DEIRDRE PURCELL
HAS ANYONE HERE
SEEN LARRY?
Deirdre Purcell is the best-selling author of seven novels: A Place of Stones, That Childhood Country, Falling for a Dancer, Francey, Sky, Love Like Hate Adore, and Entertaining Ambrose. Her eighth novel, Marble Gardens, is published in 2002. Deirdre Purcell lives in Dublin.
HAS ANYONE HERE SEEN LARRY?
First published by GemmaMedia in 2009.
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Copyright © 2002, 2009 Deirdre Purcell
This edition of Has Anyone Here Seen Larry? is published by arrangement with New Island Books Ltd.
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ISBN: 978-1-934848-20-3
Cover design by Artmark
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OPEN DOOR SERIES
An innovative program of original
works by some of our most
beloved modern writers and
important new voices. First designed
to enhance adult literacy in Ireland,
these books affirm the truth that
a story doesn’t have
to be big to open the world.
Patricia Scanlan
Series Editor
For Maureen
1: What’s in a Name?
It’s not my real name, you know. Larry Murphy sounds to me like a builder with his trousers at half-mast. No, my real name is Larissa, a much classier name, I think you would agree. Mother gave me the name because my father was a Russian sailor.
This, of course, was a scandal, especially in those times. Poor Mother, who was only 20 years old, was quickly married off to my stepfather, who was much older than she. He ran a small dairy in Cork Street, near where she and her own family lived. He and Mother never had children of their own. Since Mother was an only child, I had no cousins either. So I was sort of an orphan in my own home as I was growing up.
A charity case, too, as the dairy man reminded me almost every day of my life. Although I suppose I shouldn’t judge him too harshly. Those times were different.
In those days of big families, to be an only child was to be a freak. In my case even more so because I was born on the wrong side of the blankets. (Since we all lived in each other’s pockets there were no secrets in Long Lane.)
Anyway, to get back to how I got my name. Everyone in the Liberties in those days had a nickname, so I suppose I couldn’t escape. And so ‘Larry’ I became forever. Sometimes, I think that naming me Larissa in a world of Nellies and Joans was the last brave thing Mother could do before she settled down to a hard life of work.
Secretly, I love the idea that I am half-Russian and with such a romantic name. No one talks of it now and I no longer mention it. Only in my own mind.
All right, I know that everyone sees only Poor Old Larry, the 87-year-old pain in the corner of the room. Poor Old Larry who can’t even get up the stairs any more and who has to have a commode beside the bed at night.
Inside, however, Larissa is still 17 and golden. Instead of wearing cardigans day and night, even in bed, she always wears soft silks and satins. And while Poor Old Larry has to walk slowly with the aid of a stick, golden Larissa skips and hops down the road outside. She tosses her hair so that people always turn their heads to admire her fine skin, her slim, tall body.
Yes, Larissa is a princess who deserves life’s little luxuries.
I would be happy enough with the ordinary stuff, never mind luxuries, if I could have it. Here I am in the closing years of my life and I have no say at all in anything I do. Even what I eat! Since the arthritis got bad and ‘they’ decided I could no longer mind myself, Martha had to come to live with myself and Mary. You see Mary works, and I need someone to be around during the day. Money-wise it was no hardship for her to move here because she had been in a rented flat.
I don’t find it easy. She and I stagger along from day to day with one row following another. It wears me out, to tell you the truth. It is a terrible thing to lose your independence.
You know, it is still a surprise to me how two such different girls as Martha and Mary came out of the same womb. (They are hardly girls any more, of course, they are both in their fifties now.) But isn’t it amusing that my late husband Josie and I called them Martha and Mary just because we liked the names, and yet they have become so like the Martha and Mary in the Bible. It is almost as if somehow we knew in advance what they would be like.
No wonder the Bible Martha complained. There she was, the poor thing, slaving in the kitchen to make the place nice and to make food for Jesus when He visited. Mary, on the other hand, didn’t lift a finger to help, just sat at His feet rubbing oil into them and listening to His stories.
And what did Martha get for her pains? A lecture from their guest that her sister had chosen the ‘better part’.
Not that I read the Bible. As a matter of fact, I don’t even go to Mass any more. No need. I’ve heard enough Masses and priests during my long lifetime to see me safely into heaven. If there is a heaven at all.
So do people grow into their names?
2: Martha Speaks
Here is an example of what goes on in this house. Here is my day-to-day life. I get up at ten minutes past six. Before I bring Mammy her cup of tea – her first cup of tea, I might add – I have the washing in the machine and last night’s load out on the line, rain or shine. (I have a special raincoat for going out to the line.) ‘Good morning, Mammy,’ I say as cheerfully as I can when I push open her door. I put the tea on her little table. Of course all I get in return is a grunt.
