Stay

by Aislinn Hunter

  “Abbey I want—” and he smooths his hands over his face as if ten years in a stone cottage without modern conveniences can be erased.

  “If I had it to do over—” he starts in again, shoulders lifting a bit as if to brace himself. But he stops, looks at her directly.

  “Marry me.” A statement this time, not even a question. “Marry me, Abbey.”

  Abbey opens her door and then closes it. She sits still, staring at her hands. There are a hundred things she could say here but none of them make sense. She opens her mouth but no sound comes out. Forty feet away the bay laps at the stones that skirt the beach. A car goes by. Then another. Dermot straightens, stands there for a second. Then, without a word, he starts walking up the road.

  Carrying On

  SOME twenty minutes later, Abbey gets out of the Mini and heads towards Barna wondering if at some point she’ll see Dermot sitting or stopped on the side of the road, if he’s waiting for her to catch up to him. Or maybe he’ll be coming toward her. She adjusts her backpack straps and squints down the coast road until it veers east, inland. To her left a series of fields that slope down to the roadside, towards bent barbed-wire fences. Three cars drive by in quick succession. A few stones settle on the side of the road after the last one passes. Then nothing. Abbey bends down to tighten the laces on her boots and then stands up, starts hoofing it to town. He won’t be there up the road. He’s pissed off. Embarrassed. This is how it works with them. Dermot will carry on without her. He’ll walk up the road, double back through a field, get in the Mini and drive home. Enough cars will pass that Abbey will get a lift into Galway, or once she gets to a phone she can call Corrib Taxi. Either way, she’ll maneuver towards Dublin and Dermot will go back the way he came. It’s their old argument. She goes to Dublin to work and every time she walks out the door he convinces himself he’ll never see her again. When she went home for her father’s funeral a week and a half ago it was worse. The look on Dermot’s face at the airport. Abbey saying it would be a good chance for her to bring back more of her things.

  The truth of it is, she wants to stay. Wishes she was in the Mini heading back to the cottage with him, that at six they’d walk down the coast road to get dinner at Hughes’, that they’d spend half the evening in the pub, Abbey sitting beside Dermot, watching how he nods his head at everyone who walks in the door. That’s what Abbey’s drawn to. The sense of belonging. Of not being afraid who’ll walk in on you when you’re sitting in a room. Even if she’s just welcome by association, even if she’s riding on Dermot’s good graces, it’s something she’s never known. But Spiddal will carry on without her. People coming into Hughes will nod at Dermot, converse with him just the same. There’ll be music playing in the back room. At eight PM the Guinness taps will gurgle and fart on cue, and Niall will go and change the line. Old man Conneely will sit at the bar baiting anyone who dares to take the next stool. The twenty-year-olds will drink Budweiser and talk about Dublin bands or football. Towards ten someone will open the door and wedge a stone between it and the frame to let in some air. Things will seem the same.

  Abbey remembers the last day she’d worked at Gabby’s Diner in Windsor, Ontario, how the bells rang above her head as she’d opened the door to leave. She’d worked there for over five years. The staff had thrown a party for her that afternoon with cake and balloons, and had presented her with a going-away gift that consisted of an inflatable airplane pillow, a “Gabby’s Diner” t-shirt with the Windsor skyline on it, a bunch of envelopes bearing the staff’s addresses, a box of Maple Leaf cookies. Turning in the open doorway to wave, Abbey saw the new waitress they’d hired already putting on Abbey’s old apron. Mikki and Jenna were chatting her up, talking about the copper highlights in her hair. Abbey called out “bye” but the word didn’t carry over the stereo and the customer conversations.

  Now, as she tromps along the road to Galway, Abbey imagines what her life would be like if she was still in Windsor. She looks at her watch. It’s nine AM in Ontario. The coffee rush is in full swing at Gabby’s. The muffins are selling like crazy, the bells over the door are constantly ringing.

