It had happened to all of Maureen's sons as well, it was history repeating, she had watched them leave one after the other, until only Fionnuala was left at home in Derry, their hometown on the River Foyle. It was sad, but although all Maureen's sons had gone and her grandchildren seemed to be following suit, ah, at least they still had Lorcan... Maureen flipped another page. A Paris Hilton DUI. Her eyelids drooped and she nodded off.
“...ye mean the Proddy-loving slapper shacked up in the Waterside with her Orange fancy man? That Dymphna one?”
Maureen stirred.
“Would ye shut yer bake, you!” hissed someone else. “Her granny be's sitting right there!”
“Och, she's nodded off, and the aul one kyanny hear a thing anyroad. She's a problem with her ears, always needing em to be syringed down the Health Center. And with that dryer on her head and all, she kyanny make out a word we say, so she kyanny.”
Maureen let a fake snore exit her lips, fleshly-syringed ears atwitter.
“C'mere, wasn't they meant to be tying the knot? The Proddy bastard and the tart?”
“Aye, Saturday next, so I've heard.”
“Terrible shame what's happened, don't youse think?”
“Aye, young love dashed and all that. And I've heard...” this one lowered her voice, but Maureen still heard, “she was up the duff. Again. And the good Lord alone knows who the father of them other two wanes might be.”
“Disgraceful!”
“Shocking!”
“Molly said Mrs. McDaid told her the lass's mother, that Fionnuala one, paid her a visit and told her, that's Mrs. McDaid, they'd taken the wane's body to be done up at the undertaker's. Tommy Murphy's wee brother's place.”
“A hard-faced bitch, that Fionnuala. A drop of her piss would burn through metal. Chased her sister-in-law Ursula off to the States after her lotto win. Wanted it all for herself.”
“Ye mean that undertaker's down Shipquay Street?”
“That's the one, aye.”
“We took wer Jacintha there last fall when she succumbed to the AIDS. A lovely job they do, make them what's passed on look like they was still living. We weren't gonny have an open casket, but when we seen the lovely job they did on her, the mascara and rouge and even some glitter, well...if yer woman had looked like that when she was living, she would've maybe nabbed herself a fella. And put an end to them stories about her being a lesbo perv, one of them beanflickers. Shoulda sent her there earlier, like. All the family said so. And their rates be's wile reasonable. But, c'mere, how did that Dymphna one pass on? It was terrible sudden, was it not? She couldn't have been more than twenty! And her popping out the wanes like that like having wanes was going out of style. With her gone, the birthrate in Derry's sure to plummet.”
“Are youse sure about this? Where've youse heard it from, I'd like to know.”
“Well, Mrs. McDaid was sitting next to me, so she was, in for her wash and set, and for a new rinse and all, if I'm not mistaken, and she said that Fionnuala one was spreading it all about town that it was her boys that caused that Dymphna one's death. And did ye know that Mrs. McDaid's off to Florida? She said so. The day after tomorrow. With her lads in tow and all.”
“A drugs overdose, it musta been, then. Ye know what Mrs. McDaid's lads be's up to. Pushing them filthy E's to all and sundry. Me niece was always a regular client. Tried to beat the desire outta her, it was useless, but. Been in and out of rehab more often than I've had hot dinners.”
“Why does Mrs. Heggarty be sitting there like that, but? She swanned in here, well, not exactly brimming with the joys of spring, ye know the likes of that sour look always plastered on her face, but she came in like she's not a care in the world!”
“Getting her hair done for the funeral, do ye think?”
Maureen came to sudden life under the dryer. They screamed as one. She ripped the helmet from her fluffy locks. She hauled herself forward on her cane and towered over them. Her pink plastic cape fluttered. She waved her cane. They cringed over the empty teacups.
“What's this youse are saying? Me granddaughter's gone and died of a drugs overdose?”
“Did ye not know?”
Molly hurried over, nibbling her lower lip. She placed a hand on Maureen's shoulder.
“Mrs. Heggarty—”
Maureen shoved the hand away.
“Don't ye Mrs. Heggarty me! Just tell me what youse've heard!”
Seamus looked up, alarmed, and wobbled over on his baby giraffe six-year-old legs. Now Maureen understood the looks they had given her when she had walked in, Molly and the trainee and the stylists and those clients who were in the know unable to meet her eye, weird ear-to-ear grins stretching their faces.
