by Doreen Finn
Sarah and Judith stepped outside.
Sarah called to me. ‘Megan, is everything okay?’
‘Everything’s fine.’ I waved down at her.
‘Don’t pick any apples.’
‘I won’t.’
Beth laughed for the first time. ‘What are you, some kind of good girl nerd?’ She eyed me more closely. ‘Do you do everything your mom tells you?’
‘Sarah’s not my mother. She’s my grandmother.’
Beth nodded as she yanked at a branch of the tree. The apples, tiny and hard and green, held on tight. A wind chime, hung by Gemma before I was born, dangled above our heads. Beth shook the branch again, then gave up, letting it spring back into place. ‘So do you live here or are you just visiting?’
‘I live here.’
‘That’s cool. I wouldn’t mind living with my grandma. You must get to do plenty of stuff your mom doesn’t like.’
I shrugged one shoulder. ‘Not really.’
‘I thought grandmothers were pretty relaxed about letting you do stuff. I know mine is.’
How could I have explained to Beth that Sarah was as strict as any mother? She expected me to behave and be good, and I tried as much as I could not to let her down. I was her only grandchild.
‘So where’s your mom today?’ Beth reached up to make the wind chimes tinkle. They had barely moved since the heatwave started.
Gemma had gone out earlier and had yet to return. She bought all her paint from a wholesaler on the north side of the city, the father of a friend of hers from art college. He always gave her a good rate and she never went to anyone else. ‘Getting paint.’
‘Getting paint? What for?’
‘She’s an artist. She paints cards and people.’ My mother’s paintings were, quite simply, beautiful. Her studio in the attic was off-limits to me most of the time, but when I could, I went up and leafed through her pictures. I could never fully reconcile the preoccupied woman with the joyful, brightly coloured paintings that she produced day after day.
Beth laughed again. ‘You mean she paints portraits.’
I was slightly unbalanced by her tone. ‘What?’
‘You said your mom paints people. It’s called portrait painting.’
She was beginning to get on my nerves. ‘I know what portraits are.’
‘I just don’t think that people would let her put paint on them, which is what it sounds like when you say she paints people.’ Beth pulled my plait. She leaned towards me. Her smile was mocking. ‘Megan.’
I reclaimed my braid, moved away from her.
Sarah and Judith joined us by the apple tree. Judith fanned her face with a handkerchief. ‘This heat! And all anyone told us about was the rain. All it does in Ireland is rain. That’s what they say. All it does is rain, all day, every day, and that’s why it’s so green.’
Sarah laughed. ‘Not this summer. I think the rain has forgotten about us.’
Judith touched the back of Beth’s hand. ‘Are you two girls having fun?’
‘The greatest,’ Beth muttered.
I glanced at Sarah. Her eyebrows were raised.
Judith’s smile brightened. ‘Oh good! It will be so lovely to have Megan living upstairs.’ She put her hand on Beth’s arm. I wondered how Judith couldn’t see that her daughter retracted each part of her that her mother touched, as though she couldn’t bear to feel the contact. The girl’s anger hovered around her, hotter, almost, than the afternoon sun. ‘Honey, are you ready to go get Daddy? We’re going to move in tomorrow.’
‘Dynamite.’
Judith’s voice tightened. Her smile remained fixed, but it was a fake smile now, too obvious to be real. ‘Now don’t be like that, sweetie. We’re going to have a fun time here and look, you already have a new friend.’
I wasn’t sure I wanted Beth living so close. I liked things the way they were: Sarah, Gemma and me in our own, shrink-wrapped world. Daniel next door. New people could tilt the scales, disrupt our equilibrium.
2
There were ghosts in my mother’s attic, she said, keeping watch. Protecting her. They’d lived there for years. Gemma had no problem working among them, but I couldn’t bear to be alone with them. Late at night they came out to play. If I listened closely and was very quiet I could sort of hear them. Sarah always said it was nonsense to believe in ghosts, that there were none in the house, but I believed my mother.
