Twisting the Rope

by MacAvoy, R. A. ;

  Pádraig, who was sitting next to Elen Evans, poked her with his finger, “Elen, can’t you? You look like a girl who can sing.”

  “Like a very frog.” The dark woman twisted her tendrils of hair around a pinkie.

  “Well then, it must be that you can, Mayland. I bet you can sing like a church organ with that deep voice of yours.” The young fellow’s tone was teasing but he refrained from poking Long. In reply Mayland Long regarded him with eyes as pale as a parrot’s and he blew his nose.

  “Leave it alone, Pádraig,” said Martha wearily. “None of us has enough voice to call a cab.”

  But Pádraig was in one of his antic moods and he would not. He wiggled and sniggered and blew a rude noise on his bass whistle. “My sister Órla can sing,” he said. “Seannós.”

  Martha twitched an eyebrow. “She can? I never heard her.”

  “She sounds like this,” said Pádraig. He narrowed his eyes and made a face, staring with great concentration at his hands in his flap. The sound that came out of him was startling: unrecognizable as his own voice. Elen and Teddy, who had never heard him speaking Irish, let alone singing, started visibly. The song was high in his throat and it sailed up and down in great ornate surges, without rest. It was formal, aloof, completely controlled, and as much like a cantor’s invocation as any other Western music. It was, most of all, inexpressibly sad. Pádraig ended it with a great, rude laugh and punched Teddy on the shoulder.

  “That’s ‘Caoineadh na d’Trí Muire,’ ‘The Lament of the Three Marys.’ And then all the old people wipe their eyes and say, ‘Live forever, Órla!’ She is very popular with the old people, my sister.”

  Martha was shaking her head again, but in very different rhythm. “And I never knew. How many songs can you sing, Pádraig?”

  The young man rolled his eyes at her. “No, no. I don’t sing. I was imitating my sister, is all.”

  She took a breath. “How many songs can you… imitate your sister singing?”

  Pádraig stared, snorted, and turned his face away. “Maybe three, but… aw, no, Martha. I’d feel like a grand ass out there…”

  “Sounds wonderful, Pádraig,” said Teddy, and be clapped him on the shoulder. “You can’t ignore a gift.”

  The young man slid out from under Teddy’s earnestness and sought Elen Evans’s eyes. She saw a shade of real fright in his face.

  The harper took Teddy’s place beside Pádraig. He did not shrug off her hand on his shoulder. “My dear, you must remember that there is no one in that entire audience who knows you or whom you will ever meet again. Most likely there is no one who has any idea what this kind of singing is supposed to sound like, let alone being able to judge if you got it right.”

  Pádraig laughed at that and looked a bit braver.

  “Don’t bet on that,” said Martha, but only to herself.

  “But, but… I only sing on my boats, where it doesn’t matter if I forget the words. What if…”

  Elen’s thin shoulders rose and fell. “Men fake it. Lilt. Sing scat. Sing vulgar curses.

  “Do it for Auntie Elen, dear.”

  “Do it for Martha.”

  Pádraig glanced uneasily from face to face. Then he looked at the clock once more, stricken. With the resignation of the dying in his voice, he said, “Get me one shot of whiskey.”

  Martha watched the ruddy, late light that filtered through dirty glass and she listened to her own pulse. Ten minutes, now.

  She felt the odd sensation that she was being flung down a tube into blackness: that she was vulnerable to forces she could not name. No stage fright, this. Martha was familiar with stage fright in all its permutations. And it was not just being let down by George. The terrible practical joke was responsible for some of it too. As was “Judy.”

  Bad feng shui. Bad interactions. Bad tour all around.

  No. It was a very good tour, and one she’d be glad to have in her mental scrapbook, in years to come. And good musicians. She made herself say that aloud. “Good musicians, all of them!”

  It gave her an idea.

  “Hasn’t Pádraig solved all your problems, Martha? You look so… so cornered.”

