It was hard for Luke’s mother to talk, and everyone took turns to sit beside her, hold her hand and whisper love words to her. Luke had a stool he liked to sit on at the end of the room, his mother’s unfinished quilt wrapped around him as he watched his father attend to his mother. Each little task – helping her to drink, coaxing her to eat, changing the bed, helping her to the bathroom, ironing a fresh nightdress – was done with devotion. Luke watched his father in the sickroom and it was there he learned about love.
His parents belonged together. Not that life had been easy for them. His mother had been married before, when she was very young. Years later Gail had told him the story of how her first husband had beat her up and how she had lost a baby.
Luke’s father had rescued her, and for that she stretched out the whole of her soul for him and stitched love into his life, thick, rich threads that would bind them forever. No wonder his father couldn’t stay when she left this world. Maybe he had seen her there, out on the ocean where both their hearts belonged, and it had been just a matter of taking her hand and walking forwards. She had come back, just for a second, just for him.
Luke watched his parents and the secrets of their intimacy and how, just hours before she passed away, his father was able to make his mother laugh.
The last words Luke’s mother said to him were spoken as she let him hold her quilt up to her face so that she could rest her cheek against it and close her eyes.
The stitches are my days, she whispered, and some can be full of pain, some of joy. The quilt is my life, Luke, with all its pinpricks, broken threads and missed stitches, yet the whole of it is perfect, is it not?
It is, he whispered, hushed and still.
She opened her eyes and when he looked at her it was a gaze so powerful he felt it could transform him. Her brown eyes were deep wells. The love was all that was left as her body slowly became transparent. This was what she gave him.
CHRISTINA
They lie on the cold bathroom floor.
His hair is loose, falling over her face as he cradles her. She closes her eyes. She has travelled so far. So much has happened. And yet, for the first time in years she feels like she’s retrieving herself.
Christina – the girl before her mother left, the girl who believed in life.
‘Mammy!’ Cian calls from the other room. They scramble up, but he stops her before she leaves the bathroom.
‘Are you okay?’ he says. ‘Do you want to talk?’
‘What is there to say?’ she replies desperately. ‘I came all this way to find my mother and now she’s dead. It’s over.’
‘But what are you going to do now?’
She has her hand on the knob, but turns around and looks at him. ‘I don’t know, Luke. I just don’t know.’
‘You could come with me,’ he says softly.
‘I could? But what about Cian?’
‘Him too. He’d like the island, there’s lots of wildlife, and then…I could take you to Seattle…you could meet Sam.’
‘But what about Declan?’
‘How would he ever find you?’
‘I don’t know if it’s right, taking Cian away from his father. And then there’s Johnny. I’d be deserting him.’
‘But what will happen if you go back, Christina?’ Luke asks, his eyes penetrating her. She breathes in.
‘I can’t make a decision now,’ she says hurriedly and leaves the room.
LUKE
Luke stays in the bathroom. He closes the door and stares at the mirror. She has rearranged him. He feels no anger now towards Teri and what she did to him. Not a trace. He turns on the shower and strips off again. Getting in and turning it full on and cold, he gasps, enjoying the rush of adrenalin. Everything is going to change.
He comes back out into the bedroom with a big fluffy towel around him. The TV is off and Christina is playing a card game with Cian.
‘What are you playing?’ he asks.
‘Happy Families,’ Christina sighs, and twists her head around to smile sadly up at him. He holds her gaze for a second, then walks over to the other side of the room, flicking on the coffeepot as he does so.
‘Want a coffee?’
‘That would be lovely,’ she says, bending down over her cards. Luke watches them play. They speak almost in whispers, and as he turns, catching the afternoon shadows lengthening outside, everything seems completely still, as if the clock has stopped.
He gets dressed leisurely, savouring the peace in the room, the hushed voices of Christina and Cian as they play their game. Nothing is certain, he knows this, but despite their strange situation, Luke has faith in it. He knows that he and Christina were meant to meet. This is not fleeting.
‘Let’s go get something to eat,’ he says.
Christina and Cian look up at the same time. Their eyes are identical.
‘Okay,’ she says. She’s incredibly calm now. It surprises him, since she has just found out her mother is dead. Yet wasn’t he calm too? All those years ago, when he was a little boy, everything had seemed crystal clear.
They walk into Tofino, Cian skipping ahead. He holds her hand and she says nothing, just squeezes his fingers. They go into Breakers’ Deli and order giant burritos, sitting on stools, facing out onto the street, as they eat them. The place is busy with surfers and tourists. Cian is excited by the holiday atmosphere, jigging up and down, hardly able to eat.
Christina gets off her stool and leans towards him. He feels pulled to her. ‘Thanks, Luke.’ She puts her hands on his arm and he takes them, holds them tight, unable to reply.
From behind Luke senses movement, then Cian yells ‘Granny Angel!’ and shoots past him out onto the street.
Luke and Christina turn in unison. Cian is in the arms of a strange woman. She stares at them. She’s not young, probably in her fifties. Streaks of grey run through her jet black hair. Her eyes widen as she looks at him. Christina pulls her hands away. He can hear her throat contract, her breath falling short.
