“All the kids coming and going would be lovely. Just set me up with a glass of water and a crust of bread and I’ll be grand.”
A crust of bread!
He sighs. “It’s not that simple.”
“You complicate everything.”
“Be that as it may, you have a quite serious second-degree burn, Mum. What if you’re hungry and no one’s home? What happens when you need to use the toilet? How will you bathe?”
In the next lane, a city bus lumbers loudly along, its entire side papered in an ad depicting a mum and dad and a freckled son and daughter sitting in wide-eyed thrall of a Jaffa teacake below the words “Jaffa Time!” Kevin speeds up with the idea to overtake it, but the road ahead bends and offers no visibility. He releases his foot from the pedal and watches as the happy clan moves mockingly forward, poised forever in anticipation.
Kevin feels bad. His mother seems to him more fragile now, more vulnerable, and, he knows, lonely. On the other hand, she’s a thief (an arsonist?), a misanthropic malcontent, an exaggerator of mammoth proportions, a driver of sane sons to vivid fantasies of matricide. He breathes. To their right is the ocean. With the tide out, the strand is expansive, promising. Yellow, kinky tumbles of seaweed are tossed everywhere, as if the sea swallowed them and, on second thought, vomited the whole lot back up. To their left, Kevin and Millie whiz by what used to be prime waterfront real estate, the odd pub, a hair salon that Mum frequented until an ugly row about being overcharged three quid for a conditioning balm that was applied without her consent. From the tip of the lighthouse at the East Pier to Bray Head, Kevin could practically map out the south side with the sites of humiliations, scenes, rescue missions.
He brings the car to a halt in front of a fairly large, nondescript, detached residence with a wheelchair ramp that extends from a pair of double doors to the pavement. The Gogartys, one smiling politely, the other scowling, are ushered into Rossdale Home by a chubby twentysomething in a plush scarlet tracksuit. The place is redolent not of foul odors, as one might expect, but of Sunday dinners, lamb stew and garlicky potatoes, maybe, though his mother would never concede this, or anything.
The common lounge appears respectable if a touch shabby. Most of the odd-bod fittings and furniture were purchased in an earlier decade, to be sure, but have been taken care of properly enough, in the old way—all the mahogany bits gleam and vaguely emit a pine-esque church varnish scent, there are no visible tears in the upholstery, no dark puke patches or unsavory secretions on the carpet. A peculiar collection of seats—a chintz sofa, some upholstered rockers—is lined up in the dead center of the room, as if a child’s game of musical chairs is about to begin. Across one of the rockers, a thinning cushion bears the needlepointed words IT IS WHAT IT IS. On the Victorian mantel above a blazing gas fire, someone’s taped up dozens of Christmas cards: baby Jesus in his manger, a choir of angels in the sky, carolers proclaiming the good news, religious claptrap Kevin knows will drive his mother spare.
“You must be the Gogarty family?”
Sheila Slattery, the director of Rossdale, whose arse Kevin’s been cyberkissing the past twelve hours, is just the sort of overfriendly, overbreathy woman his mother usually adores—a younger Jolly Jessica.
“Mrs. Slattery,” says Kevin, removing his cap, a sartorial legacy of his father’s, who was prone, in his day, to don one on formal calls. “I’d like to introduce my mother, Mrs. Gogarty. We’re very grateful for the last spot, Mrs. Slattery.”
“Speak for yourself,” says Mum.
Mrs. Slattery beams at them as if Mum hasn’t just been hostile, revealing a wide gap in her front chompers like a loo window whose dark shade has been pulled down for privacy. It’s a flaw so obvious and winning, Kevin suspects it alone could endear her to his mother.
“Right then. The paperwork looks to be all in order. Let me show you to your room first, Mrs. Gogarty, does that sound good?”
They take a lift to the third floor and proceed down an orderly hallway.
“Here we are,” says Mrs. Slattery. “This is you.”
Kevin and Mrs. Slattery and Mum stand at the threshold of a small, peach-colored chamber split down the middle by a cloth curtain suspended on hooks dangling from a half moon of metal. On the right side is an empty twin-sized hospital bed, a modest chest of drawers, a bed-stand with a reading light, and a Bible.
