Where the Edge Is

Home > Other > Where the Edge Is > Page 21
Where the Edge Is Page 21

by Gráinne Murphy


  ‘What has you so touchy?’ Annie paused, then came over and patted her hand. ‘Never mind, love. I used to be the same way when I got my monthlies. There’s always next month. You and Seán will be lucky yet.’

  Alina sighed. It was impossible. She was uncomprehending, immovable. More jelly than woman. What could a person do with that?

  * * *

  Lucy her name was, the survivor. The girl Alina had once watched across a crowded lecture theatre, surrounded by friends. It felt strange to know her name now, having never known it then. Alina showered and thought about her. Where she was, how she might feel. She dressed and wondered if Lucy was awake. If she, too, felt guilt. She looked in the mirror at her covered hair and wanted kinship.

  ‘Where are you going?’ Annie stood in the kitchen doorway, a rolling pin in one hand.

  Pointless to ask her what she was making. It would be apple tart or sponge cake or trifle, something to withstand the sticky weight of cream.

  ‘I need to fill a prescription,’ Alina lied. ‘They gave it to me yesterday and said to take the tablets if I felt stiff today.’

  ‘Leave it until later and Seán can go for you after work. Or I can run out, if you can’t manage the pain for an hour or so?’

  Alina shook her head. ‘It’s fine, thank you. Perhaps a slow walk will help with the stiffness.’

  She let the first bus go by before finding the courage to get on the next one. Once on, she ignored the free seats and stood in the space by the driver, holding the bar to stop her hands from shaking.

  Approaching the city, the bus drove along the quays. Alina watched the harbour water sparkle in the sunlight. Her father was fond of saying that the city was like Beirut. That, as port cities, both had their arms open to the world. His persistent belief in his original impressions had come to seem wilful. Ireland’s welcome no longer the great warmth he remembered, but a thin thing, with the air of having its patience tried by overuse.

  The bus stopped at the direct provision centre and Alina was up and out of the bus before she quite knew what she was doing. She stood a little way inside, between the gate and the barrier, watching people enter. Women with buggies, mostly. The occasional young man. The women looked her up and down, looked past her face to her shoes, bag, coat, and knew she was not one of them. Yet on the street outside, passers-by glanced only at her face, her covered hair, and looked away. They assumed she belonged here, she knew. Such liminality was why her father feared this place.

  When she got to the hospital gates, she could see the news vans parked near the Accident & Emergency entrance. She went the long way around, fearing questions, or – worse – a microphone in her face.

  There were many corridors and she lost her way several times, the stiffness worsening with every wrong turn. It wasn’t until she reached the half-empty waiting room that she realised her mistake. She had expected to find them all there together, as if waiting for her. Keeping a place that only she would fit. Instead, a tired woman bounced a toddler on her knee while an older child walked the perimeter of the room, kicking the leg of each chair as he passed. For a moment it seemed like he might kick her too as he crossed the doorway, but he settled for curling his lip at her until she took an obedient step backwards. If they had a child, she and Seán, who was to say he might not turn out like this? Sullen and destructive, despite the efforts, all the love and good intentions. This mother, after all, looked nothing worse than tired.

  The arrival of a nurse asking if she had signed in at reception sent her back the opposite direction. She pushed through sets of double doors until she found herself in a quiet corridor, where a sign told her that the eye clinic was closed for the day. She sat on the chair furthest from the door and read the posters on the walls, urging her to contact her doctor if she had dizziness, blurred vision, black spots, as she might have glaucoma, cataracts, retinitis, dry eye. She could have all of these things. The longer she sat, the surer it seemed.

  Were there such diseases back home, when she was a child in Lebanon? Her memories were few, more stories than things remembered. The limits of what she could and could not ask as clearly prescribed as if they were written in their hallway. She didn’t remember the fetishisation of doctors and hospitals. Blood, in certain volumes, meant the doctor. The hospital only if it became unfeasible to deal with it at home. Every woman could stitch a wound, in a pinch. ‘It is not so different from a button,’ her mother told her, while they waited for the freezing spray to kick in. ‘Keep your hand higher than your heart, my love, that will slow the bleeding.’ Alina, sitting on the kitchen worktop with a gash on the back of her hand, was less certain. Yet, looking at her hand in the harsh overhead strip lights of the hospital corridor, her mother was proved right. The scar was hardly noticeable, a child sitting on her lap might not even remark on it. Not too many years from now it would be covered by wrinkles as she shrank inside her own skin. Unbidden, the thought came: five of her fellow passengers would never have that chance.

