Blue Mercy: A Novel.

by Ross, Orna

  In my bedroom, I had a bottle of green bubble bath given to me at Christmas. I could, if I hurried, heat enough water to cover myself entirely. This was, I had discovered since going to secondary school, the proper way to take a bath, the way that most people -- people who did not have to live with my father -- did it. I filled my head with an image that allowed room for no other: just me reclining under hot water, covered in bubbles, like a model.

  I crossed the room, opened the door of the hot press, pressed the red switch to On, my heart flipping at the sound of its click.

  Emboldened by my own daring, I then had a look in all the cupboards I was usually forbidden to open. At the back of one, I found the rest of the packet of chocolate biscuits. For the first one or two, pleasure outweighed guilt, but then the two emotions began to swap places. Yet even after the worry rose so high that I was no longer enjoying them, I kept stuffing them into myself, knowing they would be missed. What was I at?

  Then came my dinner, or as much of it as I could manage after the choco-fest. After washing and tidying up after myself, I put my hand to the immersion heater. Hot. Hot half the way down. Heart hammering, face flushed, I took two towels and went upstairs in search of the bath plug, a search that would require a forage into forbidden territory: his bedroom.

  There was no visible sign of my father in that room, except for a smell, one which is still in the house to this day, even after his death. Fear was thick in me as I went around to his side of the bed, and with good reason. He might well decide to drop over from the barracks as he sometimes did during the day. Especially today, as I was home early. If caught, I would bring upon myself unimaginable punishment, yet on I pressed, compelled by something stronger than fear.

  His bedroom locker was one place kept free of Mrs Whelan's housekeeping. In it, bundles of papers and letters were jumbled with two pairs of reading glasses, a screwdriver, some golf tees and a golf ball, a whisky glass full of copper coins and other debris. Under a stack of Ireland's Own and Reader's Digest magazines, I found it: the bath plug. And beneath it: a brown envelope torn in one corner. I peeled back the tear a little. Another magazine. What impulse led me to open the envelope, heart banging against its cage? It was as if I knew before I knew.

  My father's magazine was full of pictures of half-naked women. It would be considered innocent now, the sort of images that have become everyday to us, delivered to our breakfast tables in daily newspapers and to our sitting rooms by TV. A dark-haired girl in a leather hat brandishing a cocktail glass, her sweater pulled up. Another reclining naked on a fur coat, fabric carefully arranged to cover her pubis. Another lying in the bath, soaping herself, leg bent to block a view of anything too blatant. Anatomically innocent, but its intent the same as all porn, and it was the intent that held thirteen-year-old me riveted with shock.

  I was at an age where I was just becoming aware of breasts. My own were budding and I had started surreptitiously eying the bulges beneath the blouses and jumpers of the females around me: teachers in school, sixth-year girls, neighbors at Mass. I had never seen anyone else's naked before and now here was a profusion of them in every variety. It wasn't just the nakedness that fascinated me, as much as the look on these girls' faces. Saucy, as one of the captions said. Yes, they were girls, but girls of a different species. They had allowed somebody to photograph them like that because they liked it: "Hi. I'm Sophie and I've always wanted to be a nude model."

  Something I was just coming to know about women and men was writ large in this magazine, in my sixty-six-year old father keeping it in a brown envelope in his bedside locker. I wanted to put it back, pretend I'd never seen it, but I also wanted to see more of it. I wanted to know everything it had to tell me.

  Magazine under my arm, I went into the bathroom and turned on the taps. The water gushed forth, steam rising from the hot tap. I opened the magazine out on the shelf at Miss September, the centerfold, a kneeling beauty who was using the top half of her bikini to cover where the bottom should be. I put a bottle of shampoo to hold open one edge, a cake of soap the other. Then I remembered the bubble bath and went to my bedroom to find it.

