by Darby Harn
“What do you do with him?”
I turn away. “We just talk.”
“Why do you talk to him? But not me?”
The words just come. He just comes, and Lord God. I want to tear his heart out. I want to drag him into the sea with me. I want to drown us both in our sorrow.
“I don’t know,” I say.
Aoife lies back on the bed. “Well. It’s good you’re getting out, anyways.”
“I’m not getting out.”
“There’s no shame in it. You’re not the only single woman on this island, Mairead.”
“Have at him.”
She clicks her thumb, like she’s flicking some lighter. “He’s no interest in me. Or anyone else. There’s American girls stuck up the bed and breakfast. College girls. Big bouncy tits. They’re dying for a hammer, let me tell you.”
I go to the door. “Are you finished?”
“They come in the pub and snake up to him. It’s so obvious. He’s no time for them, either. The one is bleeding gorgeous. The blonde. End of the world and all. She’d do in a pinch.”
That’s all she thinks about, Aoife. Getting her oats off. The woman has done nothing else her entire life. She’s never been anywhere and why should she. Until all this, the entire world walked off the ferry twice a day in the summer. Spanish boys, Italian boys, French boys. Bleeding Omaha Beach it was. They never stood a chance. She’s like fly tape, Aoife. Still and all. She probably sleeps fine. She worries for nothing, not even the end of the world. She’ll be pissed and naked when it comes.
“I have to get on,” I say.
Downstairs, Ma stands at the front door, her coat half on. Lost in the fog of her confusion. She sees me, in my coat. The two of us going some place. Neither of us knows where.
There’s a little plastic sack waiting for me on the rock in the morning. Some granola bars. A little note taped to them.
In case you get hungry. – Gavin.
This isn’t what I’m hungry for. What do I want. Why should I want for anything. You’re waiting on me and here I am wanting. My whole life. Never enough. Not the island. A liquor store full of booze. I always need more. This hunger always inside. This space I have to fill. Fuck you. You fucking piece of shit. What were you thinking? That he’d keep? That the light of him would somehow spoil the darkness? You could hold on? There’s nothing left to hold on to. You’re alone in a cemetery and not even good enough for the dirt.
Fuck you.
Fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you fuck you God fuck you Ma fuck you Colm fuck you Aoife fuck you Gavin fuck you dog scratching against the stone why won’t you just break and I’m in the water and Gavin grabs my fists and I’m no weight and I fly through the grass no no no no no no no no let me go let me go let me go leave me in my grave with my boy leave me alone why won’t you leave me alone why are you here I didn’t ask for this I don’t want anymore in my life you’ll just get taken away everything gets taken away and this is what I want so let me go let me go let me go let me go let me go just
“Let me go!”
He can’t. He won’t. “What are you doing?”
My hands curl around an empty space in the air between us. No words. I grab those granola bars he left and they could be gold to someone these bleeding bars and I mash them inside their wrappers. I throw what’s left at him.
He turns his cheek, sore, afraid and knowing his folly but he stays and I punch, scratch and thrash in his arms but he never lets go. I pile all the weight of my anger and my sorrow on him, but he never lets go. I exhaust myself. I list into him and we make this heap against the stone. His arms close around me.
We find our shape.
We huddle under the awning over the front door. The rain mad yet. He wants to say something, to keep me from going back out there and he knows there’s no stopping me. There’s no stopping any of this. The sea creeping up the road. The sky falling on our heads. The rumble in our bellies shaking down the houses. The two of us.
I should have him in, Gavin. Give him a go and then when he’s asleep I’ll go back out and he kisses me.
I slap him.
He steps back. “I’m sorry.”
“You’re leaving,” I say.
His shame slicks off him. “I’m leaving.”
I grab his hand. “Wait until the rain stops, at least.”
The newspaper on the floor sticks to our shoes as I lead him quick through the squalor up the stairs. The only mess in my room is the piles of books along the floor and wall. They encase a squat, full bookcase like a stone mound. I close the door and I pull his jacket off.
“Do you need help with anything?” he says.
Do I need help. I peel his shirt away. My neglected nails claw at his damp skin. I kiss him. Blood runs down my chin. He stops. His fingers at his lips. He tastes my copper. The salt air. The grit of beach sand. The earth begging for its dead.
He holds me close. “Mairead…”
I kiss his cheek, still red. “Be quiet.”
His hands slow. “Are you…”
“Don’t be talking now.”
His arms lock around me. He wants me. He wants this. But he doesn’t want this quickness. This adhesive of a moment we put on our trouble and then I toss him back out in the rain. I know the fierceness in the way he clutches me now. The desperation to hold on to anything, or anyone, to keep from drowning.
The dog scratches at the door.
I closed the front door downstairs. Didn’t I? This house always open. Every dead house is open to the world.
Gavin’s hands roam free. “I’ll put him out.”
“Strays, the two of you. It’s embarrassing.”
He kisses me. “He’s my people.”
“You’re an Irishman alright,” I say. “The only thing you ever forget is the way home.”
He winces. “What do you mean?”
Lord God. What am I saying. What are we even doing. “You could both do with a bath,” I say. “I’ll boil some water. Scrub up. Warm up. Then this dog goes outside.”
