Thirteen Ways of Looking

by Colum McCann

  Halfway through the meal they put on the party hats, pulled apart the paper crackers, unfolded the jokes that came within. A glass of port for her. A fizzy orange drink for Tomas. A box of Quality Street. They lay on the couch together, his cheek on her shoulder, a silence around them.

  She cracked the spine on an old blue hardcover. Nadia Mandelstam.

  Tomas clicked the remote and picked up the game stick. His fingers flitted over the buttons: the mastery of a pianist. She wondered if the parents had been gifted beyond the drunkenness, if one day they had looked out of high conservatory windows, or painted daring new canvases, or plied themselves in some poetic realm, against all the odds—sentimental, she knew, but worth the risk, hope against hope, a faint glimmer in the knit of neurons.

  Christmas evening slipped away, gradations of dark outside the window.

  At bedtime she read to him in Gaelic from a cycle of ancient Irish mythology. The myths were musical. His eyes fluttered. She waited. His turmoil. His anger. Night rages, the doctors called them.

  She smoothed his hair, but Tomas jerked and his arm shot out. His elbow caught the side of her chin. She felt for blood. A thin smear of it appeared along her fingers. She touched her teeth with her tongue. Intact. Nothing too bad. Perhaps a bruise tomorrow. Something else to explain in the village store. Timpiste beag. A small accident, don’t worry. Ná bac leis.

  She leaned over him and fixed her arms in a triangle so that he couldn’t bash his head off the wall.

  Her breath moved the fringe of his hair. His skin was splotchy with small, dark acne. The onset of early adolescence. What might happen in the years to come, when the will of his body surpassed the strength of her own? How would she ever be able to hold him down? What discipline would she need, what method of restraint?

  She moved closer to him, and his head dipped and touched the soft of her breast. Within a moment he was thrashing in the sheets again. His eyes opened. He ground his teeth. The look on his face: sometimes she wondered if the fear edged toward hatred.

  She reached underneath the bed for a red hatbox. Inside lay a spongy black leather helmet. She lifted it out. Kilmacud Crokes Are Magic! was scrawled in silver marker along the side. Alan had worn it during his hurling days. If Tomas woke and began bashing again, it would protect him.

  She lifted the back of his head and slipped it on, tucked back his hair and fastened the latch beneath his chin. Gently, she pried open his mouth and set a piece of fitted foam between his teeth so they wouldn’t crack.

  Once he had bitten her finger while asleep, and she had given herself two stitches—an old trick she had learned from her mother. There was still a scar on her left forefinger: a small red scythe.

  She fell asleep beside him in the single bed, woke momentarily unsure of where she was: the red digits on the alarm shining.

  The phone, she thought. She must check the phone.

  She went to the fridge for a bottle of white wine, stoked her bedroom fire, put Sviatoslav Richter on the stereo, settled the pillows, pulled a blanket to her chest, opened the bottle and poured. The wine sounded gently against the glass, a kindling to sleep.

  —

  IN THE MORNING Tomas was gone.

  She rose sleepily at first, gathered the blanket tight around her neck. A reef of light broke through the bare sycamores. She turned the pillow to the cool side. She was surprised by the time. Nine o’clock. The wine still lay on her breath, the empty green bottle on the bedside table: she felt vaguely adulterous. She listened for movement. No video games, no television. A hard breeze moved through the cottage, an open window perhaps. She rose with the blanket around her. The cold floor stung her bare feet. She keyed the phone alive. It flickered an instant, beeped, fell dead again.

  The living room was empty. She pushed open the door of his room, saw the hanging tongue of bedsheet and the helmet on the floor. She dropped the blanket from around her shoulders, checked under the bed, flung open the cupboard.

  In the living room, the hook where the wetsuit had hung was empty.

  The top half of the front door was still latched. The bottom half swung, panicky in the wind. She ducked under, wearing only her nightgown. The grass outside was brittle with frost. The cold seeped between her toes. His name was thrown back to her from among the treetops.

