By the time they’re finished it’s past two. They spill back out onto the blustery road as Mary promises the dresses will be finished in plenty of time.
It’s a May wedding, isn’t it?
Yes, Angeline says, the fifteenth of May.
Christina opens the car door. She can hear Mary whispering something to Angeline.
No, she’s gone years, she hears Angeline reply. He got an annulment.
Christina turns around. She can see that Angeline is flushed and that Mary is looking at Christina in an odd way, as if she feels sorry for her.
Let’s get some lunch, Angeline says as they drive back down the hill. I’m starving.
They go to Wimpy and Angeline buys Christina a hamburger and chips as well as a Coke. The drink is flat and warm, the burger limp and the bap soggy with grease, but Christina doesn’t care. It’s great to eat out for a change.
We went to school here, you know, Angeline says.
We?
Yes, your mother and I.
Christina stops eating and stares at Angeline, who’s looking away from her, out the door at the cars flashing down the high street.
You never ask about her, she says softly.
Christina swallows her mouthful of bap and squirms uncomfortably in her plastic seat. It squeaks.
Angeline turns to look at her. She looks like an Indian. Her dark hair and skin are soft and silky, her long black lashes flutter and her brow is fine and narrow. She sits straight and wraps her scarf around her shoulders.
Don’t you want to know about her? she asks.
No, Christina says quickly, her cheeks burning. Her head begins to ache.
Are you sure, darling? Angeline asks.
No, I don’t want to know anything about her, she snaps.
Okay, I’m sorry. I don’t want to upset you. I won’t mention her again.
Christina continues to eat, shovelling down the chips, gulping the Coke, chewing away. She doesn’t want to talk about it, not ever.
Angeline gets up. I’m just going to pay, she says, sashaying up to the counter.
Christina watches her. She has never seen such a beautiful woman, and she is hers. Soon she will be her stepmother, and then it will be as it should be. Christina can’t imagine anyone else but Angeline. She is her real mother now, and she’s perfect. And yet, there’s something…
But it’s too late to ask now; the moment has passed.
It’s just one small thing – she wonders if her mother has ever sent her a birthday card.
She doesn’t think she has, but when she was very little maybe she did. Christina can’t remember. It would have been nice to know. That maybe she’s thought of, sometimes.
CHRISTINA
In Christina’s dream she was looking for soap. Not a bar of it, but a large dispenser of frothy white soap. She needed to clean herself. And Declan was one step behind, his anger pushing her forwards, making her afraid to turn around. He forced her to the edge of the cliff, and she was frightened because she knew he wanted her to jump, and then she would be gone forever, spinning in the abyss.
She dug her heels in and squatted on the hard, gravelly earth. She ran her hands through it and it was like red dust. She was somewhere like the Grand Canyon, somewhere awesome and intense. I will not let him push me, she thought, and when she turned he was gone and she was sitting on her own.
She went right to the edge then, hanging her legs over into the sky, letting them dangle there. The wind lifted her hair off her face, and she could hear a sound, like a wind chime.
She felt a presence behind her, and suddenly her shoulders were shadowed, the sun blocked out. Two strong arms wrapped around her. When she looked down at her chest she saw that no hands clasped her waist, but two giant wings, crossed over her breast. A large tawny feather fluttered across the gorge.
This was some kind of man behind her. She could feel his body pressed against her back. He cupped her. She wanted now to see what it was like, to feel him slip inside. She wanted to dip into his light.
But she woke then, surprised to be alone. It was raining outside. She could hear the wet road, see the grey light seeping in through the thin blinds. The air conditioning switched on, and she shivered under her thin blanket. She closed her eyes again and tried to recreate the feeling of company.
GRETA
I’m a little cross with Angeline.
It’s silly of me because she was only trying to help and always has the best of intentions, but sometimes I think she’s a little too familiar with Tomás. At the end of the day, she’s our employee and sometimes she seems to forget this fact.
Isn’t that mean of me to think that?
I feel ashamed now, especially when I see how happy she is compared to a few weeks ago, and she’s always saying how wonderful it is to work here and not be told what to do all the time. I do leave it completely up to her. Since she’s organising all of the shopping I let Tomás give her the housekeeping money directly – there seems to be no point in it going through me. We both trust her implicitly.
Angeline and Tomás are quite alike in a funny way. They both have very firm ideas about the meaning of life. For instance, Tomás is a strong Catholic. I too am a Catholic, though I’m also very interested in other religions. But Tomás thinks that our way is the only one, whereas I believe that there are many different paths to the one place. We’re all going in the same direction.
What was I saying?
Oh yes. You see, Angeline is quite like Tomás because she has strong opinions on religion as well – though completely different. She hasn’t spoken about them in front of Tomás because that would cause trouble. But she tells me. It’s all very interesting. Buddha sounds a bit like Jesus because he said that no one is better than anyone else. We can all become ‘enlightened’. When I asked Angeline what enlightenment meant she said it meant that you could have heaven on Earth. She does this chanting business, which she learned in London – it’s all in Japanese, and it sounds beautiful. She showed me her little prayer book and her beads, which she twists into a figure of eight and rubs between her hands when she chants, and then she took out this scroll all written in Japanese which she had hidden in a box on a little table by her bed. She called it a Gohonzon and she said that it was the mirror of her soul, so that when she was chanting she was chanting to herself.