He sits on the bed. “You’ve lived here your whole life?”
“I have.”
“We moved around a lot. We never had money for the rent and three months went by and we moved somewhere else. There were times… she never gave up though. She never quit.”
“I’ll boil the water, then,” I say.
I pick up the mess downstairs quick while the water boils. What would it be if not for Aoife? I bullied her into helping me at the home and then I left her with it. Lord God. Gnats swirl about me as I stand at the sink crying a fit over hanging her with all the responsibility. I was ready to leave it all a few hours ago. I don’t even think I’ve shaved my pits. Lord God. I haven’t done. The fuck am I going to do. I’ll take off my shirt and he’ll think I’m some French girl, like. Why should I care. He’ll take me as I am. He’ll be taking me where I tell him.
I come back in the bedroom and he’s stretched out on the covers. The bleeding dog curled up beside him.
“Your water will go cold,” I say.
“I’m good right here.”
“You’ll be getting that dog out of my bed.”
I shave my pits quick like in the downstairs sink. My legs. I was never much down there. He should be so lucky. Ma stands in the door of the loo when I go back with the towels, a bashful smile on her face like a child too shy to say hello.
“Ma, I told you to stay downstairs – for fuck’s sake, Gavin. You do not have the dog in the bath with you.”
He draws his knees up to his chin, as if he has any shame. “Yeah, just stand there with the door open.”
“Let’s go Ma. You’ve seen enough.”
“He’s in the nip,” Ma says.
“So he is.” The dog barks at me. “Don’t you be getting thick with me. You’ll be in the street. The two of you.”
“I’ll work it out with her,” I hear him say as I lead her out. “She’s like the weather here. Just wait five minutes.”
I come back in the room. “Five minutes, is it?”
“Huh?”
“Don’t start with me.”
“I think I’m finished.”
I bite my lip. “This is how you repay my kindness?”
“I see how it is. Quid pro quo. I guess I’ll be expected to do, you know, favors and stuff.”
“We’ll see who’s doing anyone any favors.”
“Clearly I’m the bigger person in all this.”
“I’ll be the judge of what’s bigger,” I say.
“Come here,” he says. “Judge.”
I button my arms. “I’ve got a fire going downstairs.”
“I’ll bet you do.”
“Let’s see it then,” I say, and come to the tub. Gavin curls up all bashful like and I try to uncurl him. The dog stands on the curved edge and growls at me.
“Be careful now,” Gavin says. “You don’t want to get bit.” I poke him in the shoulder. The dog snaps. “Better watch it.”
“Watch what?” I flick him in the same spot.
The dog lunges at me but slips off back in the tub. He laughs at me squirming in the spray and I lean in to let him have it and he grabs the wet sleeve dangling off my arm.
“Don’t – ”
The fresh, dry sweater I just fucking put on falls heavy off me as I crawl out of the tub onto the tile. The dog barks at me and with a look I send him running into the hall. Gavin laughs and I throw my soaked shoes back at him.
“Uh oh. She’s mad now.”
“You want to see mad?”
“What? You’re going to poke me again?”
“I’ll give you a poke, like. You’ve no idea the pain you’re due,” I say. “None. Deirdre Gogarty. Right fucking here.”
He shakes his head. “Deidre who? What?”
“You’re fucked is what I’m saying.”
“I feel like I can take you.”
I come back to the tub. I stab my finger into his shoulder. “Are you starting with me?”
He reaches out, waiting; waiting for me to stop this. His hands brush against my hips. My panties bunch in his fingers. He pulls them down, dropping the curtain on the scar channeling beneath my belly. He kisses me there and I go to my knees, hand over my mouth to muzzle sobs so deep they can’t surface. Some sense of modesty keeps him in the tub. Shame.
“Come here,” he says.
“You’ll prune,” I say, and leave. I come back for my shoes, floating in the water with him. My sweater. My knickers.
He hands me back in pieces.
Chapter Five
Little blinky lights pass high overhead, back to America.
Their sound a soft rumble indistinct from the waves. I’ll never be on a plane again. I’ll never leave this island again. The sea goes out and I could just walk through the mucky land of the dying but I drown. I drown every hour of every day but I can’t die. Wave after wave after wave and I choke, I crush, I survive, like the cracked rocks, the rumpled shore, the island stuck in the sea.
Gavin risked his life to let go of this man he didn’t know. How do you do it. Book a flight. Fill a pill bottle with ashes. Build this map in your head. X marks the spot. This is where. This is when.
Do you know?
Rain pelts my cheeks. The morning’s far. Or somewhere yet I can’t reach. It’s nothing compared to all the pithy years passed here in the cemetery, years like Irish rain showers.
I lose Gavin for a day.
When he comes back to the shore, he has some shit flowers he bought up the Spar. The poor sod.
The paper wrap crinkles in my hand. “Did they fleece you?”
He shrugs. “It’s ok if you like them.”
“Who did you say you were buying them for?”
“I just bought them.”
I rest the flowers on your stone. “You’re kind.”
“I’m awful,” he says. “I was awful, Mairead. I’m sorry.”