The woman comes into the deli, Cian clinging to her side. Luke looks at Christina, but she won’t look at him. She stands rigidly, staring at the dark woman.
‘What are you doing here?’ She speaks almost in a hiss.
The woman looks up, gives Christina a beautiful smile, then says, ‘I came to find you, darling. I’ve been so worried.’
Then the woman looks at him again. Luke feels her taking him in, looking him up and down
‘This is Luke,’ Christina says tightly. ‘He’s my friend.’
‘I see,’ says the woman, managing to make him feel ashamed with just two words.
‘And this is Angeline, my stepmother,’ Christina says, turning to Luke. He looks into Christina’s eyes but she won’t hold his gaze. He can feel her slipping away, retreating.
THE TEMPLE
She goes looking for Angeline. It’s cold at the back of the house and Christina shivers as she walks away, turning just once to see her mother still sitting on the windowsill. Snow streaks behind her. Christina is desperate to get outside.
Angeline, she calls, knocking on her door. But there’s no answer.
Angeline, she says again, quieter this time. She senses light and warmth so she pushes the door open. The curtains are closed but there are dozens of candles lit, their flames flickering. The room is full of a strange, powerful scent and smoke billows from a stick in a small golden pot.
Christina steps inside. She knows she isn’t allowed to, but the smell entices her and the room is all golden and bright. It feels like the warmest place in the whole house. It feels welcoming.
Angeline, she whispers, but of course she knows that she isn’t there.
There’s a little table with an odd-looking picture on it. In fact, it isn’t a picture at all but a piece of old yellow paper with black spidery writing on it. Christina knows what language it is – Japanese. Maybe it’s Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, she thinks, the little poem Angeline has taught her. She likes singing it, it sounds nicer than t
he hymns she sings in church or the nursery rhymes in her books, and when she sings it it makes her see a picture of pretty little girls dancing all in a ring.
This room is magical. On the table is a little bell. Christina picks it up and rings it. Beside it is a little red book full of the funny black writing, and lying on a pink silk scarf is a string of bright orange beads with white fluffy balls on the end of them. Christina picks them up and rubs them. The beads rub against her palms and tickle her.
Christina!
She whips around, and there is Angeline, standing in bare feet (are her toes not cold?), her black hair down, frowning.
I was looking for you, Christina mumbles.
You know that you’re not allowed in my room, Angeline says, but when Christina looks up she can tell she isn’t cross with her.
I like it in here, she says boldly. It feels like a temple.
Angeline laughs. And how do you know what a temple feels like? she asks.
I don’t know. Christina blushes, feeling suddenly shy.
Come here, Angeline says, and Christina lets her mother’s friend hug her. She sighs, breathes in her smell of lemon and garlic, different from her mammy but just as comforting. She squeezes Angeline tightly.
Hold on, she laughs again, you’re sucking the life out of me!
Can we go outside and play in the snow? she asks.
Sure we can, Angeline says. I just need a minute to get changed. Why don’t you go and put on another jumper and a scarf and I’ll meet you outside in a minute?
Okay.
Christina leaves the room, turning to close the door silently behind her. She can still see the glowing aura through a chink, and then Angeline’s back as she kneels down and picks up her orange beads.
Back down the landing she passes her mother again, but this time she doesn’t look at her as she passes. She can see she’s there, like a black stone, not moving, just her breath that she can hear, as steady as the spill of water from the mill outside. But Christina doesn’t want to look at her now. She’s more interested in the white falling sky and the icy splash of the river. She’s yearning to make her mark on the garden, its spotless, clean surface as fresh as her open heart.
CHRISTINA
They stand outside the motel, with Angeline looking down from above, and say goodbye. He asked her if she would come with him, and now she has said no, she has to go home.
There’s no more to say. She feels awkward, embarrassed with her stepmother staring at them. Luke is perplexed. But what can she do? He reaches out his hand, to touch her face, but she steps back. He shrugs then, shakes his head and slowly, tortuously, turns and walks away.
The last thing she sees of Luke is his arm – brown, strong, the elbow out the window on the driver’s side. His truck goes around the corner and there’s just silence echoing in her heart.
When she first saw Angeline standing outside the deli she’d been shocked, but then came the relief, an overwhelming sense of it, that now Angeline was here, she could take over and Christina wouldn’t have to think for herself any more.
Wasn’t that how it had always been? Hadn’t she made such a mess of things when she tried otherwise?
Angeline comes down the stairs now, holding Cian by the hand.
‘Let’s go for a drive,’ she suggests, watching Christina carefully.
Christina tosses her hair. ‘Okay,’ she says as casually as she can.
It’s surreal to be sitting next to her stepmother in this huge American car, cruising down the street in the sun. They park and go into a small bookshop/café. It’s late now and they’re hungry again. They go out the back onto the deck, looking at the boats and seaplanes in the bay.
Was Luke down there, taking off, flying away from her, from everything he had started? She feels a surge of anger at him, at herself for letting it happen.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ Angeline asks.
She picks up on everything, Christina thinks, looking at her sharp, fine nose, her endless eyes.
‘What the hell do you think?’ she snaps. ‘How did you find me? How come you always have to ruin things?’
