by Chris Lynch
I nodded.
He did a lot of quiet chattering in an accent I had to listen hard to if I wanted to get anything. Most of the time I didn’t. He talked about the Beatles some. I knew plenty already about the Beatles.
I listened to Cait more. Listened to her breathing, since she wasn’t speaking.
She looked out the window. Held my hand.
Martin stopped in front of what looked like a small version of the registry of motor vehicles back home. It was on a narrow street with a lot of other cold ugly stained square buildings.
“This is your hotel?” I said, trying not to sound too insulting.
Martin shook his head. “No time for that. This is the first clinic. I’ll be waiting right here.”
The first clinic, where Cait was to have her preliminary screening appointment. She pulled on the door handle and got out.
“Go on now,” Martin said, shooing me along after her.
First we sat in a waiting room until a lady called Cait. I sat. Ten minutes later, we were reunited, but directed upstairs to another waiting room. There, we encountered five other girls, ranging between the ages of fifteen and forty or so. Two of them had guys with them. Nobody was talking. The light in the room was kind of shockingly bright, compared to the waiting room downstairs, and the street outside, and Liverpool. Bright, like fluorescent light, but yellowed, not white. We sat rigidly in our molded plastic chairs, flipping through Hello! magazines, which they had by the hundreds.
“She’s Irish,” Cait whispered, motioning toward a very young girl in a blowsy yellow dress. “And she’s Irish,” to the older lady in the two-piece tweed. “And so is she. That one … maybe.”
Slowly, agonizingly, the staff made their way down the list. All the folks ahead of us disappeared into some exam room, to be replaced by newcomers.
They called Cait’s name, and she jumped out of her chair as if she’d been cattle-prodded. I sat, reading about Pierce Brosnan and Sean Connery and Princess Diana when she was alive, and after.
Cait came out. Sat. They called her again, and this time she pulled me by the hand into the room.
“You will be paying, then,” said a woman behind a desk, who looked too busy to be dealing with me.
“Ya, ya,” I said, overanxious. I started spilling notes all over the desk, the floor, the desk, looking at the woman, at Cait, at the floor, over my shoulder, like I was making a drug deal.
She gave Cait a card. “Be on time,” she said.
Martin was outside, just like Martin said he would be.
“You’ll want to rest then?” he asked.
“Yes,” Cait said curtly.
Martin’s wife Jane led us up narrow corridors and stairwells, all well-lighted and revealing busy sad wallpaper of horses and carriages and dogs and birds. On the third floor we were led into tiny room twelve. “If you be needin’ anything …” Jane said. She nodded. I nodded.
“Cheers,” Cait said, which sounded very strange to me.
We spread ourselves out on the oversoft bed, and tried to watch the TV, which was bolted onto a steel arm so close to the ceiling it was like watching a light fixture. It didn’t matter. We could hear, so seeing it wasn’t all that important. We had three hours before we needed to be back out again. Staring. Staring was what we were going to do.
“I’ve got to sit my exams this year,” Cait said, panicky, at one point. “I don’t know how I’m going to get through it, O’Brien. I don’t know if I’ll get through it.”
“Well … you know, where I go to school we have exams every year. I try not to worry about it too—”
“Some of those girls are here by themselves. D’ya realize … they came all the way here, with nobody ….”
She closed her eyes tight.
It was as much like a factory as anything. We ran into most of the same people from the other clinic. As if we all had been prepped, we did this little ritual thing. Make eye contact, nod slightly, look away. End of it.
Second floor. A nurselike person led us into a clean but ancient-looking concrete room with yellow painted walls. I sat while Cait got into a gown, and into bed. I put her things into her bag, took out the Walkman, handed it to her. She placed it in her lap, and stared straight ahead.
“Wish I had a cigarette,” Cait said.
“I’ll run out and get you some,” I said.
“Hello,” the boss-nurse-doctor lady said. She was all business. Not mean, not warm. “We all set then?” She was leaning over the bed, looking into Cait’s eyes like a hypnotist. A woman, a girl, anyway, started crying loudly in the next room.