I never looked among Gemma’s things, even though the curiosity nearly killed me at times. Gemma kept an old trunk under a patchwork quilt she had made when she was a student. The trunk, which she kept in the corner behind her desk, was filled with things that I was not allowed to touch, and even though the urge to rummage was overwhelming any time I was in the attic, the threat of disturbing the ghosts was enough to keep the impulse to snoop at bay. Sometimes, I imagined pulling the trunk by one of its tin handles, dragging it out of the attic and bumping it down the stairs to my room, away from the ghosts. But I knew that even if I’d had the courage, the trunk was too big, too heavy for me ever to try.
It didn’t stop me thinking about it, though. Any time I was in the attic, the trunk drew me in. Whenever Gemma was out, I resolved that I would at last venture to the attic, slip the patchwork quilt off, click the brass locks and uncover my mother’s secrets. Once, when I told Daniel of my intentions, he had been horrified. You can’t, he’d protested. It’s your mother’s. What would she say? How could she ever trust you again?
Daniel knew a lot about most things. He reminded me of the story of Pandora, which we’d learned in school. Pandora had opened the forbidden jar and by the time she was able to close it again, nothing was left inside but hope.
‘Don’t open the trunk, Megan. Once it’s open, you can’t put anything back in and you can’t forget what you’ve seen.’ We were walking back from the shop when I’d mentioned the possibility of snooping among my mother’s belongings. Milk and bread were in a bag that swung from the crook of my elbow. Ice cream melted over our fingers. ‘It’ll just drive you mad, thinking about things you’re not supposed to know about, and it’s not like you can just ask your mum.’ I supposed that he was really talking about his father, who hadn’t been seen since he forgot to come home one day after work, years ago, when Daniel wasn’t even one year old. Daniel believed he would never come back. It was easier that way, he said, just to accept it and not ask questions. No point in upsetting anyone or getting your hopes up.
It was a bit like the time the previous year when I lost a tooth. When I was in bed, supposed to be sleeping, Gemma had crept into my room and slipped a coin under my pillow. I hadn’t wanted that, to know that the tooth fairy had been my mother all along, and I tried to forget that it had been she who’d given me the coin and not the fairy in whom I’d so fervently believed. I’d tried to convince myself that Gemma had only been checking that the fairy had indeed come to me, but I knew I was wasting my time.
Maybe Daniel was right and it was better to leave the trunk alone. But it was so difficult, and my hands itched to get at the brass locks under the quilt. Even the possibility of discovering things I should not know about did little to quell my curiosity.
The Americans left Sarah in a happy state. As she closed the front door after we’d said goodbye to them, she turned to me and said, ‘Let’s go tell your mother.’ Gemma had returned from collecting her supplies earlier, while we’d still been caught up in conversation with Judith and Beth. The Americans had stayed much longer than expected.
Music seeped from the attic as we made our way upstairs. If I’d been alone, I would have paused to listen. My mother played music to suit her mood. Sometimes it was Chopin and his soft études, the notes spilling down through the house, a gracious waterfall of sound. Other times it was Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, or Simon and Garfunkel. So far that summer it was mostly Carole King.
Ever aware of my mother’s wish not to be disturbed, Sarah knocked softly and called her name before pushing th
e door inwards. I followed Sarah into the forbidden territory. In the late afternoon light, the attic gleamed. The sloped ceiling was set with skylights, and if I stood on Gemma’s footstool I could see the chimney pots out on the roof, their red tiles glowing orange in the heat of the sun. The scent of charcoal and oil paints hung in the muted air, as familiar as the perfume my mother habitually wore. The attic was big and almost full of Gemma’s things. Her art materials occupied the floor space. An easel stood in one corner, old paint dried into the wood. Half-empty canvases that she could not bring herself to throw away were stacked on top of each other in one corner. Watercolours were pinned to the wall and scattered on the floor, some in various stages of drying. Others were being flattened between the pages of the heavy art books that were heaped on the makeshift bookshelves that Daniel’s father had hammered in before he disappeared. They sagged slightly in the middle, bowed under the weight of their heavy load. Gemma’s collection of paint tubes, charcoal, pencils, inks, pens and brushes stood in jars, rows of them, lined up neatly on a small table that she had salvaged from a junk stall at a market in town. Now the table was sanded, smoothed and repainted in a bright blue that I loved. Cyan. Most people didn’t know what colour cyan was, but Gemma loved it, and so naturally I loved it too. It was a natural companion to red, Gemma said, which is why the jars grouped on the table’s surface were red jars painted by her. Her paintbrushes were grouped according to use and size: watercolours in one set of jars, oils in another, thin ones to the front, fat ones behind. A bottle of turpentine sat with folded rags. She didn’t paint much with oils any more, not unless it was a commission. Watercolours were what she preferred, and pen and ink.