  The sleeves of grass slapped hard against her shinbones. The wind played its tune over the pipes in the stone wall. She spied a quick movement at the edge of the cliff—a hunched figure darting down and away, bounding along the cliff. It appeared again, seconds later, as if out of the sea. A ram, the horns curled and sharp. It sped away along the fields, through a gap in the bushes.

  Rebecca glanced down to the cove. No shoes on the rocks. No duffle coat. Nothing. Perhaps he had not come here at all. Good God, the wetsuit. She should never have bought it. Two sizes too big, just to save money.

  She ran along the cliff, peered around the seastack. The wind blew fierce. The sea lay silver and black, an ancient, speckled mirror. Who was out there? Maybe a coast-guard boat. Or an early-morning kayaker. A fishing craft of some sort. The wind soughed off the Atlantic. Alan’s voice in her head. You bought him what? A wetsuit? Why, for crying out loud? How far might he swim? There were nets out there. He might get tangled.

  —Tom-as!

  Perhaps he might hear her. A ringing in his ears, maybe, a vibration of water to waken his eardrum.

  She scanned the waves. Snap to. Pull yourself together for fucksake.

  She could almost see herself from above as she turned back for the cottage: her nightdress, her bare feet, her hair uncoiled, the wet wind driving against her. No phone, no fucking phone. She would have to get the car. Drive to town. The Gardaí. Where was the station, anyway? Why didn’t she know? Which neighbors might be home? You bought him what? What sort of mother? How much wine did you drink? Fetal alcohol.

  The wind bent the grass-blades. She stumbled forward over the low wall, into the garden, a sharp pain ripping through her ankle. At the back of the cottage the trees curtsied. The branches speckled the wall with shadows. The half-door swung on its hinges. She ducked under, into his bedroom again. Kilmacud Crokes Are Magic!

  Still the phone did not work.

  At the kitchen counter she keyed the computer alive. The screen flared—Tomas at six in Glendalough, blond hair, red shorts, shirtsleeves flapping as he sauntered through the grass toward the lake. She opened Skype, dialed the only number she knew by heart. Alan answered on the sixth ring. Jesus. What had she done? Was she out of her fucking mind? He would call the police, the coast guard, too, but it would take him three or four hours to drive from Dublin. Phone me when you find him. Hurry. Just find him. Fucksake, Rebecca. He hung up into a sudden, fierce silence.

  When she closed Skype, the background picture of Tomas appeared once more.

  She ran to her bedroom, struggled into her old wetsuit. It chafed her body, tugged across her chest, scraped hard against her neck.

  A menace of clouds hung outside. She scanned the horizon. The distant islands lay humped and cetacean. Gray water, gray sky. Most likely he’d swum north. The currents were easier that way. They’d gone that direction in summer. Always close to shore. Reading the way the water flowed. Where it frothed against rocks, curved back on itself.

  A small fishing boat trolled the far edge of the bay. Rebecca waved her hands—ridiculous, she knew—then scrambled down along the cliff face, her feet slipping in the moist track.

  Halfway to the beach she stopped: Tomas’s tennis shoes lay there, neatly pointed toward the sea. How had she missed them earlier? She would remember this always, she knew: she turned the shoes around, as if at any moment he might step into them and return, plod up to the warm cottage.

  No footprints in the sand: it was too coarse. No jacket, either. Had he left his duffle behind? Hypothermia. It could come on within minutes. She had bought the wetsuit so big. He was more likely to be exposed. Where would he stop? How long was he gone now? She had woke
n so late. Wine. She had drunk so much wine.

  She pulled a swimming cap hard over her hair and yanked the zip tight on her wetsuit. The teeth of it were stiff.

  Rebecca waded in, dove. The cold pierced her. Her arms rose and rose again. She stopped, glanced back, forced herself onward. Her shoulder ached. She saw his face at every stroke: the dark hood, his blond hair, his blue eyes.

  Out past the seastack, she moved along the coast, the sound of the waves in her ears, another deafness, the blood receding from her fingers, her toes, her mind.

  —

  A NOVELLA HAD ARRIVED from the publisher in Tel Aviv eight months before, a beautifully written story by an Arab Israeli from Nazareth: an important piece of work, she thought.

