‘Run the tap,’ I said.
‘What? You finished?’
‘No, just turn it on. The tap.’
And he did.
And finally, I peed. I told him a little about Father as I sat on the loo and someone else’s hair emerged from the shower hole. He had always known, he said, all my ranting on and on and on in my sleep, well, it had given him many clues over the years as to my busy mind, busy, like an insect, but he felt that if we put our love out there towards each other, we’d at least get some of it back, and I told him I didn’t purposely hold love back, but he knew that too, because he’d watched me for years, protecting myself, knocking all the things I loved, or should love the most, because then there’s no expectation, not really, and he knew this too, really we both knew that and I said I was sorry about all the people throughout our life that I met (I’d usually just fucked them, but I didn’t want to break us entirely apart). But that was the extent of it. I did want to tell him that builder guy from East Clare was the very last. That was the end. But I wasn’t going to go into specifics because that’s torture, giving someone specifics, a name, a face. Alex said he always knew, every time, but I didn’t press him on it. I wasn’t a masochist. And he said, of course it bothered him but also he sort of understood it. I asked him why he’d never left, and he said, he’d often thought about it, made plans, but that really it made him think of me as alive, like a grapefruit sliced open, and there was nothing better than thinking of someone alive, like the day I wrestled the Whooper swan, he said, and something about the boys and my father. I made it up off the loo without him having to help me, but collapsed into him. As he lifted me back to the chair, he said that it was his decision to stay, that was his responsibility, and that he had a fair grasp of the facts, and himself. But that he knew me most of all, and I suggested to him that if he came early tomorrow morning that I might shower alone and he might dry my hair and fix it, paint my nails again, now that we were sharing a bathroom space. He said he would. I thought a peppermint green would be nice and he thought fuchsia would be better (because he knew where the bottle was), but we settled on a glassy peach colour, because they sold it in the Hospital shop, and it would remind me of the walls and the floor and the scanner. I said it would probably be the last time that he painted my nails. And he said no, it wouldn’t, and that he would race me back to the bed.
And he did, abandoning me in my chair, and he won.
So in the glow of his victory, I begged and I told him I can’t be a prisoner. That is not who I am. And that a taxi driver can’t be paid in red lipstick and blobfish slippers, that I am, for all accounts, entirely poor. Which is ironic. But devastating. Alex didn’t commit one way or another. Stoic.
*
The ward was eerie as the late afternoon wind rattled the windows.
‘You never told me,’ he said as he was settling me back in to bed.
‘What?’ I said.
‘What was on the laptop?’ he said, eyes firm on the silver casing.
‘Just games, you know.’
‘Games?’
‘Yeah, just things like, you know, the way kids stick gummy teeth in their mouths.’
It was all that would come to me.
‘What . . . the . . . fuck?’
‘Oh, nothing, just rubbish. Fail Army Stuff. I think they were all mixed up.’
His face froze.
‘Kinky shit, like?’
I laughed.
‘No. Not kinky.’
I laughed again.
‘Kids love that game where you eat the doughnut but you can’t lick your lips,’ he said, forgetting.
‘I don’t know it.’
‘You do, I play it all the time at the kids’ birthday parties, you do, it’s bloody impossible, and if you hit the jam squidgy centre, you’re fucked entirely then.’ He grabbed the machine. ‘Gimme a look,’ he said, teasing me.
‘No, please, leave it, will you?’
I shut down the lid hard and he kissed the top of my head.
‘You’d better wash my hair soon,’ I groaned.
The window was rattling harder now, and started to bang.
‘I need to leave. I wish you’d just . . .’ I couldn’t bring myself to push the word respect into my sentence.
‘I need to get things for the house, to make everything comfortable, sorted.’ He was awkward now.
‘What do you mean sorted? We don’t live in a cave, we have everything.’
‘There’s a few things we need. That’s what they think . . .’ He trailed off.
‘Who the fuck are they, Alex?’ I took a breath. ‘I need to see the boys. But not here. Not like this. They are not to know, please, I really can’t. I’ll tell them . . . in my own way.’