I try to ignore this and go back downstairs where I put on the porridge for the three of us. I slice up the bread for toast and lay the table. It is a quarter to seven by this time. When the porridge starts to simmer, I tramp back up the fifteen steps with Mary’s cup of tea. I don’t bother to bid her good morning. There is no point. She is in cloud cuckoo land, that one. All the time. I could be Godzilla coming in with a hatchet for all she knows or cares.
I go back into Mammy’s room and find she hasn’t even touched the tea. So I have to make her sit up. ‘Drink that now, Mammy,’ I say each day, as though for the first time. ‘It will wake you up. And I’ll be back in a minute or two to help you into your dressing-gown. The porridge is on.’ She’ll squeak something about it being too cold to drink. But I tell her it’s her own fault. I try to be gentle about it – and of course I take it back down the stairs to put a hot drop into it.
When I have her sitting up and drinking, it’s downstairs again. Then upstairs to check on the two of them. Then downstairs. I’m like a yo-yo. Same thing every day. Sometimes I think I should just record everything on a tape recorder. Then all I would have to do is to switch it on every morning.
It is a quarter past seven before we are all sitting at the table. I am already wrecked.
The whole day is still ahead of me, of course. Dishes, shopping, cleaning, laundry, cooking. Driving Mammy to get her pension or to have her hair done – the bit of hair she has left. All right, it is her car and I have the use of it. But she can’t drive it any more, can she?
She has the travel pass, of course, but would you let an 87-year-old out on her own to cross the city on a bus? So
once a week I have to drive her to visit her pal who is so out of it she can’t talk any more. All she can do now is to smile.
The visits to that nursing home are torture to me. I know I should have more patience with her, with the two of them indeed. After all, it is not poor old Marian’s fault that she’s as feeble as she is, but I can’t help it. It is torture for me sitting there, watching Mammy whispering into her ear as if we have all the time in the world. All I can think about is that back home the washing is getting rained on.
Daddy slaved all his life and paid his insurance stamps, and for what? Because Mammy is not living alone, she is not entitled to any home help. So I’m not only her body slave, I’m a body slave to the State.
I asked Mary once if she could do something about getting Mammy some rights. After all, what is the use of being in the civil service if you don’t have even a little bit of pull. But it was no use. She said it was a different department – well I knew that much – and she had no contacts at all.
My bet is she didn’t even try.
So the result of it is that all day long, every day, I have to put up with Mammy’s long face and her constant sighing. Her telling me that I’m putting the groceries on the wrong shelf in the fridge. Her asking me over and over again what time it is. She can’t read the dial of her watch any more.
That’s the worst part. Because I know why she keeps wanting to know about the time. She wants to know when her precious Mary will be home.
3: Bananas and Other Fool Food
I’m the last of my own family. And my darling husband, Josie, died many years ago. I sometimes forget his anniversary until Martha reminds me.
The really awful thing is that I have to look at my snap albums sometimes so I can remember his face.
To be fair, life in this house is probably as hard on the girls as it is on me. Especially on Martha. She’s the eldest of the six children Josie and I had. As I’m sure she has told you by now, at length, she does everything. All the cooking, cleaning, washing, shopping and driving. She is always busy, always organising, always rushing here and there. Despite not working ‘outside the home’, as they say these days, she never has time to bless herself.
Sometimes I think she trained somewhere in some secret boot camp. She certainly runs this house as though she is an army officer. Her kitchen floor is so clean it squeaks and the carpet in the hall always smells of Shake ’N’ Vac. (She likes the vanilla kind.)
I am not saying that she is a bad person. Or that she is mean to me. At least not on purpose! Because there is so little I can do for myself. My arms are as stiff as old windscreen wipers so I do value all she does for me, I do really. There are even times when I feel sorry for her.
But what can I do about it?
She is so bossy and pushy, she is hard to love. I have to admit that right up front. Yes, she is my own flesh and blood, but that’s the way it is.
Naturally, I try to keep my lips zipped. God knows, but who could blame me if now and then I come out with what I really feel? I might be 87 but I’m still a real person.
And although she would never admit it, she does make things harder on herself than she has to. I think she enjoys being a martyr.
For instance, I wish she would not insist on driving me to visit my friend, Marian. All the rest of them are gone now and she and I are the last of the gang. She’s a sad case, thin as a whip, and so weak she doesn’t get out of bed any more. Although I find it hard to see her like this, if I didn’t keep up the visits I feel I might as well give up the ghost myself.
Isn’t it funny with friends? You always feel you have to explain yourself to your family, but never to your friends.
I could get a taxi to go to the nursing home. It is not that far, only a couple of miles, so it would not be all that expensive. After all, I do have a little bit of money from my pension. But Martha won’t hear of wasting money on those rascal drivers. They would see me coming, she says. Old ladies are fair game to them, she says.
To tell you the truth, she ruins the visit for me. By the time we get there my nerves are already in shreds because she has a hissy fit if traffic lights don’t turn quickly enough. And then, while my pal and I are talking together, she stays in the room. She pretends not to listen but jangles her car keys to let me know that time is short.