  She had begun immediately to translate it, the story of a middle-aged couple who had lost their two children. She had come upon the word sh’khol. She cast around for a word to translate it but there was no proper match. There were words, of course, for widow, widower, and orphan, but no noun, no adjective, for a parent who had lost a child. None in Irish, either. She looked in Russian, in French, in German, in other languages, too, but could find analogues only in Sanskrit, vilomah, and in Arabic, thakla, a mother, mathkool, a father. Still none in English. It had bothered her for days. She wanted to be true to the text, to identify the invisible, torn open, ripped apart, stolen. In the end she had settled upon the formal bereaved, not precise enough, she thought, no mystery in it, no music, hardly a proper translation at all, bereaved.

  —

  IT WAS ALMOST NOON when she was yanked in by the neck of her wetsuit. A coast-guard boat. Four men aboard. She fell to the deck, face to the slats, gasping. They carried her down to the cabin. Leaned over her. A mask. Tubes. Their faces: blurry, unfocused. Their voices. Oxygen. A hand on her brow. A finger on her wrist. The weight of water still upon her. Her teeth chattered. She tried to stand.

  —Let me back, she pleaded.

  The cold burned inside her. Her shoulder felt as if it had been ripped from its socket.

  —Sit still now, you’ll be all right. Just don’t move.

  They wrapped her in silver foil blankets, massaged her fingers and toes, slapped her twice across the cheek, gently, as if to wake her.

  —Mrs. Barrington. Can you hear me?

  In the blue of the skipper’s eyes she saw Tomas appear, disappear. She touched his face, but the beard bristled against her hand.

  The skipper spoke to her in English first, then Irish, a sharpness to his tone. Was she sure Tomas had gone swimming? Was there any other place he might be? Had he ever done this before? What was he wearing? Did he have a phone? Did he have any friends along the coast?

  She tried to stand once more, but the skipper held her back.

  The wind buffeted the cabin windows, whitened the tops of the waves. A few gulls darted acrobatically above the water. Rebecca glanced at the maritime maps on the wall, enormous charts of line and color. A furnace of grief rose up in her. She peered out past the stern, the widening wake. The radio crackled: a dozen different voices.

  She was making the sounds, she knew, of an animal.

  The boat slowed suddenly, pulled into a slipway. A fine shiver of spray stung her face. She did not recognize the area. A lamplight was still shining in the blue daytime. A faint glow, a prospect of dark. Onlookers huddled by their cars, pointing in her direction. Beams of red and blue slashed the treetops. Rebecca felt a hand at her shoulder. The skipper escorted her along the pier. One of her blankets slipped away. She was immediately aware of her wetsuit: the tightness, the darkness, the cold. A series of whispers. She was struck by the immense stillness, the silence, not a breath of wind.

  She turned, broke free and ran. Sh’khol.

  When they pulled her from the water a second time, she saw a man hurrying toward her with his cell phone, watching the screen as he filmed her rising from the low, gray waves. He carried the phone like an accusation: she would, she knew, be on the Internet later that night.

  —Tomas, she whispered as they put her in the car.

  At home, a sedative dulled her. A policewoman sat in a corner of the room, silent, watching, a teacup and saucer in her hands. Through the large plate-glass window Rebecca could see figures wandering about, casting backward glances. One of them appeared to be scribbling in a notebook.

  The Gardaí had set up in the living room. Every few moments another phone rang. Cars turned in the narrow laneway outside the cottage, their tires crunching on the gravel.

  Somebody was smoking outside. She could smell a rag of it moving through the house. She rose to shut the bedroom window. Something has ended, she thought. Something has finished. She could not locate the source of the feeling.

  She paused a moment and strode across the floor toward the bedroom. The policewoman uncrossed her legs but did not rise from the wicker chair. Rebecca strode out. The living room fell quiet, except for the static of a police radio. A wine bottle on the table. A discarded party hat. The scraps of their Christmas dinner heaped in the sink, swollen with dishwater.

  —I want to join the search parties.

  —It’s best for you to stay here.

  —He can’t hear the whistles, he’s deaf.

