My mother’s breathing grew ragged and shallow, barely audible above the clatter of rain upon the car’s roof. Oweny wiped condensation from the windows with a rag he kept down by the gearshift.
We were ghosts moving through a ghostly world, at the bottom of a great big sea from which now and again an ethereal church spire rose; a field of cows, bodies huddled together, turned in toward one another in shelter from the wind and the rain; the darkened center of a village, the desolate crumbling facades of a shop, a garage, a pub.
I looked at my mother’s sleeping face and saw that she had aged noticeably. There were thin, deeply etched lines about her eyes and her mouth. Molly reached over and held my hand and, although I had not spoken, said, Ssssssshh, Mammy’s sleeping.
Oweny glanced in the mirror and the edges of his eyes were red and raw. He rolled down the window and hacked phlegm into the windswept rain. The car shuddered and bowed, then quickly slid across the road, but Oweny pulled it straight again, his hands gripping the wheel until the bones of his knuckles shone white, and we fled on through the rain and the wind and the perpetual twilight, all of us squinting through the glass, searching the dark churning horizon for some faint promise of light.
Summer 1979
The winter of 1978 wouldn’t end, and with the meager dole Mother barely managed to keep a fire going in the hearth. Uncle Brendan and Oweny helped when they could, with fish and potatoes and coal and wood, but sometimes it took Mother’s all just to make sure the house was heated. At night we took our hot water bottles and ran upstairs to our bedroom, jumped beneath the heavy wool blankets and quilts, and hoped we’d fall asleep before the heat of the fire had left us completely. In the mornings our breath frosted the air and we clenched our teeth as we plunged our hands into washbasins and splashed our faces with water so cold our skin would sting with the pain.
When summer finally came we were still waiting for a coal allowance that the government had promised for the hard winter everyone had endured, but as the weeks passed and no check came, Mother was convinced that we’d never see one.
We were at our tea in the kitchen watching the gray light sweeping across the fields when young Eileen Meaney came down the lane, the hood of her mac tightly bound around her head against the rain. She stood in the scullery, her cheeks the color of beets, her bare legs pink, and we sat at our tea and stared at her. Rain ran off the end of her nose and from the arms of her mac and the hem of her skirt. The water went drip drip drip on the floor. Howya, Moira, she said, breathless. Mammy sent me down. You have a call. From America. And then the door banged behind her and she was running back up the lane toward their farmhouse because her daddy said she had to see to the horses and we sat in the silence and looked at one another. Mother’s chair squealed as she rose and threw on her raincoat and Wellingtons and trudged up the gravel after her.
Molly and me waited in the dark kitchen where we had a view of the road. We’d been without the electric for a month because Mother couldn’t pay the bill. Rain thumped the glass and everything was gray. I brewed tea and as it steeped we saw Mother walking fast, bent against the rain, a large sack of potatoes hung over her small back. The back door banged against the wall and then she was scraping her feet on the scullery mat.
Your father’s coming home, she said, and threw the sack down. Potatoes spilt across the lino and banged against the baseboards; half of them were mealy and rotten. Mother eyed them as she took off her Wellingtons, and shook her head. When she looked up, her face shone wetly.
Michael, she said, you’re going to go see your father.
Daddy’s coming home, Daddy’s coming home. We’re going to see Daddy! Molly shouted and threw up her fists. She looked at me and grinned; her face was flushed.
Mother sat heavily and wrung her wet hair with a dish towel. She looked into it for a long time as if there were strands of her hair there so that I looked as well, to be sure.
Michael is going to see your father, she said. You’re staying here. I can’t lose you. If one of you stays here, he won’t dare take the other.
What do you mean? Daddy wouldn’t do that.
That man has broken too many promises for me to believe him now no matter what he says. You’ll stay here, Molly, and Michael will go. Your father will be home again soon, and then, well, perhaps it will be different . . . but not now, I’m sorry . . . I promise that I’ll make it up to you, Molly, somehow I will. But only Michael is going to see him.
