by Doreen Finn
I’m not going to school this morning. I didn’t offer an explanation for my absence, nor was I asked for one when I rang the office two hours ago. My coffee cools in its cup as I sit in the chair by the window, the same chair in which my brother slowly unravelled. The paper is folded on my lap, the deaths column open. Hatched, matched and despatched, my mother liked to call the announcements page in what must have been a rare occurrence of humour. I wonder if many will read the notice, its careful wording. Irish people love death, though, and its offshoots: removals, wakes, Masses, flowers and cards, not to mention the funerals themselves. Nowhere else would people travel great distances, take time off work, rearrange entire days because someone has died. In New York, invitations are issued to funerals. There is no question of merely turning up at the church. Americans aren’t interested in death the way Irish people are. They don’t drive for hours to attend a removal, or wonder who will tend their grave when they themselves are gone. Most of the Americans I know would be happy to have a quick cremation and for their ashes to be scattered in a place beloved by them. Funerals are bigger than Christmas here, and they last almost as long. Not for the first time, I feel the distance between the life I’ve lived in the States and what I ran from here.
My phone squawks beside me. Maude. It’s time to leave for the church.
Since Andrew died, his funeral and that of my mother are the only occasions that have lured me to Mass. Religion is not something that intrudes upon the diurnal arrangements of my life. It’s not even that I despise it, or rail against its injustices and elitism. I simply don’t care about it. I find it, at best, an irritation, something to be avoided. Religious people are not counted among my friends, and if pushed, I admit to a yearning for a time when religious discourse is no longer in the public arena.
Maude would disagree with me were I to air my opinions. She walks beside me now, her hand linked through my arm. She requires neither walking stick nor help; she simply enjoys the physical contact, and I am again guilty for not spending more time with her.
The church’s spire rises above the surrounding houses, a pleasing mix of pre- and post-war architecture, where red brick dominates. The money of the past decade or more is visible in the renovated houses, the skips outside, the huge cars, the security cameras on the widened gateways. It’s all so ridiculous, so redolent of money easily gained that it leaves an aftertaste of nouveau riche lingering in the air. We battle with the wind. It gnaws at our cheeks, stings our eyes and whips our clothes into an insane dance of coat-tails and scarves.
The service is as it always was, and I slip into the automatic responses to prayers and psalms. I feel hypocritical, standing and kneeling, murmuring dormant refrains, remembering cast-off snatches of benediction. The priest reads notices, reminds his flock of active retirement meetings, AA groups, flower-arranging classes and a talk on local heritage that will be given by a well-known journalist.
I’m waiting for the names of the dead to be read out, and suddenly there they are, several names, Billy and Bridie and Molly and Willie, all those old names, old people’s names, and as I wait for my brother’s name I hear it, but it’s wrong. Anthony Perry. The priest stumbles, corrects himself. Andrew Perry. And the moment is gone, replaced by more names, more Marys and Johns, Bridgets and Josephs.
I glance at Maude to see if she’s noticed the glitch, but her eyes are closed. The priest has moved on to other things. He glides around his altar, king of his territory, green robes swishing as he moves.
I realise that my grief, this steel cage I’ve inhabited for over twenty years, is just someone else’s mispronunciation, a name on a list among others’ dead. Grief has claimed such a huge part of me for its own. It has blunted me, stolen some element of me that I didn’t even comprehend was being taken until it was too late. And I have been the loser.
Is there a choice for me? Will I be the same each year I mark my brother’s death, a year older, but still stuck inside, still 16 and finding the body of the one person I loved, looking for all the world as though he had just slipped into sleep?
My mother may have been the same, but she had her whole life up to Andrew’s death to be whomever she wanted to be. Was it the same for her? Was she the object of pity, the one others shook their heads about, secure in their conviction that she never got over her son’s death? She didn’t; this I know for sure. I know it because I never got over it either. Since Andrew left us I have been aware of a certain detachment that has grown up within me, something that often keeps me present in flesh only, while my spirit lingers outside the window, observing all that unfolds in my life.
