I looked up at the sky and imagined myself looking down from it; that grey fucking sky. And that’s when I thought it must have looked like a crack in the earth.
For a split second I could see the shock and disappointment in Eibhlín’s face and then that twisting effort it took to bury her disappointment and put a brave face on it.
‘It’s only fish,’ she said.
‘It’s a disaster, Eibhlín.’
‘It could be worse.’
‘How could it be worse?’
She raised her phone into the air. ‘I got word; Emily Crayn called me. She said there’d been an accident. Thomas Ryan came off the road with the milk lorry – he’s been rushed to hospital and he’s not well; that’s how it could be worse.’
It surprised me to realise that I had not given any thought whatsoever to where the milk had come from. My panicked attempt to save as much of the stock as possible had totally wiped from my mind the most unlikely element of the whole incident – how a large freshwater pool had suddenly filled up with milk and how I had known for certain it was milk from the moment the water turned white around me.
‘And that’s how it could be worse,’ Eibhlín repeated as she laid her lips on my forehead. ‘You could be in intensive care like Thomas with pipes leading out of you right now.’
‘That bad?’
‘So Emily was saying; his family have been called over.’
Eibhlín sat onto my knee and lowered her head onto mine. She smelt of stale perfume and sweat, and I found it arousing as I knew she knew I would. ‘So today is not a day to complain – today is a day to count your blessings. Are you playing tonight?’
‘Yes.’
‘We have a couple of hours so, we could go to bed and count our blessings together.’ She ran her hands through my hair, lifting up a great swodge of it.
I patted her arse and turned her towards me. ‘All right, let’s do that; up those stairs woman, and let’s count our blessings.’
So she did and we did.
When I woke, she was sitting on the side of the bed with the works spread out on the side table: vial, syringe and antiseptic wipes. She was swabbing the roll of fat below her belly button.
‘Can I do anything?’ I asked even though I already knew the answer.
‘No, there’s nothing you can do,’ she said, as she took up the syringe.
So now I’m midway through my set, and the call is for Alan Jackson’s ‘Remember When’. I like the song; it’s just finely balanced between mawk and genuine sorrow, a song you can properly feel your way into. There’s two or three couples on the floor, waltzing. They’ve broken away from the press of people around the bar, and just having these few couples dancing gives the song an extra depth, an extra bit of meaning. I wind it down, and the couples break and raise their hands in applause before they make their way back to their seats.
I lean the guitar against the amp and go to the bar. Helen spots me and passes a pint over the heads of people crushed around me. A Friday night in a small Mayo village; you could be in worse places and you could be in better ones.
There’s talk of the crash – the milk truck going off the road is big news. There’s a lot of concern and wonder also because Thomas is local and he’s been driving these roads for years with the truck.
‘I hear he’s not good,’ a voice beside me says.
‘He’s in intensive care – the family was sent for. Does anyone know what happened?’
‘Marcus Conway was there – he said that the road gave way under the wheels as it was coming into the bridge, and it slewed away over the side.’
‘There’s a good drop from that road.’
‘About thirty feet.’
‘That and more.’
‘It’s not so much the drop as the rocky slope beneath – that’s what ripped the tank open. I saw the truck going over the road this evening on the back of Jimmy Lally’s low-loader, and you could see the tank was ripped open like a crisp packet.’
So I hear the talk and leave them to it. Back on the small stage for the second part of the set, I lift the tempo for the last forty-five minutes. A couple of Elvis songs – ‘Teddy Bear’ and ‘Jailhouse Rock’ – and a couple of Johnny Cash songs – ‘Forty Shades of Green’ among them – and round it out with ‘Friends in Low Places’ … And of course I top the whole thing off with ‘The Soldier’s Song’ …
And it’s been a good night – a nice crowd with a lively buzz and a few couples taking the floor, waltzing and jiving and making the job worthwhile. I lean the guitar against the amp and leave it there; I will pick it up tomorrow afternoon when it’s quiet. At the bar, Helen has an envelope in her hand, and she presses it into my hand with a smile.
