The Visitors

by Patrick O'Keeffe

  —None of us live without regret, my dear.

  —That’s true, my dear, but since I got the message from Kevin Lyons a few days ago, I’m opening these doors that I thought were all in the same house, a house I thought I knew every corner of, because I built it myself, but the doors open into all these weird fucking places, like in nightmares and children’s stories.

  —It might then be good for you to see this Lyons guy, my dear.

  —So my sister and brother say. I went out with Lyons’s sister, my dear. When I lived in Dublin years ago, I did, and he never knew anything about it, though he was living there then. None of my family knew about it, but they suspected, and I come from people who never forget, but I kept my mouth shut. I always did and I still do. I never even told my beloved sister, Tess, who was once madly in love with Kevin Lyons.

  —The tangled web, my dear.

  —Indeed, my dear, but Lyons’s sister and I loved the idea of having a secret. A secret kept the others at bay. She taught me it was fine to have your own life. She gave me the ugly shirts that I gave away to mysterious Walter or Jeremy, or whatever the fuck his name is—

  —The woman who gave you no horse, my dear.

  —How selfish of her, my dear.

  —You loved this one, my dear.

  —Never marry a fucking Celt, my dear.

  —I’ll keep it in mind, my dear.

  —All immigrants are conniving assholes, my dear.

  —I’ll also keep that in mind. Thank you, my dear.

  —You’re more than welcome, my dear.

  —Can I tell you something, my dear?

  —It’s high time you did, my dear.

  —When Dad and I made up later in the summer he left my mom, I would go to his apartment. Luke had his own room there, I had one, and my dad had parties every weekend that summer. He was enjoying his freedom.

  —Maybe he was just lonely, my dear. He needed people around.

  —Whatever, my dear, but he invited me to every party. He said he wanted me there more than anyone else, and he invited his work friends. I knew most of them. I had since I was a kid. They were very kind to me. They knew what was going on. But there was this one guy, who attended every party, a guy who was close to our age now, but if he didn’t have the good fortune to be a nephew of one of my dad’s colleagues, who knows, my dear, this guy was a dumbass.

  —Accident of birth. Gifts from the gods.

  —He flirted with me, my dear. And I liked his attention. I was miserable and so angry with my dad, and I was fighting with the guy I was dating. We were fine in North Carolina, but things changed for us at the end of the summer. Like unexpectedly he became someone else. Or I was the one who became someone else.

  —These things happen, my dear.

  —But this guy at my dad’s parties was cute, my dear. A mover. All gung ho. At one of the parties we sneaked up to my room. We were drinking gin and tonics. The windows were open, and I could hear the voices of the men on my dad’s patio below, their loud, self-satisfied voices. This guy took my t-shirt off. I yanked off his polo shirt. And the men on the deck were laughing and talking about the fine quality of the meat being grilled. The ice clinked in my dad’s heavy glasses. And this guy wanted to be one of those men. He could not wait to be them, and he thought he was giving me something special, and I was charmed by his attention, like he was exactly what I needed. He didn’t know that when we were making out I could only think of the thick hamburgers and steaks dripping bloody fat on my dad’s new patio grill.

  —Probably none of it was easy for your dad, my dear.

  —Why are you so forgiving of him?

  —Because it might make it easier for you. You love him. He loves you. Because I never liked my own father.

  —You regret that, my dear?

  —I got to live more than once, my dear. You won’t like them all and they won’t like you.

  —Remembrance of things that are of no use, my dear.

  —He was right there, my dear. That’s all I do fucking remember.

  —But you are worried about meeting your old neighbor, my dear. You’re upset over his brother’s death. And we should go inside. I’m chilly. I must finish the proposal. You have to be at the bakery in the morning.

  —These things must be done, my dear.

