Exit Unicorns

by Cindy Brandner

  Jamie, left cursing ten ways from Sunday, picked up a Waterford vase and hurled all twenty pounds of it at the fireplace. It made a glorious smash, though it wasn’t as satisfying as he’d hoped it would be. He sank into his father’s chair and finding no comfort there wished he didn’t need a drink quite so damn badly.

  The ‘dollar-a-dance’ girl from Mulligan’s Stew and Brew on 42nd Street in New York had never actually seen a goat much less bathed in its milk. The milk she drank, served up by Hugh Mulligan himself, came in pint mugs and always held the aftertaste of stale beer. The cows who produced it grazed some two hundred miles to the south of where she lived in a seedy, one room walk-up. There were only four months separating her from that life, four months and a lifetime of dreaming. It was indeed, she thought wearily flopping down on her bed, a bloody long, long way to Tipperary, or the settlement one hundred seventy-five miles (as the Irish crow flew) to the northeast of it, more commonly known as Belfast.

  She had spent three years dancing with old men, fat men, ugly men, smelly men and men of every sort other than decent. She’d crossed an ocean, traveled down dark, deserted country roads, been fondled, rubbed and propositioned by every down-on-his-luck, seedy wastrel on either side of the Atlantic, all this so that she could come here and discover that Jamie Kirkpatrick had no memory whatsoever of her. It was, regardless of the rosy light one tried to shine on it, less than flattering.

  She had given him as many memory cues as she could without completely abandoning her pride. Last night she’d even tried the poem he’d written for her when she was eleven years old, she’d managed quite skillfully to work it into the conversation, only to have him say, ‘It’s merely a variation on a fifteenth century French poem and not,” he’d raised his eyes from the book he was reading, “a very good one.”

  She’d only just managed to choke back the words, ‘Well you should know as you bloody wrote it’ and he mistaking her look for insulted injury had hurriedly backpedaled, “Well it’s not so bad. Here though,” he’d risen and fetched a blue cloth-bound book from the overflowing shelves, “this is the original,” he opened the book and smoothed the page down, “humble, charming and syntactically tight. Three syllables per line, never more, with the emphasis always falling on the middle syllable, listen:”

  Ma mignonne

  Je vous donne

  Le bon jour;

  Le sejour

  C’est prison.

  Guerison

  Recouvrez...

  Chills chased down her spine as the French fell off his tongue like Parisian snow, soft, sooty and not altogether wholesome. This close she could smell the individual notes that made up his particular scent, limes and sandalwood with an undernote of something very comforting, freshly baked bread or newly mown wheat fields or...

  “So you see simple and yet really rather clever,” Jamie, having reverted to English, was looking at her oddly.

  “Um yes, rather,” she said jumping slightly in her seat.

  “Are you feeling alright?” he asked, looking absurdly paternal in spectacles and cardigan.

  “Fine,” she assured him, trying to tame what felt like a horribly overeager smile.

  “Mmphm,” he turned back to the book, “now your fellow while catching the gist of the poem, has his syllables all over the place, and seems to have thrown structure out the window with the bathwater. Could you just recite it for me again?” He’d taken out a pen and a piece of paper, and with black ink poised expectantly over the muted sand of the paper waited for her to begin:

  My sweet girl,

  Head aswirl,

  I come to wish

  A good day.

  The bed’s constraint

  Your blush does taint

  Your constitution

  Please recover,

  So that I may

  Cease to hover

  Near thy chamber door.

  Sweetmeats

  To treat

  Thy languor.

  Indulge thy whim

  Because of him,

  Who says it must

  Be so.

  For if not

  My dimpled nymph,

  I fear to see

  An elfin sylph,

  In thy plenteous stead.

  “See,” Jamie said pen still stroking across the page, “the syllables run the gamut from two to six, the emphasis is uncertain and the control non-existent. Still,” he smiled indulgently, “it’s a nice gesture. Though I must say there’s something a bit Humbert Humbertish about both of the poems, original and secondhand, it’s as if he can almost imagine himself licking the back of her knees or something. Rather inappropriate, though perhaps we’re mistaking the age of the addressee.”