  As I searched through the shoe-box at the back of my wardrobe where I kept all my precious things, a noise outside in the corridor made me jump. My heart started to flutter and flap like a bird caught in a room. I turned my ear up, urgently, to listen. Nothing. Nothing, you silly. Nothing, except the old house creaking. Finding the bubble bath, I hurried back to the gushing taps. I nudged the half-open bathroom door. It hadn't been nothing. No.

  It was my father.

  My father, bent over the bath, turning off the taps.

  When he sensed the door move, he swung round. He was dressed for rain, in his official policeman's cycling cape and pull-ups. The chinstrap of his cap dug into his jawline. On the shelf beside him, level with his head: Miss September, her chin thrown back, her protuberant breasts on offer, nipples pushing out of the picture. Our eyes connected for an infinitesimal moment of silence, where there had been gushing water.

  Then I turned and ran.

  After Doctor Keane delivered his bombshell, I had to go back into the pub and stay to the very end, my mind clanging with his insinuations. Star sat opposite me at our table, chewing on her pudgy fingers, disdaining to join in the talk. I switched out too, let the conversation churn around me and waited, waited, for them all to finish their food and their drinks and take off. It was hours before they cleared, but eventually only the stragglers, freeloaders and alcoholics were left and Pauline, more attuned to the niceties of Doolough behavior than me, said it would be okay to go.

  "I will never, ever set foot in that place again," I said to Star as we walked out together. "Never, never, never."

  "Ah, now," said Pauline, coming out behind us, putting an arm around us both. "I thought it all went off grand."

  Mikey, her husband, was waiting outside to drive us home. Star and I sat into the back and I was grateful for everybody's silence. I was exhausted from taking condolences and from watching people straining to find nice things to say about my father. We drove through Doolough, past the school and the smattering of houses known as the heart of the village (as if Doolough had a heart), out onto the Avoca Road. Past the high walls of Doolough Lodge. Past the police barracks. As the car drew towards our house, I said: "You can drop us here, Mikey, at the end of the lane. We'd be glad of the fresh air."

  "Are you sure?" asked Pauline. "Do you not want me to come up?"

  "Not at all, Pauline," I said. "You've done so much already."

  Pauline twisted her head round to Star. "It's great you're here now, love. Your poor mam has been a slave to your granddad's illness these past months."

  She patted my hand. "You let Star look after you now, from here on in." She got out of her front seat and folded it forward. I climbed out and we waited side-by-side, trying not to see Star's struggle to extract herself. Why are fat people's exertions always so painful to watch?

  "I'll be round tomorrow at one o'clock," Pauline said, "with a bit of dinner."

  "Thank you so much for everything."

  "You're sure you're all right?"

  "Positive."

  Star was out.

  "Ring me, won't you, if you need anything," Pauline said, sitting back in. "Even if it's the middle of the night."

  "You're too good, Pauline." I closed the door on her. "Thanks, Mikey."

  "Thank you," said Star, her only contribution since we left the pub.

  We waved and they were gone, the chuggy sound of their engine carrying across the fields as my daughter and I turned and walked up the lane back to the house where I was raised -- or reared, as they like to say in Ireland, as if you were one of the beasts of the field. The short day was coming to a close; the late December light was pale as water and fading fast. We could see my father's house: tall, white, Georgian, protected by a circle of faithful ash trees, with two chimneys either end of the roof in which jackdaws nested and cawed.


  Is it an Irish or an American saying, that when it comes to money or possessions, "you can't take it with you"? If you could take anything to the place beyond, this house would have been it for my father. There had always been a question mark over how he, a Garda sergeant, had accumulated the money to buy it.

  I matched my pace to Star's slower, more tentative, steps -- the heavier Star becomes, somehow, the less solid she feels -- and we walked up the lane in gathering darkness, two feet by two crunching along the gravel. Eight front windows, six above and a large one either side of the front door, stared us down. It was ours now, this house, unless my father had another surprise waiting for us in his will.