  I came away from the railing and blew out the candles then picked up the plates and the glasses. Zoë held the door open and I put the things down next to the sink, wrapped the cheese, stored it in the fridge, screwed the cork back on the gin, and flung the dregs in the glasses into the trash. Then I began to wash the glasses and the plates. Zoë stole up behind me and wrapped her arms around me, pressed her face between my shoulder blades, tightened her hold, pressed her face harder. I kept washing and saw her riding on the back of her father’s motorbike along the strand at night. Water pounded the sand and stars shone in the heavens. And I recalled the carefree sound my feet made when Brendan and I rushed laughing up the quivering gangway at Dublin Airport the day we left. Then I turned off the tap. Zoë sniffled. I held her hand to my mouth and kissed her fingers. They tasted of lemons.

  —Are your allergies acting up, my dear?

  —Stop it, my dear.

  —Sorry, my dear.

  —I’m sorry, too, my dear.

  And we stayed that way for a long time before we released each other’s fingers.

  • • •

  A thing like a dream woke me. My watch on Zoë’s bedside table said 6:30. She was soundly sleeping. In the thing like a dream I walked down the blue corridor. It was pitch dark but my fingertips knew the damp and bumpy walls. I stood for a while outside my parents’ door before I pressed down the wonky handle and slowly pushed the door in and stood at that threshold I hated to cross. Aunt Tess’s red curtains were open and the room was lit with evening summer light. July or August light. Everything in the room was the same. The small holy pictures, the bigger picture of Saint Francis and his animals, their bedside rug and shoes. But the room was maybe three times its size. My father and mother were sitting on the edge of their bed. They were wearing their Mass clothes and talking to Auntie Tess, who sat on a chair beside them. She wore a fine tweed coat buttoned to the neck. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but their faces looked agreeable. To the right of Aunt Tess, the others sat next to each other on chairs that had been brought down from the kitchen. My sister Tess was talking to my sister Hannah. Tess was playing with one of the buttons on her purple coat. Stephen was chatting with Anthony and Seamus and Tommy Lyons. Seamus was the way I recalled him. Smiling. Stocky. Hair like Ray Davies in the mid-sixties. Una was talking to her father. She wore those long earrings fashionable young women wore in the eighties. That’s all I saw of her. And Michael was laughing. The hat rested on his knee. The little feather flashed from purple to blue like traffic lights slipping from yellow to red. Nora sat silently beside her husband. She wore a black dress. Her face looked solemn and her raw red hands were joined on her lap. Hands of mothers I grew up around. Uncle Roger sat next to her. His belly was huge. He was naked from the waist up and his suspenders hung down. And I was slowly backing out of the room when my mother looked at me and smiled. I smiled back at her and called her what I once called her. But this was a thing like a dream. And you understood that.

  —Look, Tom and Tess, we have a visitor, my mother turned to them and said.

  My father then looked at me. The corner of his mouth slipped down.

  —Whoever you are, you’re welcome, he said.

  —Oh, a visitor, you’re more than welcome, Aunt Tess said.

  She was looking at me and smiling the way my parents were.

  —I should offer the visitor a cup of tea, my mother said.

  Then I was back again in the dark corridor. Standing right outside their shut door. At the end of the corridor, where the kitchen door
was, was a shining set of eyes. The eyes I saw in the elderly woman’s driveway a few nights before. And the eyes rose up to where they were around my height. I blinked and I was that boy running and laughing down the platform at Limerick Junction to Aunt Tess. My father was behind me. I don’t know how far but far enough. And I picked up my dead aunt’s bags and she said, Jimmy, you don’t have to do that. I gasped and looked up at her and said, But I want to. I want to. She turned to Coleman Daly and smiled. Coleman’s teeth were cigarette yellow. And then I was standing in the empty schoolyard. Kevin Lyons and I faced each other like in a Western. That tone and cast of light. A train whistle blowing in the distance. At our feet the withered elm leaves. At the side of that schoolyard, the stout branches of four or five elms grew over a tall wall. He came to me and put his hands on my waist. He pulled me to him and kissed my lips. I put my hands on his waist and kissed his lips. He shoved his tongue into my mouth. I shoved mine into his. And we ground ourselves into each other until we were exactly the same person.

