Our eyelids flicker, like a song that wants to keep playing through the skips. Our cheeks radiate. Waiting for the words that should have come—the gentle carrying out and away as a stork lifts an infant: Notice the feeling of your clothes against your skin; turn your attention to the sounds of your environment; only when you are ready to leave this peaceful place, the awareness of your surroundings increases; as you reawaken, as you wiggle your fingers and toes, keep with you the feeling of calm and relaxation. She hasn’t said this. But we fill it in. We open our eyes just a sliver, to see if those words will come. If her mouth is moving. If her wreathed teeth show. She has led us to such places before, toward the bonfire for getting rid of things. But she’d walked us away, after. She’d led us very far away. Slow and sure, she ushered us, until we no longer tasted smoke.
Miss? Tara says.
Liam, Miss Lynch says. You may go first. You mustn’t lie to your friends or to yourself.
Liam frowns, glances at Tara. He does not yet individually understand, but we can help. She wants you to say what you found. Liam doesn’t speak—not since. He writes things down. Our parents lose their minds over him. A sturdy, capable young man, voluntarily mute. Miss Lynch says it’s a means of differentiating what needs to be said from what doesn’t. She says it engenders something in him but we can’t remember what because part of the lesson was the word “to engender.” While we wait on Liam’s report, Miss Lynch lingers over each of us, watching for alteration—signs of our brains doing the heart’s work. We don’t like having to tell her what we found with fifth class within earshot. But it’s our last day and we know how we could hurt her by withholding. She is angling for a part in the rest of our lives. Beyond this room. Liam scratches dry skin from his jellyfish-stung arms. He washes in the sea when there’s no rain because the Heffernans only have a water tank. This distresses Miss Lynch. Tara calls for attention again, pointing at Declan, who’s begun to go a bit wan. Leave him be. We scowl at fifth. The loud rain makes the room sound like a tent.
Tara, says Miss Lynch. Did you find a microphone, by chance? Or a mirror? Tara lifts her pointy chin. Refocuses. No. It doesn’t matter. Make no mistake, Tara, your deepest concerns matter. But there’s a reason I’m not asking you first. I know you understand. Miss Lynch’s closed lips stretched across her teeth resemble knuckles. We’ve seen how neatly her index finger goes there, in the philtrum nook. Key to lock.
Liam wrote down what he found and the note is traveling the tables. Miss Lynch carries a chair to sit among us. After soberly considering the note, we hear her swallow. Bunged guttering after a downpour. A roll of them? She asks Liam: How big of a roll? Did you unspool it and count how many cards there were?
No. This big. He makes the sign O. Smaller than a clam, bigger than a cockle.
What sort of cards come in a roll, we wonder. When it became clear he’d found scratchy cards, we were more buoyed than envious, because Liam deserves good things and because of what worse things it could have been and wasn’t. We didn’t understand Miss Lynch’s expression. She seemed to be searching the note for something plain and ordinary. A naggin. A fillet knife. We suddenly recall her telling us: Being fortunate is not the same as being lucky. Good fortune has to do with providence, but luck is a fluke. Is luck a sin, then? We hadn’t braved asking. Are we better off with no chance at all?
Miss Lynch is making us nervous with the intensity of her focus. If it was a boat’s radar, it would be too narrow and she’d thump rocks. She explains that one card represents one year of his life. One for every year. This line reminds us of the Seamus Heaney poem she taught us, where the brother (who is Seamus because poems are real) finds out while he’s at school that his small brother’s dead and when he gets home there’s a four-foot box, a foot for every year. “To toll” had been part of the lesson. And how a hyphen is not the same as a dash. Our school has no bell though. Our church has no bell either. But before dinner at home we dip our heads and move our lips saying Hail Mary for the four-foot box and the boy in it. That’s what we pray for. Providence. We try not to think of worms, but it’s hard. But Liam’s healthy as can be. If he’ll only live as many years as there are scratchy cards, then he probably misjudged the size of the roll. One or two of us look across at him and smile. Let him see a small bit of our envy. It’s nice to feel you have something that others don’t and we want to let Liam have that because it’s our last day and we might not get a chance again if he heads to the noisy quarry where there’s no use for a voice. Gestures will do. We’ll run along the limestone lip and wave.
Miss Lynch wipes her nose with her mustard corduroy sleeve that was definitely once a pant leg. There are sobbing sounds in fifth and the high pitch of voices competing with reason. We get hung up on a word she said—“portent” (without the “im-”)—and miss the conclusion. Shannon’s turn goes quick because she found nothing in the box and even though no one says it we imagine her running her fingers all around the box to see is there a small diamond she missed and then we’re skittering again and Shannon doesn’t give two shites but Miss Lynch looks a bit mauled and then we feel sick because we don’t take this lightly.
Someone robbed you of it, Miss Lynch tells Shannon. Someone took it from you, and you may know who and when. She lowers her voice. How dreadful.
