to the surface was not to look at any of it too close, to stay in the minute and not fret over how she got herself here or what was yet to come. Amends. Amends. This was how she would make amends for the wrong she and Barney had done in the war times.

  The baby smiled a gummy smile. "Ah, look," said Peg.

  "She's very good," Sister Margaret said, with no trace of anything like a smile cracking her own face. She was a formidable woman, in her black wimple. "Sleeps from seven to seven, or later sometimes. And a good eater. You won't have too much bother from her."

  Peg took the baby up in her arms. The little head smelled like something between vanilla and honey.

  "It's good you'll have her for the Christmas, anyway," Sister Margaret said, walking them out to the big front door, clearly happy to see another assignment brought to its conclusion. She handed over a bag of baby paraphernalia and waved them off.

  "Fierce businesslike, wasn't she?" Peg said to Tipsy, once they were out of hearing range.

  "Only short of spitting in her hand."

  Christmas again, thought Peg, settling the child over her shoulder for the walk down to the omnibus that would bring them back to the railway station. When Sister Margaret had said that about Christmas, Peg had been shocked. Nearly a year already since they lost Barney. If anyone had told her this time last year that by now she'd be a married woman with a child...well! It was true what people said, you really never do know.

  The baby was heavier than you'd think to look at her. Not a peep out of her as they walked along. No sign that she was disturbed by being carried so by a stranger.

  How would Norah be, this evening, when they got her home? She was fierce agitated this morning when they'd been setting off. Not that it showed. She'd held herself so quiet on the front step, watching them set off, but the turmoil was written on her, if you knew how to read it. Peg would have to make a special effort when she got back, to make her realise it didn't matter who got the title of mother. They would mother the child between them and then, later on, when Norah was a bit better in herself, she could take over completely if that was what she wanted.

  And later again — they'd know when the time was right — the little girl would be told the truth.

  The bus took a half-hour to get to the station, and when they arrived the Wexford train was already in place, huffing on its tracks. They settled themselves in, hoping nobody else would join them. The baby's cold made her sleep noisy, punctured it with snuffly snores, but otherwise didn't seem to bother her. She lay in Peg's arms, her little lashes closed, tiny blue veins marbling the skin of her eyelids. The train pulled away. People rocking down the corridor smiled in at them through the window, and Tipsy preened under their attention, delighted with himself.

  "Is she all right, d'you think?" he asked. "She's due that feed an hour past."

  Peg smiled. "If she was hungry, she'd wake for it, wouldn't she?"

  "I suppose."

  As if on cue, she began to stir.

  "Now look what you've done," Peg chided, but to tell the truth, pleased as well.

  Tipsy reached down to the bag at their feet, took out the bottle, held it ready for when it was needed. Sister Margaret had put everything together for them nicely; they wouldn't have thought of half the things themselves. The baby gave a small cry and when Peg handed her the bottle, she latched onto the teat with a strength that would frighten the li
fe out of you. Because of her blocked nose, she had to stop every so often to take a deep breath between sucking.

  "Isn't it a grand life you have at that age, all the same?" said Tipsy. "Nothing to do except eat and sleep and be ferried about the place. Isn't it a pity you don't remember it?"

  Peg rubbed the baby's head gently. "She's very good, isn't she?"

  After the milk disappeared from the bottle, Peg sat her up on her knee. The child looked swollen, stupidly full. Her eyes were enormous, like two planets in her head, as she looked around her, taking it all in. Tipsy offered her his finger and her little hand curled around it. Peg saw a frightened look in him. She could see why: something in the child's look made it seem like she knew everything and they knew nothing. Then she let a big belch and they both laughed.

  "She's wet," Peg said. "But I think I'll wait until we're home to change her. I don't fancy doing it here, with the rocking."

  "Do you want me to hold her for a while?"

  She was surprised by the request, but handed her across. He rested her into the crook of his arm. Already her little eyes were heavy again with sleep. She was calm, happily sated. He put his hand on top of Peg's and when she didn't move it away, he lifted it, took it in his hold. She let him. Then she was sorry because she could see him wishing that somebody else would come along the corridor and take a look in at them. She shifted away from him in the seat, stretched out her legs.

  "I'll be glad when we're home," she said, with a small yawn. "D'you know, I never want to see the inside of another institution. Since this thing started, it's been nothing but big houses."

  "That's over now, anyway."

  "We've a bit to face yet before we can relax."

  He turned a puzzled face to her.

  "The reaction of the village, I mean."

  "I'd say we're over the worst," he said.