I look away. “It’s nothing to be sorry for.”
“I think about you all the time.”
“Go on with yourself.”
“I worry about you.”
Waves punish the shore. Spray beads on the wrap holding the flowers that have been sitting up there at the Spar long enough for them to become hard. Dull. Brittle.
“Do you know there are wild flowers you could have picked?” I say. “Primrose. I would have done with primrose.”
He nods, like someone in a movie who’s acknowledging some secret sign or code. “I’ll do better next time.”
I pull a dead petal free. “I like talking to you.”
“I like talking to you, Mairead.”
“If we could just talk… that’d be grand.”
Gavin sits on a flat rock across from me. Red with the wind already. An hour goes in our talking, but he doesn’t move, red as he is, sore as he is, cold and soaked as the spray leaves him.
A fishing boat makes a go of it out into Galway Bay. Every angry wave I think she’ll go under. I surprise myself with my stake in their success. Someone should be so lucky.
Gavin watches with as much anxiety as I do. This is the only sport on the island now. Watching each other die. Cold today. The mood of the weather as mixed up as the spray and rain.
“My dad fished, too,” Gavin says, and we wind on through the beach grass fringing the edge of the island.
I trail after him, letting him lead. “Do you?”
“Not really. As in, not at all.”
“You’re more an indoors type.”
“For a while my mom and I lived in this duplex close to the river, over by the meat packing plant. I was twelve, thirteen. He was always down at the river, under the railroad bridge. Saturday or Sunday mornings. I’d see him sometimes, when I’d take pop bottles back to the cigar store downtown to turn into money for comic books.”
“Comic books?”
“Most of the kids I knew went down there to sneak into the nudey section. I wasn’t a normal kid.”
“Clearly.”
“Every time I open a comic book, I smell cigars.”
“You still read comics, like?”
“I wrote them for a while. I tried to, anyway. So. What kind of music were you doing in the city?”
New York. Feels like a movie I watched half asleep on a plane. “Do you know The Sundays?”
“Oh, yeah. Harriet Wheeler.”
“Of course.”
“Well, I was the right age.”
“You were,” I say. “It was a bit Sundays, the music. Smiths.”
“Do you have any tapes or anything?”
“Tapes, he says. Maybe I had some records pressed.”
“Vinyl is making a comeback.”
“Is it now?”
“Things come back,” he says. “Eventually.”
“I don’t know. Could be one or two lying about.”
“I’d love to hear them.”
“You didn’t happen to bring a copy of this book of yours with you, did you?”
“Why, did your heating go out?”
“Will soon enough,” I say, biting my lip to kill my smile. He brushes my chin. I step back. “We’re just talking.”
“You’re bleeding,” he says.
“Oh.”
He unzips his jacket and takes a cloth out of his pocket you use to wipe your glasses, like. My lower lip curls under the top and he has nothing to treat.
He hands the cloth off to me. “I can bring you some lip balm. I don’t have it with me.”
“I’m grand.”
Gavin looks for that fishing boat. I don’t see it, either.
“They probably made it over,” I say.
“Right.”
I lick the copper off my lips. “Why didn’t you come back before now? You said you loved it here.”
“I tried making it as a writer. Didn’t work, so I got a job. Made good money. Got comfy. And then I'm 40 and…”
“It just goes, time.”
You laugh,
you cry, you say your first word and those two years are as quick and gone as a dream. I fight to remember every last thing, sitting out here, standing in the room, walking out to the naked sea after you. I don’t remember anything before you. I wasn’t alive. I was just a dream that didn’t take on any meaning until you woke up.
Gavin touches my hand. “Do you miss the States?”
“I miss the anonymity.” My head shakes, like some bobble thing. How did we get out here? How long have we been out here? “Everyone knows who you are. Everyone thinks they know.”
“Would you go back, if you could?”
“I might have stayed past my welcome. By several years. I wasn’t there properly, like.”
“Fucking Irish. Taking our jobs. Our women.”
“Well, the women. I cannot be blamed. And you, then? How is it you don’t have a wife?”
We wind back into the beach grass, littered with tide thrown rocks. Crooked crosses.
“Haven’t found her, I guess,” he says.
“Best get a move on.”
“Where did you meet women in New York?”
I roll my eyes a bit. It had been a joke. “You’re looking for tips, is it?”
“Research. For the book I’m working on. Did I tell you? Dating tips during the apocalypse. Do’s and Don’ts.”
“More in the Don’t section now, I suppose.”
“What are some ideal places?”
“The gym. The showers, like.”
“You’re sort of right there.”
“Opportunity, yeah.”
“Probably not a good strategy for me,” he says.
“You’ve some sense at least.”
“Is it true? Women are better lovers?”
“You’ve never been with a woman?”
“I left myself open for that.”
“You were doing so well,” I say.
He laughs. “Was I?”
“You were.”
I want to talk to Gavin. I want to tell him everything but even now, after being half naked with him in the loo, there’s this fight in me. Do with him. Don’t. No good starting something now. No sense digging your heart out to for someone. My heart is gone, besides. Does he hear, Gavin. This empty rattle.