  When I sat on the edge of Zoë’s bed and pulled my pants up, that’s how those images had arranged themselves, even though I don’t know if it happened in that exact pattern. Already I’d fixed them. Not so much unlike when you are awake and what you see you fix into what you can manage and make sense of. And so those dead and living people sat in that room. My mother said that. And my father and Aunt Tess said what they said. And I ran down the platform to Aunt Tess the way I once did. And Kevin Lyons and I met in the empty schoolyard and we kissed and became the same person. Definitely the schoolyard. The rustling elm leaves. The gravel shifting underneath my feet. And in their bedroom they drank their tea from cups and saucers my mother brought out only when the parish priest visited. Which at most was once a year. The failed priest who lived in Vermont posted those willow-pattern cups and saucers to her. My mother often said they were too beautiful to use, and she washed and cared for them like she once did her babies. Back when she understood and liked us more. When she changed our nappies then wiped and powdered us. When we suckled and bit her and grabbed her hair in our fists. But my mother would open the two doors of the kitchen cabinet to the right of the sink. She’d fold her arms, take a step back, and admire her cups and saucers. When she did that I imagined she was staring at a dead body in an open casket.

  I tidied the bedclothes around Zoë. I was careful not to wake her. She had left ten bucks on the night table for the gin. I pocketed it. The air felt chilly. I turned the air conditioner down and sat back on the edge of the bed and stared down at her lovely face. I smoothed her black hair. A stór, I whispered, like my father used to once say to Tess.

  The air in the street was warm. Birds darted from the trees on one side of the street to the cables on the other side. Then they flew straight back. The lawns were neat and clean. A few sprinklers were already going full blast. The ugly photographs of politicians, their names, their parties, had all faded in the sun. A boy was flinging newspapers onto lawns and porches. He skillfully maneuvered his bike up onto the footpath then back onto the street. I passed five joggers and a few people in leisure wear walking their dogs. In the cool shadow of the Methodist church I stared at the wilted tiger lilies and regretted not having been more watchful, because every year I looked forward to the tiger lilies blooming, like in spring, when the snow and ice vanished, I longed to see and smell the lilacs. I could be happy then. Happy to use that one thing to forget the others. I walked by the old woman’s house. A Dumpster was parked in the driveway. The yellow truck was gone. So were the lights on the porch roof. The son took them home to Chicago. Or they were in the Dumpster with his father’s trash.

  In the flat I made coffee. It was one of the days I didn’t have to be at the bakery until 9:00, and not at 4:00 a.m. to measure the flour, butter, eggs, buttermilk, brown sugar, baking soda, salt, macadamia nuts, dark or white chocolate chips in the big bright metal containers that were shaped like tulips. And I didn’t have to wheel the containers under the mixer that churned those ingredients with a whisk you might anchor a small ship with. And I didn’t have to cut the cookie dough in the cutting machine, arrange the cut dough on the trays, then slide the trays into the oven. And while those trays circled the oven I’d stand at the bakery window, hands on hips, the way my father stood alone in the fields, and that glorious smell rose at the same time as the fiery red sun rose over the golf course across the road from the then empty parking lot of the strip mall.

  The nine o’clock shift was different. I’d push the trembling heaps of dough into the cutting machine, shut the lid, press down hard on the handle, then open up the lid and fling armfuls of cut dough along the long wooden table, and the mothers who worked there full-time, and the high school and college kids doing summer jobs, laughed and joked and kneaded the dough into loaves. I’d arrange the loaves on the trays, and I and the mother who gave me the pot kept an eye on the loaves in the oven while we chatted and swept the floor and cleaned the table for the next round of bread. That bakery job might be the nicest one I’ve ever had.