But why? Molly’s lip quivered. Why him and not me? Sure haven’t I been good? Haven’t I done me chores? Haven’t I done well at school? What more could I do?
Molly, please. My mind is made up.
But why?
My mother placed her head in her hands, and Molly pushed back her chair. She had paled suddenly; sweat beaded her brow.
I think I’m going to be sick, she said, and ran from the room. A door slammed and after a moment the sounds of retching came from down the hall; it reverberated off the lino in the hallway, sounding harsher and much louder than it should, until I felt I would be sick myself listening to it.
After, I stayed in my room for some time; I lay upon the bed and stared at the mildewed ceiling wondering what it meant to see my father without Molly. How could I possibly see him without her? How could she not see him? It had been two years since he’d left. I couldn’t imagine not seeing him, but I also couldn’t imagine taking the place of my sister—and didn’t know which was worse: not seeing him or going in the place of my sister. There was a gnawing in my guts as I thought it over. I didn’t know what to do.
The kitchen was empty and the rear door leading from the scullery to the hallway open. The front door as well. Mother had left both doors open to let in the breeze. Washing was flapping on the line, and the smell of the fresh washed linen suggested good weather. The top of Sliabh Coillte was birch and heather-patched, straggling sheep along its dun western slopes; above, the sky was blue broken only by the infrequent cloud moving high and slow, drawn as if by an invisible hand. The air was warm and pleasant. You could smell the river, and the sea. Mother was burning refuse in the compost heap alongside the septic. At the far side of the field at its end, Molly sat upon the wall that stretched the divide between the fields.
I ran through the grass to reach her, but when she looked up I slowed.
Molly moved astride the wall and stared off toward the hills. She had a stone in her hand and was beating the rock with it slowly, methodically, and I listened and searched in that sound to hear something I might understand, something that might tell me what she was thinking or feeling.
I’d understand if you hated me, I said.
Molly shifted on the wall and pecked the rock with her stone, then threw the stone far into the field. Don’t be daft. How could I hate you?
I sat next to her. Well, if you were going to see Daddy and not me, I don’t know how I’d feel.
You’d probably feel the exact same, and you wouldn’t hate me.
Will you look after my eel traps while I’m gone?
I don’t know how.
If you have the time I can show you now. We’ll go out on the river together.
Molly followed me down through the ten-acre pasture to the overgrown path and to the cove where my boat was tied. I pulled the boat from the rushes, and when Molly had clambered in, I pushed off through the Flats.
It was warm and thin streamers of mist had crept down to the water’s edge from the woods above the fields. Sunlight flickered at the top of the trees along the banks and mottled the river, spotted with fallen leaves. It was warm and pleasant now that the rain had passed; steam rose from the rushes. A haze settled on the fields that came visible in the distance. Flying things hummed in the air about us dreamily. The oars felt good in my hands, and as I lengthened my strokes, I felt my shoulders stretch and warm pleasantly to the task.
Molly kicked at my creels. Jaysus, those things stink.
Are ye sure you want to do this when I’m gone
?
The banks of the waterway became shale and stone, and a large stone rose like a quarry wall out of the waters. To our right was Mulligan’s Rock, a chain running from a black ring imbedded in the stone from a hundred years before.
Mulligan’s Rock, I said.
I know what it is.
Well, just in case you didn’t.
I moved the boat toward the stone and glided alongside it until I was past the churning crosscurrent and into another series of shallows that would lead me to deeper hollows and darker places.
Will you remember this? I asked, and Molly looked about as if she was only now taking everything in.
I rested on the oars, breathing hard for a moment. The gorse was shimmering with twilight mist, the light was falling, and with its going, sections of the bank grew dark. We passed beneath canopies of trees and emerged into low sunlight again and Molly leant her head back to catch its warmth.
You have the life, coming out here when ye please.
Aye, but I didn’t see you offering to help during the winter, or in the rain or the wind or the cold, ye loaf ye.
