Nine Folds Make a Paper Swan

by Ruth Gilligan

  The next thing I knew, the nuns had pulled the plug. Ima had to stand on tiptoes to kiss me goodbye, the purple staining my cheek this time instead. I pictured it like a bruise, a wound I had no idea how to heal.

  And as I watched her walk away for some reason I remembered how she once smuggled me a candy cane on Christmas morning, so that I wouldn’t feel left out. ‘They used to be my favourite,’ she said as she undid the wrapper. I must have heard her wrong. I sucked for hours, the sickly sweetness coating my gums, my body stiff for the sound of Abba’s footsteps.

  So I wondered now if a family could ever really exist without these lies, these secrets to keep it alive. Or if, in the end, that was the definition of love.

  Sunday

  Aisling wishes she had brought the book with her to the church.

  It would have been incongruous, yes, absolutely, but it is the first time she has been apart from the thing in twenty-four hours and her whole body registers the absence, her hair still matted from sleeping with the flat of it beneath her pillow.

  She has been awake since seven, though she was restless all night. The heavy fug of the electric blanket. The strangeness of the silence. Because on nights when she and Noah slept apart he would always make sure to Skype her and leave the laptop on the bedside table next to him; the rhythm of his breath as they nodded off, side by almost side. So by the time her father came looking for company this morning she surprised him by saying yes, any excuse to get out of the house.

  He sits beside her now in the pew, the solid wedge of him dressed in his usual Ralph Lauren uniform: shirt, chinos, dress shoes. All the little horses, cantering across his limbs. In a better mood she would remind him it is supposed to be a day of rest. And she half-remembers they used to have a joke about horses and the priest, still the same grey-green stick-man then as today, his voice frantic like a commentator down from the pulpit, sprinting his way through the service:

  And coming up the outside we have the Holy Spirit but begob the Lad himself is making a fine comeback, twenty furlongs to the home stretch and it’s winner all right! Winner all right!

  He always had them wrapped up by five past one at the latest, over the road for pints and a roast or home for the dirty fry up, Clonakilty Pudding and all – the blood and spice that repeated on you for the rest of the day.

  ‘The Lord be with you.’

  ‘And also with you.’

  ‘And with your spirit.’

  Aisling listens to the South Dublin accents around her. They are nasal, strangely Americanised; half of them garbling one response while the other half garbles another. She read that they brought in a new translation of the Mass a while ago, the old Latin having been deemed inaccurate. But it seems a lot of people just haven’t bothered to adjust, sticking to the old script instead, as if a few words here and there can really alter a faith.

  ‘Thanks be to God.’

  She shuffles on the bench, the wood varnished stiff and cold. She stares at the plaque on the armrest, dedicated to the memory of one Frank O’Meara, Beloved.

  And she wonders a bit about translation now, about what is lost in the process. Thousands of years and a handful of tongues and do the words still mean the same thing? Or close enough?

  She touches the metallic indents of the stranger’s name, the shortest obituary in the world.

  And then what about translating people – reconfiguring them in terms you can better understand? Like changing some aspect of yourself to suit the person you happen to love? Only, by the end of it you might not even be the same person any more – the one they fell for in the first place. No, you might have become someone else altogether.

  She checks around, as if the other congregants can hear the ramblings in her head. But they pay her no attention, not even much to the priest himself, too busy making shopping lists in their own heads and Is there rugby on today? and There’s your one from down the road after getting a new haircut – mutton as lamb, wouldn’t you say? Worse again, she remembers how her teenage self would use this time to scope for members of the opposite sex. The local disco the following Friday: Eh, I think you go to the same church as me?

  Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.

  She looks up at the altar. The colossal advent candles sit ganged up and glowing. The crib is crammed with life-size figurines and an empty manger, big enough that she could just lie down now and close her eyes, make a blanket out of the velvet curtains from the confession booths lined up along the side.

