The Visitors

by Patrick O'Keeffe

  The couple said it was amazing. They even said it was exotic.

  They were five years younger than I was. A smiling copper sun with fat cheeks was pinned above their door. Green creeper plants dangled from baskets on their porch roof. I looked down the sidewalk and wondered if the elderly woman was sitting on her porch, but it was too early for her. On the sidewalk across from her house a tall man with a backpack walked toward downtown. Only for seconds did you think he was Walter. And then you were thinking you’d seen the last of Walter. But you hadn’t.

  I put the cigarette butt in my pocket and waved again at the couple. They waved back. They were beautiful to look at, in that sunny, faultless American way: good-natured, freethinkers, secretly and viciously ambitious, though taking their time with graduate studies before the careers and the house down payment their parents would furnish. For a while you wanted to be them, except that you could never be them, but the imagining, then the finding out, was always what fascinated. From the beginning you were on this road. I was whistling when I opened the screen door. The cool air rustling the vents made me see leaves being blown across an empty deck floor in autumn. I sat in the chair with a beer. Then I stood, turned the music down, and rang Tess.

  —Should I ring you back, Jimmy?

  —Do you mind, Tess?

  —Not a bit, Jimmy.

  Tess rang back.

  —So the news is you got rid of another man, I said.

  —It’s high time you rang me. It’s ages since you rang me—

  —Are you miserable, Tess?

  —I could be better, Jimmy, but I’ve been a lot worse. Kieran was a fair-enough man, but he wanted children, and I said to him when we first met that I didn’t want them, and I haven’t changed my mind, and he had no problem with not having children when we first met, but as the time went on he started to say he wanted one, just one, but I said no way, and he used to get mad at me and say he never met a woman before who didn’t want children, and there must be something wrong with me, and I said to him he’s at liberty to think whatever it is he likes—

  —You’d be a kind mother, most of the time.

  —I never wanted one.

  —You heard this terrible news about Seamus Lyons?

  —Hannah was on the phone the moment she heard it.

  —And you quit the nursing.

  —I did, Jimmy. And I’m selling the house.

  —Hannah told me that, too.

  —She left no news for me, but I bought the house for nothing over ten years ago, and I’ll get a good price for it now. I’ll buy a condo. Something that fits me. Then I’ll see what I’ll do. I was knackered from the job, and I’m not going to go back to it unless I have to. I’ve saved a good bit, too, and I will have to get a part-time job somewhere, but I’m fine for now.

  —Any other news for me?

  —So Hannah didn’t tell you about Kevin Lyons selling the houses in Dublin about six months ago?

  —She never said a word about that.

  —She’d too much to tell you, Jimmy. You know the way she is, she just keeps yapping away about whatever comes into her head—

  —And she’s constantly run off her feet—

  —She’s not happy unless she is, but she complains to me that you don’t ring her.

  —She says the exact same thing about you.

  —She says it more than I do. I know to expect it. I know what you’re like more than she does.

  —You do, Tess, but Kevin bought those tenement houses for nothing.

  —He did, and he did them up and rented them out to yuppies. And he let some rental company look after them after he left. He got into trouble before he left for not paying taxes on them, and he wasn’t paying his workers their stamps.

  —In Boston he and his wife bought houses, the first wife.

  —Kevin’s been on the mind the past few days, Jimmy, to be honest. Maybe it’s because of Seamus. Or it happens when you break up with someone. You start thinking about the other ones. I had it for Kevin in a very bad way at one time.

  —I know that, but you behaved yourself.

  —I did and I didn’t. You don’t even know the half of it.

  —We’re lucky to know the quarter of anything, but you never told me the didn’t part.

  —When I could tell you, you wanted nothing to do with us, but Kevin and I were sneaky, Jimmy. We had to be. If they found out I was seeing him there would have been holy war, as you know. They would have locked me up and buried the key.

