One Star Awake

by Andrew Meehan

  Being out of your depth—in the sea, in space or, in this case, sitting before Shirt in her living room—involves fighting for air. I don’t know what anyone else heard but the sound I made was of some burly men moving furniture. And this was attended by a moment of recognition. No, I could not deliver a convincing performance but my failure had been prepared for, long in advance of Paris, in my apathy to the one thing held precious by my father and mother. Music was something into which they poured meaning. This concerto—Dvorak in particular had been Dad’s suggestion—was for them a deeply dependable structure which provided moments of discovery and release that, even when I could recognise them, I could be counted on not to see meaning in and not to deliver.

  There was the scrape of a chair as Shirt left the room—the world was moving on—and I decided to follow, handing the bow to Mum on my way out. Later my parents had the cello shipped home, and here it is now. I pluck at it. At least I can say now that I never had the anti-climax of living my dream and being disappointed by it. Had I studied music with real intent—had that even been viable—would I have made it my life? To say that abandoning my dreams was out of character would be to assume that I was then, a girl of eighteen, the careful, supposedly obedient woman I am now.

  It can’t be 5 a.m. but Dad is sitting on the bed. On a tray is a teapot and two cups.

  —You for or against tea, Evie? he says, using my name for the first time since Quai 53.

  Tea must be a sign that we have weathered the storm.

  —For, I think.

  He looks at me and smiles. I don’t expect him to appear decorative, but the damning evidence has added up—the sadness of those straining pyjama buttons and, on top of the cigar stench, the persistent strains of yesterday’s gin. The worried look on his face as he deals with his trembling hand suggest problems of his own but Dad, I can tell, is trying very hard to keep his end of the conversation upbeat. I have not been there to witness the vitality leaving my father’s body, though it is not hard to imagine—he is leaden-eyed and wheezing.

  —We didn’t know where you were. Thank God for your American friend.

  —He’s a good friend.

  —Have you thought about what you might like to do?

  —That depends on what I used to do.

  —What do you mean? Dad says.

  The voice is his but I barely recognise it.

  —I might need a few prompts, I say.

  Dad summarises—I was a fair and pliable student, my teenage years a relay of pseudo-survival and incompleteness, my career a dead-end narrative of small humiliations. Fired without hesitation from Superquinn, Tesco, Dunnes Stores, and, completing the grand-slam, Marks and Spencer.

  —There any supermarkets left?

  —Don’t worry, he says. I’ll buy one if I have to.

  Dad is drinking from my cup now, as casually as someone who has just bumped into an old acquaintance in an unusual location—the context emphasising the fact that times change but people don’t.

  He asks, —Was life so bad that you had to start making things up?

  The tea is cold in the cup, just how I like it. But I’m not sure I want anything he has made for me. He stretches out his hand but I don’t take it.

  —What was I making up?

  I calm myself with some more shallow breaths. At the merest glimpse of Dad’s face I glance downwards. He is already acting as if whatever was the matter between us has been resolved. And then it occurs to me, something I have not expected and cannot deal with—Dad reminds me of Jerome. In his way of being awkward in his own house, in his discomfort with other people’s anxieties as much his own, in his—I don’t want to think of it.

  Jerome hit me only once but this will be all I remember. Dad has never raised a finger to me, and never would, but I think of him after the audition in Paris and his insistence that we go somewhere expensive for lunch and the way my morning was already attaining the status of anecdote. We sat on the terrace of Les Deux Magots, as I recall, and I watched them horse into the rosé and—because this was Paris—pretend that nothing bad had happened. Although it wouldn’t be on my behalf, we had to celebrate something. It turned into quite the session—I watched a waiter approaching our table with an ice bucket share a look with one of his colleagues. No one ever ordered more than one drink at Les Deux Magots.

  —Just tell me you’re okay, Dad says. You’ll stay this time.

  Now I can name the thought I have had a dozen times—instead of making my way to Ireland and instead of subjecting myself to this, I should have stayed on the island. I should have stayed with Ségo. But I tell Dad I’ll stay. I say I’ll be glad of the break from Paris when, of course, there is actually little to be taking a break from. If I am taking a break from anything, it is the feeling that I will always be my parents’ biggest worry and their only failure—parents rarely get the children they want.

  —Your mother has breakfast planned, he says. I have to go into Vincent’s to see the consultant. Just a formality, don’t worry. He won’t need to see me again after today. You and Mum can eat together when she gets up. I’ll be back around lunch.