  ‘I never said you shouldn’t be here.’

  Alina stiffened before realising that the man’s voice wasn’t speaking to her but, instead, came from around the corner.

  ‘You were always a terrible liar,’ a woman’s said.

  Her voice was familiar, but Alina couldn’t quite place it. Perhaps it was someone from work. It was difficult to know whether to stay where she was or risk the noise that leaving would make.

  ‘I worry about you, that’s all.’

  ‘It’s a little late for that, Tim, don’t you think? You weren’t long clearing out when I needed you.’

  ‘That’s hardly fair, Nina. I was grieving too.’

  That was how Alina knew the voice. It was Nina, the woman who interviewed her yesterday. She really should leave. Even though they made no effort to keep their voices low, it was evident they believed themselves alone.

  ‘It was hard to tell from the outside. That’s where you kept me, you know. On the outside. I had my family on one side pretending nothing had happened, and you on the other side pretending we could just go on as if nothing had happened—’

  ‘Just stop. You can’t possibly actually believe this and I can’t listen to it. I just can’t.’

  ‘That’s right. Walk away. You’re good at that.’

  Alina froze where she was. Half-standing, half-sitting, poised in indecision, while the footsteps moved and a distant door swished first open, then closed. In the sudden silence, she heard the hitch and sniff of silent tears. The kind she used to cry in the school toilets at lunchtime. There was no lonelier feeling than trying to keep your tears to yourself.

  She walked around the corner and saw Nina. ‘Here.’ She held out the tissue packet, one already neatly slid out, waiting.

  ‘Thank you.’ Nina took it and wiped her eyes. ‘Alina, isn’t it?’

  Alina nodded and sat down beside her.

  ‘I don’t suppose there’s any point in pretending I was just reading this?’ Nina reached into her bag and pulled out a book.

  Alina looked at the mournful dog on the cover. If refugees were dogs, they would all find homes.

  ‘I was sitting in the corridor for the last few minutes,’ Alina said apologetically.

  ‘Shit.’ Nina blew her nose again. ‘Thank you for not asking if I’m all right.’

  ‘It seemed to answer itself,’ Alina said.

  To her surprise, Nina laughed.

  ‘True. That doesn’t stop other people from asking though. There are days I swear if I hear it once more, I’ll scream.’

  ‘People are funny about things like that,’ Alina said carefully. ‘They ask questions they don’t want the answer to. So much of politeness is lies.’

  ‘Lies, damned lies and politeness. We’re all brought up to believe that not upsetting the apple cart is the pinnacle of achievement in life. Leave the world as you found it, not a mark made nor a feather ruffled.’ She began to cry again. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t usually cry like this over… things. I don�
��t know what’s wrong with me today.’

  ‘When my father died,’ Alina said, ‘I didn’t cry for a long time. My husband and his mother didn’t understand. I could see them watching me, as if they were not satisfied until I wept.’ She shrugged. ‘Tears are a crude measurement of grief.’

  ‘Everyone says it feels better to let it out,’ Nina agreed. ‘But, if anything, it just makes me feel heavier.’

  ‘My father used to say that fighting difficult feelings was wasted effort. Like trying to raise a kite on a still day,’ Alina said.

  They laughed together, before Nina said, in a rush, ‘I feel I should apologise. My… Someone said I manipulated you in that interview.’

  Alina’s laugh was bitter. ‘That is the safer option. That my words had no meaning because I did not know what I was saying.’

  ‘I’m sorry if—’

  Alina shook her head. ‘My husband said something similar. It’s because people are frightened.’