  “I was twelve,” she said stiffly, wishing to God and his impish angels that she’d never mentioned the poem. “And I had a broken ankle, so my friend,” she allowed the word to fall under the weight of emphasis, “made up stories and poems to amuse me.”

  “Kind of him,” Jamie said jotting notes down the side of the poem, “but still,” he looked sharply over the top of the gold-rimmed, half-spectacles, “but still you were only-”

  “Twelve,” she supplied rather testily.

  “Hmm,” had been his only reply, then he’d sat down and begun playing with the poem, shuffling words, syllables, languages, mumbling to himself, lost in a world of ink and paper where words were master and slave to one’s pen. He’d not even noticed when she left the room.

  Tonight had been a disaster. She shouldn’t have thrown his whiskey out but the truth was he did drink too much, a rather disturbing amount. At least then he didn’t ask too many questions. Questions, she saw quite suddenly, she’d no desire to answer.

  She undressed and changed in the tiny bathroom across the hall, cleaned her teeth and after offering up a half-hearted thanks to God for the day, slid between the worn linen sheets, with their lovely scrolling ‘K’, just in time to hear a knock on her door.

  “Yes,” she called out in a muffled tone as she discovered that her hair was wrapped around the buttons that adorned the pillowslip.

  Jamie’s head popped around the door. “Just thought I’d check if you’re alright, need more blankets, anything of the sort?”

  “No,” she said sharply as the pillow, with the aid of her fingers, wound ever closer to her head.

  “Actually,” he stepped all the way into the room, “I came up to apologize, perhaps I’m not used to such blatant honesty, but that doesn’t excuse my own behavior. You’re right, I drink far too much and I plan to rectify that, though I may,” he smiled like a small boy, “need some help.”

  “Certainly,” she said, tears stinging her eyes as the pressure on her scalp became more pronounced.

  “Are you quite alright?” he asked, peering through the dim light at her.

  “Fine, well actually my hair’s wrapped around this damn button,” she gave it a yank, “ouch.”

  “Here.” He sat on the bed and with sure, deft fingers unwound her hair, strand by strand, from the offending button.

  “I thought,” he said, “that if we talked in the evenings, played cards, games, it would distract me. And perhaps you could help me finish off some of my father’s work. He was translating some old Irish folk tales when he—when he—”

  “Died,” she supplied for him.

  “There you are,” he said releasing the last hair from the button and handing the pillow back around to her. “Funny old pillows, aren’t they, all buttons and lace, they were my mother’s. They still smell like her,” his voice drifted down to a breath.

  “Old roses,” she said.

  “Pardon me?”

  “She must have smelled sweet and old-fashioned, like old roses,” she shivered and wondered if she’d imagined the ribbon of touch down the length of her hair, so light, like snow falling on a moth’s wing. “I’d love to help with your father’s
stories,” she said softly, “though I’m hopeless at Gaelic.”

  “I’ll teach you,” he said and moved with haste off the bed and towards the door. “Good night.”

  “Good night,” she replied to the closing door, wondering if she’d offended him somehow.

  It took a long time to fall asleep after that, though she was content enough to watch the stars and the moon, a chaste quarter, scroll by as if they rode the wheel of a child’s wind-up toy. Later, much later, she dreamed.

  Twelve must have been a number cursed by the ancients she’d decided. Not just the number but the entire bloody age. Neither child nor woman, but lost in that hinterland of ‘girl’, though everyone still treated her as a child. A child to whom nothing could be told. There must be an unwritten commandment somewhere about not talking to your children as though they were actually possessed of a brain because something in her twelve-year-old world was seriously awry. Stuck for the summer on the Vineyard, away from her friends and father, the two pillars that upheld her world. Generally she loved the island, loved her horse and dogs and the complete freedom that being away from the city provided. But this summer an ugly bug had gotten under her skin and she was determined to be miserable. Her father, only coming down on weekends, was utterly distracted and not at all like himself.