“Granny! Granny!” Seamus whimpered, grabbing hold of her cane for support as he usually did. Maureen almost toppled into their tin foiled heads.
“Get offa me cane, wane!” she snapped. She steadied herself, thrust him off and pointed a knobby finger at the faces trembling around her.
“Shame on youse for not letting me know! Or at least for not offering yer condolences! Ye could've had the decency to!”
“But it's wile terrible—” Molly began.
“Shocking!”
“Disgraceful!”
“We wouldn't have known what to say.”
Maureen sputtered and gasped her rage, grief and shock.
“If it's any consolation,” Molly continued, “I was gonny give ye yer wash and set on the house. Ye would've realized then me thoughts are with ye and yers.”
“Och, go on away and shite, you!” Maureen barked. She grabbed Seamus and dragged him through the trail of hair clippings toward the door. She paused to snatch her handbag and duffel coat from the hooks on the wall. She fought back a torrent of tears. “Heartless, youse are! Using me poor wee granddaughter as fodder for yer mindless gossip!”
“What's wrong, Granny?” Seamus whimpered behind her as she struggled to make her way down the steep concrete staircase.
“Nothing!” Maureen wailed, the neurons of her brain aflame. It was Fionnuala's job to explain death to her children.
Seamus cried in fear, Maureen cried in grief. Her left claw clutched the wall for support, each thrust of her cane down the steps a danger that might send her tumbling down the stairs to join her granddaughter in the cemetery.
She turned when she reached the bottom. Seamus was crawling down the stairs backwards.
“Och, for the love of God, wane. Hurry yerself up.” She tapped her cane impatiently. “Ye're six years of age, so ye are. Can ye not walk like a normal wane?”
Fionnuala thought Seamus suffered from developmental issues both mental and physical, “a flimmin spastic of the mind and body,” were her exact words, and Maureen had always chided her for that. Maureen had always given Seamus the patience he needed. Now, but...
The moment he reached the bottom, Maureen flung him out onto the street and the rain.
“We've to find a phone, wane.”
Her mind raced. Paddy was at work, Fionnuala was...where? She had heard one of the women say Fionnuala had taken Dymphna's body to the undertakers. How could that be? Why wouldn't they have told Maureen? She needed to know.
Fionnuala had one of those mobile phones, but Maureen had never seen the sense of them. She saw the sense of them now. There was a payphone booth next to the butcher's, but through her tears she saw wires hanging where a receiver should have been. A teen passed her, ashes on his forehead under the hoodie.
“Could ye give me a lend of yer phone?” Maureen begged. Teens always had them.
“Feck off, gran.”
Seamus wailed as Maureen roared abuse at the teen's back. She hobbled over the cobblestones in the pelting rain, Seamus teetering behind, past the Top-Yer-Trolly, past the Kebabalicious where Dymphna used to work..and then it hit Maureen. The chip van! Dymphna should be working there. Dymphna was the lone employee, as far as Maureen knew. If she were dead, it would be closed. Maureen rounded the corner.
Her cane clacked down the alley between the Guildhall and the post office towards where the van was usually parked.
A sense of loss gripped her. She thought back to her granddaughter, knew Dymphna was supposed to be a town disgrace and scandal, the infants popping out of her with murderous regularity, and an impending wedding to a Protestant, of all things! Maureen knew Fionnuala hated Dymphna, but Maureen loved the girl's spunk, her kindness, her red curls... Maureen grieved with every tortured step, her heart racing.
When she saw the hatch of the chip van open, Mrs. Mulholland at the counter—Maureen knew her rain cap—her heart was gripped with hope. It was only malicious gossip after all. She quickened the thrusts of her cane over the cobbles. But when she saw the wee boy Rory, Dymphna's beau, behind the counter, the tears streaming down his face, a high pitched wail of grief escaped her. It must be true. Not one for speaking to Protestants if it could be avoided, though she really didn't mind them as such, she turned. Seamus banged into her knees.