And don’t get me started on her cooking. Sometimes I feel my throat will burst if I have to eat one more plateful of mashed up vegetables ‘because they’re good for you’. The teeth aren’t great, of course – but really! Surely in this day and age there should be some solution so we don’t have to eat like babies? I do try to get the stuff down but Martha gets in a snit if I make a face. I can’t show even for one second that I am less than thrilled when she plonks this gooey, grey-looking mess in front of me each dinner-time. If I so much as sigh, she snatches the food away and throws it in the bin. She shoves a banana under my nose. ‘There – eat that!’ she says, as though I’m a monkey.
4: Bella! Bella!
I love Italy, as I’m sure my mother has already told you. I have no idea what she has been saying in general, but I am sure that at least she has told you that.
It is what we talk about in the evenings when I come home from work. I tell her about the large hot spaces around the Vatican. The bright, wide Spanish steps. The lovely wall paintings by Fra Angelico.
I am so lucky to have been there. I am so lucky to be going there again two weeks from now, this time to Verona. We have been booked in to see an opera, Aida. That’s the one with the elephants and the big parade. I can’t wait. I believe it is one of those events you will never forget for the rest of your life.
Mammy will miss me, I know that. But it is only for two weeks and I have to get away from here now and then, I just have to.
I am going with a group of singles. It’s how I always travel. ‘Travel hopefully’, isn’t that what they say? Well, I’ve travelled hopefully for nearly thirty years at this stage and so far I haven’t arrived! It’s nearly all women on these singles’ trips. I’ve come to terms with this. You see, from day one, all of them were better looking than me.
Although Italy is great in that regard. Men have whistled at me, you know. Even as lately as about five years ago when I would have thought I was long past it. In Italy, a woman, no matter how plain or fat, is made to feel like a woman. I always come home in a much better mood than when I left here. I usually feel quite good about myself, in fact. If I had any get-up-and-go I’d go to live in Italy for good.
Well, maybe not. Not with Mammy to look after.
Most of the time, I don’t really mind having Martha here with Mammy and myself. I’m out most of the day anyway.
But Martha feels put-upon all the time. We have fights. We fight about really small things. For instance, I like strawberry yoghurt and I keep it in the door of the fridge. But Martha wants to keep the door of the fridge free for bottles and jars and cartons of milk. Because she is here all the time, she always gets her own way.
But since I bring in most of the money, shouldn’t I have some say over the arrangements in the fridge? Her point of view is that since, according to her, I don’t lift a finger around the house, and since she is the unpaid maid, I have no right to tell her how to stock ‘her’ fridge in ‘her’ kitchen.
I try to keep these fights quiet so they won’t upset Mammy, but I’m sure she knows about them anyway.
Some of the fights are silent. Just looks and expressions. I have to walk on eggs every tea-time.
What is the big deal about giving me my tea when I come home in the evening?
I don’t want her to do my washing either, but she insists, even after she turned all my knickers pink!
And I have never asked her to bring me up that bloody cup of tea in the morning – not once!
That’s what she throws up at me whenever there’s a row: ‘And every morning, I have to go up and down those stairs like a yo-yo bringing you and Mammy cups of tea …’
To te
ll you the truth I would far prefer it if she didn’t. I tried to tell her as much once or twice but she took it personally. As though I was complaining about the quality of the tea.
I think if it wasn’t for knowing that the holidays are coming up every year I would not be able to put up with the kind of stuff that goes on in this house.
Mammy and I actually look forward to the evenings when Martha goes out to visit her friend, Father Jimmy.
Don’t you think that’s a little bit odd? After all, he is a priest. But she spends hours getting ready and after she is gone we have to open the windows to get rid of the wash of talcum powder that’s left in her wake. He gives her holy pictures with ‘God Bless You, Martha’ written on the back of them. She gives him presents. Grapes, buns from the local bakery, stuff like that.
Stop the lights! It’s all a bit iffy, if you ask me. It’s none of my business, of course. And I shouldn’t complain because when she’s out, we can watch Coronation Street without hearing her banging pots and pans about in the kitchen as if they are our heads.
I know she’s my sister and I suppose at some level I do love her, but she is driving me crazy. Roll on Italy. Bella! Bella!
5: Six Tiny Teeth
No, cooking was never Martha’s strong point. She makes my morning porridge as best she can, God help her, but it’s always lumpy. I try not to point this out but sometimes I can’t help it. That puts her in yet another huff for the rest of the day.
And then there are my clothes. She washes and scrubs the good out of everything and totally ignores the fact that I don’t mind a few stains. A little bit of dirt never hurt anyone. I actually like the smells buried in my cardigans and blouses. The memories of old perfumes.
I certainly prefer those smells to the bleachy, artificial smells of washing powder.
But I might as well be talking to the wall. It is as though she is set on washing away every little bit of my real self, my Larissa self.
Has Anyone Here Seen Larry? Page 1