  Since she'd arrived on Christmas Eve, Star and I had had no time alone. My father had died the next day and, since then, it had been nothing but people coming and going and funeral arrangements and things to do. Now I wanted her to myself for a while. Our old way of being together had evacuated and we needed time together if we were to replace it with something new. I wanted to show her Doolough and all the beauty spots of County Wicklow.

  Yet I didn't know how to ask, or tell, her any of this. Imagine that: lost for words with my own daughter. The breach of adolescence, the generation gap, is no secret but it's like other women telling you about their birth pains. You only dimly perceive what you're being told, until your own experience smacks you into knowing. And Star and I had complicating factors, if ever a mother and daughter had. Her sensitivity around all that made all other talk precarious.

  I let her in through the back porch, followed in behind. Beneath those dyed and gelled spikes, just below her hairline, was a birthmark about a square inch in size, the shape of a five-cornered star. When she was a baby, I used to kiss that mark after every feed.

  I did my best Star, I wanted to scream, as I followed the spine so hunched against me. I did my best. Even as I was thinking it, I was despising the thought. The anthem of the failed mother. Instead I had to find words that might reach through that anger of hers. If we were to salvage anything to take into a shared future, I had to persuade her to stay.

  In the kitchen, I put on the kettle and had an idea. I'd show Star some of the family photographs and letters that I'd found in the bureau. Draw her in, then ask her to stay on, at least for a few days. I fetched them and laid them out on the table for her to look at while I made tea. The first to snag her attention was one of Daddy and me at the beach. Me, aged seven or eight, in a hoop-striped swimming costume with a frilly skirt piece, standing in front of a sandcastle. My father, already old, sitting upright on a plaid rug behind me, his shirt buttons undone showing grey hair across his chest. Both of us squinting into the sun.

  "You were so cute," Star said, her voice wistful, as if she was looking at her own memory, not mine. "Who took this?"

  "It couldn't have been my mother. She was long dead by then."

  "It's so sad that you never really knew her."

  I nod. She'd been saying that her whole life long and yes, my mother's absence must have affected my life, but it's not something I've ever felt directly. Had she lived, would my father have been different? I don't think so. Nobody could ever rein that man in. When I picture her, probably more imagination than memory, I see us standing either side of my father: one small, one adult size, shimmering figures of fear.

  "Mom, you know I'm leaving tomorrow?"

  "Star, please. Would you not stay for a couple of days, now you're here."

  "Oh yes, now I'm here."

  "What does that mean?"

  "What if I hadn't decided to come, Mom? How long would I have had to wait before you'd have got in touch?"

  Here it came, the attack.

  "Not a word, nothing, for months. I had to fly 6,000 miles. I had to hire a car in a strange city, not knowing who'd be here when I arrived. If I hadn't...? I get why you ran off, just about, though did you really have to leave for Ireland quite so quickly? Well, maybe. But what I don't accept, Mom, what I will never accept, is the great silence that came after."

  I looked across at her angry, shuddering jowls. For a moment, I was tempted to do what she was doing - to let myself think of nothing but me-me-me. What would I say to her? Grow up, Star. Move on. Let Zach and me be. Get your own life.

  But I didn't say any of it. Star was American; I, for all the years in Santa Paola, was still of Ireland where -- in my day, at least -- the national motto was 'whatever you say, say nothing'.

  And I was the mother, trained into biting my tongue. Daughterly anger we might survive, but maternal self-pity would kill us off. And anyway, I'd let Zach go now. I had to make a play for Star. But how? What did she want from me, anyway?

  "It's all so complicated," I ventured.

  "Complicated? To pick up a telephone?"

  "I didn't think you wanted to hear from me. You said –"

  "We both said a lot of things that day, Mom."

  In fact, I had said very little. It was she who had ranted and raved before stomping out of the house, but this didn't seem like the time to say so.

  "Couldn't you have written me a letter? A note of your telephone number here?"

  It felt forced, this anger of hers, unable to see anything beyond itself. What about all the years before my unintended mistake, day after day after day of mothering and giving? Did that not count for anything? Should that not be weighed against my sin?