‘Good work, Jamie, you were flying up there. We’ll see you next week.’
‘See you then.’
The envelope is buttoned into my shirt pocket as I make my way through the crowd and head out into the night.
Eibhlín’s in bed when I get home. No lights on except for the digital display on the oven. I toe off my boots beside the range and fill a glass of water from the tap. We have a ritual, and I like to see it observed.
I sit on the bed beside her and roll a smoke in the light pouring in from the hallway; when it’s licked and tipped, I lay it on the bedside locker. Then I pull open the drawer and take out the two blister packs and the small jar. I press one pill from each pack into my hand and two from the jar. The popping sound wakes her, and she pushes herself up sleepily against the headboard. With her eyes closed she reaches her hand out, and I place the glass of water in it. One by one she takes the pills, washing them down with a mouthful of water and setting the glass down on the locker.
My acoustic guitar is standing against the wall.
‘So tell me about it,’ she murmurs, without opening her eyes.
‘There was a crowd.’
‘Good, anyone dancing?’
‘Yes, a few people dancing.’
‘Nothing rowdy?’
‘Everyone was well behaved.’
‘And you got paid.’
‘I have it here.’
‘Good.’
Her voice murmurs from the edge of sleep. I pick a few strings. ‘So what will it be tonight? What do you want to hear?’
‘Something soothing,’ she says, twisting herself down beneath the quilt, ‘something to return me to sleep.’
‘How about, “She Ain’t Going Nowhere”.’
‘Okay, “She Ain’t Going Nowhere”.’
So ‘She Ain’t Going Nowhere’ it is, and she drifts off in the final, fading chorus. Or so I think; just as I’m about to pull the door behind me, I hear her sob.
‘Milk,’ she chokes softly, ‘of all the damn things.’
I light up at the kitchen table but leave the light off. One strange day gone by. Out there in the darkness there is a man in intensive care with his family gathered around him; who knows what the morning will bring them. Up the river there are two large holding tanks filled with dead fish – clearing them out will be tomorrow’s work. And down the hall a woman has just sobbed herself to sleep, choked back another disappointment, another setback: one more day of putting a brave face on things. Outside, the night is settling into its full depth, a night flattened over a world drowned in milk.
The clear light of day in which things might look better is a full six hours away.
Celestial Orbit
Bridget Sprouls
Trevor let the bag of textbooks slip from his shoulder and onto the floor with an enormous thud. Downstairs, the neighbour bawled his usual threat, and Trevor’s sister laughed because she had never heard it. The onset of adulthood had chipped her front tooth in half, making her smile like a pumpkin. Adults freeze up as they get older and start to look weird, Trevor thought, like camera-shy people or old surprised puppets.
‘Your sister’s come to stay with us,’ his mother said. ‘If you’re lucky, she’ll give you a painting lesson.’
&nb
sp; ‘Right,’ Celeste said. ‘Totally.’ She took a beer from the fridge, twisted off the cap and flicked it wide, into the living room. His mother never bought beer. ‘What grade you in now?’
‘Ninth.’
Trevor thought his sister looked as though she had just rolled out of bed. She’s probably been travelling all day. One brown hem of her jeans was dragging on the floor like a mangy tail.
After dinner, Celeste came into his room. She had showered and now swam in her mother’s denim.
‘I’m gonna go meet Vicki and some other people,’ she said. ‘You remember Vicki, right?’ Trevor did not remember Vicki, but his sister had never wanted him anywhere near her friends. She was eight years his elder. ‘Wanna come? Mom’s fine with it.’
He followed Celeste across the empty boulevard to the ocean block. They trudged over the dune and beyond the throw of street lights. Everything was dark. A cold breeze was blowing. Finally Celeste spotted a flock of lit cigarettes.
Trevor’s eyes adjusted to the black enough for him to pick out a loose huddle of people.