‘But you won’t, Sinéad, you’ll hint and shuffle and no one will know what you’re on about.’ He softened. I had to stop pushing him. ‘Can we talk later? I’m exhausted?’
‘Fuck, fuck, shit, ouch, OUCH.’ The curtains rustled around Hegs and brown liquid poured out on the ground and across the middle of the Ward. Claire jerked the curtain back; hot chocolate had gone belly up on the floor beside her slipper socks. Alex sprang forward to help.
‘No no, no no nono NO NO NO . . .’ Claire insisted. ‘Just leave it.’
He came back and rolled his eyes, his patience waning.
‘Look, it’s Saturday, what would you think of getting a proper tea?’ Alex said to me.
‘Oh, Alex, I just . . . I haven’t the energy, or the clothes.’
‘I’ll run out for it, we can have it here.’
‘Here?’
Claire mopped the chocolate liquid off the floor.
‘Sure, sure,’ I said, distracted. ‘What you thinking of getting?’
‘Takeout? Wine?’
It was adventurous for him. ‘Or. Falafel maybe? Pizza? Indian?’
‘Indian, yes, great! Not too hot.’
My stomach heaved, but it was progress. If he could get takeout, he could drive me home.
Jane was wearing a small navy vest top that Michaela had given her, all forgiven now we were reassured Margaret Rose was just sleeping and not dying.
‘Thank you so much, my dear,’ Jane said to Michaela, as she pulled at the string of the top. ‘Quite the drapery you two lovely young ladies have going.’ Michaela looked at me, and we smiled. Everything started to go infundibula and yellow and fuzzy and I could hear a whoosh in my head as I shook all over.
Jane came and pulled the curtain around me and I succumbed to her, lay back as she pulled my oxygen mask onto my face. I imagined her twisting the little copper nozzle on the oxygen tank and then Iron & Wine’s banjos came through the headphones on the bed. Jane leaned her willowy frame over me and kissed me with her stained lips, sitting on my bed, like a parent tucking in their child. She rubbed my hair out of my face, kissing me again, gently, on my forehead.
‘Now, that better?’ Jane said, lifting the mask of my face.
I nodded, and she grabbed my hand.
‘You OK? Why are you crying so much?’
I shook my head. Oxygen escaped.
‘I know, I know, you see, your breath is going against you.’
I smiled.
‘You’re having a little attack. I get them all the time.’
Air passed a little further down now, my belly rose gently, small ball.
When Alex returned, I’d play What If. Show him I believed he was up to it. The job. The kids. What If, yes, I’d play that game with him. What If the house was on fire but Jacob was showing signs of meningitis and then Nathan fell and banged his head? What If the boys wanted to go to a disco and bring a naggin and sleep over in the house of a parent we didn’t know? What If Joshua got Grand Theft Auto and you found Jacob playing it? I stopped the game. I couldn’t answer the questions myself.
‘Thanks, Jane.’
Head. Heart. Hands. Husband. Hold all. Home.
She sat at the end of the bed now and put her feet in
under my chin, I threw the fuchsia hoody over
them.
‘You’ve lipstick all over your face, Jane.’ I smiled.
‘I have?’
‘Yeah, look.’ I passed her a little silver mirror.
‘Ash, ash, hash, ta-da, ta-da, ya still have it, Jane,’ she said, and smiled in at the mirror. ‘What is this awful shade of red? Is this blood? Oh, my God, am I bleeding? Oh, my goodness, I’m dying? Aren’t I?’
‘No, no, no . . . it’s only lipstick, Jane, just some red lipstick. Look . . . it’s OK.’ I showed her the tube and began twisting it up and down in an effort to rejig her memory, remind her.
‘Oh, now, now, rub it off me, girl, it’s a dangerous red, pillar-box red, red is a dangerous lipstick, polish up my skin, make it like your skin, polish it young for me like a good girl, you know Ann told me how very beautiful I am, do you know I have nine children and not one of them even met her?’
I pulled a baby wipe from a packet and began rubbing her face gently, attempting to remove the stains.