“Won’t be needing that,” says Mum, nudging the book perhaps harder than intended, perhaps not, sending it skittering to the tile flooring.
“Mum!”
Kevin picks up the book and replaces it on the bedstand.
“No worries at’all,” says Mrs. Slattery, though Kevin can see that the aggressive Bible push has surprised her, made her reevaluate his mother as decidedly uncharming, an inevitable evaluation, perhaps, but one he was hoping to put off at least until he’s made it back to the car. He’s terrified they will change their minds. “We’ve made a mistake!” they’ll say. “Take her away at once!”
“There’s someone I’d like you to meet,” says Mrs. Slattery. She pulls the curtain back. There lies, much to Kevin and his mother’s surprise, a tiny, shrunken, slumbering, possibly comatose, almost entirely bald woman well into her ninth decade. Someone’s tucked the poor soul up snugly beneath a fading ivory counterpane. Nestled, she puts Kevin in mind of a girl’s doll from another century.
“This is Mrs. Jameson,” says Mrs. Slattery. “Your new roommate.”
28
As she does now and then—typically in the mornings—over the next week, Mrs. Jameson turns a set of vacant, milky eyes, like half-cooked egg whites, onto her gawking, impatient roommate.
“Good morning!” trills Millie one day. “Or should I say good afternoon? I think you’ve been asleep since Tuesday. I said to one of the staff, ‘Is my roommate by any chance in hibernation? Is ursine the word for “bear”? Or “lupine”?’ I’ve never seen such sleep.” Millie pauses to gain breath and hover with deep curiosity above this blank of a woman who may, in this moment, be entertained or vexed or, indeed, filling up her catheter.
If one were to categorize Rossdale’s residents into types of business models, say, Mrs. Jameson would be a sole trader. No one from the world has thought to send her a postcard; her phone hasn’t rung, she’s had no visitors. She is alone. Of course, Millie doesn’t exactly consider herself a conglomerate. She hasn’t been inundated with Gogarty TLC. She is barely speaking to Kevin, which makes his harried visits—as if he has scores of errands to run despite being currently jobless—brutal. He spends most of the time asking the aides to do up the shades or wipe down the bed-tray, or he chats up the one or two young nurses (some of whom look worse off, or at least fatter, than Millie). He regales them with tales of his brief employment years ago as a hapless, hemophobic volunteer in a local clinic. They laugh.
Yesterday, Kevin had swooped in with a lavish “Good afternoon” and an extravagant kiss on his mother’s frazzled head, entirely dismissing her admittedly childish behavior. She harrumphed—can’t do much with that—and with pursed lips and a scowl, jutted her chin toward the peach wall and remained stubbornly thus. All of which required immense willpower. She was fairly bursting to complain about the custard, which is stone-cold and the color of earwax, and to tell him that the rhubarb is flavorless, the rooms tropical, the doctors supercilious, the nurses patronizing, the aides indifferent, the nights eternal, the pills choke-worthy, the proximity to death unbearable. She said none of these things, and experienced a hot lump clawing its way down her throat when he closed out his visit with a second spectacular kiss.
“I’m really enjoying our chats,” he’d said with a wink.
“If I were you, Mrs. Jameson,” Millie continues now, “the first thing I’d do is check my handbag.”
Mrs. Jameson levels a watery, disconcerting gaze at, or sort of at, Millie.
“Not to alarm you—Kevin, my son, you see, now he’s an alarmist. He worries about his knees, he’s an athlete, you see. Won
derful tennis player. Very graceful. And then, oh Gerard’s exams! That’s his eldest. Will he fail? Will he meet a nice girl?”
Millie throws exasperated hands up to punctuate her monologue. She decides, having studied the woman’s soft folds of skin and collapsed neck and hand-stitched eyelet cover, that back when Mrs. Jameson was not bedridden, before whatever befell her, she was a generous woman with a creative streak and a wicked sense of fun, a good egg.
“Didn’t I wake up and see that naughty nurse—and I don’t mean ‘naughty nurse.’ ” Millie giggles. She has begun to appreciate the liberating benefits of a mute roommate. “Rooting around among your belongings, both hands digging in there, well manicured, too, I can tell you.” Millie mimes a person snooping through someone’s bag.