Molly smiled and shrugged. I pointed to my markers.
Take the gaff, will you, I said, and get hold of that line.
Together we heaved the pots in, pried the eels from the trap into the creel. Watch their teeth, if they catch hold you’ll have a hell of a time getting them off. Make sure you wear the gloves. Are ye right?
Molly groaned, slammed the lid on them, and we sank the pots again. I blessed myself and watched as they sank slowly back beneath the water.
We did this a dozen times more until Molly said she was tired.
I won’t be doing this every night, she said.
No. Only as long as you set the traps. If ye can’t be bothered just pull them up so’s the eels aren’t rotting in their own juice when I get back. Then we can set them together.
What do you use to set them?
Fish bits. They like the heads and guts best, freshly killed. Molly grimaced, and I laughed.
I’ll not set them.
No sure, you needn’t. I’ll set them just the once and then you can check them through the week.
Molly reached with the gaff and slowly drew a line in and we pulled the trap up, checked it, then sank it again. The boat rose and fell as she clambered across the seat. Water churned and slapped the black rock. The sun was sinking down through the trees along the shore and the gorse shone bright as gold. The last of the light played on the river in its own lambent ripples and undulations as the trees swayed and clouds raced in from the east. Molly looked at me and squinted. It’s nice out here. I wouldn’t have imagined it was this peaceful.
I nodded and rowed slowly toward the first of the stones I set for Mother, a praying cairn in imitation of the shrines throughout the countryside, garlanded with wildflowers, flowers which I knew had ancient meanings: pink thrift and sea campion, bog myrtle, fleabane, meadow vetchling, marsh thistle, lichen and moss, the simple nettle and graceful Queen Anne’s lace. I used the gaff to pull us close, then tied off. As I lifted stones from the bottom of the boat and piled them on the bank atop one another, Molly asked me what the stones were for.
They’re for Mammy. I’ve been building these since she got sick.
Do they work?
She’s well, so, isn’t she? I snapped, and then regretted it. I shrugged. I think they might, I’m not sure. I like to think they do.
Could I lay a stone as well?
I nodded and sat back, watching as Molly took a stone from the bottom of the boat and set it atop the cairn. Light flickered amongst the trees; mottled shadow danced across her arms and face. She closed her eyes, and her mouth moved soundlessly. I rested on the oars and listened to the soft exhale of her words, lowered my head, and felt the water pressed and rushing beneath our feet.
The brake shifted and sighed and a bittern boomed from out of the hollow silence, startling us. For a moment we sat listening to its rare singular sound with the water lapping against the boat and the line bending back and forth, then drawing taut again. I played absently with a knot upon a seine that lay rotting in brine at the bottom of the boat.
How far do you think we could get if we just rowed for it, Molly? I said and smiled at her.
But she sat there in the half-light, distrait and silently considering it, listening, it seemed, to the sound of the bird. Finally she picked up the oars and banged them in the oarlocks so that the wood shuddered. I reached for them but she shook me off. Not far enough, she said, and began to paddle us home, but her strokes dragged and slapped the water and we went slow through the channel, bumping rock and shale. And that rare, lonely sound of the bittern boomed out of the depths of some secret dark place beyond the rising mists on the shore as we splashed our way down the dusk gray channel toward home.
Every month Molly and I had petitioned Father with badly spelled letters to which there came no response; at Christ- mas we had reversed the charges and pleaded on Milo Meaney’s telephone until we were all in tears, but nothing would change Father’s mind, nothing would make him return. He had returned once and it had sucked the life from him, he said. He couldn’t go back to that, not after America. It would be a kind of death. It was ironic, then, that it was death that did finally bring him back to Ireland, to us. The death of his brother Rory.