  I manage to sleep but I am woken by the shock of another balloon inflating inside my skull. It is times like this when I wish I could disappear, fall back into whatever black hole from which I have sprung. I picture a cool, black pillow smothering my face. I try to move, to roll away—my muscles are bawling at me to—and, after another hour or more of trying to move, I wet myself on the new sheets, the steam rising from me as though I am a hot dinner. Soon I am cold, thrashing around in imitation of someone who has been electrocuted. But even within its fullest grip—a burning comet is on a tour of my brain—the headache cheers me, or insulates me, somehow. Then my eyes shut of their own accord and I become inert, counting myself lucky to have survived the worst of it. As long as that has been the worst of it, I can never be sure.

  I am about to go back to sleep when there is a knock on the door. Mum has a basin of bone-coloured paint and a roller. She has all sorts of ideas for my bedroom and she decides there is time to paint one of the walls before breakfast. It’s not something to which I’ve given much thought but she seems to want to get on with things and we agree that it’s good to get as much done as we can.

  Mum is a quick worker. She can climb and then descend a ladder in the time it takes me to dip a roller into a basin of paint and give the wall a good staring at. I can hear her even breathing—she is still fit at whatever age she is and her arms are even thinner than mine. We work in continuing silence until she decides it is time.

  —I’d say we’re all caught up on things by now, she says. I presume we’re going to put all this behind us.

  Another me would stand up for herself. Instead, I say, —I think so.

  Mum is already standing back with her arms folded, the roller aloft so that it resembles a microphone.

  —What do you think? she says. Is that a wall or is that a wall?

  —Definitely a wall.

  —Not sure you’ll be able to sleep in here straightaway. The fumes will do for you. We’ll make up one of the other rooms for tonight.

  We take a moment to inspect the wall and immediately I see that on her side there are several spots where my brushstrokes failed to overlap, mistakes Mum is already rectifying. I move closer—as if I can finish the wall by looking at it—as she assuredly dabs at the gaps with her brush. We are allowing another few minutes to pass before admitting that decorating my room so soon has been a mistake.

  There are three oranges in the fridge’s fruit drawer but Mum says that’s not enough to juice for all of us. As I wait for her to return from the shops, I get dressed in a pair of my old jeans. I feel nothing but strange in my old clothes—they are massive and could be anyone’s—but obsessing over everything that has changed will mean I will never make it out of
here.

  Feeling my way quietly, I creep down the staircase that leads to the dining room and then to the kitchen and the narrow pantry where, surrounded by egg boxes arranged in impressive terraces, I decide to get started on breakfast.

  I don’t live here—and I’m certainly not a guest—so the only thing I can do is behave like an employee. There are no dishes to wash—but later I will implement my system, even though it will be impossible to go about things the way I do at Gravy. I will have to be careful with the plates.

  I turn an egg over in my hand, top to bottom, top to bottom, like a life. Should I stay here—should that be viable—I will be facing more unhappiness, a great store of it. Not that I would seek out unhappiness, not now, I merely understand its value. It soothes me to see it in this way. And it’s not that I wonder either—because not knowing is different from forgetting. I can make my own truth. I crack the egg in one decisive movement—Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers—and I think what a foolish thing to do, to give Dad false hope. Isn’t that normal? People do this kind of thing all the time. He must know in his heart that I am long gone. If he doesn’t he will soon enough. I whisk the egg gently before adding another. Two is plenty. I finger around in the bowl, attempting to round up the bits of shell.

  On the plane I order a little bottle of red and I pose with it. I can drink as long as I don’t lose the run of myself—but I don’t see that happening now. It doesn’t have to begin today but I want to be an expert in something for a living. Daniel did say at the time that I had a real nose for wine.

  The woman in the seat next to me cheers me as I take my first sip.

  —Hate them, she says.

  There is no point in asking what she hates.

  —Me too, I say.

  —I don’t know why I have to drink out of plastic. I can taste it in the wine. Not that it’s good wine, I’m not a complete fool, I don’t go around expecting good stuff on planes, but it still makes a difference. How do you find it?

  —It’s very expressive, I say. One of Daniel’s words.

  —That’s not how I’d describe it.

  The woman says she works in analytics.

  —Me too, I say.