  When she turned from the gritty basement window to Long, Martha’s face was still worried but it had lost the distracted look. “Almost, dear heart, but… I’d be grateful if you’d do me one more favor, in your endless series…”

  Long felt an unworthy stab of disappointment. He had been kept in motel rooms every evening since Marty’s arrival, and this evening Elen’s friend Sandy had once again offered to take over, so that he could attend the concert. He did so like to sit in the front and watch Martha. But his face showed none of his struggle. “I am yours to command, madam. Does it mean I will miss the whole concert?”

  Martha’s eyes wrinkled up in laughter. “Oh, no. You’ll hear well enough.”

  The warmth of the spotlights made him sleepy, and he had to remember not to blow his nose near the microphones.

  Long felt no nervousness, sitting at his small and very nontraditional electric piano, waiting for the cues to put in his little bit of background. Not nervousness at the audience, at any rate. His very good eyes could make out the faces despite the darkness of the hall, and they affected him no more than so many faces of birds or rabbits. He would have rather had his sheet music, which Martha absolutely forbade him to take on stage, but that was not important. That his level of performance might disappoint his teacher, however, was another matter.

  She didn’t need him. She didn’t need Pádraig’s singing either, Long thought, however pleasant it was. And she had never needed St. Ives’s intrusive piping. All alone with a one-pound fiddle she could hold this audience all, night.

  He watched Martha with quiet pride as she gave her little dip to the audience. He listened to her very short, very relaxed, and not especially witty introduction. He waited.

  With a wild, ear-confusing burst Martha opened the concert, daring anyone to complain that the music was missing in some way.

  Pádraig was nodding, as though he had made those sounds himself. He was wearing his bad-boy face and grinning like a fool. Oozing confidence, Long noted.

  Perhaps he had just needed to be called upon to do something for which he was not really responsible, like singing, in order to feel at ease for the first time in the tour. Or perhaps he thought it was all too silly for nerves. His accordion came up in unison to Martha and, wonder of wonders, they were in perfect tune. So was Elen, on her cranky harp. And of course so was Mr. Long (no credit to him), when he added his simple runs and arpeggios.

  Pádraig sang “An Bunnán Buí,” but beforehand he stopped to explain how it was a poem about a bittern dead of thirst, and therefore a lesson to all not to stop drinking, no matter what the doctors might say. He got confused, and did not make it clear whether Raftery, the poet, had died or whether it was the bird, but he got quite a hand for the explanation.

  And for the song.

  It was working. Wonder of wonders, Pádraig Ó Súilleabháin seemed to be enjoying performing in public. Ellen was beaming like the boy was her creation and Martha was making jokes with her fiddle. Teddy, still nervous and apologetic, was the perfect image of a self-effacing accompanist.

  Long, himself, felt a surge of fellow feeling for the others which surprised him. Being the sort he was, he withdrew from it, and for the course of a set of reels, he played with mechanical severity. But it caught him back and held him. He exchanged a very friendly glance with Elen Evans.

  Without George St. Ives, things were certainly more fun.

  “Kid on the Mountain” went splendidly.

  They came backstage after the first forty-five-minute set glowing and sweating. Martha looked half-drunk. She slapped both Elen and Pádraig on the back, gouging them with the butt of her bow. She gave Long an undignified, oversized wink.

  Elen wiped her face with a rough paper towel. “My, my, Martha. This is a fine, big concert we have here. I feel like a child let out
of school.”

  “It is a fine night,” she replied, “Not well organized, mind you, but going very well. Now if we only don’t have too many ethnologists in the audience…”

  Elen stood with the paper still in her hand, breathing excitedly, when her eyes lit on the neatly stacked pipes on the table. “What a shame to feel so good just because someone isn’t here.”

  Teddy, perhaps feeling outcast from the general high mood, mooched around the room. “I can’t say for sure he hasn’t been here, folks, but if so he surely left no traces behind.”

  Martha, seeing that all eyes were on the guitarist, gave Long a covert little hug and a kiss. She whispered in his ear a few words that caused him to explode into laughter.