Shannon stops smiling and the blush drains. She holds Miss Lynch’s gaze, turning her head slowly so that she’s offering Miss Lynch her freckled cheek. Ever since Shannon found Miss Lynch taking the shortcut to the beach, facing off with a bull too far down the field to turn back, they’ve been bonded. A calf wobbling around behind the bull. Shannon gave instructions in a booming voice as she hopped the fence to help Miss Lynch out-bravado the animals. No, says Shannon. No one stole enthin belongin to me. There’s no clock on the wall and none of us has a watch. Call it a minute before Miss Lynch says, levelly:
If you say so.
I say so.
And we’re not sure if we want her to be so clipped with Miss Lynch. Anyone can see whatever Shannon’s missing she’ll live without. What was taken might be so worthless she’d never have noticed it gone. Like the dead ends Tara’ll sweep off the floor of A Cut Above. Like taking clothes in off the line at the first lick of rain and putting out the ashes. Doesn’t she want Miss Lynch to say what it is, for the knowledge of it? The advice she’s doling out as a leaving gift.
Shannon’s defenses are up, Miss Lynch says, looking at each of us in turn. As is often the way of the burgled—
Shannon bunches her hands on the table and Tara twirls her friendship bracelets made of catgut as though she’s winding a watch. She blurts out: I found a camera!
We all beam at Tara. But Miss Lynch isn’t done with Shannon—she can’t send her out to the world unadmittedly burgled. Look at me! Miss Lynch says. I’d know! She wears a scooped smile, which she holds out like a bowl…then drops. But not in here, with you. There’s no call for defenses. When each of you walks out that door, you’ll start to stockpile defenses. It’ll be your main concern. Gather gather gather. You’ll hoard them. Cars. Coats. Drugs. Tattoos. Gold claddagh rings. Perfumes. All shapes and sizes. But don’t let them fool you into feeling safe. They’re worth nothing. Nothing and no one can protect you. That fact is the only defense worth grasping.
The wild garlic stench from the bunch in the sink is giving us headaches. We want to tolerate it, but a break would help…If there’s to be no break, it feels like home time should be soon. Someone in fifth pipes up about Declan. He’s asleep and should they wake him. Miss Lynch goes to inspect the hand for congealing. She looks into the blue plastic bucket and tips it to see how much blood is pooled in the bottom. A castle turret’s worth. Evidently the bandage wasn’t tight enough, so she redoes it and Declan wakes, whining, and Miss Lynch says fixing the bandage will sting but she’ll phone his mummy to come and get him when it’s done, and Would you like a lolly to pep you up a bit? Bríon
a gets a lolly from the cupboard and we all salivate at the pastel yellow-pink sherbet. When Miss Lynch is done with the hand and the phone call, she returns, asking Tara: What sort of camera? And was the lens facing down or up?
Immensely relieved about Declan, Tara tells us it was a disposable camera, lens down, that had been all used up—she’d checked by trying to roll the little wheel thing for new film.
Do you think it means I’ll be a photographer?
Do you want to be a photographer?
The rain slants across the window behind, carrying a wet wind in it, as Tara thinks. There’s only so much you can photograph drenched. I want to work at Google.
Miss Lynch looks to be sucking on something bitter since she gave Declan the lolly. He’s zonked out on his desk and the blood bucket was emptied into the sink on top of the garlic and the wasp paste: a good basis for some potion. His-mother-is-coming-for-him-and-he’ll-get-looked-after is the wrong message to send us away with. That is why Miss Lynch says what she says.
There is an undeveloped film inside that camera, Tara, and you won’t ever see the photographs. You’ll live with the vague sense of what’s there—the latent rumor—but it won’t ever clarify from the negative into a less-fogged image. Miss Lynch is trembling with energy and fifth class have stopped talking record-smashing and how really long fingernails coil into pigtails. The wind has moved the worst of the rain clouds along and it’s easing, but there’s a shade on the room the color of damp heather and it feels late. Mister O’Malley’s classroom breaks into a hullabaloo, marking lunchtime, but we are not hungry. Miss Lynch continues:
A box is no use to contain it. You need to go back to the place and to dig yourself a pit, Tara. You need to fill the box with salt water or urine so the film spoils, then wrap the box in good strong skin and stitch it shut a thousand times. You need to bury the box in soil—not peat, that would only preserve it—and pack the earth like a suitcase before you stamp on it. Do you get the idea, Tara?
When Tara finally nods, a tear falls onto her desk, where it sits preserved on the lacquer. It reflects all the dots of us around her, like a ladybird.
We insert all manner of bad things onto the film. We feel bad to do this. But we think it’s because Tara was his best friend. Miss Lynch might imagine it’s a film of the friendship and she wants Tara to leave it behind in this room, not to take it with her.
But leaving behind memories is hard to do. We tried it. Some stay with us against our will. The poppy bruise stays. No one’s hand is in the air but Miss Lynch says: Yes?
Macdara is holding two pencils like chopsticks, picking up a rubber. His fringe is a black feather pasted to his forehead. Chocolate wrappers, he says, uneasily, when Miss Lynch asks what he found in the box. His voice broke early when he was in third class, much to Mister O’Malley’s annoyance. And today the depth of his voice sends shivers up our spines because it’s not his voice that’s out of place any longer. It’s us, here. It’s what’s in store.