The priest speaks of earthly flesh, of its return to dust at the closing of day. Where does it all go to, all this earthly flesh, this human substance? Where does the knowledge go, the bits of ourselves we have given to others, and the parts of those others we retain after they themselves have left us, we who are the repository? The air in the church is heavy, ponderous with absence, with loss, the loss of the Marys and Johnnys, the Jims and Annies. Who are the bearers of them?
Incense thickens the still air. The priest mumbles over the consecration. The sparse congregation kneels and stands like puppets on invisible strings. Maude pats my arm and I place my hand on hers and hold it there.
Outside, Maude thanks the priest by name. I linger by the gate, not wishing to be drawn in to questions I can’t answer. The priest, his green robes gone now, replaced by plain black and the white flash at his throat, glances my way. I lift my eyes to the sky. It is the colour of ash.
‘Will we go to the grave?’ Maude asks, as she tucks her hand in the crook of my arm.
I shake my head. ‘No. If you don’t mind.’ I’ve been there once, and for now that’s enough.
Maude doesn’t ask again. This time we are blown from behind as we make our way home, our path eased by the wind at our backs. We pause for Maude to rest at a low wall. She eases herself onto it, rubs her knee and then her hip.
‘Let me tell you this, Eva.’ I turn to her. ‘There is nothing glamorous about getting old. All this,’ she gestures at the offending body parts, ‘this pain and discomfort. It’s awful.’
I want to say something, to offer some sort of comfort, but Maude busies herself, standing and brushing her coat down with her gloved hands. Instead, I give her my arm again, which she squeezes as we begin again our walk home.
CHAPTER 27
I notice a man a few mornings later as I leave for school. He is standing at the bus stop a couple of houses down, but the bus arrives and takes off again and still the man lingers. Something about him catches my attention, but I’m not sure what it is. Maybe it’s his coat, an expensive city coat, all navy wool, single breasting and immaculate tailoring, or maybe it’s the similarity in his age to my father, to how old he would be if he were alive today. The man brushes early cherry blossom off his shoulders, fallen in a flurry as a sudden gust of wind shakes the branches of the trees. Already, too many blossoms lie banked along the footpath, turning brown at the edges. Indifferent feet trample them in the early morning rush.
I should think about my father more than I do, and maybe I did, once, when I had capacity for other deceased members of my family. Sometimes I’m aware of how much headspace my brother occupies, yet I have no choice but to return to him, the original source of my sorrow, and touch every pouch of pain, feel every throb. There’s no doubt that it is worse here than it is in New York. There, somehow, none of it seems as real as it does in Dublin. In Manhattan I can think of Andrew at a remove, without having to live in our childhood home, without having to be around reminders of him that keep tearing strips of skin off the buried wounds. Pain changes shape, moves around, slips to the back of my mind on good days.
Today I’m more rushed than usual. Sean shuffles behind me, his finger hooking the back of his shoe, pulling it on. His hair is flattened by his beanie, absurdly blond agains
t the black wool.
‘Wait up, Eva,’ he says, his breath pluming in the early morning light.
‘Can’t,’ I say, eager to be gone. ‘I’ll be late.’
‘Well, drop by later. Or call me.’ He puts his thumb to his ear, his little finger to his mouth, the universal gesture of staying in touch. It makes his youth ridiculous, even more pronounced than it should be. That’s when the man at the bus stop catches my attention. He is much older, late sixties at least, yet I think that I probably would have more in common with someone of his age than I do with Sean.
I return the gesture, feeling more like Sean’s mother than his accidental lover. ‘Okay.’ Happy, he ambles off in search of coffee, or more sleep.