‘Ah, thank you, much appreciated. Now, tell Jane, why are you crying? You see, life’s too short for that, you know?’ she said, rubbing my hand. We were like two ewes in April nibbling each other’s wool after they’d taken our lambs away to slaughter.
‘I’m not crying Jane, promise, it’s only the air . . . or the oxygen.’ I took a deep breath. ‘It’s going against my eyes, and watering them,’ I lied.
‘You’ve only gone and reminded me . . . I haven’t watered my hanging baskets once this summer. Did you know I made a lovely job of my hanging baskets last year? Stuffed them full of pansies and lovely trailing ivy and lobelia. They were magnificent.’
‘It’s not summer yet, Jane . . . Don’t worry, you’ve plenty of time.’
‘Isn’t it? Isn’t that a pity? Have I really? Plenty of time? Are you sure? Before summer. Is it really not summer? Feels so very hot in here, that’s good though, for the flowers won’t wilt and die without me! Aren’t I very silly thinking it’s summer, and do you know what, but that nurse looks just like summer, doesn’t she?’
‘She does,’ I said, ‘she’s lovely.’
‘No, she certainly is not lovely. Are you gone completely astray in the head?’
‘She works hard, no?’
‘Well now, doesn’t everyone work hard? Isn’t that only what you’re supposed to do? She’s so fresh that one, you should stay away from her, only bring you trouble, I’m telling you.’
‘Ah, no, she’s no . . . no trouble, Jane.’
‘I saw them,’ she said, giggling. ‘Both of them. Together. I just peered out of there like this,’ she went on, and put up her gloved hands to her face and opened out the palm of red leather like a peacock. ‘Ah, see, I did I did I did, ah, they were there, you know, all curled up like little field mice, yes, that’s it, little field mice curled up in the cold. She’ll end up like Ann if she’s not careful. Did I ever tell you that Ann went and hung herself off a banister . . .’ she said, rocking. ‘Did I tell you this?’
‘Yes, yes, you did.’
‘Lovely Ann. With a terribly narrow cord, yes, wrapped all tight.’ She squeezed the hands around her neck. ‘I put those bitches of nuns in their place, look –’ she nodded over at Margaret Rose – ‘I think I killed this one with the barrel of a gun. That summer nurse needs to be careful. No good will come of her and she all curled up with him and up to all sorts.’
‘You didn’t kill her, Jane, that’s Margaret Rose, she’s your friend. You like her. It was just a hairdryer. But you did hit her hard with it . . . she’s a lovely woman,’ I said, slowly, and she lifted her hand to her mouth about to cry. ‘Margaret Rose is a good woman, she’s your friend.’
‘Oh, feck it, is she? Oh, no.’ She lifted her leathered hand to her mouth. I wasn’t sure I had been fair to the old woman, perhaps I should have played along. ‘Did I upset her?’
‘No, no, she’s fine. She’s just tired,’ I said, having gone too far.
She was silent a minute.
‘Have you ever told Tom?’ I asked.
‘About the summer nurse all curled up like a little dog with the Polish boy? No, no, sure, I haven’t seen Tom, with my holidays, you know, he needed to stay home, cows calving.’
‘No,’ I said, rubbing her back, ‘did you tell him about Ann?’ I couldn’t imagine Molly and Michal. Not then. I distracted myself.
‘Of course. Jane Lohan does not like secrets.’ She swatted my hand down, crossing her heart and hoping to die. ‘Just before our wedding, oh, now, you see, it was so very early on the morning that we were married, that was the way things were done, early morning, up to the altar when the cock crew. I called out to him, to his house, out to his home place. It was about six in the morning,’ she said, tracing her finger around an imaginary clock, ‘I couldn’t sleep for days with the big secret, and I knocked on their front door. Big house. His mother answered and she wasn’t going to let me in, bitch of a mother, you see, imagine, a morning breakfast celebration? That’s the way we did things,’ she said, distracted, and caressed my neck. ‘I couldn’t keep it from him any more. I hardly knew him, but I was in love with Ann, I always would be, despite all that happened, and I was not in a good place to be marrying anyone. I told him all about her, Ann, how he’d never be as good as her. And that I probably couldn’t . . .’
