Shift

by Mia Gallagher

  The hall is dark. The carpet is dirty. Not like Mam at all. I stop at the banisters. That smell is worse now. I sniff at my collarbone, but it’s not me. Then I get it. It’s not a physical odour. It’s as if something has ripped in the veil of reality and a wind is blowing through the gap. It’s the same smell our house stank of before they took you away to that hospital. Panic, sick people, and death.

  You used to joke about it. How, if everything went tits-up with the economy, I could always follow my Mam’s footsteps, take a job as a scrubber. Your word. But somewhere along the way I lost focus, let your chaos infect me. Stopped doing the dishes after every meal, allowed pots to gather in the sink, dust to collect in corners. It felt decadent, sophisticated in a weird way, letting things go like you did, with your journals and papers and coffee cups heaping up in unruly gatherings on every spare surface. As if I was trying on another history, another class. You never said anything, but I felt your approval glide over me. When we left London and returned to Ireland during the boom, I began to revert.

  Nesting, you called it.

  It took me two days to tidy up after you left, bag all the crap and organise your books in alphabetical order on the walls of what I still call your study. Even now I am impressed, if that’s the word, by my own efficiency. I had a list in my head. Somewhere near the top, above Tidying, should have been Event, capital E. Underneath that, bullets: Catering, Cutlery, Funeral Home, Service (?). Beside each a little box, ready for a tick mark. They say that helps, a finite set of manageable activities to fill the

  except

  except

  except every time I went to ring the funeral directors, I found myself nowhere. Thinking you were still around, but in the next room, or upstairs. Waiting for you to come in because your smell was still so strong. Which was criminally stupid, because the last place you’d been in was the hospital.

  Then: that weird return. Handset on the floor. Dial tone droning. The sun in a different place in the garden. Me in front of your desk, sorting through papers.

  They had no choice, your sweet parents with their golf club respectability, their careful tact that tasted of crushed glass. Nobody else could have filled the breach. Jeanette too busy drinking up the drama like it was bridesmaid time all over again, oozing tears and pathetic cups of tea. Or that’s what I told myself, when, if you’d been there, I’d have come clean, admitted I just couldn’t let Big Sister do it again, step up for me, shield me from the pain, and she hadn’t the right anyway, you weren’t hers to boss away into nothing. Da was useless, naturally, hitting the gargle and telling everyone he could how much he loved you, a great man for the words, my Da, and Mam might have been there, I guess, if I’d let her, but of anyone, she’d never have been able to fight that battle for me. I have to hand it to your own mother. She was extraordinary. Like that Woody Allen joke about the kidnap victim: My parents swept into action, rented out my room. She swept into action alright, and believe me when I say I don’t feel any rancour towards her for it. We hadn’t been to Mass in years. I knew you’d hate it, and I would too, but fuck you, and fuck me. Someone had to take charge.

  A better person would have fought.

  Yeah. How?

  Said: ‘I think he’d have wanted—’

  ‘Yes?’ Their faces eager, anxious for an edict from beyond.

  I think you should know this. They hauled in that priest who officiated at your confirmation, dodgy cousin Paschal from Roscrea. Payback for the registry office wedding. Christ, he hogged the pulpit. Number one on the pastoral bucket list: officiate for a dead rellie. I’d taken some of your mum’s Valiums and was zoned out for most of it, but at one point in his endless spiel, he started speaking about what a lovely child you’d been, sharp as a tack, but a good boy scout and always helpful, and my attention snagged. I thought of the you I knew, couldn’t match it to his picture. Then I thought of the way you always had to have a Plan B and it seemed to fit quite well. Be Prepared. And suddenly I saw you in the coffin, except you weren’t broken and instead of that lovely charcoal suit that matches your eyes, you were wearing a scout’s uniform. Shorts and all. Three vials by your side, steaming from the permafrost; haploid cells, suspended in amber. For a horrible moment, I thought I was going to start laughing, but your dad put a hand on my shoulder and I settled.