“C'mon, wane, we've to get the mini-bus home,” she said through her sobs. She hobbled back the way she had come to the bus stop, Seamus wobbling behind. She paused at the mail box to click open her handbag, She rummaged through it, first to ensure nobody had stolen anything while it had been hanging on the hook at the salon, then to find her heart pills. The trauma was causing it to beat in strange ways. She gulped down a few, then continued on her way. She realized when she passed the public toilets she was still wearing the pink cape under her coat.
“What's them tablets for, Granny?” Seamus asked.
“Them tablets is for to keep me alive, wane. Leave me cane be!”
“Wh—why've I not got tablets to keep me alive and all? Doesn't ye and me mammy want to keep me alive?” His lower lip trembled.
“Ye've got yer food for to keep ye alive. Calm yerself down. I've other troubles at the moment. And leave me handbag be and all. Walk on yer own two feet!”
“Food?”
“Aye. And drink.”
“Food and drink keeps me alive?”
“Aye. And oxygen and all. Breathing it in, like. Quit questioning me, wane!”
“Do ye not eat and drink, then, granny? But I've seen ye, like.”
“Aye, I do. Leave me cane be, I've told ye!”
“But—”
“Och, give me head peace, wane!” Maureen finally snapped as they reached the bus stop. “I haven't the time to explain it to ye now. And I've told ye to leave me cane and handbag in peace! Ye want me toppling onto the cobblestones? Ye mind it happened last month, and I had to walk around town with plasters on me forehead for a week!”
A week of people everywhere she went—at the bingo, the health clinic, Xpressions, staring at the Band-Aids instead of her eyes. The bus pulled up. There was a pneumatic whoosh, and they boarded.
When they got home, the house was draped in silence. And with the amount of beings trapped in life under that roof, silence was almost unheard of. But Maureen tried to think rationally. She knew Paddy and Lorcan were at the fish packing plant, Siofra and Padraig would maybe be at some after-school activity, Eoin was in Florida, and Moira was in Malta. And Dymphna was dead. Only Fionnuala was unaccounted for. The house was empty, as it should be at this time, but a feeling of disquiet crept up the spine of Maureen's velor tracksuit. She shivered. It was as if someone were walking over her grave. Perhaps Dymphna.
Seamus ran upstairs to cry. Maybe she had been too harsh on the poor demented thing, but she was under a lot of strain. The pills were helping, though. She'd give him some sweeties later for losing her temper with him. Some Jelly Babies. They were his favorites. She clacked her cane into the empty sitting room. She tensed. Could she smell Dymphna?
Was there the scent of her in the dusty air of the room? There was a perfume she always wore, something cheap and brash, sweet and sickly, with a hint of citrus and strawberries. Maureen sniffed like a bloodhound on a hunt, then shook her head. She was going insane. The trauma of her granddaughter's untimely death was affecting her.
She padded out of the sitting room, into the hall and onto the linoleum of the kitchen. She hobbled past the kitchen table with its rocks and paints for Fionnuala's latest 'project' for the Amelia Earhart Interactive Center. Then, through the grease streaks and hand prints of the window, the part that wasn't taped over with cardboard, her eyes clamped upon a sight that caused her to clutch her brittle breast in fear. Tentacles of terror coursed through her veins. Cold sweat trickled down the wrinkles of her forehead. She removed her red-framed glasses with a trembling finger and wiped the lenses with a dirty dishtowel. She peered through the window again. Her eyes saucered behind the lenses. She gasped, her breath short. She fought to shove it into her lungs as she struggled to comprehend what she was seeing.
A being, an otherworldly creature was leaping through the rain in the back garden. It was draped in a flowing white robe, half forest-nymph, half heavenly angel, face eerily pale, sunken eyes, like sucked gobstoppers, red curls bouncing through the air. Maureen made the sign of the cross, her head spinning. The dizziness had her head on the verge of toppling into the sink. One part of her brain bemoaned the fact the last thing she would gaze upon before the heart failure killed her was a mountain of fish sauce-encrusted plates and a serving spoon with mushy peas clinging to it.
“Heavenly Father, protect me,” she moaned, lips trembling, fear and wonder coursing through her veins, heart pounding against her breastbone. Was the creature wicked or benign? She clutched her crucifix, then grappled her chest as a ton of invisible weight seemed to crush it.
