Malarky

by Anakana Schofield

  —And now that the two of them are gone?

  —Were you ever in the bus station in Athlone? There could be 4 buses parked and you’re sure you know someone only you don’t, but by the time you accept it, you climb back on the bus. I never get out of that bus station.

  Grief did not push me. For I would have had to say I am only waiting to be gone myself now. Isn’t that the final installment, hanging around in people’s way as they’ve to step around you and about you?

  —I’ve a new friend, I told Grief instead.

  —You do?

  —Yes. He lives in Limerick.

  —He, is it a man so?

  —It is.

  —Well, Grief said. That’s wonderful. Except, she said, it was important to take things slow. And she said many women rush into relationships.

  I had to shut her up.

  —Oh no it’s not a relationship, I said. He doesn’t actually like me, I said.

  —Wouldn’t that be a bit tricky if he’s to be your friend?

  —Not at all. I said. As long as he doesn’t throw something at me.

  Grief returned to talking about my daughters.

  —Now tell me the latest on your girls and the sleep situation.

  Grief is so interested in my daughters, I almost expect her to proffer adoption papers.

  —I want you to do something for me, Halim repeated. He’d asked twice, so he must have something filthy in mind. Perhaps he did know something of my son after all.

  —Anything, I said like a horse with no harness

  —I have to know what the cervix feels like.

  —Very good, I said, work away, thinking he meant sex.

  It’s not ideal, not precisely her plan, but there are worse things to do on a Sunday and there was a time wasn’t there when she thought it would be a very good idea. The time when she determined it necessary to understand the beef of her husband’s actions.

  —I want you to know I have read a book on it, Halim reassuring.

  —Grand, she says. Get on with it, she thinks.

  Some budgy fingers ’til she realizes it’s a physical examination he’s after, like the doctor, not the usual manner of squish-against-the-thigh let-me-in entry.

  —You mean?

  —Yes.

  —I don’t know about that, she says.

  —Please?

  —Go on, but be careful. For God’s sake be careful.

  Whilst it’s not the most appealing thing she has ever experienced, it’s not objectionable enough to tell him to cease and she stacked up her generosity and once he retrieved his fingers, he couldn’t find it and the book is all wrong, but he’s glad he tried. He said it is interesting up there, the abstract way you’d talk about a strange coloured bird up a tree. Isn’t the colour of its breast remarkable?

  He’d one more request.

  She was practical, pragmatic.

  —What is it? She clucked before adding a curt, whatever it is would you just get on with it. Men such ditherers! She recognizes she’d be hard pressed to see her husband any more assertive in these circumstances.

  Silent his hands meandered her mid-riff. Little interest in a traditional sexual act, she couldn’t quite fathom him, he was ordinance survey mapping her reproductive functions. The palms of his hands and fingers splayed and stretched on her skin, his thumb and first fingers pointed, stretched one either side against her skin, to locate precisely what? She’d no idea. He rotated her legs down from the bed, they trailed the carpet, parted them as wide as they’d go and manipulated her groin with his forehead. It was mighty peculiar. She could not figure what he was up to, only felt some kind of gentle head butting motion, as though he was trying to push his cranium back into her. She’d give him a maximum of two minutes at this lark before she’d lean to her final request, that she’d been deliberating on. She could hear his voice again those months back instructing her on how she’s to be with her son, as though only he, in his boots, might understand him. Leave him be, she heard, he’ll tell you when he’s ready. We’ll see, she thought, we’ll see how much you understand him. We’ll see now what you know.

  Halim was smiling pleased, after her allowing the head in the groin rummage and she wondered for how many years of his life he wished to undertake this exploration. How many women had rejected such a request? How many women had he filled up trying to parse his way to the mystery of the cervix? She looked at him and realized he was a tender young man, who, for whatever reason, no matter how many women he might fill, would always have an empty hole. Never, he exclaimed hushed, did I think I’d get this chance and it’s exactly how I imagined! Can you still have a baby? he asked absentmindedly.