  She made her First Confession here all right – her First Confession and her Holy Communion and then her Confirmation too. Not out of any great decision, but just because that is what you do in this country, the ritual you find yourself following before you grow up and move to London and don’t step foot in another church again; don’t pay it all another thought.

  So really, it isn’t the new religion that would have her worried, but the religiousness at all. A few token nods are one thing, she thinks, but an actual conversion? An active leap?

  She breathes in, floor polish and radiator-tang. A silence descends. They stand up to greet the Gospel, like students when a headmaster enters a room.

  And in a way, she thinks, going a little further now, giving air to the thoughts that have been at her since she woke, but in a way it feels disrespectful to the faith to just take it on, just like that; to suddenly pretend you’re after having some big epiphany, simply because you find the traditions kind of fascinating; because you like the family aspect; love the idea of a culture that actually encourages you to ask questions and challenge everything it says.

  This time, it is the collection basket that interjects. She nearly drops it. Her father hands her a two Euro coin – another token nod – before he adds a crisp blue twenty of his own – a bit much, but of course, he knows people will be scrutinising so he doesn’t really have a choice.

  From the corners of her eyes now, Aisling scrutinises him too. The thick fingers are clasped in supplication, sausage-fat. Her father’s fingers, yes, but also the politician’s fingers, praying for re-election next time round; a party restructure. Or maybe just for no more persecution out in the street – no more gobs of spit and blame from the voters who still can’t quite believe it all went quite so bloody wrong.

  Your fault! You wankers!

  Expenses to the eyeballs while I can’t even feed me bloody children!

  But at least he believes in what he’s praying for, she thinks now, her top lip pulled back so that she can gnaw at a nail. Whereas Noah isn’t even particularly religious – rarely ever goes to Shul; says he doesn’t know what happens next; bacon sandwiches when he’s ­hungover – bet the book doesn’t advocate that!

  But the mention of the book catches her short. Her jaw slackens, her hands suddenly remembering their emptiness. While the priest’s words come looking for her, down from the mic: ‘In the Gospel today we hear of the two hearts each of us possesses. The split sense of self of which the scripture speaks.’

  Aisling bows her head and thinks Amen, both sides of her growing weak. Above, a figurine of Jesus hangs, bleeding from every limb. While the Virgin Mary watches on, her eyes full of calm, an easy flow to her blue, porcelain folds.

  After the Mass, the priest shakes their hands in the sunlit porch like a host at the end of a party.

  At the car-park gate the Romanian beggar wears a Leinster rugby jersey, adjusting his image to the parishioners’ tastes. Her father guides the Merc past him without opening the window or even slowing down. ‘It’s a coup we’ve never been sent one of those Nigerian priests,’ he thinks aloud. ‘The accents are supposed to be a divil – have you ever heard the likes?’

  Aisling, though, is barely listening, too focused now on getting home again and straight up to her room. To the book. She doesn’t want to open it – no, she isn’t ready for that yet – she just needs to feel it, to take the weight. The
surprising strain on her wrists like in a child’s game of ‘Mercy’.

  Only, when they make it home they discover there has been another arrival. And despite herself, Aisling feels a little lift in her chest.

  ‘Séany!’ Her father moves first, grabbing his son in a tackle. ‘Welcome home.’ Thumping him on the back the way men do, as if burping one another – infants once again.

  Aisling watches them, careful not to breathe. She sees the blue eyes peek up and over the embrace, bright even after the longest haul. ‘Ash, what are you… I thought you couldn’t— ’

  ‘You thought wrong.’ She moves now, unwrapping the endless coil of her scarf. A bees’ nest of knots has formed halfway down her hair.

  ‘Just couldn’t bear to miss me, I suppose?’

  ‘Ha, hardly!’

  Until they are standing opposite one another, brother and sister, mocking already. He is two years older, though they could easily be twins. Or even ‘Irish twins’, that ancient phrase for siblings less than twelve months apart. But these are a full twenty-six and recently a few thousand miles too, just for good measure. Irish-­London-Australian twins.