So it’s like praying to yourself rather than God?
I suppose so, she said. It’s possible to answer your own prayers.
I thought about that a lot.
And I like the way her religion has the symbol of the lotus flower rather than the cross. That’s much softer, more feminine. Angeline says that the lotus flower represents karma, which means that everything you do has a consequence, which is quite like Catholicism, although in a way it’s harder because there’s no forgiveness – once the deed is done, you pay for it.
So sometimes I feel that Angeline and Tomás are two big boulders of rock, solid and unflinching, and I’m the water flowing between them, going this way and that, oscillating. Maybe I don’t have a mind of my own, because when Tomás talks about God, I agree with him completely, but then Angeline talks about Buddha and that seems to make a lot of sense as well.
But I was telling you why I’m a little cross with Angeline. Well, first of all she spoke about how I can heal with my hands to Tomás, and I told her specifically not to do that.
Tomás had a headache – sometimes he has terrible ones – and he was going to take some pills when Angeline asked him why he didn’t get me to massage his head. He just stared at her stony-faced and said, How do you know about that?
And do you know what she did? I’m still a little shocked, really I am. In front of me (I suppose that’s better than behind my back) she goes over and touches my husband on the arm. She actually stroked his arm from shoulder to elbow, and said, she helped me one day. I had a dreadful headache and she got it to go away in a matter of minutes. It’s a gift, Tomás, and you should let her use i
t.
He didn’t brush her off and he didn’t tell her off, he just looked down at the ground and mumbled that he supposed she was right. So she made him sit down in the big kitchen chair and she beckoned for me to come over, and my hands were shaking because I was so cross. So then, of course, it was hard to make it work, and Tomás made me nervous. Angeline told me to relax, and I don’t know whether she was talking to me or Tomás, but almost immediately I could feel my fingers warm up and I began to touch my husband’s head.
She turned her back on us then and made a saucepan of creamy hot chocolate, and I felt that I couldn’t be angry any more.
Last night I kissed Tomás all over and he asked me what was wrong, and I said nothing, couldn’t I kiss my husband, and then he made love to me, but it was a little different. Oh, that’s all silliness, and I’m only thinking these things because I have too much time on my hands, sitting around and brooding. It’s hard to watch Angeline, so slim and beautiful, whereas I feel like I’m turning into a round thing. I feel useless. Angeline has taken over everything – the cooking and cleaning and the money, even Christina to a certain extent, and what am I left to do? So from tomorrow I’m going to take out my sewing box again and begin to make things for the baby, and for Christina and Tomás. She may be the better cook, but no one can compete with me when it comes to the needle!
CHRISTINA
She had hoped being somewhere different would make her feel stronger, but Christina was the same person she ever was. And now the concrete path, the whispering buildings, threatened her as much as the dark woods at home. She was afraid in the city, adrift among all these strangers: the street signs, the bars, the shops and hotels, all these foreign symbols felt like a threat. Everywhere Christina looked there were people, and everyone she met had been friendly, sure, but nobody really cared. She was alone.
They took a taxi back to the airport. It had stopped raining and Seattle was bathed in bright sunshine. It was getting hot. Out on the forecourt it was all concrete and noise, with buses taking off every few seconds. Christina circled the area twice before she could find the bus for La Conner. The driver was loading up luggage. Other buses flew past, making the air thick with exhaust fumes. She went over and he insisted on writing their names down on a clipboard before asking for fifty dollars. Christina’s fingers stuck to the notes as she peeled them out of her purse. The money was running out fast.
The bus headed out of the airport and shot down the interstate. The driver began talking, giving them a running commentary on the history of Seattle, but Christina wasn’t listening. She looked at the five lanes of traffic all flying by and twisting past Seattle in one big curve. This city reminded her of Oz – it was tall and shining and looked like it was full of promise. Cian was glued to the window, whispering to himself, and Christina strained to hear him, but she was too tired to pick anything up. Already the motion of the vehicle was wearing her out, and her eyelids began to drop.
She flickered between consciousness and memory. Shards of the recent past splintered her, these fragments and moments all sad. Like the last time she slept with Declan, and how she had tried to touch him and he had shrugged her off. She had cried silently, because by that stage he was immune to her tears. In fact, if he saw her cry it would make him more distant, less compassionate.
There she was, white moon face on the pillow, her hair fanning out, the tears sliding down the side of her face onto the cotton slip. Her hands were placed on her belly, and she kneaded them. She was an ordinary woman living an ordinary life, yet her pain felt so extraordinary.
She floated above the bed, and she could see Declan, cocooned. He was lying in the foetal position, covered in thread. His whole body was bound, around and around, with strands of white thread. He looked like a spider’s egg sac. He was trapped too.
Her heart jumped, and she sat bolt upright. Her breath came short and she could feel the familiar tightness in her chest. She opened her bag and pulled out the bottle of water, taking a giant gulp. She had to maintain control, but all she wanted now was to get off the bus. She looked out the window, but everything was blurred.