  Oh Star, my daughter dear, go easy on me. Go easy, or you might come to regret it.

  STARDUST |ˈSTÄRˌDƏST| [NOUN]

  (something which causes) a dreamlike or romantic quality or feeling.

  *

  On the night Star was born, I stood at the window of an adobe that her father and I shared with five others at that time, watching the sun radiating purple beams through patches of silver New Mexico sky. The earth was palest yellow, the color of a lion's mane, flat and treeless, naked except for a smattering of sage. Across the plain, Taos Mountain seemed on alert, as if it knew what was happening to me. In the sky, a strange cloud formation filtered the rays, iridescent and full of significance, like direct messages from above.

  Behind me, circled around our big, communal dining table was... everybody. Our housemates --Madeira, Zane, Emma, Jade and Quicksilver -- together with Buff and Jalope who'd moved in two days ago and would stay as long as they were needed. We had laid in plenty of food and they each took turns to cook, except for me. "Mama Lightning" was excused from all duties except rest.

  In the other corner was the child's paddling pool in which I would give birth. Jade, who had been a midwife in her other life, had studied underwater birthing in France and was going to help deliver the baby. Zane had borrowed a car, in case anything went wrong. But nothing would, I knew it as sure as I knew that Taos Mountain would not fall down.

  For thirty minutes, I had been pacing around our living room, stopping each time at the big window that faced west, timing my way round so that I'd have my contractions there. Snakeskin looked up from his card game each time I passed, to show me he cared.

  "You okay, Mama?" he'd ask and I'd nod, wanting to keep the baby to myself as long as I could.

  I had expanded to twice, to ten, to a million times my normal size by pregnancy. I'm not talking about my enlarged belly, but inside. I was a fruit, ripe with knowledge. I had become the one the others came to with their problems. Me, Lightning! I was changed, we all knew it.

  Cramping clutched me again. I struggled to the window, this time only making a pretence at looking out. Thunder clattered in the clouds and a shriek of lightning tore across the sky. A jack rabbit ran through the sage. Across the plain, rain started to fall -- slant and stretched -- the kind the Pueblo people call "Long Walking Man". We were still bathed in sunlight.

  "Sunlight," I said, turning to the others when my breath was returned to me. "The baby will be called Sunlight." With a piece of my name in him or her.

  Another pain came, too quickly, bending me over. When I looked up again, night was surging across the sky from t
he east and Jade was beside me. "It's started, hasn't it?"

  I turned to find Snakeskin. He was at the table, talking. I waited until he lifted his head so I could connect with his eyes. Only then did I answer her: "Yes, it's started."

  He got up, smiling. What a smile that man had. That was all it took for me to feel as if he had just covered us both, me and the baby-to-be, in wild roses.

  Yes, yes, I know. Lightning and Snakeskin and long rain and wild roses. I know -- but back then, we didn't care. We were proud of such things. We called ourselves "beatniks" and lived in a commune and let ourselves say what the wage-slaves feared to think. Our men wore goatees and berets and played bongos while our women danced in black leotards. We were open, wide open, to peace and sunlight, to sex and drugs and complicated love, to any kind of living that wasn't the kind we deemed a living death.

  It was all a long way from Ireland and it was this edgy, complicated man who had spirited me away. I had known he would the moment I saw him, long before he was Snakeskin, when he was just plain Brendan Creahy of Laragh.

  We met in Molina Dancehall, one of those Irish arenas of pleasure thrown up on the side of a road in the middle of nowhere, summoning every young person for miles. Boys on one side, girls on the other, bottles of soda pop – we called them "minerals" – clenched in our fists, the sweet fizzy liquid sucked through straws. At sixteen, I was one of the youngest there. I had sneaked out the window of my cramped bedroom.

  Looking back, I can't believe my daring.

  "If my father catches me, he'll kill me," I'd said to Pauline, my friend from school.