Mrs. Jameson yawns.
“That’s true.”
“Sorry?” says Millie.
Mrs. Jameson clucks twice, and smiles.
“I wasn’t even sure you could—and here I am talkin’ the face off ya. You have no idea all that’s been going through my mind while you lay sleeping. I’ve come up with your entire life story, in case you’re interested?”
“That’s true.”
“Sorry?”
“That’s true.”
Mrs. Jameson smacks lips like onion skin together and runs her tongue along her upper gums and then her eyes flutter and close just as Millie’s bedside phone rings.
“Hallo?”
“Mrs. Gogarty?”
“Speaking!”
“Guess who?”
“Sil? Is that you?” Millie covers the mouthpiece and to her roommate announces, “It’s my American friend. I must tell you.”
“Mrs. Gogarty? Are you there?”
“I’m speechless! How did you track me down? Did Kevin tell you I was here?”
“Well I couldn’t just neglect my favorite Irishwoman now could I?”
“Oh, he’s put me in this place. Did they tell you?”
“I called your house a bunch but it just rang and rang. And so I called Kevin’s house and his daughter answered and told me there’d been some kind of fire?”
“Oh we mustn’t talk long. This is a transatlantic call. Just let me hear you breathe.”
“What?”
“That’s gorgeous.”
“What happened?” says Sylvia. “There was a fire?”
“Oh it was horrendous. I nearly died. Did you not hear? And Kevin came in and found me in the kitchen. But never mind that. Tell me, how is our patient? When is the surgery?”
“It happened a few days ago.”
“That was fast.”
“And he’s recovering now. So far so good.”
To Mrs. Jameson, Millie says, “The surgery was a whopping success!”
“The doctors say it’s going to be a long recovery, longer than we thought. You should see him—all tied up to machines and eating Jell-O. He’s such a trouper.”
“I’m just thrilled to hear that,” cries Millie. “For you both. Just chuffed.”
“All thanks to you.”
“Oh now…”
“It’s such a relief, I can’t tell you. But what about you? How long do you have to stay in there?”
“Between yourself and myself and Mrs. Jameson, I don’t think I’ll last long here.”
“Mrs. Jameson?”
“I miss our chats, Sil. I really do.”
“Oh me too,” says Sylvia. “I hope you get home soon. You think in a few weeks?”
“Well, the kitchen—you wouldn’t know where you were, black as night.”
“Oh my goodness.”
“Here’s what I want you to do: book your ticket right back home and come and help me escape. Take me to the land of the free!”
Sylvia snorts and says, “Wouldn’t that be great? Oh shoot, I have to go. The doctors are calling me in for an update.”
“Ring me again, won’t you, when you’ve got a bit more time?”
“Of course.”
“Or give me a number where I can reach you?”
“Oh sure.” Sylvia rattles off a whole slew of digits, which Millie takes down on a scrap of paper.
“When are you coming back to Dublin?” says Millie, but they must’ve got disconnected because the line’s gone suddenly dead.
29
Kevin pays a maddening ten quid to ensure his vehicle’s not stolen during dinner and shuffles toward Mulberry Garden to celebrate his twentieth wedding anniversary. Back when he was gainfully employed and things felt rather less disjointed on the home front, he and Grace had discussed marking this landmark with a romantic trip—a bank holiday getaway in Corsica, or an extravagant fortnight in Argentina. They’d take tango lessons; they’d spend long lusty afternoons on their private hammock. They’d pass out in blissful siestas in a Recoleta boutique hotel room, a wicker fan rotating coolly overhead.
But they’ve no money for such frolics and she’s grown tired of sleeping with him, whether in a Buenos Aires hammock (even possible?) or not. All mention of their dream trip faded. For a time, Grace envisioned a party in the house, a blowout with a signature cocktail, proper invites, the children mock-roasting them in a rehearsed skit (Kevin tends to find these pony shows twee, but they love performing them and so he holds his tongue). That trickled down to a soirée with just their intimate circle—less work, more fun, and cheaper. And that diluted to this: the two of them meeting for a meal in Donnybrook.