  Her request, in comparison, was tame. And he was awkwardly bemused by her instructions, squinting and staring down at the top of her head, his body a tad stiff and tickled by her nippling. Her insistence that she repeat the nipple sequence until it was perfect confused him, up on the elbow, she instructed him to act indifferent, then become aware and he wasn’t entirely convinced by the requirement to fling his thigh over her, suggesting it’d be more natural if she flung hers over him. They rehearsed and rehearsed. Now we’ll do it properly she said. One last time. He was generous and didn’t question the what and why of this nipple fixation. It’s like a play, Halim laughed. Exactly, she thought. Precisely.

  She’d moved onto hand gestures to illustrate so there might be no misunderstanding: her final request. Her skirt she hitched and indicated her rump. To tell him this is where you are going next! She ensured her hand pinpoints his destination precise. Make no mistake about it she did not flap vaguely about the kidneys, but as she did so it dawned on her this might not replicate what she saw Jimmy do by that stone, since Jimmy was doing it. This wretched inversion time and time again. But it was too late. The request had been filed.

  She pointed out the window.

  —Out there!

  There was a very interesting pause. It was one of the more interesting pauses of her life.

  Halim’s arms flew up. His head retracted slightly.

  —Absolutely not!

  He began to wave his hands like he was signaling traffic.

  —I never do that. No way I go in there! On my mother’s life!

  She laughed, a hearty laugh into the calm that followed.

  She offered tea. She was furious. Furious that her ascent was cut off, so near the top. In protest she did not scald the pot.

  But she’s vindicated. Ha! A wholesome vindication.

  —These are the things my son likes to do. You don’t know anything about my son, she said quietly.

  She watched him to ensure he’d heard her, but he had not. He had not registered a word of it. He was still looking out the window.

  She wanted to be both her son and the man who hupped him.

  She didn’t want what Red wanted.

  At the table there was something slightly stunned about Halim. Like she offered something but with no place to put the image it stuck in his throat and rendered him speechless. They won’t discuss it. Never, she thought. If he tries, I’ll tell him to go. Not to worry, yet again he trod back to childbirth.

  —Is it true that the leg ligaments stretch endlessly while the woman is giving birth and how do they go back? Halim wanted to know.

  The Lord save us, the man’s devotion was inexhaustible. She wondered would she have taken him up that field? She imagined her husband coming upon them. She could have defended herself. This was what I once had to witness. I had to find out how cold and uncomfortable it is. But she would have frightened him in a way no man deserved to be frightened. His wife would have been irretrievably mad, rather than momentarily mad.

  She was not finished with Halim, if he won’t go in there, she will.

  Episode 13

  —Can you remember when your children were small and the words they said? Our Woman asks Joanie recent.

  —I don’t know, Joanie, cautious. Do you want a hot drop?

  The dodge t
o the teapot. They’re all doing it now. Trying to keep her off the subject, any subject, danger, trouble subjects.

  She’ll not be budged.

  —What’s the earliest story you have?

  —Oh I don’t know. There are so many.

  —Do ya know I’ve less and less. I am losing them all. She tells her by return post.

  —Come on ’til we’ll measure the front window for curtains. Come on now.

  Years back, when her girls were yet young and Jimmy not even born – as life is now: girls not young and Jimmy gone – details nestled tight in mental crevices. She could confidently look and and not lose the shape of things so quick.

  Today, thinking, on the Blue House beside her, she has the shape of the old woman, who sat in front, screaming instructions at those within and changing her tone whenever anybody passed. She can hear her.

  —How’re ye gettin’ on? She’d call out to not quite hear the reply. When you passed her she’d turn again.

  —In the name of God how long am I to sit here shouting for a spoon: are you all dead in there or what? She’d curse them.

  Today, the poor repair, the present state of disintegration is not obvious, she can only see where the blue of the windows once sat, but since peeled and flaked into overgrown grass, so paint nor house nor garden are indistinct from each other. A protruding tree from the half collapsed chimney declares neglect like a flag. It is a house dismissed. Fit for nothing. There will never be a good fire inside the grate again. Demolition would be the pale ordinary man’s verdict.