  Her only company was Rose, the woman, neither young nor old, that her father had brought over from Ireland to care for her when she was a baby and her mother had run away. Actually run away from the hospital and left her behind in a glass bassinet.

  Rose was not much of a conversationalist, though the things she did say generally had a lot of color to them. ‘May the angels of heaven fly up yer nose and the divils of hell fly out yer arse,’ was Pamela’s favorite. That was Rose’s idea of a benediction. Another good thing about Rose was her expectations. They were very low. Bathing was required only once a week, shoes were lost in the first few days and never found, food was to be eaten when the hunger struck you and dinner was often comprised of berries one found on one’s explorations.

  This summer however, exploring had lost some of its charm and Rose was buried nose-deep in the ravaging romances that women with names like Beryl and Josephine wrote. Pamela had taken to spending long days out in the hayloft, eating apples stolen from the orchard on the neighboring farm, apples so wild that they tasted like the first apple from the first tree. Pamela, apples piled high, read anything and everything she could find. Bailey, her good-natured, rotund little mare took to stamping her feet every time Pamela walked past. It did the horse little good. Pamela wanted a real horse this summer, a real bad horse, truth be told. She began to cast longing glances at Nemesis, her father’s big black stallion. He had a miserable disposition but he could run like a bat out of hell. At least that’s what Shorty, her father’s jockey, said. She could understand the horse though; she knew what it was to have that itchy, restless, got-to-run-or-I’ll-die feeling.

  It was a Tuesday and raining when she succumbed to temptation, she’d been in the hayloft all morning reading an old copy of ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ and thinking that while virtue might be its own reward it also made for damned irritating characters. She wished she’d brought the Byron down to the barn, but reading Byron made her feel funny, if she really just let her thoughts go and allowed the words to rock her (she could think of no more apt analogy) then she got this strange, melty, icky feeling, which was not altogether unpleasant and therefore that much more disturbing.

  Nemesis was whickering and chuntering about in his stall, wanting, she knew, to be out running until there was no thought or words or strange feelings, just clear perfect feeling, sky above, pure earth below. She couldn’t stand it any longer and swung down out of the loft, bits of hay floating airily in her wake. Nemesis rolled his eyes prettily at her approach, he was a friend and he trusted her, at least enough to give him apples and lumps of sugar and for the occasional nose rub.

  Today though, the gate opened before him and nose rubs and wild apples became the least of his concerns, he could smell freedom and it had an intoxication like absolutely nothing else. He barely noticed when the girl swung up on his back, her weight would not slow him down. After the first mile of sand and oat grass, when the thunder really began to pull up into his legs and he was stretched out fully feeling the thrum and burn of every muscle, he forgot her completely.

  Forgot her even as he covered mile after mile of even, sandy beach and the rain began to come down like hard, stinging needles, even though her knees dug into his bare back like burrs and she rode horizontal to his rippling mane. Forgot her even when he saw a snake, twisting its slow, sweet way across his path. He reared in mindless, frothing terror and did not even notice the weight that tumbled and fell end over end over end off his back and onto the sand or how when he reared back again something more substantial than a twig snapped under his hoof.

  She never was to remember much later, except for a moment of mind-numbing pain and then a blessed blackness that came down like a stone on her head. When she awoke, it was to see an angel above her, or at least what seemed like an angel to her dazed, eleven-year-old eyes. Then the angel spoke and didn’t seem very holy after that.

  “What the hell did you think you were doing just then? You could have killed a damn fine horse and yourself into the bargain, insane child.”

  “Ow,” she said and promptly passed out again.