There had been no intention of sleeping with Sean again, and it happened by accident more than anything else. Another chance meeting at the café, followed by a pizza in one of the eateries in Ranelagh that has managed to stay afloat in the midst of the wreckage. He is leaving for Australia in a month, so it was an easy decision. No strings, no chance of it leading anywhere. I kept all thoughts of Adam firmly out of my head, and even now, watching Sean’s shoulders hunched against the cold and the cruelty of an early wake-up call, I don’t feel guilty. Proud, maybe, of having nabbed such a beautiful man for a fling, slightly sorry that he’s going away, and secure in knowing that I won’t hurt him. He is moving on to bigger things. This interlude I will remember with pleasure.
The sky is flinty, coated in a jumble of silvered clouds. I wrap my scarf tightly around my neck. Jesus, this climate is unforgiving. New York is cold, and the snow can be relentless, but I’d forgotten how the damp in Ireland gets into your bones, settles in deep. The east wind shreds my skin. Apart from the blooming trees, there is barely a hint of the spring we should be in. The budding branches are spines against the opalescent sky. I blow on my hands.
A bus arrives, and the man steps back. He looks out of place here, slightly lost. I pass him, my book bag heavy on my shoulder. When I glance back he is watching me, but he turns away before I do.
Adam plonks coffee down beside me. It slops and splashes the book I am trying to read. I brush the offending liquid away. The mug is staffroom standard issue. In black lettering is printed I love spreadsheets, with a red heart substituting the word love. Whose job description is it to come up with such phrases, such corporate jargon? Maybe there is irony somewhere in there, but I can find no evidence of it, and I have essays that I need to return to the boys that I just can’t get started on.
I make room for him at the table. The stack of essays sits in a pile. I move them to the windowsill. The radiator pumps out heat. I remove my cardigan, smoothe my shirt. Tom Ford, bought in a sale in Manhattan, a fraction of their original price, and I love wearing them. I understand the attraction of expensive clothes, the quiet power that wearing them imparts.
‘So, Annelie’s arriving on Saturday,’ he says, his cheer exposed, shining.
I sip from my spreadsheet mug. ‘Great!’
‘You won’t back out, will you? From agreeing to spend a day with us?’
Sean’s nakedness presses itself to the fore of my mind. He is full of youthful swagger, a bravado that anyone could puncture with one misplaced word, one careless swipe.
Adam and I are not a couple. I must remind myself of that fact each time Sean cavorts in my head. We’ve yet to have that discussion, and I find I’ve been waiting to have it, am anxious to know what Adam thinks of me beyond conversation and sex. Lately, when he is absent, I think of little else: Adam in his car, Adam at the Picassos, Adam in his house, Adam sharing my pillow, his hair over his eyes, a half-smile playing about his lips.
And, my God, the sex is so damn good.
Outside the staffroom window, thick drops of rain start to fall. The fluorescent ceiling lights are yellow in the reflection. It is mid morning, but it looks like early evening. This was the kind of day my brother died on, cold and wintry, the daylight leeched by an overhang of cloud and sleet.
Adam nudges me. ‘So?’
Of course I’ll meet his child. ‘Sure.’
‘Great! Want one?’ He offers me an unwrapped piece of wax paper, in which are squares of brownies. ‘Left in by a grateful mother.’
‘Grateful for what, you dirty old man?’ Pat, the PE teacher is sitting behind us, listening to every word we say. ‘I know what you’re like around those mothers.’ He slaps his thigh, hoots with laughter. I roll my eyes at Adam.
‘Yeah, yeah, you just wish you had my gifts.’
Pat slaps Adam on the back. ‘I might even be as lucky as you with the good doctor there.’
My eyes widen so far that for a second I think they’ll never close again. ‘What did you say?’
Pat stops. ‘Jesus, Eva. Sorry about that.’
‘Don’t tell me. It just came out of your mouth before you had time to think, right?’
He looks abashed. Adam laughs, winks at me.
‘Come over later,’ Adam says as he leaves the table. ‘I missed you last night.’