  All incidental.

  Still she does not have the story of its discovery. The when and why and how the Blue House invited her in. This is frustrating. She tries again. She must try harder. She must listen for it. Then maybe it will come again.

  Was it Jimmy who remarked on the house, it must have been Jimmy, otherwise she would not have noticed it, but there’s no retrieving what he said. All her Jimmy moments feel like they’ve rolled under a cupboard and she cannot quite reach them, even with the handle of the broom extended. Whenever she can’t find a story she cries and she doesn’t like this, she wants the story for herself, rather than the inconvenience of a wet face needing swift repair when knuckles knock against the window, the way the knuckles do knock, or a voice calls out, so regularly around here. Hello within. God bless all here. Hello. Come in. It can feel like there is a set of teeth in through the back door every hour. Rap tap tap tap. All the different knocks she has come to identify. She’d love to roll under a cupboard and just wrap herself around the molecules of the story she cannot quite trace.

  —Mammy.

  —Yes.

  —Where are you?

  —On the bus. Me, talking on the mobile phone, that Áine, my daughter, insisted on buying me and insists I carry everywhere, even into the toilet. There’s only three numbers in it.

  —What are you doing on the bus? Áine, talking in my ear, via the phone she insists I carry.

  —You’re breaking up. I lied and pushed the red button to disconnect her.

  It is important to always answer the thing when she phones, in case she takes it upon herself to visit me. Áine’s my eldest, she’s a divil for interfering, but won’t interfere when interfering is necessary.

  —Mammy what are you doing on the bus? Áine, back in my ear again. She always sounds impatient with me, even when wishing me Happy Birthday she sounds like she wishes it had less letters.

  —Áine I am not on the bus anymore.

  —Where are you now?

  —I’m with Joanie, I said. I could hear her relax.

  —Well, she said, I need to talk to you so you’d better be home later.

  —Very good. I said the way her father would have and let my thumb slip again to hit the red button. I love to terminate a red button. I can’t resist it. I’ve given up offering God Bless the way other mothers do.

  I don’t recall exactly when the Blue House became so important to me. It crept up and took me over in the way projects take me over. I’m in them, before I contemplate them.

  Our Woman takes the bus.

  Too many Prime Time programmes on random gang violence in Limerick have her nervous of car-nappings. She read the word in an article about Brazil, thus Brazil and Limerick have merged. Never mind that legions live a peaceful life there, when they see her Mayo plates they see a plump duck, an invite to attack her. She can see faceless people pulling shovels from the boots of their cars to batter her into the ground, flattening her like a mole.

  The bus driver, his stomach pressed against the steering wheel like the pleat of a duvet, explains the estate is on the outskirts. Hard enough to get there by bus, but describes the way to do it and wait now, ’til he sees, can he leave her at this spot, not on his route, but what harm, might it be easier for her, it would, it would so. A ruse to get her to sit up beside him perhaps. He talks of his daughters, one away in London, most unfortunately the other married a farmer in Thurles. And does he like the husband? I do, he says but I didn’t want her going marrying this quick, but what can I do? Two hours and Our Woman’s learnt of many things he likes and doesn’t like, his wife trying to insist he eat salad, he’s worried about farming subsidies, people are driving too fast and no offense now, but he doesn’t like Enda Kenny. She’s no opinion on the man, she says. Whether he eats salad or he doesn’t, he has generously delivered her, she’s there, stood in front of generic wood door, generic net curtains but peculiar statues stare at her from the window. China mermaids are they? White. An odd white, a not quite belonging white. Like they should have a dirty smudge where someone lifted them absentmindedly after messin’ with a car.

  A man, nervous fluster of an aging male, answers.

  —Yes.

  —Hello.

  —What is it?

  —I need to talk to you.

  —Is it you?