‘Oh, God. How’d he take that?’
‘Him? Oh, now, he took it very badly, not good if you must know. For he went as quiet as a mouse, you see, and didn’t utter a word back to me. But we had to marry, you know?’
And she curved her hands in front of her.
‘Oh, he marched off out of the short hallway like a lunatic, and went into a bedroom and slammed out the door. Cursing. I had to leave, the mother was shouting all sorts at me, and told me I better be at that altar by nine, or she’d let everyone know . . . she was wild and angry. I did what I was told, went home, and readied myself. I got dressed, it was just a light pink jacket and skirt, we didn’t go in for much fancy nonsense then, and I went along and met him at the altar, an hour later. He was terribly white. Wouldn’t look at me, or link me. I pulled the wedding band on myself in the end.’
‘Did it help?’ I said, unsure of why she exposed herself like this. ‘Telling him?’
‘You can be so silly,’ she said, ‘really, a most incredible fool sometimes, I think you’re such a clever girl, and then you’re not that smart at all.’
She smiled, showing only her bottom teeth.
‘It was the worst thing I could have done. He held it against me my whole life. He went absolutely crazy. Mad crazy . . . and he knew I would never love him, but I do, you see, I do love him . . . he would just never accept it . . .’ She stretched and wriggled. I let go of her foot. ‘Just after the wedding breakfast, we took our leave and went on to a guest house, that’s what you did then, different times now, and he dropped me at the front door, big green door, with a brass knocker, but said he couldn’t bear to come up with me or be near me and sped off out the gravel. He didn’t want to check in with me maybe, in case people knew. Or have to lift me up going through the door, like we did back then. I was watching for him out the window of the guest house, and I didn’t hear him come in after me, and I was waiting at the window. He snuck up behind me –’ she placed her hand to her forehead – ‘so I had no idea he was still so angry. Indeed, maybe I was a stupid girl, I was, so very naive, a bit like yourself, and when he came into the room behind me, before I had a minute to turn, he grabbed both my hands and twisted my arms up behind my back and shoved me hard into the window frame.’ She pointed to her forehead, to the long narrow line, the shiny snail-like track that ran from the crown of her head to the bridge of her nose. I had thought it was a deep furrow line, from ageing or squinting. ‘Yeah,’ she sighed heavily, ‘the blood gushed from me, he said I was a dirty rotten cunt,’ she coughed, ‘pardon me,’ she coughed gently into her hand, ‘and that he’d knock all of that dirty Amer
ican slut, Ann Hegarty, out of me, that’s the way he said it, now pardon me again,’ she said, coughing gently again as she blessed herself. ‘You see, I’d never heard those kind of words before, and then he turned fully on me, and said that I drove her to it, Ann, that I drove her to the banister, and the cord, he was roaring then, all bothered about what he had gotten himself into at all at all, and that he’d heard about
women like us. Dykes. But he hadn’t been crazy enough to believe it, because women like us were worse than witches, fucking dirty rotten devil whores.’
‘Oh, Jane, it’s OK,’ I said. ‘There’s no need to go back over this.’
‘Oh, I can assure you I spoke up,’ she said, sensing my apprehension, perhaps not wanting sympathy, ‘but it got me nothing, nowhere. I tried to defend myself. I shouted back at him, for I think I was braver then, that’s what being young does, “Well, Goodman Tom Lohan with all the big horrible words,” but he roared out and I was so afraid everyone in the guest house would hear, which I am sure they did, even though I tried to keep him quiet, and the more I shhhh’d him, the angrier he got, he was mad with himself for going ahead with it, the wedding maybe, I don’t know, he said nothing else but took the paisley neck tie off from around his neck and twisted it around mine.’ She stretched again as I gently wiped the rest of the lipstick off her face.
‘I thought I’d go the same way as her, as Ann. But that was not good. For as bad as the longing was upon me to see her, I’d go to the fires of hell with her, because that’s what he said would happen, a devil like me. I wanted to die. But sure we’d never have met again. I knew I needed to repent before I could meet God, and of course, who knew if poor Ann had gone to God at all?’
As You Were Page 20