  “No, really. Very good,” she whispered again. “And I can’t let everyone out there wonder indefinitely.” Louder she said, “Need brings out the best sometimes. That doesn’t say anything against George’s piping. It could have been any emergency.”

  No one replied.

  There was a gentleman sitting in the front row. He had a huge handlebar moustache and thinning hair. It was Long’s opinion that he was staring at Martha Macnamara with too much interest and not the proper respect. What did he think she was a poster on a wall? Had Long’s spare body carried hackles, he would have raised them at the gentleman.

  But this preoccupation did not prevent him from catching his musical cues, and at the end of the first number of the second set, Martha made good her threat and introduced him, explaining to the hall that he had come in at the last moment to substitute for a sick performer. She added that he wasn’t Irish, and that line got a wholly outsized laugh.

  With great dignity Long stood and bowed, Chinese fashion.

  Pádraig leaned over and stole Martha’s microphone, “There is nobody here that is Irish. We ourselves are out of Minnesota.”

  After that it was all horselaughs and monkey business and a lot of very loose music which lasted until eleven. Teddy had room for two solos which were hardly traditional in style but were just what Santa Cruz liked to hear. Pádraig sang “Is Fada Mo Chosa gan Bróga,”“Caoineadh na d’Trí Muire,” and even “Casadh an t’súgaín,” of which he didn’t remember quite all the words. He explained how it was about rope twisting, told them how that activity was done and what it meant as a courting ritual, and ended by advising all the audience that if they wanted to make money on visitors, they must thatch their guesthouses with straw.

  In the end they were all a little silly, and Long could even forgive the man with the handlebar moustache for stopping to talk to Martha after the show.

  “My, my, what a night.” Elen gave a self-consciously limp-wristed farewell to the emptying hall. “Practice, preparation, and precision: my graven watchwords. La!” Pádraig was at last too tired for either brooding or ragging. He gave Martha a shy glance, knowing he had pleased her.

  She was swaying with weariness and Long stepped beside her, carrying her fiddle. Teddy, who had dashed off the stage ten minutes before them, came back out of the dressing room. “He still isn’t there. Nor does he answer the phone. I’d better go find him, Martha.”

  Martha took a deep breath and shook her head to clear it. “Oh, yes. George. Well, I guess so,” she said.

  The white wickerwork in the lobby of the motel looked spidery under moonlight and the leaves of the, potted tree like so many fat bellies of spiders, Martha walked through, turning her head away. “If he weren’t such a… with his damn separate but equal accommodations…”

  Long smiled thinly. “I don’t think he would feel quite: at ease bringing his lady friends into the sort of family situation we’ve evolved here, Martha. Nor would the young people have had as much fun together, had he been in the next room.”

  It was as though she hadn’t heard him. “The worst of it is, we can’t call the police for help. The man is out there somewhere doing”—and here she lowered her voice in a kind of desperate angriness—“some very illegal drugs, I bet. He wouldn’t thank us at all.”

  “Perhaps some official agency other than the police,” suggested Long. “Are there not telephone services for crises such as these? It occurs to me I have read about them.”

  The hall was too bright after the darkened lobby. They squinted against the light and made quickly for the door to the room. Martha sought in her small bag for the key to the right-hand door but Long opened the other before she had found it. He followed her into the room.

  “Cold,” she murmured. “Amazing how sharp the temperature differential when the sky is clear. Just this afternoon…”

  The picture that met her stopped her flow of words by its quiet oddity. In the dark, lit only by the fluorescent light coming out of the bathroom door, sat two figures at diagonally opposite ends of the room. Their posture was the same, with arms wrapped around themselves, hands over their shoulders. Both were still, jaws clenched. One of the two, the one closest to the door, was Elen’s friend Sandy, the babysitter, the digger of the French drain. The other was Marty, propped queenlike on the bed, and her face was dirty with tears.

  The babysitter started, noticing them for the first time. She scrambled out of her chair. “God. You’re back. I’m so glad.” She stood very close to Martha but she did not relax her rigid arms.