  I should have pushed harder, I started thinking as we made our way out between our friends’ muffled sobs and the whispering grass of our neighbours, those tacky hymns belting down the nave behind us. I should have forced it out of you. And the crowd vulture-swarmed us: ah, love, love, eyes ravenous for a taste of our grief, stiff hugs against brooched chests, all passive-aggressive Irish, expecting thanks. Do you – I have to ask this – do you remember that day on Hampstead Heath, when we were not yet thirty, and I tried to get us to talk about how we’d like to celebrate our—

  Passing, I said, using my family’s word because it was nice, it was respectful, it was classy, I thought.

  Ugh, you said.

  What?

  Passing.

  What?

  It’s such a, you know…

  No. What?

  Eh, you said, like it was obvious. It’s so trite, Annie.

  Trite? And hurt, and quick, so you couldn’t start backtracking: Okay. Our Dying, then. In my best teacher-style, making the D a capital, precise between my teeth.

  Ah come here, Annie, I—

  At least, I said, I’ve some vision. I want my ashes to be thrown in four directions off the hill of Tara.

  You flinched. Talk about melodrama, you said.

  Well? I said.

  I don’t want to think about it.

  So unlike you, who had to have contingencies for everything. But no, you said. Thinking about that stuff just made you feel morbid.

  Anyway, babe, it’s not going to happen for ages, so why worry?

  I’m not worried.

  Oh. I didn’t say you were. I said—

  We bickered and it intensified and then we brought it down, me because it was always easier to fuck than fight, and you because, I don’t know. After we made up, lying in the long grass, looking up at the sky, already beginning to spit rain, you said: ‘I know. Let’s go together, Annie. In an explosion. The end of the world.’

  I let them put you into the ground, in your family’s plot at Dean’s Grange. I watched the clods fall and the hot August sun send sweat sliding down your mother’s powdered forehead and the black-clad armpits of the throng, and the taste of copper in my mouth was your ghost’s tongue, hating me.

  Wanted what, Conor?

  A tick beside a box. If unused, discard.

  Elevenish came and went. Jeanette and Steve, late again, always late. Kids, School, Football, Clients. By midday, there was nothing left to clean. I had phoned the builders, left two messages, fed Mixie, put her back out in the yard. Prepped some classes, marked homework. During that time I succeeded in not thinking, very much, about Mam. Call me heartless again, Conor, but it’s easy to disconnect from drama when that’s all there is.

  Aren’t you ever worried, you used to say, that you’ll miss something real?

  Like what? I said, and you couldn’t answer.

  And you see? I blame you. Because that fruitless conversation with you was what was going through my head instead of what I should have been thinking: What did Jeanette mean, Not Great? And I blame you for this too: me prowling through the chat rooms instead of thinking, What did Jeanette mean? Unable to concentrate, feeling more like a trespasser than ever as I skimmed past those crucial, generous, hard-won nuggets of advice.

  you should think carefully about

  I’ve nothing but sympathy for you and I’m saying that to make sure you know, because

  Sorry I think it’s too soon.

  You probably need to realise this is a legal issue as much as anything else.

  I think a lot of you are being very hard on AnnieGetYour. When we—

  Outside, Mixie’s claws stopped scrab
bling and she made a sudden sound; coaxing, grumbling, affectionate. I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help glancing over. Her head was brushing against air, her happy mouth open, her tongue lolling. Unseen small things lifting from her. Sparking, like dust.

  The world shivered.

  The bell rang.

  I jumped.

  I don’t believe in this stuff. I should have put you at a fucking crossroads.

  You drag at me, you claw my hair, you layer dust on my mother’s filthy carpet. You want to trip me, force my retreat. My movements are treacly. I should be easy to obstruct. Your hands pass through me, catching on the soft bits inside.

  The upstairs landing is gloomy, an ancient, sepia-toned photograph. I nudge their bedroom door open with my foot. Inside, their bed is empty and unmade, Da’s navy jumper thrown sulkily over the rumpled sheets. It’s cold. He’s left the window open at the top again. The blind cord is slapping the glass. Through it I see the strand, concrete grey, beyond that the sea. Number 2 on the Beaufort Scale, little scales of movement, no white caps. I step out. Across the corridor, the door of the box-room, the one we used to sleep in when we stayed over, is ajar.