  —They thought you and him were not suited—

  —Who knows what they thought. Them showing their will at every twist and turn. Wanting to be the boss of your life. Wanting us to live the way they’d lived. Never wanting one thing to change even when the changes were happening right in front of their eyes.

  —But you were good at keeping it to yourself—

  —Like I said to you, we had to, Jimmy, although I did get over him. It took me a long time, but many’s the night I stayed awake over him, but you’re right, he was not for me, but no one could tell me that then. And Kevin had to have more than one woman, more than one of everything, houses, cars, suits, and so on, and he would have wanted children, and more than one of them. I wasn’t fully a fool, I knew he was the wrong man for me, but at one time and for a long time I thought the two of us were meant to be.

  —So when was the last time you saw him?

  —A bit before he went out there.

  —And so now you tell me all this.

  —But you’d put me and us behind you, Jimmy. From the day you left home, you did, don’t let on differently, so Kevin rang and said he was going to the States and he wanted to see me one last time. We hadn’t seen each other for a year. He’d visited Cork a few times, but I finally had put a stop to it, and when he rang to say he was going, I was seeing someone new, we were serious enough like, but I told Kevin to come, so he drove to Cork, and we met at a bar a good ways from where I lived and worked in the hospital. That was the last year I lived in Cork, before I moved up to here, and so I got someone to cover my shift in work. I lied to that person and told her there was trouble at home, and I needed to go immediately to see my father and sister. And I dolled myself up, Jimmy. I put on the red dress. I knew he’d like that one on me. Or maybe it was another one. No, Jimmy, it was the light red one. Not the other red one. I paid good money for that dress. But I knew what perfume to wear, perfume he’d bought me once, and he’d say to me to spray a few tiny drops on my right wrist, only a few so that no one else could smell it but him, and when we’d meet, the first thing he’d do was bring my wrist to his lips, and Jimmy, I was in heaven then. I don’t think I’ve even felt anything like that since, and I did the hair up and everything, but didn’t I run into the girl who took over my shift. I had to put petrol in the car, and she walked straight out of the petrol station and there I was pumping the petrol, and she on her way to cover my shift, doing me that big favor, and I knew by the way she looked at me that she knew I’d told her a pack of lies. She knew because of the way I was dressed, like I was not dressed like there was trouble at home. I was dressed for a different sort of trouble, if you know what I mean. And the two of us smiled and chatted away, and I told her I was on the way home to see my father and sister, but she knew, Jimmy. She saw that I was dressed like a hussy, and thank God she didn’t know the fella I was going out with then. If she did, I was in even bigger trouble, and I probably told her other lies now that I forget.

  —But Tess, maybe she didn’t know a thing.

  —That would be nice for me to think, Jimmy, but I could see it in her face that she knew, but when I finished pumping the petrol I drove to this bar about five miles away, the place we arranged to meet, and we sat at a table at the back and drank one drink. Mine was a vodka and tonic. We sat there for hours, till way after dark. And all I tasted through that
straw was the bitter lemon. You see, I thought I was well over him, Jimmy, that he couldn’t do that to me anymore, but to tell you the truth I was in tears. The face in a pure mess and all the makeup running. I looked like the crying clown. That’s what I was. A crying fool of a clown. I brought it all on myself, but after we left the bar, Jimmy, we were sitting on the plush leather seats of his car in the dark car park. He had a bit of hash and we smoked it, and he kept putting his hand down and I kept pushing that hand away, I knew well what was going on inside his pants, but he eventually stopped and we said nothing for a long time. I was looking out the window, looking at the couples hand-in-hand walk in and out of the bar, and I was the one who broke the silence. I turned back to him and said that he was the torment of my life, and that I hoped I’d never lay my eyes on him again.