  Martha’s glance, shifting birdlike from Sandy to the child on the bed, was curious and still a bit angry. “It’s too cold in here,” she said. “Do you still have on the air conditioning?”

  Sandy looked down at her blue arms. As though appreciating her state for the first time, she shivered and her teeth began to chatter. “God. God, no. It’s just her—uh—here, and I never knew that children had such a weird energy.”

  Martha stared blankly at the woman, who was young, thin, and slightly spinsterish despite the Egyptian gauze dress and Gypsy jewelry she had put on. Long, however, made a noise that was halfway between a hum and a hiss of anger. He slid past the two women and hit the light switch.

  Marty’s face wore a very concentrated, adult air, and she reacted to the sudden brilliance by screwing her eyes shut. She clenched her jaw harder and looked pained.

  “Is she… is she within the bell curve?” asked Sandy. “I mean, is she normal?” She shrugged her shoulders apologetically. “I guess I don’t know children very well. Probably I shouldn’t have said I’d watch her. I don’t know what’s wrong.

  “I gotta go. I’ll call you tomorrow.” The young woman was out the door and gone before Martha could think of a polite response.

  Long sat on the edge of the bed and put his outsized hand against Marty’s face. Martha joined him. “What’s wrong, honey-lamb? Did Sandy and you have a fight?”

  There was the noise of a siren in the distance and the light went dim. Martha raised her head and the sound became immediate: thin, metallic, keening. She thought at first that it was pipes, and a moment later changed her mind and thought it was a sea bird. Cold rose up from the bed and struck at her.

  “Martha, look.” Long’s whisper was strained. He held Marty’s face between his hands and it was not her face at all but the face of an idiot: lolling, slack-mouthed, and with a round, overhanging brow.

  “Marty!” There was no recognition. She touched the horrible face and it was clammy, even to her chilled fingers.

  “What is it, Martha?” Long’s eyes were daffodil yellow and round-wide in the darkness. His lips were pulled back with either amazement or fear and he looked all eyes and teeth. “What is the truth of this happening?”

  Martha’s face, in its lineaments so like her granddaughter’s, almost mirrored the child’s expression, so mystified was she. Then, in a moment, she was in a bright red rage. She struck the girl with both hands, left and then right. “No!” she shouted. “Stop it this instant.”

  Marty squinched her face together as the light came up in the sudden silence. She took a deep breath. “You’re back,” she said, and then she lay down again under the covers.

  “How could I tell you, Marth
a? Tell you what, that I heard a noise and the lights failed and for a moment your granddaughter looked like another person?”

  “Yes, you could have told me that.” Martha picked up her nightgown and put it down again. Having had to be strong for too many people and for too long, she was now in no mood to be reasonable with the one man she could trust.

  “That would have made me seem a very timid creature, I fear.” Long laughed. “But Martha—you know I do not have the right way of looking at things sometimes…”

  “I know you think you don’t.”

  He sighed and the sigh set off a fit of coughing. “What… what was it? A visitation? Possession?”

  “Or an allergy. Or a nervous reaction to faulty electricity. I don’t know, my dear. But I want it to stop.”

  He tried the sigh again, and this time it worked. “It seems to have. And tomorrow we leave this place, so the faulty wiring will be behind us. And her.”

  “She will be home, please God!” Martha frowned again, as she remembered the problem that had been subsumed in this one. “And speaking of things behind us, there’s a missing musician to find. May I ask one more favor of you, Mayland? Will you stay with Marty while I look?”

  The room being warmer now, Long had taken off his jacket. Now he swayed from side to side in his chair, in unhappy protest. “Martha, I am always at your service, as you well know, but I am really rather weary of being left at home to mind the baby!”

  “Oh.” Martha glanced at him with some surprise, so rarely did he fail to bend to her wishes. After a moment she began to grin. “Right on! I’ve been abusing you terribly. You must remind me.”

  He turned his head self-consciously away in embarrassment and Martha thought at that moment that his form and his features were very beautiful. “That is hardly the case. But I think in this instance I would do better to look than you.”