She bit her trembling fist as the weight shoved down on her chest. She was vaguely aware of thinking she detected the flutter of wings from the creature's shoulder blades as pranced in the ether of this mortal coil, not a care in the world. Maureen wondered if she was about to join it, if she should wave her crucifix at the, the...she had to say it to her brain—
The ghost of Dymphna! Descending straight from the pearly gates, or sideways from limbo?, to haunt them all! She clutched her undulating chest, labored pants escaping her mouth as she understood it all now. This was how her life would end. Her granddaughter's ghost had come to take Maureen Heggarty to meet her heavenly maker.
CHAPTER NINE
Father and son sat in a darkened corner of the Rocking Seamaid. Lorcan had been hauled into the industrial showers for a thorough sanitizing before his trip to the office, but even so, Paddy had difficulty keeping the lager down his throat, so overpowering was the stench still. He sat as far as he could from his son, but as close as possible so that they could talk.
“They've docked me wages, Da,” Lorcan moaned, running fingers through hair that seemed strangely stiff and had a greenish sheen, “and I've to work overtime, and they're not paying me a penny for all the extra work. And they've given me a written warning about drinking on the job and all. I've heard that skegrat git Brian's threatening to press charges. He threw the first punch, but. I swear to the Holy Father. I did nothing but defend meself after he accused me of wanting to shag the knickers offa that Sinead one. What if he does go to the Filth? They'll bang me up again, me being out on probation as I am. It's his own fault he had to get hauled off to Altnagelvin to get his jaw wired. Would've done worse to him, but, if I hadn't slipped and fallen over the edge of the catwalk.”
A second of pride was replaced with despair.
“Och, Da, I kyanny take this no more. Even before this, ye heard me this morning, I've been thinking of fecking away off from Derry. From the whole country.”
“Catch yerself on, son. Ye know as well as I do that that Brian'll never go to the Filth. A grass, he'd be branded, and hated more than we are round the neighborhood.”
“That be's but faint comfort to me Da. I'm away off outta here. There's no life for me in this godforsaken city no more. ”
Paddy guzzled from his pint, his eyes stricken over the rim of the pint glass.
“But yer brother Eoin's just gone and left. Ye he
ard yer mammy's sobs when he fecked off to the States. And this after yer sister Moira ran off to Malta. Even wer Dymphna has fled the family home...into the house of Proddy bastards!”
“I know. Ye know yerself, but, that wanes the day don't stay long in this town. Aye, a few years ago we was rolling in the dosh and it made sense to stay. Now, but...” He stared at a coaster. “I know them passports with the Yank visas be's terrible dear, but maybe I can gather the funds together for to get one.”
“Ye'll break yer mammy's heart, but.” Paddy was alarmed. “Surely ye must know ye're her favorite, son.”
Paddy had seen the lists. Fionnuala sat on the sofa in the front room every third Sunday of the month when she got home from mass, a cup of tea at one side, a bar of chocolate on the other, Songs of Praise playing on the telly before her, and comprised a list in a little notebook with a pencil of who her favorite children were. Similar to the pop charts, some of the seven children climbed up the charts, and some moved down. It had been years, and Paddy was thankful for it, since there had been a new entry on Fionnuala's charts. Six years, to be precise (that's how old the youngest, Seamus was, and he had debuted at number one). But the all-time bestseller was golden boy Lorcan. Paddy knew how Fionnuala saw him: her handsome, charming, strapping lad with shiny-black locks and piercing blue eyes and a heart of gold, virile and able to sire a litter of grandchildren, hopefully grandsons, if not for her pleasure—she didn't seem to like children much—at least for her pride..
Paddy's brain cells trundled to think of something that might coerce Lorcan to stay.
“You know it's true...everything I do...” warbled Bryan Adams from the jukebox.
Like one of Pavlov's dogs salivating to the sound of a bell, the song instinctively made Paddy tense. He felt sudden revulsion, and this time it wasn't Lorcan's smell.
His brain couldn't erase the dark days of radio broadcasts in the early 90's, when “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You” blared non-stop in the background of his life, in the factory, during the pub quizzes, dart tournaments, at the bookies and the off-licenses, in the supermarket, though he rarely ventured there; shopping was left to the women, and it wasn't because Paddy had no desire to be a New Man, but because that was the way it was.
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