  I stop. Through the gap I see darkness. The smell from downstairs has got stronger. Somehow I have moved, am forcing myself over, entering Mam’s space. I can’t see a thing. My knee meets the edge of the bed with a soft bump, and I lower myself, feeling my way with my hands. I can’t help thinking I’m going to sit on her by mistake, and the thought makes me giddy and breathless. In the end I manage it without making any contact. She must be curled up tight, I think.

  like a foetus

  I regroup, corral my senses to the present. They adjust, obedient senses. I catch the sound of her breathing, slow and even. Then I see her: a humped shape under the duvet, squashed close to the wall, facing into it. On the little bedside locker is a tray holding the shadowy forms of her untouched breakfast. I imagine Da earlier that morning, cajoling. Here you go, pet, lovely glass of grapefruit juice, couple of nice slices of soda bread, a bit of Lo-Lo, some chunky marmalade…

  My father, Feeder and Hitter.

  My mother, mistress of dissimulation, keeper of secrets, perpetual avoider of the Bad News.

  I can hear voices trickling up from downstairs. Jeanette’s high and uncertain, Steve’s useless fits and starts. Under them Da’s gravel rumble, kango-hammered by sobs.

  Mam’s breathing changes. Is she awake? Can she feel us there beside her, you and me?

  They said you had a seventy-five percent chance of recovery. There’d been setbacks, the stroke was unexpected, especially for a young man, but in time your condition would stabilise. Many used the words ‘pull through’. We could, the more cautious ones said, reasonably expect an improvement. The physio said so, the speech therapist, even the woman running the rehab programme said she’d never seen anyone with so much fighting spirit.

  ‘You tell me,’ I said.

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Oh?’

  I nodded. We laughed. No need to say any more. Some women are sisters. I used to tell mine by the wary look that would come into their eyes when they heard an argument on the bus, the rolling upwards of their eyes at a stranger’s swearing bravado. Jeanette always used to say, smugly, wasn’t it funny that it was me – not her, the Daddy’s girl – who followed Mam’s example and chose an angry man to share my life with? As if, in spite of our upbringing, or maybe because of it, she believed anger only came in certain forms and inhabited certain people, and everyone, given a chance, was not capable of fury. As if a few loud arguments with you over breakfast could have ever equated to our Da chasing our mother around her own house with you name it in his fist.

  Looking good, said the rehab lady as you clenched your fingers, forced them open.

  One snag.

  There might be an issue, the consultant said, with fertility. There was a possibility, she told us, that the nature of your condition could affect performance. Erectile function, she said, and you frowned while I fought the childish snigger rising in me. Only a possibility, of course, she reassured us, and smiled. And only in the long term. But, she told us, moving on quickly as her smile turned serious, depending on what approach we were going to take around medication, your treatment itself could impact on sperm count and quality. Perhaps, and she looked straight at you, as if she was propositioning you for a fuck, you might consider freezing some, Conor? Now, while you’re young and relatively healthy.

  It was painless. It was funny. It was something people did in movies. We hadn’t talked about children. Not seriously. It was a given, but for later. We had time. This was only a possibility. In the long term. And maybe, I said, and you agreed, we had enough on our plate for the moment? Because the number one priority, wasn’t it, was to get you back on track. But this. Why not? No harm, surely? Good idea, surely? Fine, you said. Great, I said. They gave you the paperwork. You ticked the boxes.

  I didn’t tell anyone. Not my friends, not Jeanette. Not, God help me, Mam. I felt ashamed after you’d done it, not in a prudish way, but as if I’d been complicit in branding you, with your newly slow right eye and sagging right lip, as lacking. That if I told people, this failing would be exposed, raw, for the world to see. Of course, now, in full-watt hindsight, I think it was simpler than that. I think I was afraid.

  After the second stroke, your fighting spirit took a surprising new tack. Well, Annie, you said. It’s clear the orthodox route isn’t working. Perhaps we need to try a different approach. You said it over breakfast, two weeks after they’d let you back home. You spoke calmly, as if you were talking about replacing a faulty machine component.