I shake my head. ‘Can’t.’ Two men in two nights? I mean, I could, of course, but I’m already regretting slightly last night’s encounter with Sean. If anything is to happen with Adam, if we are to make anything out of this friendship-with-benefits, it can’t happen if I’m sleeping with someone else. I’ve wondered about a future with Adam, and each time I erase it from my mind before it’s had time to take shape. Adam will stay in Dublin. His first responsibility is to his child. As it should be. That’s how these things work. Annalie comes first.
Before the bell rings for the next class, the rain has turned to hail, the slush piling up quietly outside, gathering on the granite windowsill, on the teachers’ cars, on the front playing field. Fat, wet granules stick to the glass beside where I sit, pausing as if in shock, before melting slightly and zigzagging down the pane.
Jim Collins strides into the staffroom, rubbing his hands together briskly. Surely he cannot be cold? The school is ridiculously overheated today. Something to do with the thermostat getting stuck. A handyman was being sought when I arrived in this morning. The elderly caretaker is unable to fix it.
‘Eva,’ he nods as he passes. ‘No matches today, I’m afraid.’
I murmur my sorrow at such news.
‘So,’ Jim announces to the few teachers in the room. ‘If this keeps up we’ll have to close a bit early. I’ll have to get the whole system shut off. Terrible waste of money, all this heat and the windows open.’
‘There’ll be no coming in to make up the lost class, will there, Jim?’ A geography teacher, Bernie, looks up from the newspaper.
‘I’ll have the parents on the phone within minutes,’ Jim says, ignoring him. ‘Anyway, decision taken. We’ll close before the last class.’
A mild cheer goes up in the staffroom. Jim Collins sighs.
Bernie shakes his newspaper. ‘Better hope it doesn’t snow, right, Jim?’
‘Don’t even mention it, or we’ll be in over Easter making up the days for sure.’
I slip out as soon as the bell has rung. The boys are milling around the corridors, shouting, high-fiving each other, throwing books around. It’s only an early finish, nothing to get too excited about, but the air is giddy, festive with the elongated afternoon. They really are only kids, and I envy them their youth, their ability to still be excited by a missed class. I want to tell them to slow down, to stay young for as long as they can, but I know they wouldn’t listen to me even if I could say such a thing to them. They’re in too much of a rush to get somewhere else, when really all they’re doing is running frantically into the future, eyes blindfolded, hands tied behind their backs. They need their hands held, they need help with all the big decisions that lurk ahead. Probably, they just need their mothers.
I see the man again, the man in the expensive coat. He sits i
n the window of the café, a newspaper open on the table in front of him. I push the door in, order a double espresso, and for a second our eyes meet before we both look away. We do not affect recognition from this morning. Probably he does not remember seeing me.
I don’t know him, but I could. He has a look that I’ve seen many times before, an aura almost. Money gives you that, that confidence, and so too, sometimes, does age. He is quite like how I imagine Isaac will be eventually, older, confident, assured.
I sit behind him, finally able to open my book. A copy of today’s paper is folded on the table. Someone has filled in half of the crossword and all of the sudoku. I read a few pages, but my attention wanders, drawn to the street outside and the melting hailstones gathered in soft drifts at the kerb and along the windowsill. Insanely, it is starting to snow. There are early blossoms on a few trees, and blunt flakes of snow are whirling past the window.
When I step outside, traffic is crawling along the main road. The street is hushed in a way I do not recall having witnessed before. How white it is becoming all around me, how white and silent and thick. The web of snowflakes thronging the air parts for me as I make my way the short distance to the house. My face stings from the cold. My lungs drag in ice with each breath. The stillness is clean, devoid of anything that could blemish the as yet untainted transparency. It was on one such day that my brother left us for good.
CHAPTER 28
It is late when I wake. The Roman blind is half up, and the brightness of morning has edged its way into the bedroom. I check my clock. Half past eight. If school isn’t closed, I’ll be late.