Rory was the one who had never left, the one no one would sponsor in America on account he’d had the red fever as a child and had gone soft in the head, and who would never have done well in England or America, the places where you lost God. Rory, they figured, would either take to the drink or take to the women. So Rory stayed behind and looked after my grandmother, who was spitting black-blooded gob from her mouth with the tuberculosis, and then there were the cows and sheep, as emaciated as Rory had become herding them from pasture to pasture, roaming the fields and the mountains, searching for fit grazing amongst the rocks. But now, grandmother was gone and Rory had only to be put in the ground. After all these years, it was Rory to whom Father and his sisters and brothers were coming back with heads bowed in shame, returning to Ireland as if it were a penance for the sin of their having ever left in the first place.
In the predawn gloom Mother and I, holding tightly to our small suitcases, took the bus from Rowan to Dublin. Molly stayed at Aunt Una’s with my cousins, and I both envied her and felt sorry for her. It was cold and the bus jostled and bounced along the empty country roads all the way to Carlow, where we waited for another bus to take us the rest of the way. We sat in an empty pub lounge that smelled of beer-sopped wood and cigarettes. The smell made me think of a circle of talking, laughing, shouting men, and it reassured me. Heavy, soiled red brocade curtains were drawn tight against the night outside, and one small light burned on the mantel above a hearth that hadn’t been shoveled of ashes in weeks.
Once we boarded the second bus I was quickly asleep, my head nodding onto Mother’s shoulder. She gently pushed me off. You’re too old for that, she said, and I turned away, lay my head against the hard window instead, upset with her for no proper reason I could explain.
I woke bleary and confused, my head banging the glass. There wasn’t much to see at that time of the morning, and nothing that I might reference or recognize. The stingy thread of the dirty Liffey as the bus passed over the bridge, early morning mist rising up off the slick gray-cobbled shop-lined streets pressed in upon one another, a stretch of tall glass office buildings, the grand statue of Parnell, a sleek church spire, and the distant dome of the GPO.
And then there was the train: dark, stained Naugahyde seats smelling slightly of manure. Jolting stops and sudden starts and long suspensions between short, stumpy fields, occasionally occupied by a sorrel, or a few raggedy sheep, fleece half shorn and dragging from their shanks, a small herd of cows chomping cud, a donkey hoofing the sparse gorse, and all wasting farther and farther away as the train staggered into the West. Yet I was filled with amazement at each scene that passed before my window�
��there was a wonder to the struggle of it all, and, as the land shifted and changed, hedgerow and valley and thick fertile field turning to stone and bog, I recognized the vast difference between the world I knew, and was leaving behind, and the one we were passing into. And for just that moment, I was glad of it.
The smell of burning came through the window at us. In the distance they were razing the fields down to the scutt—rows of orange flame moved across the land, leaving great black swaths behind and everything laid down like ashen snow and rising up in drifts and dirty billowing clouds against houses and sheds and walls and the train whistling headlong through the churning choking smoke, blowing in gaps across the tracks so that in the carriages it suddenly seemed as if it were night.
I sat heavily in my anorak and even when it grew warm I would not remove it; I imagined that I must look preposterous. The weather was mild and I sweated slightly. I bent into myself, slouched in my chair, dangled my feet, glanced quickly at the people who entered the carriage or passed the open doorway.
Mother had given me twenty pounds, tucked into an inside pocket of my anorak; it lay there, burning against my ribs. I feared that I would lose it, that as soon as I relaxed and allowed myself to take in the passing countryside or a girl in the vestibule or an old man talking—as soon as I allowed the slightest distraction—I risked it being gone.
Mother told me to Sit up straight, Stop acting the gom, Take my coat off—it would be useless when I really needed it—What is wrong with you? What’s got at you? and What will your father think? That you’ve become a monkey?
I felt for the lump of money against my chest as Mother dozed, her head nodding back and forth with the rhythm of the train. We passed a ruined monastery with its high balustrades and vaulting arches, and then flat tea-colored plains of machined peat upon which a distant tinder light played like glittering glass, and which I imagined was a light drawing us closer and closer to Father.
In the Province of Saints Page 7