She’s behaving like a surly teenager, but Christine can’t control herself.
‘I guessed you would come here,’ she says, smiling her strange lopsided smile.
‘But how did you know this was where my mother lived?’
‘I’ve known for years, Christina,’ Angeline says, running her tongue over her lips, then looking quickly down at her plate of spaghetti.
‘What?’
All this time her stepmother has denied her this information. Christina wants to smack her, knock her on the ground, but she can’t. Cian’s here. She grips onto the sides of her chair, unable to eat, unable to speak.
‘Granny?’ Cian pipes up, chewing a large oatmeal cookie.
‘Yes, darling?’
‘Are you still my granny?’
‘Of course I am.’
‘Good.’ He stuffs the rest of the cookie in his mouth.
Angeline glances over towards Christina, then continues, picking up Cian’s sticky hands and flicking crumbs off them. ‘And we’re all going to go home together, tomorrow,’ she says.
‘Back to Ireland?’ Cian asks slowly.
‘Yes.’
‘But we never went to Luke’s island, we never went to see the whales,’ Cian whines.
‘Another time, Cian,’ Angeline says. He looks downcast for a moment and then, peering back inside the shop, he flits to a new subject. ‘Mammy, can I go inside and look at the books?’
‘Yes, sure. Just don’t go out the front of the shop.’ She gives him a squeeze and a peck on the cheek before he skips off, oblivious of the tension between the two women.
Angeline puts down her fork, pushes the unfinished food away and crosses her hands on her lap. Christina can’t help studying her face, how familiar it is, each contour, every line. Yet Angeline looks different here, younger maybe, without the backdrop of The Mill and Daddy.
‘Padraig Kennedy came round and told us everything.’
‘Oh.’
‘Yes, “oh”.’ She sounds like a schoolteacher, thinks Christina.
Angeline continues, ‘I couldn’t understand how you could have got hold of the money for the plane tickets. Well, then Padraig showed up explained it all. When he heard that you had snatched Cian and run off, his conscience obviously got the better of him.’
Christina gets up, walks over to the railings and looks down at the small sandy cove. Her stomach churns and she feels dizzy and confused.
Why is it that she’s always defending herself to Angeline? It was Angeline who should be explaining herself; it was she who should be sorry.
‘I know what you did.’ Christina turns around sharply, spitting the words out, eyeing Angeline.
‘What on earth do you mean?’Angeline asks wearily, staring back blankly.
‘I know that you drove her away.’
For once Angeline looks shocked, lost for words. ‘No, it wasn’t like that,’ she murmurs.
‘What did you do? Cast a spell on my father to make him want you and turn him against my mother?’
‘I never wanted her to go into that place,’ Angeline says quietly.
‘What place?’
‘St Finian’s. That wasn’t my idea, it was your father’s family. They put such pressure on him. In those days, people didn’t know what to do when something like that happened. That’s why they hid people away, because of the shame.’
Christina takes a step back and holds onto the railing. What is she talking about? ‘What are you telling me?’ she asks shakily.
‘That your mother never actually walked out on you, Christina.’ Angeline flicks her dark eyes towards her and then looks away. ‘She was put into a hospital, initially for a few weeks, but she never got better…and so, well, during that time your father and I got together. It’s no one’s fault what happened in the end.’
Her mother had been committed
. She had travelled all this way to accuse this poor woman of deserting her when it wasn’t even true.
Her throat is dry and she’s unable to speak. She shakes her head uselessly.
Angeline gets up and puts a cold hand on her arm. ‘And then she came to me. Your mother escaped from St Finian’s and arrived at the house one afternoon. I knew that Tomás’s family would have him lock her up again, so I helped her escape.’
‘I can’t believe Daddy would do that.’
‘Just because he’s your father, Christina, it doesn’t make him better than he is. Tomás honestly thought that Greta was unwell at that time. He brought her to the hospital because he believed it was the best thing to do. Your father is a simple man. He was completely overwhelmed by what happened to Greta. He tried to visit her at first, but he couldn’t cope with what he saw. She changed so much. So he shut down. Your father was afraid of the truth. He’s still afraid to look inside himself.’
‘So why did you stay?’ Christina turns viciously on her. ‘Why did you stick around with him all these years?’
‘For you,’ she says simply, looking deep into her eyes so that Christina knows it’s true.
Christina pulls away and looks out at the inlet, the azure sea and the small green mound of an island across the way. ‘Why does she have to be dead?’ She drags her hands through her hair. ‘I’ve travelled all this way, so that…so that I could finally stand before her and say I forgive you. That’s what I wanted to say.’
‘You never had to forgive Greta,’ Angeline says by her side. ‘It’s me you have to forgive.’
They look at the ocean together in silence. A seaplane is preparing for take-off and they watch the passengers board before it slowly taxis across the water, gradually picking up speed and lifting up into the sky. The air smells different here, thinks Christina. At home you can smell the earth, hide somewhere, create an enclave, but here everything is as open as the big sky, bright and exposed. It’s impossible to conceal her feelings.
She hears the patter of feet behind her on the deck. ‘Mammy!’
A Small Part of Me Page 28