  Aisling tucks a strand of blonde grease behind her ear. He wears a hoodie she bought him for a birthday years back. She notices the sleeves are saggy over his fingers, as if his body has shrunk in transit.

  ‘Well, it’s good to see you.’ Séan reaches towards her. ‘Even if you do look like shit.’ Defaulting to the dig, yet she is surprised all the same that he caved first.

  She presses herself into the cavern of his hood, inhaling the un­familiar smell. But she supposes it has been years now, quite literally, whereas Skype chats reek only of cheap wine and microwave dinners, the brown rind around the carton edges like a tide line on a sea wall.

  ‘No Magic Man with you, no?’

  Aisling pulls away, scanning his face to see how much it knows – the face people say is so like her own. It is heart-shaped. Handsome. Though the skin is much darker these days; the eyelashes bleached – all the beautiful blemishes of a new life the other side of the globe.

  ‘What?’

  They were always close growing up; competitive too in equal doses. She was the winner academically, but with the age advantage he was always onto more interesting things by the time anybody noticed – coaching rugby in Zimbabwe or gallivanting off to Australia, twelve months of bar work before the requisite stint picking bananas to earn his visa extension until he settled down and found a proper job and now it is impossible to imagine him ever moving back.

  Another loss, Aisling thinks to herself; another separation.

  They always kept different friends out of principle, not that his didn’t make sure to try it on with her, just to piss him off. At first she would blink away their advances – it wasn’t worth the betrayal – but then it was university and they had a falling out so she arranged to meet a different one each evening of the week; to do what she thought another kind of girl would do, not the little sister any more.

  On Monday she fucked Martin.

  Tuesday, Cillian.

  Next JP.

  Rory.

  O’Dwyer.

  Saturday, Chris.

  And on Sunday she made up with Séan again, a mixture of smugness and shame pricking her legs as they draped across his lap on the couch. Especially when he took her nail-chewed hand in his and told her he was moving away.

  ‘It’s just so important to get out of here and have a fresh start,’ he had announced, philosophical for himself. ‘To make yourself up again as you go along.’

  To take the swan and fold it another way. A cleaner, better shape?

  ‘No,’ she finally replies, back in the hallway, as straight as she can manage. ‘No Magic Man.’ Holding her brother’s gaze a second too long, as if to prove something. Before they follow in a line towards the AGA-broiled kitchen, the Creedon clan reunited at last. In the heat Séan takes off his jumper and hands it over, the ghost of some old routine, while Aisling puts it on and buries herself in it as deep as she can go.

  That night the beef is blackened, the blood bled out long ago. The dining table is vast, far too big for just the four of them, but after all, they are celebrating. Around them the wallpaper is jade green, a bit dingier than she remembers, and up near the ceiling a strip has started to unpeel – another layer underneath and then another again, all the past incarnations; rip them off like skin until there is no wall left at all.

  The feast, though, is an abundance. Her mother doles out wads of roast potatoes, iridescent in their goose-fat sheen. Aisling watches the older woman, giddy on white wine and reunion – the vices she needs to survive. She used to be an air hostess, back in another life, hospitality above the clouds. Until she gave it all up for an aspiring politician and a South Dublin semi; dinner parties on tap and enough Waterford Crystal to twinkle an army. But then eventually, the Crystal crowd went bust, the decanter drained, and champion housewifing was slowly replaced by quiz-show marathons and Come Dine with Me on repeat, so that when her husband’s party failed to be elected for the first time in fifteen years she had nothing better to offer him than a recipe for Philadelphia soufflé and a stream of facts from that afternoon’s rerun of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

  When Aisling passed the spare room earlier she noticed the bed unmade. Used. And for some reason she thought of Séan first before she realised.

  Another secret. The different lies we tell for love.

  She pictures the book hiding underneath her pillow. The indecision tucked away where no one can find it.