  —He took that very hard, Tess—

  —Very hard, Jimmy. I was a pure bitch to him. But it was very hard for me, too, of course, but after I said those things to him he started to cry. I’d never seen him shed a tear before, not even at his father’s funeral, I didn’t know he had tears inside him, but he wasn’t putting it on, and he cried and said it was so hard to leave me, and I would never understand how hard that was, but I did wish him luck, Jimmy, and I got out of the car the moment after I said it. And I never looked back at his car, but it didn’t pull away till I got into mine and turned on the lights and started the engine and drove away, like he still thought I might come back to him.

  —You were in bits, Tess.

  —Complete bits, Jimmy. I had to squeeze the steering wheel very hard because my hands were shaking that bad, and the tears like a downpour, and I got lost in the city, took every wrong turn, drove down every wrong street, and ended up out in the country. I didn’t know where I was going, and I just kept on driving, Jimmy, because I was thinking then too that you were going to leave. I knew it. I knew since the day you left for Dublin that you would never stay. And in my selfish way I wanted you to stay. I never wanted you going away, but I knew you would and I knew you had to. And that night I didn’t know which way to turn, and it was so dark, Jimmy, and I could see the sea out there in the moonlight, and I was frightened that something very bad was going to happen to me, that I was going to make it happen to myself, like I was going to land myself dead in the sea, because of the way the water moved in the moonlight.

  —Christ, Tess. You’re all right—

  —Fine now, Jimmy. I can let things go. I can. So that’s well in the past, but that night, Jimmy, I told my mother that I was sorry for all the going against them, the anguish, but their mad regulations would make anyone mad, the You’re not going out wearing that, the constant How could you do this to me after all I did for you! All the vows she wanted me to make that I wouldn’t let a man even near me, locking me in the toilet with her and making me swear that I won’t ever let them touch me, cross your heart and hope to die, and you know how many times she told me that nothing would make her happier than me becoming a nun, that she prayed night and day that I would become one. But can you imagine that, Jimmy, me a nun!

  —Not for a second, Tess.

  —But I was afraid, too, that night, Jimmy, that I’d run into the man I was seeing. I’d drive the car around some corner and there he’d be, standing in front of the car, waiting for me, waiting to say, Caught you in the act, you bitch.

  —A panic attack, Tess.

  —Call it what you like, Jimmy. But I didn’t want to leave Kevin in that car park, but I couldn’t go with him. I did not want to leave home. I could never get on a plane, and if I could not get on a plane for you or for Kevin Lyons, I could for no one. And of course Dada was alive then. And I was not leaving Dada.

  —Kevin wants me to go and see him, Tess. He sent someone to my door with the news. A down-and-out man—

  —Sending someone, that’s Kevin.

  —That’s what Stephen said.

  —But Jimmy, why do you think Kevin wants to see you?

  —I have no idea, Tess.

  —Are you a fool, Jimmy?

  —Oh, sister—

  —He’s in an awful state over Seamus. He wants to see someone from home.

  —Stephen said something like that.

  —Stephen’s right, but I wish you would just come home, Jimmy. You could get a job here now, no problem. You could get all the jobs you wanted—

  —I had a job, Tess. I live here now. I have to finish the studies.

  —You never say much about what you’re studying, or I forget.

  —Poetry and some other things that don’t talk to me anymore.

  —It goes away and comes back, Jimmy, you know that.

  —I do, Tess, you’re right, but I’m not going to see Kevin.

  —You’re so stubborn. You always were.

  —You’re a fine one to talk, Tess. And so you heard the news about Una’s mansion being built where the cottage was. They tore up the silver birches—

  —Oh, I heard it from Hannah. The moment she heard it she’s on the phone to me, but it’s Nora I often think about. How was she going to raise those children? Where was the money going to come from? You remember their uncle Roger?

  —I do, at the creamery. His red Zetor and all his milk churns. He had all that land. He and Michael didn’t talk. They fell out over the land. The father left the land to Roger, although Roger was a few years younger than Michael was, but the father didn’t like Michael.

  —How do you know all that? From Una?