  Abbey bends over to pull a pebble out of her boot. She’s pushing her fingers down between boot and heel when a car passes. Finding the stone, she straightens up and sticks out her thumb—too late for the driver to have noticed. She looks back, hoping for someone to come along and offer her a ride. Another ten minutes at a good clip and she’ll pass through Barna. She could call a taxi from there. Or, if she keeps walking past Barna, she’ll come to the caravan park: dilapidated trailers and slick Euro caravans set up side by side in an overgrown field. There’s always a good bit of traffic heading in and out, tourists and travelers going into Galway. Maybe she can get a lift from there.

  Another car comes towards her and even though Abbey’s thumb is out, poised mid-air, the blue Civic drives by without even slowing.

  After two more cars race by without stopping, it occurs to Abbey that her rucksack probably makes her look too much like a tourist. Five years ago that would’ve been an asset but the locals are fed-up with tourists now, especially in Galway in the off season. Without her pack Abbey looks Irish enough—her grandparents came over from Donegal back in the forties—but as soon as she opens her mouth her flat intonation gives her away. “Hi” instead of “Hiya,” “excuse me” instead of “sorry.”

  Two summers ago when Abbey was getting ready to leave Windsor, when she’d finally gathered the nerve to go, she’d gone over to break the news to her Aunt Jane. They’d argued for hours, Abbey standing in the kitchen with her back to the fridge. The accusations non-stop: “inconsiderate, childish, as-selfish-as-your-mother.” Jane had looked out the window a good seven or eight times, her disgust palpable. She said, “Your father is dying, for Christ’s sake,” as if Abbey hadn’t a clue. And that was part of it. Frank was demanding too much of Abbey, phoning her at all hours, refusing to eat, to get out of bed, to take his medication. Jane listened, pulled a cigarette out of the pack on the kitchen counter, lit it pointedly. “You can’t go,” she’d said. Then she turned her back on Abbey, stood in the archway between the kitchen and living room watching the TV while Abbey waited by the dishwasher, nervously fingering the crocheted tea cozy that lay on the end of the counter. After ten minutes Abbey pulled her coat on. She asked Jane to look in on Frank, make sure the nurses’ aids hired by the home-care agency showed up when they were supposed to.

  Jane looked over her shoulder, said, “He’s your father,” and then, “When did you start calling him Frank?” The news droned on over the silence that followed. Abbey’s hand on the door knob. “If you were my kid …” Jane said, shaking her head at that, watching Abbey open the door and go.

  He Rearranges the Furniture

  DERMOT is pacing. Goes from the front room to the kitchen and back again, grazing his knuckles along the arm of the brown couch as he turns. He taps his head with the flat of his hand. Why can’t he ever let things be? Back in the kitchen Flagon puts her snout into her yellow plastic bowl, knocks it once then stands there, waiting for him to feed her. He’d done the wrong thing, said it wrong, and there is no way of going back on it. He thinks about why he’d proposed, makes a mental list, linear, rational, like he’d been taught to do, as he’d shown others when he’d taught at Trinity. Count the versions of the manuscript, write down how they differ, make your notations in the following manner, be precise. There is never one version, every story can be told a hundred ways. He considers writing down “why I love her,” revising it until he has it right, leaving copies for future scholars. In six hundred years they could try to make sense of it, put the list in order. Why he first loved Abbey Gowan—her youth, attentive nature; and why he later loved her—the sex, smell of her skin in the morning, for singing off-key in the bath; and why he finally loved her—for never admitting she thought he was full of shit, or for being naive enough not to notice. There would be a progression anyway, all notes copied in the same hand, a numbe
r of recensions filed away, the odd scrap of marginalia: she changed me / she didn’t change me / she did.

  “She’s coming back.” He practices saying it. Hates himself for doubting it’ll only be the week. “Her shirts are drying out on the line.” He says this too, as if it’s proof enough, as if in seven days Abbey will be at the door, slipping into his rubber boots, trudging outside to unpeg the clothes, bringing them in flat and stiff with wind. Flagon picks her bowl up in her mouth and drops it at Dermot’s feet; she barks into it, paws it until it flips over. Grabbing it, Dermot walks over to the sink, bends down, opens the cupboard, scoops some food out of a bucket.