Big blocks of paper were stacked within arm’s reach of her desk, where Gemma now sat, her head bent over her work. For a moment, she did not acknowledge our presence. The paper in front of her absorbed her attention and until she returned her paintbrush to the jar of cloudy water beside her, neither Sarah nor I spoke. The sun slanted through the room, hitting my mother squarely on the head. Her straight hair shone, the sun picking out strands of copper in her dark-brown braid. It almost reached her waist. On a small shelf behind her sat her camera bag. Gemma was a great photographer. At art school, she had considered pursuing photography instead of painting, and even now she still took photos. Albums of her pictures were stacked on the floor. Sarah had framed several of them and they hung downstairs. One of them, a black and white picture of me as a toddler, sitting on the piano stool, occupied the wall above the piano, a gentle reminder from Sarah to practise my scales and my exam pieces. Piano lessons did not enthral me, not in the least, despite promises of future success and ability. I was meant to practise every day, a fact I allowed to slip by. The heatwave was keeping everyone occupied, so much so that neither Sarah nor Gemma were paying too much attention to my distinct lack of musical compliance.
A creased paperback lay face down on the floor. Borges. My mother’s enduring love affair with South American writers. She read them in translation, even though she had a pretty good level of Spanish. Her favourites were dotted around the house. Sabato, whom Gemma loved because he was also a painter. Lugones, especially for his poetry. Puig. Cortázar. Sarah never touched them, had no interest in what she called magical realism or existentialism. I didn’t understand these terms, couldn’t grasp what my mother meant when she explained them to me, but I liked their sound, how they felt on my tongue when I tried out their unfamiliar syllables.
Turning towards us, Gemma wiped her hands on the front of her painting shirt. She had a few, all of them my grandfather’s, worn thin now from years of use, their fabric feathery and threadbare. Gemma’s smile was wide as she held her arms out. I went to her, rubbed my cheek against hers, breathed her in – all her paint-filled, green-tea-scented gorgeousness. ‘Well, what brings you both up here? What time is it? I’ll have to get a clock up here.’ Gemma rubbed her eyes, squinted at the open skylights. ‘With all the sun it’s impossible to tell when it’s getting late.’
‘It’s almost six.’ Sarah paused to look at a picture Gemma had left to dry. ‘That’s lovely, Gemma, it really is. Anyway, we have news.’
‘Good news, I hope.’
The record player clicked, the stylus lifted and returned to the start position. It sat on the floor, records in a stack beside it. I loved the music my mother played. Often, I lingered on the stairs, listening to the songs through the door. I wanted to play the records myself, but I had to be very careful not to scratch anything. Sometimes, if Gemma was out, Sarah would put some music on for me and I would sit, listening. Mindful always of the ghosts, I preferred to sit on the top step outside the attic door and sing quietly.
I got off my mother’s lap and wandered over to a book of Picasso’s paintings that I loved. His misshapen women, the grotesque still lifes, the exploded space of Guernica. Using her bare foot, Gemma closed the lid on the record player. She reached her hands high above her head and stretched. Gemma knew yoga and was able to bend and stretch as though her limbs were elastic. I copied her sometimes, knitting my arms and legs into twisted poses, wobbling to keep my balance. Her shirt had a caterpillar of green paint on the pocket. For a moment, the only sound was that of the traffic outside, almost muted by the walls. I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand. Even the open skylights did nothing to relieve the thick heat in the room.
Gemma started to put away her paints. She handed me a silver tube of yellow paint, touched her fingers to my cheek. I closed my eyes, felt her stroking my skin. ‘Do you want to do the lids, Megan?’