‘Cian.’ He was talking to himself again. ‘Cian. Cian!’
‘What?’
‘I need to get off the bus.’
‘Why, Mammy? What’s wrong?’ His little face looked suddenly worried.
‘It’s all right,’ she said slowly, trying to hold on. ‘I just feel a little car sick. Can you ask the driver to stop for me?’
‘Okay.’ He looked at her uncertainly, then walked up to the top of the bus. A few minutes later, he came back, full of the importance of being the messenger.
‘We’ll be stopping in a minute. He says we have to change buses.’
Christina started to pant. Her body was too small for her, her heart was going to explode. She couldn’t faint. What about Cian? They might take him away, they might find out.
The bus jolted to a halt. Christina jumped up, grabbing Cian’s hand. Over the rush in her ears, she could just about hear the driver speaking to her, but she ignored him. She dashed down the stairs and pushed the door.
‘Okay, lady, just take it easy.’ The doors sprang open and she tumbled out, banging into a man who was right in front of her on the tarmac.
‘Hey!’ he said, jumping back.
She was unable to speak or look at him or focus on anything else but getting inside the hotel where they’d stopped. She could hear Cian beside her, calling ‘sorry’ to the man. She ran into the foyer, looking for the toilets.
Sometimes this worked – she counted slowly to ten, taking a deep breath in and pushing it out on each number. She undid her bra and took it off, shoving it into her handbag. She took out some Rescue Remedy and put some on her tongue. She needed a drink, but she couldn’t let the bus go without them. Shakily, she flushed the toilet and opened the cubicle door. Cian was washing his hands. He turned and stared at her.
‘Are you sick?’ he asked.
‘No, I’m okay.’
‘Good, because I don’t want to go home yet, we just got here.’
They went back out into the dusky sunshine. The driver was chatting away to another man. They were both wearing dark glasses.
‘Excuse me,’ she asked, ‘but which bus is the one for La Conner?’
‘Are you okay? You seemed in pretty much of a rush back there,’ the driver said, and the other man stepped back and stared at her. She could feel the blood rush to her face.
‘I know, I’m sorry. I just felt a little sick.’
‘It must have been bad, you just about knocked me down,’ said the stranger.
‘Oh, that was you? I’m sorry.’
‘It’s that little shuttle bus over there, that’s the one you want, leaving in a minute,’ the driver said.
The men turned their backs on her and continued to talk. She walked over to the bus, still shaky and tremulous. Cian clambered in first and chose a seat right at the front. She settled in beside him and stared out the front windscreen. She could see the stranger chatting away to the driver. She couldn’t see his face, but he was tall and long in denim jeans and shirt. In fact, everyone in America looked how she’d imagined them, all jeans or shorts, with baseball caps on their heads.
‘Mammy, can I get a cowboy hat?’ Cian asked her again. ‘A real one?’
‘We’ll see,’ she said. She felt exhausted now, depleted from the effort of controlling her fear. All she wanted to do was hide in bed, back in Helen’s cottage. But she had nowhere to retreat, thrust as she was into a foreign environment, and it terrified her.
GRETA
Angeline has been trying to convert me! Seriously, though, I’m very interested in her beliefs. We were walking with Christina in the woods the other day, collecting some early spring blooms, and I asked her how long she meditates for every day.
I chant for about an hour and a half, she said.
So you don’t believe in God?
No, she smiled. I never really believ
ed, not even when I was a child.
I was astonished.
It all seemed a load of twoddle to me, she said, picking a little wildflower out of the weeds.
But you never said anything at school? I asked her.
Oh, well, I knew better than to question the nuns! She spun the flower between her fingers, then handed it to Christina, who ran ahead up the path.
What do you believe then?
She stopped and looked at me. Against the perfectly blue sky her eyes were the same colour as her special chocolate drink. She scratched the bark of my tree with a twig and continued to walk on.
We’re in control of our own destinies, not some faceless God. It’s up to us to make good something we might have done which is wrong. There’s no such thing as sin or confession. She spoke with conviction.
I thought about this, and I couldn’t say that it didn’t make sense.
She started pulling back some branches which blocked our way, and said, It’s hard, though. We all have negative impulses. Sometimes it’s hard to know what’s right.
What do you mean?
I looked around for Christina and could see her ahead, bobbing up and down the path in her emerald green coat.
Well, society, and especially the Church in Ireland, dictate that we should behave in a certain way. For instance, we’re told that once you’re married, that’s it – you have to stay together no matter what. But what if your husband beats you? Or if you just fall out of love? Surely it’s better to be true to your heart?
This made me uneasy, because I think that marriage should be forever. I think that you make that commitment for life.
But today I tried a little bit of the chanting with Angeline. Tomás was meeting some of the men in town to discuss farming matters over a few drinks in O’Hagans, and so since he was out, Angeline asked me if I would like to try it. I thought why not, though I sent a little prayer up to heaven to forgive me if it was a sin!
We began by chanting a Japanese phrase – Nam Myoho Renge Kyo – and Angeline explained to me what it meant.
A Small Part of Me Page 10