  I don’t respond when she asks me where I work and for whom.

  À l’attention de Ségolène Carena. La Plongeuse Irlandaise.

  From the window the world is white and soft. I smile at Analytics and sip my unexpressive wine in its wrong cup. Then I press the button in the ceiling and I ask for a gin and tonic instead, as Dad would.

  Ya rouhi means you are my soul.

  I can remember the first time I fell in love with something so beautiful that I prayed for it to be gone. The first time I fell in love, among a scatter of loose onions—well, I wasn’t able to make it out. I used to sleep in the vegetable store at Gravy. It was a sickbed among the pumpkins and onion skins and I awoke one morning—or afternoon or night—to find someone tucking me in and stroking my hair. She then began her work, the cleaning and sorting and picking that would later become my work. Ségo was a busy woman but caring and showing it—without saying anything or having to—was her main occupation. The serious business of her mushroomy breath alive on my skin, even her being anywhere near me, became the kind of feeling you attempt to ignore but actually live for. I know from Daniel that some people fall in love as easily as stepping into a pair of clogs. Now I am one of them—love has grown in me somehow and is alive in me now. I am love-swept, love-bucketed, love-sucked, love-sickened, love-saddened, love-maddened, love-damaged, love-blackened, love-beaten, love-resistant.

  I have walked all the way from the bus stop in Ars-en-Ré and now I am alone in the kitchen in the dark. There are dinner plates in the sink. Daniel and Ségo must have gone to the beach for a moonlight swim. I want something to eat, too—although they can’t have been to the market in the last couple of days and there isn’t much to work with. Some more of Daniel’s oysters—that’s what I feel like now.

  There are some peaches, which I can grill and I’ll eat them with tomatoes—there’s been a glut because of the August heat. The knives are so blunt and I try my best to slice the peaches but they are over-ripe and one after another they turn to juice in my hands. Perhaps I won’t grill them.

  I know what I’ll do—I’ll go and see where everyone is.

  At first, she doesn’t notice me standing on the beach.

  Then, —At last, she says.

  She is floating and staring upwards, where the moon is at full volume—she sees me and lures me towards her with a warning about dangerous insects in the sand. I undress slowly. I have the shivers because I have not been into the sea yet, not even in the daytime—there was never the right moment. She offers to take my hand as inch by inch I creep into the gently fizzing water. Perhaps I sound exasperated but the opposite is the case. It is so hallucinatory that I do not expect to get wet.

  —Count to ten, she says.

  How I make it into the water I don’t know but soon I am up to my waist in black sea and my throat is in shock and contracting at the very moment I need to breathe. I am too scared to attempt it of my own accord and I feel myself float just as I catch Ségo’s smile. I feel the sky tilt and I become aware that I can move around in the water. It is no more intimidating than slipping from a stool.

  A stinging wind takes over. It’s impossible to escape, even in the water—but it isn’t the sudden drop in temperature nor is it the goosebumps on my sunburned shoulders. It’s something else, the knowledge I am being spared so much by being here with her. As my feet waggle for the mossy stones on the seabed I understand how a dead soul must feel when it leaves the body—a file being erased after so long in storage.

  Ségo swims over to see that I’m okay, before inspecting the skin on my shoulder.

  —You’ve blistered since the other day.

  I dunk my face in the water and, getting a harsh mouthful, regret it immediately. Saltwater is spluttering out of my nose.

  —Should I go back inside?

  —I’ll keep an eye on you, she says. There’s going to be a storm. I’d hate you to miss that.

  —Where’s Daniel? I say.

  —Went back to Paris, she says. He’ll be there when we get back.

  Sure enough, there is more friction in the air—it has been another hot day—and it starts to thunder and then it pours rain. I am snug where I am, watching the drops needle the water. My moonlit toes are so far away, the rest is private and beautiful. Of course, I worry that it is impossible to float with your eyes closed, just as it is impossible to imagine forgetting—but floating is just something you do. A little piece of mind, everyone deserves that much.

  One Star Awake

  Acknowledgements

  I am grateful for the existence of the following journals: The Stinging Fly; The Moth; The South Circular; The Bohemyth; Banshee; Long Story, Short; and Winter Papers. Much respect to the editors. Running literary journals, and reading them; it’s what we all should be doing. Finally, I’m very grateful to these two allies: Dan Bolger of New Island; and Marianne Gunn O’Connor.