  —Mostly overheard in the kitchen from the mother and father.

  —So Roger’s land and money would solve Nora’s problems, but in the end she never even had to marry Roger—

  —Because he died suddenly, and Nora inherited Roger’s money and land, so they auctioned off the land and house and everything else Roger owned, and they moved down the country, bought that new place with the money, and Kevin bought his tenements—

  —But Jimmy, I forget how Roger died.

  —He died in the meadow. I remember hearing it. Died slumped over the steering wheel of the tractor. A heart attack. That’s what they said. Went the way Michael did. The tractor was in low gear and humping the ditch like a dog.

  —But Jimmy, people were not a bit nice about Nora and Roger.

  —They weren’t, but Roger was the devil.

  —Una told you that, of course, but you won’t tell your sister—

  —Oh, sister—

  —I understand, Jimmy, we all have things we don’t want to tell, but when Nora took up with Roger, Dada never spoke to Nora again and Mama talked away nicely to Nora when they met after Mass, but when Mama came home she clipped Nora like I never heard her clip anyone. One time after her coming in from Mass, I remember, her saying Nora Lyons was a pure tramp, how dare Nora Lyons go up to the altar and receive—

  —Stephen just told me Nora tried to burn down the shed a few days after Michael died, but they stopped her the moment she struck the match. Seamus told Stephen that.

  —Stephen might be making that up, Jimmy.

  —I said something like that, but he’s not, but I hear you’re painting again—

  —Taking a class for the first time. But what about you, Jimmy?

  —You lose track, Tess. The country is huge. I live in a matchbox—

  —You won’t forever. Should I send you money?

  —I’m fine, thank you.

  —Ask if you need it. We’re all rotten with it now. We’re acting like the only problem we ever had was that we’d no money, like the way we lived at one time was a different country with different people, but Jimmy, you’re the sort who drives forward looking into the rearview mirror—

  —I don’t look in the rearview mirror—

  —You do so. And you should go and see Kevin and then ring me. He never once looked in the rearview mirror, I can tell you that much. But I know you
and him were never close. I know you never liked him. You and him are so different in manner. Then he’s the few years older.

  —I spent many schooldays running like a lunatic from him.

  —Kevin had to be the biggest man in every room, but I admit I liked that in him.

  —You still think about the two of them—

  —Nearly every day, Jimmy, but we were all so hard on each other at times.

  —And I still think about not ringing you after he died, after Hannah asked me to.

  —I’ve forgotten that, Jimmy. You know I never stay mad at you for too long.

  —I haven’t, Tess, but I should wash the flour out of my hair and eat something—

  —Talk to me for another few minutes, Jimmy.

  —What’s the weather like there today?

  —A few showers this morning, but the sun came out around two, and the grass dried up, and I cut the lawn and took the dog for a walk by the river, and then I went to the bakery in the village and drank a cup of tea and read the paper. I’ll be seeing a few friends later on. One of them is bringing some fella who wants to meet me. I’m told he’s a nice fella and he’s nice-looking. I hope he is, but Jimmy, you should go and see Kevin—

  —I’m not going, Tess. You know very well I’m not.

  —You have to go, Jimmy.

  —I don’t have to go anywhere, Tess.

  —Jimmy, like I said to you, you’re so stubborn. He just wants to talk to someone from home. “Yea, ere my hot youth pass, I shall speak to my people and say: Ye shall be foolish as I; ye shall scatter, not save”—do you remember that, Jimmy?

  —Patrick Pearse, Tess. I forget which poem it is.

  —The teacher beat those lines into us with her meter stick.

  —It’s not “The Rebel” or “The Mother.” Oh, I remember, Tess. It’s “The Fool.”

  —That’s it, Jimmy. So will you do that for your sister? Kevin’s our neighbor—

  —Christ, Tess. Everyone’s our neighbor. Remember that.

  —Fine, Jimmy, but you owe me that much.

  For a minute we were silent.