  I listened to the news on the radio. Then I washed myself at the toilet sink and changed into bakery clothes that when laundered still smelled powerfully of flour. I opened out the door, hooked the screen door, and sat in the chair. I went through the books and picked up the Good Book and opened it to the page I’d marked after I’d finished talking with Tess the evening before.

  It is better to go to the house of mourning,

  than to go to the house of feasting: for that is

  the end of all men; and the living will lay it

  to his heart.

  I looked up to see Walter at the screen door. Sunlight glowed on the gravel at his feet. He was wearing the shoes he wore the first two times I saw him. And he was wearing the other shirt Una gave me, the one with the blue in it. The sleeves were rolled up. The baseball cap was on. The backpack was over the shoulder. I put the Good Book down.

  —You’re up early, man, I said.

  —Guess I am, man, he said.

  He took the cap off and pushed it into his back pocket. I crossed the floor and unhooked the door and told him to sit in the chair. When he was sitting I asked if I should call him Walter or Jeremy.

  —Walter, he said.

  —I’m sorry to hear about your kid, I said. —I am, and I don’t know what else to say, only that I won’t hold the lie about your aunt against you.

  —Grateful, man, he said.

  —If the telephone pole wasn’t there, the woman said.

  —Bullshit, he said.

  —Bullshit is forever the right answer, but you’ll have coffee, I said.

  When I handed him the cup he thanked me. I said sorry when I told him I had to be at work soon.

  —Talked to Mr. Lyons yesterday, he said.

  —I’m going, man. The mind’s made up, I said.

  —Have the tickets and information here, man, he said.

  He reached down and rubbed the soiled backpack like it were a blind person’s dog.

  —That’s easy enough then, man, I said.

  —Said to mention John Garfield.

  —He did now, did he. Ever heard of John Garfield?

  —Not so sure, he said.

  —Actor. Forties. Fifties. Mr. Lyons’s father and my old man watched his films on television on Friday nights when I was growing up. Joseph McCarthy’s mother was born in the county where I was born. Garfield was blacklisted, so go figure. But where exactly does Mr. Lyons live?

  —North of New York City. More than an hour. Down an unpaved road. Ain’t far from the river—

  —Ha! Between Boston and Brooklyn, I said.

  —Tell him to expect you in four days, man, he said.

  —Four days will work, man. I just need to throw a few things into a bag. And I have to talk to my boss at the bakery.

  He unzipped the backpack and pulled out a large taped manila e
nvelope. He handed it over to me, and I held it to my ear, shook it, and then glanced at it back and front. There was nothing written on it. I threw it onto the futon bed and looked away from it.

  —He says everything you need is in there, man.

  —Thanks, man. Do you want a cigarette?

  —No, grateful, he said.

  —I’m sorry again about it. You want more coffee?

  He said yes. I filled his cup. I turned the radio off. When I sat again I offered him a cigarette. He said no.

  —How’s she doing? he asked.

  —The elderly woman? I said.

  —Your girl, he said.

  —Oh, Zoë. It’s Greek, you know. Means life, yes, life, but Zoë’s good, and she’s not my girl. Zoë’s not anyone’s girl. And the elderly woman is in an old folk’s home in Chicago. All her life is all mixed up in her head, so her son told me, but as we speak she is eating breakfast and blissfully looking out over Lake Michigan—

  —A real sweet lady, man, he said.

  —Zoë is that, man. She liked you, she did. She enjoyed our day out very much, but I have to knead bread soon.

  He finished the coffee and stood. I stood. He slipped the backpack on and pulled the cap from his back pocket and put it on. He adjusted the bill. I followed him to the door. When he was outside I hooked the screen door. He took a few steps and turned his back to me. He stared down at the gravel.

  —It was about wanting to leave and never about where you were heading, I said. —That place only exists in the head. But you probably know that better than anyone.

  —Don’t know what you’re talking about, man, he said.