I jumped at any opportunity to be useful to my mother, to show her how good I was for her. At times, I felt responsible for her. If she hadn’t had me, she could have been out in the world doing something else, being someplace else. I also knew that if I’d ever said such a thing to Gemma, she would have been horrified. We were a unit, she said. A package deal. Buy Gemma, get Megan for free. No bargaining necessary. That’s what she said. But still, helping with her precious paints made me feel important and happy. I lined the tubes up in a row on the blue table, then sorted through the small hexagonal lids.
‘Of course it’s good news. The Americans who viewed the basement want to take it.’
‘Excellent. I hope you’ve got a decent price from them.’
‘Of course I have!’
Gemma stacked some books together. Miró, his strange shapes and lines, incomprehensible to me. Sisley, blurred landscapes, indefinite faces. Kandinsky, all angles and triangles, his foreboding of impending war. The sensitivity of artists. ‘Mother, you’ll understand my lack of conviction. Your idea of a fair price is way below everyone else’s.’
‘Gemma – ’
‘I just don’t want to see you getting ripped off.’
Sarah sighed. ‘I’m not daft.’
‘And what are they like, these Americans?’
My mother said the word Americans as though it were something distasteful. I hoped she wouldn’t start on about Vietnam when they were around. Gemma liked to talk about Vietnam any time American people were mentioned. There had been a huge war there, America versus Vietnam. It wasn’t exactly clear who had won, but Gemma knew lots about it and loved to discuss it. She had a book of photos of the war, but I didn’t like looking at them. I’d seen villages in flames, trees destroyed, children with their clothes burnt off. The Disappeared in Argentina, Agent Orange in Vietnam. There was no end to atrocity and Sarah hated that I knew about such things.
‘I haven’t met the husband yet, but Judith seems to be a very nice woman. They have a daughter, Beth. She’s a bit older than Megan.’
‘She’s twelve,’ I interrupted. ‘She’ll be thirteen in November.’
‘What’s she like, Megan?’
I paused in my lidding of tubes. What were the right words to describe Beth? Angry? Sullen? Impatient? ‘She has blonde hair,’ I concluded. ‘And it’s very long, longer even than yours, Gemma. And she’s tall.’
Gemma took off
her painting shirt. ‘It’ll be lovely for you to have a girl around.’ She brushed the front of the T-shirt she had worn underneath my grandfather’s old checked shirt.
‘I don’t need a girl. I have Daniel.’
‘What does the husband do?’ Gemma asked.
‘Judith said he’s a professor of something or other. Literature of some kind. They live in Manhattan.’
‘And Beth is not happy that they’re not there,’ I interjected. Sarah and Gemma turned to look at me. ‘She said that her friends were going camping for a month and she was going to miss it. She said Ireland was stupid and she didn’t want to be here.’
‘I think she’s just a bit out of sorts at having to move to a new country where she knows no one,’ said Sarah. ‘I’m sure she’ll be fine. The husband will be working in Trinity for a year.’ She turned to me. I was looking at another book Gemma had left open on a shelf. Matisse. I touched a photo of one of his paintings, its bright colours, its beauty. ‘What did she say his name was, the husband?’
I turned the page and didn’t look up. ‘Chris.’ My fingers were stained with paint. I wiped them on my shorts.
‘That’s it. Chris. Chris and Judith Jackson. Don’t put paint on your shorts, Megan. It’s impossible to get it out.’
Gemma shrugged and finished her tidying away. We stood for a moment, watching her methodical routine. My mother’s fingers were permanently marked with paint, despite her efforts to clean them. Secretly, I think she liked having stained hands, proof of her dedication to her art.
‘Well, if you want to eat with us, it’ll be ready in about half an hour,’ said Sarah, turning towards the door. I wanted to linger a while in the warm attic cocoon and maybe catch a silvery shimmer of ghosts, but Sarah had her hand on my shoulder and steered me out the door.
‘Thanks, Mum, but I’m going out.’
‘Lovely,’ Sarah said. ‘Anything nice planned?’
Gemma fiddled with the corner of a book on her desk. South American Politics of the Modern Age. My mother loved current affairs. ‘Some sort of gathering.’