  ‘Aisling?’

  Before she is caught.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Would you like another slice of beef?’

  She looks at her plate, her heart beating extra blood. She shakes her head and takes a long, sickly sip of red.

  ‘Are you all right, honey?’ her mother asks. ‘You’ve been quiet?’

  ‘Pining for loverboy?’ Séan cracks in, stiffening her body once more.

  But when she doesn’t reply her mother moves on, turning to the Prodigal Son himself. ‘Would you like some mustard, darling? Or I can do more gravy – I know it’s your favourite.’ Aisling watches her, easier with her boy, yes. But also more needy – never quite relaxed. Because that is the secret of the emigrant child – that the further you go the more power you have, the bigger the return you might one day just decide not to make. ‘And do you cook much in Sydney, pet? JP and Eamonn any use in the kitchen?’

  ‘Ah, Geraldine, sure you know Eamonn Duffy has come back.’ Her husband has bounded in now, a hint of scorn in his tone. ‘In fact, I met his uncle in the club the other day – he says Eamonn’s after moving up North?’

  ‘That’s it,’ their son agrees. ‘Seems to be happy enough.’

  His father looks smug like he has got a question right. ‘Only did I hear he’s after marrying a Presbyterian?’

  ‘Christ, how did the parents take that?’

  Aisling’s knife slips on the plate.

  ‘No, it’s true,’ Séan says, ignoring the squeak of the china. ‘He’s finally settling down. Gave up the accountancy and now drives some kind of bus around Derry, bringing the tourists to all the ­Troubles hotspots. The murals. The bullet holes. The Palestinian flags. “Conflict Tourism” he says it’s called, though some people think it’s a bit— ’

  ‘Ah, but sure any tourism is good tourism these days,’ their father cuts in, defaulting, as ever, to his politician’s nod. ‘Sure, the country is only desperate for it. And actually, there’s another scheme in the pipeline not too far from here.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Yeah, that house in Rathmines where one of the World War II bombs fell. You know, up there where all the Jew lads used to live?’

  This time Aisling has to shut her eyes.

  ‘The terrace like, split down the mi
ddle.’

  She swallows, tasting the gravy rinse of her mouth. She needs to brush her teeth.

  ‘Well, they’re planning to add a big wall of glass down the side of the house, then to build an education centre, to lure the tourists good and proper…’

  But in the blackness behind her eyelids, Aisling finds she can almost picture that old redbrick – only one half of the whole left behind. She visited it on a school trip, years ago; told Noah about it once too. And she also told him about the old story that sometimes went along with the place – that a couple had been lying there when the bomb fell, so that their bed was split right down the middle.

  ‘…and trust them to find a rake of funding at a time like this, eh?’

  A perfect heartbreak line.

  Thankfully, it isn’t long before the men move on, switching the focus away. There is the rugby season. The NAMA debt. The Gypsies on the move (I think you’re supposed to call them Travellers now. Oh whatever, same same). Easy banter back and forth, back and forth, languid with the flow of it. Like two lads Aisling saw one freezing Saturday afternoon in Hyde Park, knocking a sliotar back and forth, back and forth, the donk of their hurling sticks nearly lost in the mist.

  When, finally, it is time for dessert, her mother goes out to the utility room and reappears with the Christmas Day trifle. ‘What’s a few days early, eh? Especially for a celebration like this?’

  Aisling takes a bite, the familiarity cloying on her gums; the boozy sponge and the gelatinous squeeze of the fruit. Only, between mouthfuls she begins to realise there is something else there too – another taste that won’t seem to go. A different dinner and a different ritual, just two nights ago, niggling at her now to compare and contrast.

  ‘And did your mother tell you about the hoo-ha over the Quinns’ granddaughter?’

  Two versions of belonging, held up to the light.

  ‘So their daughter is after shacking up with this atheist lad, right? And they just had a baby, but decided not to baptise him.’

  Different sides of her, both crucial in their own way.