  —Best stay in the cottage, Mrs. Barrington.

  She felt as if she had chewed a piece of aluminum, the pain in her head suddenly cold.

  —Marcus. My name is Marcus. Rebecca Marcus.

  She pushed open the door of Tomas’s room. Two plainclothes police were sifting through his cupboard drawers. On his bed was a small plastic bag marked with a series of numbers: strands of hair inside. Thin and blond. The detectives turned to her.

  —I’d like to get his pajamas, she said.

  —I’m sorry, Miss. We can’t let you take anything.

  —His jammies, that’s all I want.

  —A question. If you don’t mind.

  As the detective approached, she could smell the remnants of cinnamon on him, some essence of Christmas. He struck the question sharply, like a match against her.

  —How did you get that bruise?

  Her hand flew to her face. She felt as if some jagged shape had been drawn up out of her, ripping the roof of her mouth.

  Outside, the early dark had taken possession of everything.

  —No idea, she said.

  A woman alone with a boy. In a western cottage. Empty wine bottles strewn about. She looked over her shoulder: the other guards were watching from the living room. She heard the rattle of pills from the bathroom. An inventory of her medicine. Another was searching her bookshelves. The Iron Mountains. Factory Farming. Kaddish. House Beautiful. The Remains of the Day. So, she was under suspicion. She felt suddenly marooned. Rebecca drew herself to full height and walked back toward the living room.

  —Ask that person outside to please stop smoking, she said.

  —

  HE CAME DOWN THE LANEWAY, beeping the car horn, lowered the window, beckoned the guard over: I’m the child’s father.

  Alan had lost the jowls of his occasional drinking. The thinness made him severe. She tried to look for the old self that might remain, but he was clean-shaven, and there was something so deeply mannered about him, a tweed jacket, a thin tie pushed up against his neck, a crease in his slacks. He looked as if he had dressed himself in the third person.

  He buried his face in Tomas’s duffle by the door, then sank theatrically to his knees, but was careful to wipe the muck when he rose and followed her to her bedroom.

  The policewoman in the corner stood up, gave a nervous smile. Rebecca caught a glance at herself in the full-length mirror: swollen, disheveled. Alan paced the room.

  —I’d like to be alone with my wife.

  Rebecca lifted her head. Wife: it was like a word that might remain on a page, though the page itself was plunged into darkness.

  Alan repositioned the wicker chair and let out a long sigh. It was plain to see that he was seeking the brief adulation of grief. He needed the los
s to attach itself to him. Why hadn’t she woken? he asked. Was the door to her bedroom open or closed? Had she slept through her alarm? Had Tomas eaten any breakfast? How far could he swim? Why didn’t you get him a wetsuit that fit? Why didn’t you hide it away? Did you give him his limits? You know he needs his limits.

  She thought about that ancient life in the Dublin hills, the shiny kitchen, the white machinery, the German cars in the pebbled driveway, the clipped bushes, the alarm system, the security cameras, the limits, yes, and how far the word might possibly stretch before it rebounded.

  —Did he have gloves on?

  —Oh, stop, please, Alan.

  —I need to know.

  The red lights of the clock shone. It had been twelve hours. She lay on the bed.

  —No, he had no gloves on, Alan.

  She could not shake the Israeli story from her head. An Arab couple had lost their children to two illnesses over the course of five years: one to pneumonia, the other to a rare blood disorder. It was a simple story—small, intimate, intense. The father worked as a crane driver in the docklands of Haifa, the mother as a secretary in a corrugated-paper firm. Their ordinary lives had been turned inside out. After the children died, the father filled a shipping container with their possessions and every day moved it, using the giant crane and the skyhooks, to a new site in the yard, carefully positioning it alongside the sea: shiny, yellow, locked.

  —He feels invincible, doesn’t he?

  —Oh, Jesus, Alan.

  The search parties were spread out along the cliffs, their hopeless whistles in the air, her son’s name blown back by the wind. Rebecca pushed open the rear sliding doors to the balcony. The sky was shot through with red. A stray sycamore branch touched her hair. She reached up. A crushing pain split her shoulder blade: her rotator cuff.