Grace is late. Kevin sips his G & T and checks his phone. Yesterday, he’d deleted Rose Byrd’s contact information, an act whose irrevocability makes him feel at times slightly heartsick, at other times, like right now, grateful and relieved, his fate decided.
He sees his wife arrive and check in with the host. A man at a nearby table regards her, which pleases him. Kevin swallows and slides his mobile inside his jacket pocket and examines his fellow well-heeled diners, preferable to examining himself, but introspection crawls through his mind anyway. Even if a suitable job in his dying industry became suddenly available, honestly, would he want it? He’s had every conceivable experience in the magazine world; he’s slain those dragons. What he needs, he knows, is something different, something to unstick him. Whatever or whomever he engages lately seems to turn to shit. To wit: Mum despises Rossdale and will never cease dogging his days with complaints. Aideen, let’s face it, continues to view her own family as a brood of odious arseholes worthy primarily of contempt, which she is singularly equipped to dole out. But mostly what he doesn’t care to ponder as Grace wends her way toward him is what twenty years with her means or doesn’t mean or ought to mean. He does not want to reflect on whether they’re confusing love with loyalty at this point, or that the children who have been the glue are devolving into its antidote, or, and this is too cynical, he knows, that the two of them are held together by a deeply rooted laziness, an abhorrence to having to dismantle their cluttered, complicated household and divvy up all the useless and embarrassing suburban crap they’ve accumulated lo these many years. Laptops, emery boards, teakettles—these cannot possibly be the mortar of a marriage.
Now his wife of two decades stands before him—she stifles a yawn, which he finds darkly hilarious on their big celebratory night—and Kevin, anxious and overheated, removes his jacket as he rises to greet her.
* * *
Once their meals arrive, Grace admires the décor and says, “I want to book at that new place near the Gresham; the organic one, what’s it called?”
“Hmmm?”
“I thought you’d been there? The chef’s from Cork…”
“Pass the wine, will you?”
Grace refills Kevin’s glass and nudges at a pale cake of potato gratin.
“It’s driving me mad…” she says.
“Oh, the restaurant? The one where Mick and I had dinner a while back.”
“Mick?”
“Yes Mick.”
“You don’t go to restaurants with Mick.”
“Mick does require no
urishment other than stout from time to time.”
“Let me try a bite of your sole.”
“I sold it long ago, darling.” He tries to smile but it feels more grimace than grin, more drug-addled clown than good-natured husband.
Grace reaches across the table to stab a wedge of his fish. “How were the kids today?”
“Pugilistic comes to mind,” he says.
“Nuala and Ciaran? Oh, this is lovely.” She chews, always has, in a way he finds somewhat grotesque, like she’s working a mouthful of heavy, wet sand, a grain of which will inevitably lodge in one of her incisors, though she won’t notice or bother to remove it until bedtime. It’s sometimes difficult for him to recall just how intimidating her beauty once was.
“There was a big row, mostly Ciaran’s doing.”
“Oh?” He can see she is put off by this topic. She does not care to hear disparaging information about her offspring. This inevitably causes in Kevin a palpable need to play up all tales of their bad behavior, to prove to Grace, he supposes, what it is he’s been doing all day, how hard he sometimes works to keep the peace.
“He found out about Gavin and teased her mercilessly. He was really quite a devil. Cute little devil though.”
But Grace has stopped listening, her fork frozen midair like a professor’s pointer, and her confused expression raises an alarm in Kevin.
“Found out what?” she says. “What about Gavin?”
“Oh nothing. It’s silly. Just that they’re apparently a thing now, you know. Officially. He gave her a necklace, quite sweet actually.” He picks up his glass. “Did I not tell you?”
“No, you didn’t. And more to the point, she didn’t tell me.”
“I’m sure she will.”
Grace resumes her chewing. “Well, to be fair, I got in late last night so she didn’t really have the chance.” Grace turns wistful. “First real boyfriend! He seems quite nice, though, doesn’t he? When did all this happen?”
Kevin considers lying. But he realizes there’s no point: Nuala wouldn’t lie along with him. His children, three out of four of them anyway, are do-gooders, far more scrupulous, perhaps, than their father.
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