Cait didn’t answer right away. This seemed like a place where they needed answers right away.
“All set then?” the woman asked more directly.
Cait’s eyes went all blue water. “Don’t know. Don’t …” Cait looked at me.
Me. Right. Like I was … what? I could help though. I could help, could be of help. I would help her now.
Cait kept looking at me. She never once asked what I thought before now.
Never asked myself, as far as that goes.
She stared at me. I stared at her. I thought I could help. I thought I could say something. I felt my own eyes going.
“Right you are then,” the woman said, calmly, firmly placing her palm on Cait’s forehead and guiding.
Cait gave way completely, her head falling back, her eyes fixing on the ceiling. She attached the Walkman’s headphones to her ears, and switched it on. She played it loud. I could hear the music as clearly as if I were wearing the phones.
“We’ll be in for you in a moment, dear,” the woman said. Then she turned to me. “You can be back at half past eight. She should be ready around then.”
“Oh,” I said, looking up at the clock. It was three-fifteen. “Oh. Okay.” I looked to Cait, who was not looking back. “I’ll just wait a few more …”
“Half eight then,” the woman said, gently taking my hand and giving a small tug.
I waved at Cait as I was led out. She glanced over, waved weakly, and looked back at the ceiling.
Liverpool is huge. Must be ten times the size of Galway. And frosty cold. Not cold the way New England can get cold in the winter, but a different and somehow scarier cold, where the wind that blows at a thousand miles per hour picks up moisture off the river and the ocean and drives the dampness into your bones and your joints.
The Mersey was something shocking. It was like a small ocean of its own, with the piers and stone embankments, with the far coast being almost obscured in the mist and rain.
Rain. Hard mean rain that came in thin bolts more like fiber-optic lines than drops. The Mersey had waves. It had a life. Walking along the long and merciless wide walkway that ran along the river, I had moments of panic, where it was obvious to me that the driving rain, the chopping wind, the slapping water, were pulling together to haul my stupid self in and under and gone.
It is so big, Liverpool. Birthplace of the Beatles.
Stopped into a place called Harry Ramsden’s, which is supposed to be famous for fish and chips. Had a hamburger. Tasted like fish.
Then back to the long walk along the river. Still felt like it was going to get me, but still couldn’t resist it. Went to the iron rail, and leaned over. Couldn’t stop looking at it, breathing it. Walked some more. In the middle of a sort of expanse, of paved, windbeaten, nowhere, was a small Beatles tribute. Their signatures, John and George and Ringo and John. In the ground. From when they refurbished the area. Kind of a highlight. I reached down, and I touched them. Touched George Harrison’s letters.
Found myself then, on hands and knees, running fingers over letters of names. Then looking at the whole deal, the nearby bench. The walk, completely empty of people. The river, raging and huge and ignored.
These were the Beatles, for god’s sake. How is it possible to make the Beatles, the Beatles, be here, all alone? Tiny and alone and sad.
Where exactly was she now? Which cold room? With
whom? What were they doing with her exactly right now? What position had they bent her into? Was she awake? How many people, were working on her? What were her eyes fixed on? Did it hurt? Was it over? Was it started?
She had never been to Liverpool before. Said she had relatives, which I guess meant I did, too. Loads of Irish in Liverpool.
Walking and walking and walking and walking and walking. The streets are huge in Liverpool. Big and wide and slick with wet. The rain had quit but it certainly felt temporary. Nice buildings, even the ugly ones. Chunky, large, up to something. Monstrous ugly cathedrals. All of it quiet. Aside from cars, there appeared to be almost nothing going on whatsoever.
Albert Dock. There was stuff like this back home, loads of it, in fact. Old working-waterfront stuff that had been converted to shops and things. There were museums. I didn’t go in. There were pubs and restaurants I stayed out of, too. I walked around the Albert Dock, and around. Plenty to do there. Plenty of shiny, warm, and inviting inside space to spend an interesting few hours.