  The next time she’d awakened, it was on a bed, a cloud of blue and white ivy crisscrossing and twining above her. Her ankle felt like it was on fire and all the demons of hell were ramming pins into it. When she tried to sit up and have a look at it her head swam in nauseating loops and she fell back again, then swiftly twisted over the side of the bed and threw up on a very fancy looking carpet.

  She started to cry, an entire summer of bored sophistication crumbling in the face of pain, a strange house and vomiting on a silk rug.

  “It’s alright, I should have had a bucket there, it’s likely the fright and the doctor gave you a shot for the pain, I take it it’s not helping.” The angel hove into view, golden and no longer glowering. The angel sat.

  “Who are you?” she managed to croak in a miserable attempt at bravado.

  The angel smiled. “James Kirkpatrick at your service, but you may call me Jamie. And you,” he raised his golden eyebrows a smidge, “must be the little O’Flaherty girl, I’ve seen you out stealing mine host’s apples this summer.”

  “Mmphm,” she said not wanting to talk about her thievery.

  “I’ve called your home and Rose said she would call your father. The doctor said it would be best not to move you tonight, you’ve done a real beauty of a job on your ankle.”

  “Where am I?” she managed to croak before passing out for the third time that day.

  It was the afternoon of the next day before she learned that she’d been moved to the hospital and that she would be staying there for the next week. One week became two, as it turned out she was allergic to morphine. Then her ankle didn’t mend as it should have and had to be re-set after it had begun knitting together. It was, altogether, a nightmarish few weeks. The pain had sunk her in a black pool for the first week, a pool she only sporadically emerged from before sinking right down again. Her father, haggard with worry, had come and gone, staying until he could not leave his business unattended in New York any longer. Jamie had stayed and stayed. Holding her hand through the worst of it, when she’d emerged from her peaceful black hole and the pain had made her scream. Lulling her to sleep with story after story after story, myth, legend and anything embroidered with enough romance and adventure to distract a girl’s mind. There was one about the Queen of the Fairies being turned into a bejeweled dragonfly that had particularly caught her fancy.

  Playing Monopoly and cards with her and then finally teaching her the intricacies of chess to pull her mind away from the dull, throbbing ache in her ankle and leg that made her
irritable and angry.

  He brought her books, chocolate, fresh fruit, anything to brighten up her days. One day he’d come bearing a particularly thick tome and when she’d asked what it was about he’d said, ‘it’s about the depths of misery a man can sink to and the heights he can rise to in his soul and I promise you that when we’ve finished the last page you will be out of this place.’ They took turns reading aloud and the words became a magic spell for her, an incantation that took away the pain and the misery. Years later the first lines, paragraphs, pages would still be firmly limned in her memory.

  ‘In the year 1815 Monseigneur Charles-Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of Digne. He was then about seventy-five, having held the bishopric since 1806. Although it has no direct bearing on the tale we have to tell...’ she had begun that afternoon and eight days later when Jamie read the words that closed the book, the doctor had come into the room and politely waited for the tale to be done before telling her she was going home.

  Home to Rose, which suddenly seemed unappealing, home to boredom and loneliness again, home to her father who came only on weekends, flying in late, late Friday night and leaving early Monday morning. Not his old, fun-loving self. Worried and tired and thin.

  Home was not the same place however. Her plain little summer room had been transformed with new paint, a beautiful Star-of-David quilt that smelled of apples and bayberry, a walnut shelf filled with books of every sort and description and a delicate perfect cut-crystal angel that hung in the window and refracted the morning sun into a hundred rainbows.

  Rose was more attentive, insisting on three regular meals a day and baths at least every second day. Her father came down for two solid weeks and actually had a tan and put some weight on before he headed back. Jamie continued to visit and was mutually adored by Rose, her father and herself.

  When at last she could move beyond the confines of porch and the masses of morning glory that adorned it, it was Jamie who took her for walks on the beach, offering his arm should she need it. Jamie who insisted very strongly that she had to get up on a horse again before the fear became a permanent part of her. It was Jamie who took her to her first party; it was Jamie who was the first man to dance with her.