They sat down among them.
‘I brought my little brother,’ she said.
Trevor crouched behind her on the sand, partially out of the wind.
‘Who’s got my candy?’ she said, and he thought of the liquorice in the kitchen pantry at home and the butterscotch suckers in the scallop-shaped dish on the coffee table, and he looked with forced intentness towards the ocean, tumbling out of the dark into lines of hissing grey.
Celeste and someone else got up and smacked away the sand.
‘Stick around,’ she said. ‘I’ll be back.’
He wondered why she had asked him to come.
Trevor listened to the other three shapes’ varied complaints; my life may depend on it, he thought, then wondered at the childishness of it.
‘I got work at the ass crack of dawn,’ said a woman’s voice.
‘Let me call you Dawn,’ said a man.
The woman squealed in surprise, then her voice dropped to a whimper. Trevor looked towards the huddle after a silence. He saw only two shadows, now flat against the sand, one on top of the other in a dark grey sandwich. Wet heat travelled the back of his neck. He tingled everywhere, and his sleeping thing woke up.
Get away, he thought. The tongue went in his ear. Why not let this happen? A hand gripped him. It might be important … No, it’s weird. Make it stop. Hurry. But, clutching a handful of sand, no no no, he lost control. Get away, he remembered and ran through the dark.
His mother heard him come up the stairs and called him over to sit with her in front of the TV. He wished he could take a shower, but she would think it peculiar. He normally showered in the morning.
‘I’m tired. G’nite.’
‘Where’s your sister?’
‘Out.’
‘You came back alone?’
‘It was boring.’
‘What was boring?’
‘Jesus, Mom! You want me to spy on her or something? Who cares.’ Trevor took the remote from next to the candy dish and scrolled through the menu. Nothing interested him. Then he saw a listing for Drop Outs, a show about sky-diving instructors. His dad was not on the show, but he did jump people out of planes and pull their parachutes open for a living. Trevor had not seen his dad since the sixth grade but liked to torture himself by watching these guys discuss the risks then laugh all the way down. He selected it.
‘I don’t want to see that,’ his mother said. Trevor changed the channel and went to take a shower.
Celeste’s paintings arrived in a cardboard box that took up half of the living room. In one a man’s eyes bled ink. In another, a blue woman hurled broken bottles at tiny pink asses in the cloud above her head. Paint streaked. Paint ran in changing directions. Paint took big dumps of more paint. Trevor thought that if Celeste had kept to the abstract stuff he might have found something to like. He might have seen a storm system on Saturn, Jupiter’s famous big red spot, solar flares. Instead, he bristled at each rainbow blast of tortured thoughts and hoped his mother wouldn’t hang them on the wall.
‘Mom, I was all … effed up when I painted those,’ Celeste would say, twisting a hangnail. ‘Why d’you even want them?’
The answer was always the same: ‘Because you have a gift …’ and their mom would go on to tell how she had thrown away her own. She had taken years of ballet classes and, at seventeen, danced the part of Medora in the All City youth production of Le Corsaire. She had danced it so well that her teacher came into the dressing room afterwards to say that a good, personal friend from years ago, who now taught dance at NYU, was waiting to congratulate her in the foyer. Trevor’s mother had worked extremely hard for everyone’s approval, but she did not go to the foyer to meet her teacher’s friend. She used the rear door to the parking lot and waited for her parents by their car. A week later, she dropped out of the dance school, feeling for the first time that she must have better things to do, sink in with other people, look as bored as possible, chase boys.
Of course, when their mother came to the end of the story, she inverted everything, saying it had all turned out for the best and she would never change what had happened, her two wonderful children. Trevor knew his mother’s ballet story, and it always made him sad. It always worked on him.
Soon their mother took Celeste out for a ‘mother–daughter day’, and they came home with two oversized bags of new used clothes. Not just jeans and tops and shoes but black dress pants and black collared shirts.
‘Your sister found a job,’ Trevor’s mother said.