Quality Street, asks Miss Lynch, or Roses?
The rubber pops free of his pencil-chopsticks and plinks to the floor like a champagne cork at the end of a horse race with money on it. Celebrations.
Right you are, says Miss Lynch. The party is over.
* * *
—
The rain’s stopped and it’s white out. Break time’s over and they’re back in class next door, doing quiet lessons. We didn’t eat yet but Miss Lynch sent fifth class to go with Declan to the gate and to sit there sharing their sandwiches till his mam comes. Our tummies grumble but in a good way.
Words that are part of our lesson: “To chaperone.” “To divvy.” “To soothsay.” (Not the same as soothing.) We say to close her eyes. We slot her sunglasses on her, to help block out the afternoon that’s getting bright. We say to think of an outdoors place where she feels calm and happy. A beach, a forest, a field of baled hay, a boreen with grass down the middle, a boat in a lake, the edge of a cliff where a storm petrel would sit with his wings wide. A make-believe place or a real one. She has to be there alone. With every breath in, to become immersed in her place. With every breath out, to be surrounded. She’s there, in our circle. In her place. We grin wildly at each other, giddy at how kind and graceful we wield her, at all the better things an adult imagination will find. When she’s arrived at the box, we bring her slow slowly slow back to her senses and try to sound ungreedy when we ask what she found.
An egg, hatching.
We all sip on the air. Some of us roll up our sleeves. Miss Lynch still wears her sunglasses but her eyes are open beneath them. She’s searching for an empty chair beside us to rest her concern on but there is none, we make sure. What sort of egg, Miss Lynch?
Ovoid.
Avoid?
No.
A void?
A three-dimensional circle is a sphere. A three-dimensional oval is an ovoid.
O, we say, rolling our heads.
This matches all the things she’s taught us and it’s just as matter-of-fact. A two-dimensional life is a death. She’d said this to explain the sense of choosing ashes over casket: a strange sum of what lies above the earth divided by what lies below. We make our mouths oval. Egg-shaped, Shannon says.
Shhh, Shannon, with this small talk. Miss Lynch is holding an egg, hatching. It’s our turn to explain it. What occurs to us, at first, is that she’s breaking. Her responsibilities were sent down to the gate. She’s passed the responsibility of herself to us like a bucket to be carried to the sink and tipped. She’d made us ready to handle such stuff. We brainstorm the moment. The image. Take turns expanding the sentence so that it goes all around the circle in a beginning a middle and an end: the meaning everywhere, the vocabulary nowhere.
Miss Lynch.
In the box there was an egg, hatching. Once upon a time there was a mother to lay the egg and tend the egg and hide it from the father, who was rash and would break it open early. The father would splash cold seawater on the egg to wake it up. To wean it off what’s warm. Later, he’d splash cold seawater on the boy to make him a man. To make the boy better reflect him. Johnnie sat in our circle and made us complete. There were eight of us and we sat two by two. Johnnie sat with Tara and dipped Ghostbuster toys into her yogurt instead of spoons and licked the yogurt off like ghost-goo full of germs. Even though Johnnie was quiet as Liam before Liam went quiet, we loved him. We knew why. The yogurt was fruits of the forest, which is the same color as a poppy bruise and he had them. There was nothing we could do except to keep him out among the rock pools and streams, away from his father and his head. When he drowned we were down to seven, which is uneven, and it is also a prime number. That cannot be divided except by one and itself. We were only forming and our skin was made of thin shell. But now we are not so thin and breakable. Miss Lynch. You needn’t take our measurements and compare them to his. We are taller. We are wider. Just look at the pencil rain on the walls. It goes halfway up the windows, so we can open them. Johnnie won’t be missing tomorrow because we won’t be here. You won’t see us and count our uneven number and hear plashing in your head. In your box there was an egg, hatching.
Bubbles form in the corners of our mouths as we speak because we don’t swallow or pause for fear of losing hold of the sentence. Miss Lynch takes off the sunglasses and because her eyes are wet and red the silver eyelashes are like slivers of moon. It’s you! we say. The egg. It’s because you’re ready to get out.
Miss Lynch greets our readiness with the look of a fisherman arrived home from a storm. In one piece. Crates empty. Her limbs jut out of her center like a huge jigsaw piece with nothing to lock into. Mister O’Malley would tell her Sing up! if he heard the vibrato of her good strong voice:
I took it into my hands to watch life break the surface, she explains. I felt warmth there, in my palm…A will to burst out into the air…but it cooled so fast. The cracking st
opped. The fight petered out. There was a fissure large enough to fit my thumbnail into. And I did. I cleaved the egg open. And there was nothing inside? The sunglasses on Miss Lynch’s lap show us enlarged and reversed in their bulbous lenses. Not even dust!
“To cleave” is part of the lesson. “Peter out” makes us wonder: Who is Peter anyway? No one knows because he faded away. We each find explanations for the nothingness but our ideas don’t really make a beginning-middle-end sense. It’s just vocabulary. All circumference. To disentangle. To ghostbust. To mince.
The O. Henry Prize Stories 100th Anniversary Edition (2019) Page 32