  “An bhfuil tú an madra?” he asks her, ruffles the fur on the back of her neck as she leans in and starts eating. He watches as she burrows her nose around in the bottom of the bowl, half of the food spilling out over the side. “Yes, you are a dog.” He says it in English, then in Latin, then French. Flagon’s head is in the bowl even though most of the food is on the floor. The whole enterprise moving in increments across the kitchen linoleum as she noses it along. “I told you so,” he says, kneeling down beside her. She looks up at him for a second then goes back to eating. Dermot adding, “I won’t tell you who I am.”

  Dermot decides he’ll be busy, get some work done so things will have changed while Abbey’s gone. Cut his hair, call and make an appointment, go clean shaven. Anything. At least get up off the floor. He rings his friend Michael in Galway. “I’m rearranging the furniture. Would you give us a lift to Hughes?” Dermot sits in his chair by the fire, eyes the couch perpendicular to the door, the coal bucket, the stool against the wall opposite, the big oak table and two chairs by the far window, everything in its place, in the place Abbey has put it. Dermot remembers when she first moved in at the start of winter, the mess of the cottage, the drafts coming through the gashed thatch roof. Abbey, keeping her coat on from the cold, had walked through the front room, stopping to tap the glass of the framed manuscript that he’d hung over the bookshelf.

  “What’s this?”

  “Kiliani Vitae,” Dermot said, going past with her bag, not even glancing at the illuminated page.

  “Is it real?” She’d traced the capital K, the bold red and blue strokes that curled into a fox’s head and tail. After the “K” the writing was small and ornate. He’d looked at her from where he was standing in the bedroom doorway; her bag sitting on the end of the bed.

  “A reproduction.”

  “Oh.”

  He went over to her then, to warm her hands between his. Abbey’s eyes welling up.

  “It’s a copy of the fourth recension of his life.”

  Abbey kept her head down; she was watching his big pale hands go bump bump over her knuckles, back and forth. Dermot moved his hand to her hairline, pushed a strand of her hair back.

  “My thesis.” That’s when he knew it for sure. He’d have to be gentle with her, he’d have to explain things, he’d have to weigh what he said.

  “There’s stacks of books on our friend Kilian under the bed. He met a particularly bitter end.”

  Abbey laughed and looked around, then started crying.

  “If you’re not sure.” Dermot said it slowly. Still, he had it out before he could retract it. He didn’t care if she was sure or not, he just didn’t want her coming and going all the time, a day here and there and then the bus to Dublin, another day God-knows-when dictated by her work schedule. He was tired of waiting for her to come around. It was all or nothing, he didn’t have the means to manage anything else. They’d only been together two months. He remembers thinking that if he strung the days one after the other they would amount to a week and a half. “Stay with me,” he’d muttered the week before when she was halfway out the door for Dublin. The closest he’d come to commitment in years. Stay. Unpack. Eat three meals at my table. And then here she was, her bag set down on the foot of his bed.

  “Are we all right?” he asked.

  “Fine.” She walked straight into his chest, scratched her chin on his blue wool sweater. “Really, it’s fine.”

  Dermot’s hands on the back of her head, her neck, one hand finding her wrist so that he could bring it up to his lips. Abbey stepping back, accidentally bumping the narrow bookshelf, the framed manuscript knocking back against the wall above, the cup of coins on the top shelf jingling around in their mug. She’d almost started to cry again.

  “All right?”

  “Yep.”

  “You’d think we were falling apart here.”

  Abbey wiped her nose on her sleeve. “One of us, anyway.”

  “Come here,” he said, turning the corner, walking into the bathroom. He turned the taps over the tub on, and pulling up his sleeve he set the plug in.

  “Have a bath. I’ll get the fire up.”

  “Where’s Flagon?”

  “I’ll call her in.”

  Steam started to filter up from the taps. Leaving the room, Dermot saw Abbey unbuttoning her overcoat, undoing her jeans.