  ‘If the public reaction—’

  ‘The public.’ Alina waved her hand as if to shoo them away. ‘Who are the public to say the shape my belief should take?’

  ‘Just because other people have an issue with it doesn’t mean you have to change who you are,’ Nina said.

  Alina sighed. People who persisted in their naïve idealism were somehow worse than the overtly hostile. ‘When we first moved here, my mother was young and beautiful. Then she began to eat. I always assumed she ate for comfort, because she was homesick or lonely. Or because she liked to eat, I don’t know. Now I can see that she eats to make herself invisible. People are happier to see her as simply one thing: fat. It makes their reality easier.’

  ‘Reality can be untrustworthy,’ Nina agreed.

  ‘What do you do when you have done everything you can and still it is not enough?’

  ‘I would say you should drink, but is that even…?’ Nina gestured at Alina’s veil.

  They were still laughing when the door opened again. A heavily made-up woman looked at them with disapproval. ‘I was looking for the toilets.’

  ‘They’re just through the double doors there,’ Nina pointed, but the woman made no move to follow her directions.

  ‘Isn’t it well for you to have so little to worry about that you can sit around reading and giggling. And don’t think I don’t know who you are.’ She pointed at Alina. ‘What business have you back here, come to see your handiwork, is it? To see the wrecks of people you left after you?’

  Alina felt rage surge in her throat. ‘Actually, Madam,’ she said, careful to keep her voice even, ‘we were simply discussing this week’s book-club choice.’ She held up Nina’s book, her hand steady and satisfying.

  ‘Shame on you both,’ the woman hissed and stalked away in a series of indignant clicks.

  ‘Her daughter survived,’ Nina told Alina, when the woman was out of earshot.

  ‘Gratitude would serve her better than rudeness, in that case,’ Alina said. She heard her own mother in her words.

  ‘You said something before,’ Nina said. ‘That we invite the things that happen to us.’

  ‘It was something my father used to say. These things happen, Alina, because we make them so. He meant good luck, friendships. He believed that positivity could overcome everything.’

  ‘Is that what you believe too?’

  ‘I believe…’ Alina stopped. ‘Nothing is as simple as my father wanted it to be. We can’t assume that in the worlds of our actions only the good remains while the bad vanishes as if it never was. When I lose my way, I can only trust that Allah knows the way for us both.’

  ‘Does it comfort you to believe that?’ On seeing Alina’s look, Nina continued, ‘I’m interested, truly. My husband – ex-husband, the man that just left – he believes that God has a plan. That our daughter… That things happen for a reason. I don’t know if I pity him or envy him.’

  ‘My husband cannot understand why I don’t yearn for “my homeland”, as he calls it. Marriage is a strange thing. Nobody can understand what the world is like for another.’

  Nina nodded. ‘You know, when Plutarch’s child died, he told his wife to be careful not to show too much grief. You must fight against the incontinence of your soul, he told her.’

  ‘The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain,’ Alina said, remembering. ‘Khalil Gibran. My father used to tell me that whenever I struggled.’ She sighed. ‘And so all families fail each other.’

  ‘That’s a pretty lonely statement.’

  Alina stood. ‘It is a lonely world.’

  Outside, she left the bus stop behind her and walked until she found a pharmacy.

  * * *

  When the front door opened and her mother stepped through, Alina rushed to her arms as if it had been years instead of weeks. Mai held her for a long time, her lips moving in prayer, warm on Alina’s ears.

  ‘Mrs Haddad,’ Seán’s mother came out of the kitchen, her hand extended.

  ‘Mai,’ Alina’s mother said, as she always did. ‘Call me Mai, please, Mrs O’Reilly.’

  ‘Well,’ Annie said, and gestured them into the front room.

  ‘Was the traffic bad?’ Annie asked Seán as they settled themselves into chairs and onto sofas.

  ‘Not too bad,’ he conceded. ‘It’s early yet though.’

  ‘You’re the right end of the city for coming out here, of course. Lovely area, but just that bit too built up for me, Mrs Haddad. How long would it take you to get into the city centre, now?’ Annie demanded.

  ‘Perhaps fifteen minutes,’ Mai said. She did not add that she no longer went into the city.