‘I’m gonna waitress,’ Celeste smiled, her chipped tooth miraculously whole. ‘At the same place as you.’
Trevor thought of the servers at Gianni’s Italian Restaurant, where he washed dishes three evenings a week. They did everything a lot faster than Celeste. Maybe it had been his mother’s idea, her way of making him get more involved, probably as an informant.
When Celeste did not show up for her third shift, Gianni asked if Trevor knew why.
‘I don’t know. I’m really sorry,’ he said. He wanted to say, ‘You think that’s my sister? Yeah, right!’ Instead, he agreed to tell her: ‘Gianni says don’t bother coming back.’
That night, Trevor woke to a twang and sudden brightness. Celeste had poked a needle through his doorknob and sprung the lock. He sat up, pulling the covers high, scared she would see him naked, though he always wore pajamas to bed. She swayed a little, her head to one side, like a zombie, her odour reminding him of the storage room to his school’s biology lab, except the floor would have to be one giant ashtray.
‘You tell on me?’
‘No,’ he said, squinting at the safety pin open between her fingers. He had not said anything. He had avoided their mother all evening, lying that he wasn’t hungry and needed to work on a school project. ‘I didn’t,’ he said.
Celeste nodded, glancing around his room. The two magazine cut-outs over his desk caught her eye: one a hot pink and purple composite image of a supernova, the other a photograph of a girl in a wetsuit with a longboard held upright beside her. Along the bottom of the advertisement was the name of the surf shop, Crest King’s, printed in a wave shape. Justin, the shop-owner, knew that Trevor had been saving all his earnings for a hand-built board.
‘I went to school with that girl,’ Celeste said. ‘She was so fat we used to call her Earthquake, but she’s lost most of it. Must be forcing her meals back up.’ She jabbed her middle finger towards her mouth and clicked her throat. Trevor remained quiet. Until that moment, the girl in the picture had not looked fat or skinny to him. Now she was both.
Each day, his mother seemed so happy to give Celeste fifteen dollars against her first pay cheque. Trevor couldn’t bring himself to tell her there would never be one. He could not even tell her when she asked, revealing undercurrents of doubt, if Celeste was in fact still going to her job. He lied until Celeste blew her own cover a week later. She’d forgotten all about the
restaurant. She must have started thinking of the money as her allowance. Trevor couldn’t believe how stupid this was. When she stormed out, leaving them alone in the kitchen, his mother reached across the table and pulled his dinner plate away from him. Trevor didn’t argue. He snatched a piece of bread and went to his room, slamming the door behind him.
He had seen the board at a surf competition the summer before and stared and stared at it while other spectators stopped, nodded and wandered away. Eventually, the man with salt-and-pepper hair down to his shoulders sitting at the back of the booth took an interest in him. He told Trevor about saving up for his own first-ever board at about the same age. ‘And I still use that one all the time, which is saying something, considering how many I’ve got. By the way,’ he said, putting out his hand, ‘I’m Justin.’
But when, the Saturday after Celeste quit her pretend job, Trevor and his mother arrived at Crest King’s and Justin knew exactly which board to bring out, Trevor could not find his bank card. It was not in his wallet or his pockets. He did not understand. He had used it to check his online account the night before to make sure it was all there, the last installment of forty dollars. Where could it have gone? His mother looked disappointed, but handed Justin a card of her own and said, ‘This one should work.’ Trevor wished she wouldn’t. He wanted to go straight home and search their apartment. His mother reminded him, however, that she seldom drove this way. He would just have to give her the money later, when he had found his card.
To Justin, it would appear that Trevor’s mother had been paying for his board the whole time, in installments because she could hardly afford it. He would class Trevor as the type of kid who always got his way.
‘Celeste took it,’ Trevor said, once they were back in the car.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘My card, she stole it.’
‘Don’t jump to conclusions,’ his mother said. ‘You should know better.’
‘No, you should. Celeste is fucked.’
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