  —It is.

  —He’s long dead your father.

  —He is.

  —Is there trouble?

  —No. No. It’s about the house above. I wonder would you rent it to me.

  —There’s little left of it to rent.

  —I’d be happy with what’s left.

  —What do you want with it? It’d only be good for grazing animals.

  —That’s all I want it for.

  —Call back next week and give me the chance to think.

  If all were to be well it should have ended there. But as she’s leaving, he calls after her are her family well?

  —There’s little left of them now. I lost my husband and my son recently as well.

  He’s sorry. He won’t ask her what happened for he wouldn’t want to upset her like you know. Confused, he mutters, it’d probably be no harm if she was to have animals in about the place, he hasn’t been near it in years. But she better call back for he’d have to think about it. Goodbye now and in he’s gone, catching the tail of his dressing gown belt in the door and struggling before re-opening it. She’s careful and doesn’t look back. She won’t have him embarrassed. She knows what way fellas go when you catch them short. She hears the door slam. It may have lost her the house, the dressing gown belt may have scuppered it.

  She wanted him to ask what happened. She wanted to be upset by his inquiry after her dead men. What is wrong with her? She’d be happy enough if someone was to take the time to assume they’d upset her by asking the questions she’s delighted to answer. I had a husband and a son and they were both taken from me suddenly and what have I learned from this? I have learned no answers. I’ve learned to act rather than wonder. I’ve learnt only how to misbehave.

  On the bus back, the wobbly, straw haired alcoholic, the bus driver cautioned them about on the way down, this fella who selects Eastern Europeans to sit beside . . . well here he is now stagger-teetering his way back the bus. Heads are down, clear of his gaze – don’t, don’t sit beside me, whatever my sins, don’t chose me. Plunge, plonk. The smell hits her the way heat swipes your face at the oven d
oor. His heat says drink hath been consumed and will continue to do so as long as there is a pulse left in me. He’s a desperate alcoholic, the one who’d see every limb removed before he’d quit. Below the above-the-waist stink of him, he’s soiled himself, since he stepped off the bus and barely noticed because his inebriation insulates against the embarrassment of the trace of wet on a leg. Even the man’s eyebrows are in disarray.

  A lean, his nostrils toward her.

  —You’re going to Dublin, is it?

  She nods. (She can’t speak to him because he’ll talk the whole way home.) The bus is headed the opposite direction. Should she tell him lightly that he doesn’t know whether he’s coming or going today? She remembers the earlier refrain, arra he’s harmless enough. He can sleep it off instead.

  There’s plenty harm in the smell of him as the stench now is turning her stomach. The small bangs from his right forearm which falls onto her every time the bus turns. What can she do with it, only shove it off, or lift him up by his sleeve.

  Once he’s in a deep enough sleep, she’s an idea. A handful of baby wipes Joanie tucked into her handbag a while before – did Joanie think diabetes caused dribbling? She goes to work on him. His hands are in awful shape. She wipes one, tentative so he will not wake to see she’s repairing his hygiene. Above, she opens the air vent. No effect. She’s pegged in by him. He’s bitten the corner of his mouth and there are various scars on his face, but his hands are the worst. Swollen with muck and either hard drinking or hard work, his unnaturally widened fingernails and bludgeoned fingers are difficult to improve. He’s young enough beneath the damage, yet rolling through bottle to bottle. She could bring him home and fix him up. She could put him in the Blue House.

  It’s the neglect that grabs her. He reminds her of an injury she once sustained trying to move a lump of rock in the field. It slipped back. An extended moment with her left hand pinned underneath it, a pain that gave way to a numb astonishment. Her screams brought Jimmy and he rolled the rock away. It was only in retreat did the scale of the pain raise itself back to an accurate octave. She remembered her son holding her left hand in his two hands, and pressing it into his armpit to bring the blood back to it and her roaring and him Mam, mam can you feel your fingers? and pulling her amid this distraction to the kitchen, him muttering oh Jesus Christ.