  Dermot turns the picture frame that sits on the side table towards him. It’s a black and white photo from one of those booths in Dublin; Abbey too close to the camera, eyes wide, clip of dark hair angling in across her cheek. He looks rough, like he’d been left out in the elements, forgotten. He turns the frame the slightest bit so it sits on an angle, a gesture she probably won’t even notice. He wants the cottage to go back to its original state, wants the gash in the thatch roof to widen, the table to be covered in papers, the dishes left out on the counter instead of put away. He thinks back to when the mud floor wasn’t covered by rugs, when all he had he could count on the one hand—dishes, a sleeping bag and kettle. Dermot bunches up the wool blanket on the couch, he throws the candles on the mantle into the bin so she’ll think he’s lit them, that they’ve burned down to nothing in her absence. He goes back to the photo and puts it face down so he doesn’t have to see himself; turns the ringer off on the phone. Then he waits. It’ll be half an hour or more before Michael pulls up. Dermot plants himself on the couch, turns the radio on and then, unhappy with the blather on RTE, switches it off. Sits there in the quiet. Waits for the house to go dark around him.

  Spar

  AFTER his fourth pint at Hughes, Dermot steps out. Walks through the rain past the bakery, the closed tourist shop, careful to stay under the awnings. The street is dark save for the Spar, which is lit up like a ferry port. The bells jingle above the door of the corner store as Dermot enters, and he is immediately stunned by the fluorescent light. Walking over to the counter he eyes the Times but leaves it.

  “Dermot,” says the cashier; the boy leaning forward, slack-jawed, eager.

  “Jimmy,” says Dermot.

  Dermot feigns an interest in the magazines, then turns his attention to the front page of the Independent. Picks it up, puts it down. He walks up to the cash and wavers, plants his hands on the counter top and enunciates “John Players,” so as not to give off a slur. Jimmy turns, grabs a pack off the shelf, sets it firmly down in front of him.

  “Anything else, then?”

  “No.”

  Or had Michael asked for something? He pictures getting up at the pub to run over, and Michael asking for … Dermot tries to figure out what it could be. A paper, a bar, a piece of fruit? Dermot looks around for a clue. Was it a snack Michael wanted? It almost comes to Dermot, but Jimmy interrupts and it’s gone.

  “Did ya hear about Mrs. McGilloway?”

  “No.”

  “She passed on this afternoon.”

  Dermot staggers back a step and then catches himself. Jimmy watches him; his face a mess of pock marks and freckles.

  “Eileen McGilloway?” Dermot’s voice is garbled, his tongue feels thick.

  “The postmistress.”

  Dermot shakes his head. “I know.”

  “McGilloway’s only just gone fifty-three.” Jimmy starts to ring in the Players.

  “What of?”

  “That’s four fifty-five.”

 
; Dermot already has the exact change on the counter.

  “What of?” Dermot repeats.

  “Sorry?”

  “Eileen McGilloway.”

  “I think it was the heart.”

  Drunk, Dermot chortles for no reason, turns and walks out under the ruckus of the door.

  ——

  “Eileen McGilloway’s died,” Dermot says.

  “I’ve heard.” Michael gestures with his thumb to the next table, where a group of women are sitting. “Just like that. After her postal run this morning.” He finishes off his pint and shifts around in his seat, turning his attention to the women. They’ve been talking about McGilloway since they came in.

  “Can you believe it?” Margaret Keating turns to Dermot. Her eyes liquid.

  “Jimmy just told me.”

  “She was still in the van, it was parked in the drive.” Keating has gone over this detail again and again since she heard. “Tom Joyce found her. Slumped over in the seat.”

  “The neighbour,” Dermot says. Michael nods.

  Keating takes her coat off, puts it down on the stool between herself and the seamstress from Furbo. The younger girl, elbows on the table, chin in her hand, says, “I imagine Deirdre’ll be coming over from Dublin now.” Stirring her gin with a plastic straw.