I looked in the door of the Maritime Museum. Liverpool, where all those Irish and the grubbier Irish-like English folks piled onto boats to come to my country. Could have been the way my old man made the trip, as a matter of fact. Could have been. Could have been. Probably that would be an interesting thing to look into.
I closed the door of the Maritime Museum when the guy at the desk wouldn’t stop staring at me. Went instead to the Beatles shop, and bought a postcard of John Lennon in his round shades and sleeveless New York City T-shirt. Then I went back to walk along the Mersey.
“Yes, she is ready now. If you would like to go up to room …”
She was dressed, sitting up at about a sixty-degree angle with pillows piled behind her. Looking at a copy of Hello! magazine. She had the headphones on. I could hear them as I came up the stairs. From all I could tell she’d had them on like that the whole time. Do they allow that sort of thing? I hope they do. Hoped they did. I stood there in the doorway for a bit, watching her, waiting for her to look up. She looked okay, though not completely lifelike, suspended, like you can get when you have the headphones on and nobody else hears what you hear.
She looked up. There was nothing here or there on her face. She looked back down at her magazine, as if I was just another attendant passing by. Which is what all of them were doing, passing by, buzzing by, on their way to someplace else, on their way to somebody else. I got bumped three times in two minutes standing there. Busy place, this was. Too busy.
Finally Cait looked up again. This time, at me.
And then gone again. One hand flew up and covered her eyes, the tips of her fingers making obvious indentations into her temple. Tears escaped the grip anyway, falling down over her face and onto Hello! magazine until Cait’s other hand came up and she held on tight, like to keep her face from blowing into fragments.
I went over and sat on the bed, collapsing into her. She grabbed me, she squeezed me, I squeezed her. I was drenched already, inside and out with Liverpool seep, but it hardly would have mattered. In my ear Cait was possibly trying to talk but what I was hearing was the persistent grasping of the air, as if I were hugging a racehorse or a steam train.
We left when they made us leave. It was the very last place on earth we ever wanted to be, but we could not get ourselves up and out until we were made to. When we got outside, Martin was there with the van.
We overslept.
“You’re late,” Jane said, knocking hard on the door. Cait and I jumped. The television was still on, way up there on the ceiling. I had no idea where I was. “You’re late,” Jane said, knocking again. “You’re going to miss your plane.”
“Oh god, no,” Cait said desperately. She got half out of bed, grabbed her abdomen, sat back.
“Go easy,” I said. “Slow down.”
“I can’t stay here. O’Brien. I cannot stay here. I have to go. I have to go home. I have to go home. I need to be home.”
“All right. Calm down.”
“I have to go.”
“Right, we’ll get dressed and go.”
“I have to have a bit of a shower. I can’t …”
“Go. Go ahead.”
I packed up while Cait showered. Jane came by again, banging. “Ye’ll miss your plane.”
Cait was out of the shower. I looked at her. “You all right?”
“Right so,” she said. “Off we go, so.”
“Off we go, so,” I said.
When we reached the bottom of the stairs, Martin was there finishing off a sandwich and jiggling car keys.
“Ye’ll not have time for breakfast,” Jane said, sticking two warm foil-wrapped packets into my hands. “But ye must eat. Here. Bacon and egg. Off ye go, so. G’wan now.”
Cait reached over and held Jane’s forearm, looking into her. She said nothing.
“Slan,” Jane said. “Off y’go, petal. You’ll want to be gettin’ home.”
Cait squeezed, let go, and we hurried away.
The long bus journey between Dublin airport and Galway finally came to an end beside the Great Southern Hotel. The city was mad as it had been for weeks, buskers doing all the same tricks, bars spitting people into the streets, pipes and fiddles and guitars and bodhran and the odd didgeridoo filling the air with noise, noise, arty party noise. We were back.
“My last two nights,” I said, taking Cait’s rucksack over my shoulder and her hand in my hand.
“I know,” she said.