  ‘That would be on a good morning though, I’d say,’ Annie said. ‘But if you had a run of traffic lights against you?’

  Alina’s mother conceded that, under certain circumstances, it could take up to half an hour on the bus.

  ‘No,’ Annie shook her head. ‘Give me a little town like ours any day. Everything within five or ten minutes. That’s the only way to live.’

  It used to amuse Alina, the Irish obsession with timing every activity. Entire conversations were based on how long everything took, how much time the business of living took from life itself. As if the cure for cancer might have been found had the commute been slightly shorter.

  ‘Too far entirely,’ Annie repeated.

  It was an interminable afternoon, full of simmering politeness. One moment, Alina wanted to scream and hurl obscenities, the next, she found herself wanting to take the hand of each woman – each widowed woman – and say, look how much you already share. Look! This, here, now, is family.

  Over it all was a longing for Annie and – guiltily – Seán to leave so that she could talk to her mother, really talk to her. Instead, they were solicitous, jumping in with details she had forgotten, telling her story for her. In the end, she sat back and left them to their imaginings of what might have happened. Annie’s earlier dismissal of the danger had been overtaken, it seemed, by more interesting angles.

  ‘You should get checked out, you know, Alina love,’ Annie said, rounding on her as if she had spoken out of turn.

  ‘The hospital was very thorough,’ Alina said, confused. Surely Annie knew she had been there for many hours, many tests.

  ‘I don’t mean that. I mean… you know.’ Annie jerked her head and winked, and it took Alina a moment to realise what she meant.

  ‘Oh! No. No, there’s no need. Everything’s fine,’ she said, flushing.

  ‘Still. To be on the safe side. There’s no one getting any younger.’

  ‘Mother.’ Seán shook his head and pantomimed zipping his lips closed.

  ‘For heaven’s sake, why tippy-toe around it? We’re all family here. I’m sure your mother is as keen as myself to have a little one to dandle on her knee and spoil.’ She winked at Mai. ‘Am I right, Mrs… Mai?’

  ‘All things in their own time,’ Mai said.

  Had they been alone, she would have said Insha
llah, Alina knew. Her gentle mother, living her censored life.

  ‘Lebanese grandparents don’t view their grandchildren as something to spoil,’ Alina said. ‘Their role is more important than that.’

  ‘Nothing could be more important than grandparents,’ Annie agreed.

  Had she deliberately misunderstood or was this more of the careful obtuseness that Seán cultivated, patting around the edges until she fit into a neat, subdued package? If they had children, she would ask her mother to speak to them in her own tongue. There would finally be honesty.

  ‘I don’t think—’ she began.

  ‘Alina, I have some things for you,’ her mother cut across her. ‘Is my bag—?’

  ‘In the spare room, Mai,’ Seán said.

  ‘How long is she staying?’ Alina heard Annie say in an undertone as she left the room with her mother.

  ‘Alina needs her mother,’ she heard Seán reply, and was torn between love and rage at his failure to anger on her behalf.

  Alina followed the slow width of her mother’s hips down the hallway. The smell of boiling cabbage and roasting lamb fat came from the kitchen. Annie would expect gratitude for this dinner that Mai would praise and yet be unable to eat. Every time, this same dance. She was so weary. If she sat, she might never again stand.

  ‘I think I need some air,’ she said to her mother. ‘Do you want to come for a walk?’

  As they walked, they talked about the small things of interest. A neighbour building an extension. The failed marriage of an unremembered cousin. The street was peaceful in the early evening and Alina felt the tension seep from her feet, to be left behind on the footpath. Would it be washed away by the rain or evaporate in the sun? Perhaps the next person to pass would pick it up and carry it for a while, unsure where their sudden anxiety had come from.

  For now, though, the winter sun was angled low in the sky, winking brightly around the corners of buildings and through bare branches of the ash trees, bringing the sensation of air and freedom. Her father used to say that the Irish ash was like the cedars of Lebanon, their place carved in the stories of the land. That was his gift, to see a hybrid world where none existed.

 

‹ Prev