  ‘You mean something… alternative?’ I said, unsure what you were getting at. We’d always hated that stuff. New Agey mumbo-jumbo, you called it.

  ‘Fine,’ you said. ‘Forget it.’

  ‘No. I don’t…That sounds really positive, Conor.’

  Later that evening I drank wine and watched you attempt to meditate, the word desperation scratching at the bottom of my brain.

  I don’t hate them, all those people we went to. They were kind. Supportive, and not too crazy, even though that cynical part of me couldn’t help wondering at the palaver. The talk of aligning spirit and mind, shifting baggage, finding root causes of cellular degeneration in behaviour. The notion that if a person directs enough attention inwards, the outer stuff can be fixed. The old you wouldn’t have blamed me for wondering why it was necessary to get so medieval about the whole thing. Your body pierced with needles, your ears fed melting wax, foul potions brewed from witches’ herbs bubbling on our stove.

  At first, against the doctors’ savage new odds, the new direction seemed to work. Your brain and body slowly began to tune back into each other. I felt hope uncurl inside me as our future started to reconsolidate, line by broken line like a drawing in an Etch-a-Sketch. It was then we started talking about it. Seriously. Will we try, you said. Maybe we should wait, I said. Till…

  Till what, you said. I feel terrific. And you grabbed my ass the way I liked it, drawing me to you and I told myself you were there, under the softness of your trouser fabric. Okay, I said, and up the stairs we went for that dirty filthy ride.

  They said this might happen, I wanted to say.

  Maybe we should go to that clinic, I wanted to say.

  Perhaps… you said, frowning. I prayed you wouldn’t finish your sentence.

  Next time.

  I agree. I let it slide as much as you did. More, maybe. Isn’t this the woman’s prerogative? Magic moon-cycles, maternal instinct, the countdown of the biological clock.

  The contingency came into effect so smoothly I couldn’t help wondering if you’d had it up your sleeve all along. We got a rescue dog. You called her Mixie. You adored her. To your credit you never talked about her as Our Furry Baby, though you had your own ridiculous, dotey names for her. I tried to respect her. She was our companion animal. Until, I thought, though the word had a fuzzy quality to it, nothing
like the urgency of my friends getting loud and anxious over birthday glasses of wine, or colleagues worrying in the staff-room about time-windows or genetic abnormalities or the M-word. Then you announced you had a Plan, one evening after you’d come back from Reiki, and I thought, with a treacherous jump in my heart that I still can’t tell was terror or excitation: Clinic. But no. You were going to build a new extension to our house. A small job. Just a bit of a conservatory, to add light. Ah, I said, nodding. It was something I’ve always been threatening to do, you said, and your smile had a manic quality to it.

  I watched you take the sledgehammer to the back wall and dig trenches in my garden, your weakened arm dangling by your side, while Mixie, the pest, chased invisible rats. Then I came back from work that evening and found the house black with smoke and, terrified, started screaming.

  ‘Jesus Christ, Conor! What the hell is going on?’

  You hadn’t noticed. You were out the back, smearing the same brick over and over with cement.

  I batted the smoke away and saw a pan on the stove, blue flames flickering underneath. The base of the pan was charred; what was inside had burnt to nothing. I grabbed the handle and pain carved a red X across my palm. I swore, dropped the pan, ran to the sink. The tap didn’t work; no water.

  I looked up. You were at the door, watching.

  ‘I’ve turned off the mains.’ The sun was behind you, haloing your hair. Your eyes were slitted. You were leaning against the door, and I knew it was because you no longer trusted your leg, but the insouciance of that slouch made your lopsided body look almost sexy again.

  After I’d cooled down, we sat at the table and I saw the salt lamps had gone. You took my hand. ‘It’s no use.’ Your speech was slurred. Zhnoyoosh. You sounded worse than you had that morning. Was that even possible. ‘It’s bullshit—’

  ‘It’s not bullshit.’ My teeth were aching. ‘You’re bullshit.’

  You laughed and I saw Quasimodo, crooked and monstrous.

  ‘That’s what I’m talking about,’ I said. ‘That bullshit attitude. How can you ever expect to get better if you keep giving up?’