We crossed Eyre Square where John F. Kennedy once spoke, where Cait was approached by three different filthy girls who wanted to wrap her hair for three quid, and a guy with no teeth offered to sell me the tin whistle right out of his mouth for the price of a pint.
“Well, what I was thinking, was, I might maybe stay for a while. So.”
Cait stopped, let go of my hand. Stepping up alongside of me as if she were unsaddling a horse, she removed her backpack from my shoulder. She kissed me, and at the same time grabbed a bunch of my hair.
“I think maybe not. So.”
She walked ten yards to a bench, where a gypsy-looking girl was set up with a hundred different colored threads and beads.
“Yes?” the girl said hopefully.
“Yes,” Cait said. “That orange, that purple, and that metallic green.”
“Beau-tee-ful,” the girl said, and immediately set to wrapping Cait’s hair.
I walked up and stood there, watching over the work for a bit. Cait rolled her eyes up to me. Reaching out, she grabbed my leg, just above the knee, and gave a small squeeze.
“Off ya go, so?” she said, warmly. And for the first time since, smiled. Not the full-watt smile, but the spark of it anyway.
“Off I go, so,” I said.
I waited for more. I expected more. Cait closed her eyes, listened as some girl standing on a box sang a wobbly version of something called “The Foggy Dew.” Cait’s lips moved along to the words. There was no more.
Off I went, so.
HORROR VACUI
NOBODY EVER SAID IT was love. Nobody owes anybody any apologies.
I should have gotten a summer job. I should have done what I should have done. I should not have waited for last summer to come back, for the summer before that and the summer before that when we were all here, and here was just what it was supposed to be.
I should have gone to the seashore with my family. I should not be the big man minding the house. And the house knows it.
The little towel room, linen cupboard, closet. Why should a bathroom have its own closet? Does the kitchen have its own pool table? Does the living room have its own garage? True, it didn’t bother me last summer, or the one before that, but now it’s bothering me.
It’s a bi-fold door, with sneaky, downcast louvered eyes searching the floor, the toilet, your legs, as you try and go about your business in there. How can a person even go about his business, being watched like that? The answer is, sometimes he can’t.
Right. Check the clos
et five hundred thousand times and five hundred thousand times nothing out of the ordinary appears. Allowing that a forty-year-old fox stole is not out of the ordinary. Three foxes, each helpfully biting on the other’s tail. And some towels, of course. And a bathroom scale.
It could tear you apart some days, those little foxes biting each other’s tails.
God knows what they get up to when that bi-fold door closes again.
Shaving is a terrible, terrible, terrible thing.
The television in the kitchen has to be on, or I cannot shave. The occasional downy whisker winds up in my Special K—I am getting fat too, so I have to get serious about the Special K and grapefruit—but that is, I think, a small price to pay.
I probably shave too often this summer. Because I don’t have enough to do. Which I know is my own fault.
But at least it’s Wednesday. I have to cut the lawn on Wednesday.
When we were twelve, this is how much I trusted them. I laid myself out in the sand on Nantasket Beach, and when she told me to open my mouth and close my eyes, I actually did it.
Call it what you want. I call it trust.
I don’t regret it.
When we were twelve, this is how much I trusted them. When I was afraid I had only one nut and I was too afraid to search for the missing one, I let him root around for me.
He found it. It wasn’t much, but he found it.
I bought him a Creamsicle.
It is so hot around here in July you come out of the shower sweating. You towel off and then towel off again, then you race to dress before beading up again, like the reason you keep sweating is that you don’t have enough material covering your body. Then your underwear gets soaked through, then your shirt, then your pants even, and you feel so much more damp and hot and horrible than you did before your shower that you wonder why you even try.
The wiggly heat vapors are dancing up off the blacktop like translucent streamers when I pull the front door open and stand there, like a dummy.
Everything is so empty. The house, the street, the everything. Inside, outside, everywhere, empty. You would think that empty is a finite thing, that it stops somewhere, that empty is empty and you can’t go past empty, but it is not true. There is always more empty waiting.
