Blue Mercy: A Novel.

by Ross, Orna

That's what I'd found her doing quite often these days when I got back from a solitary walk or drive, but if I came in and settled down beside them, Star always slipped away.

  "What on earth do you two talk about?" Daddy, I suspected, from the few snatches I had managed to overhear. "I didn't think she'd be your choice of company."

  "I feel sorry for her, she's on her own all the time."

  "So am I."

  "Oh, Mom, don't start."

  "It's natural that I'd want you there, surely you can see that."

  "Granddad says he'll take me fishing."

  "If you don't go to Dublin with me."

  "Yes."

  She knew how I felt about my father. On the plane across, realizing that she had an image of him as a kind of twinkly, Dan Rather figure, I thought I'd better brief her as to what she could expect but, in the telling, I had somehow ended up in tears -- nerves at the thoughts of meeting him, I guess -- so that she had to call the stewardess to bring me Kleenex and a glass of water and we'd both been shaken by that.

  Since we'd arrived, we'd had more than a few whispered exchanges about his carry-on, and silent communications with eyes and eyebrows behind his back. Up to that moment, we were forming a bond of sorts around his perverseness so hear her say that made me snap.

  After all the tirades and tantrums, of being the best I could be, of keeping what shouldn't be said unsaid... I felt something implode inside. I teetered, but only for a moment, before letting rip. I'd called her selfish in arguments before and I called her that now but I also said what should never have been said. I called her fat. A fat selfish lump, to be precise. And thereby undid the work of five, patient forbearing years.

  "Ladies and Ladies," I said, beginning my talk, for there wasn't a single man at the book launch. A titter broke, a small wave around the room. Looking down from my podium at the faces turned towards me put a nervous wobble into my voice. "In 1889, the year that WB Yeats recalled first meeting Maud Gonne, he was moving away from the influence of older men that had been so predominant in his life. Men like his Pollexfen grandfather and uncles, the old Irish Fenian John O'Leary, the magician MacGregor Mathers and, of course, his father, were ceding their place in his life to a number of strong-minded and unconventional women. These women -- Gonne herself, Madame Blavatsky, Olivia Shakespear, Florence Farr and Augusta Gregory in the 1890s and many others from then on, most notably 20 years later, Iseult Gonne and his wife, George Hyde Lees -- were, variously: emblems, muses, providers, literary and mystical cohorts, mentors, friends, and sometime sexual partners."

  There I stopped, blank, a string of panic knotting my throat. My eyes floated back to a couple of kindly faces near the front and I remembered what I wanted to say.

  "Of all these women, none were more important to his poetry than the Gonnes and it is them I'd like to talk about tonight, most particularly Iseult Gonne, whose influence is so often overshadowed by the poetry he wrote for her mother. Maud, the radical Irish revolutionary, the celebrated beauty, the unattainable muse, would – I think - have loved to know that we are here tonight, discussing her. Iseult would have hated it. When I started my research, I had a disconcerting image of her watching me with a cool, disapproving gaze as I scoured dead books and papers and letters for meanings they were never meant to bear..."

  On I went, talking to a room of strangers with nobody I knew there to hear me. Before I'd left for Dublin that morning, I had checked in on Star who was sleeping with her head under the duvet, like a bird with head tucked under its wing, only her quiff showing, collapsed across the pillow.

  "Star," I'd called, gently.

  Silence.

  "Do you want breakfast before we leave?"

  Silence.

  "You are going to come, aren't you? Please come, darling. We can talk in the car."

  Silence.

  I went in, sat on the side of the bed. "I'm not even asking for me, Star. I know what I said the other day was wrong and I am so, so sorry but I'm not asking you to forgive me, only not to let it stop you coming with me today. Today is a big day for me, the biggest day in my life since I had you. I'd love you to be there and I really think that if you don't come, you'll regret it later. Don't let a row stop you. Star? Please...? Star?"

  But no.

  After my speech, there was a wine reception at which most people, except me, knew somebody. We stood around, eighty or ninety of us, holding long-stemmed glasses between our fingers and our copies of Between The Words under our arms, saying what we hoped was the right thing to each other. I can do small talk -- restaurant work is training school for it -- but it always feels more like performance than connection to me and, that night, I had had enough performing on the podium. I wanted to get away, consider how it had gone, work out what I was feeling. Failing that option, I should have liked to be with people I could really talk to, ask them what they really thought, and tell them how I really felt. Star or Marsha or -- stupid thought -- Zach, instead of these strangers coming across to congratulate me.

  And then I was tapped on the shoulder. I turned around to a pair of dancing, aquamarine eyes that I recognized immediately, even though I hadn't seen them for years, not since my mother's funeral. I had expected the habit and wimple she wore then but it seemed she'd ditched them. She was dressed in civvies, sensible navy, but an ordinary skirt and jumper. "Sister... Auntie... Catherine!" I said, delighted. "You came!"

  "Came? Of course I came. Best invitation I've had in years."

  I hugged her, taking a moment to settle the emotions that leapt in me at the sight of her. She was my mother's sister, long-time principal of a girl's school in Dublin, and I had sent her an invitation.

  "So, the prodigal daughter returns. And..." She cast her lovely smile around the room. "...on a wave of glory."

  "Not exactly glory," I said.

  "Now don't go making little of it. I don't like when people play down their achievements. It's a fine book. Very interesting work. Very important work, excavating all those untold stories. Tell me about your Iseult Gonne..." And she was off. No small talk now. We had so much to tell and ask each other.

  After the launch party broke up, we sat in the lobby drinking tea and talking, talking...She knew so much about me and my past and nothing, it seemed, was out of bounds. Towards the end of the night, when we were both overcome by yawning tiredness, she spoke of the woman who had been lying, silent as dust, between us all evening.

  "I remember trying to talk to her after she got engaged but she wouldn't let me broach it. It wasn't until the day of the wedding, when we were getting ready, that I got a chance to ask her if she was sure. I made light of it, saying something like, 'this is your last chance now, Martha, to change your mind'."

  "What did she say?"

  "That he was a good man, a guard, with land and prospects, and she knew what she was doing."

  She hesitated.

  "Go on, Sister."

  "I don't know if I should be telling you this but it's always burnt a hole in my mind. She said to me, 'Isn't a bad marriage better than no marriage at all'."

  "Oh my God."

  "She was twenty-five and her time was running out. That's the way it was, then. Marriage was everything for a girl -- job, status in the community, the lot. Women weren't allowed to work at much else, remember."

  "Unless you became a nun," I smiled.

  And she smiled back, a smile that was happy for her and sad for her sister. "It was after Martha's wedding day that I knew my own calling."

  The next day, driving back down to Wicklow, I thought about Sister Catherine the whole way, how she'd probed, but gently: careful as a cook checking a soufflé, how much I'd told her. Funny how life works, I thought, driving up the lane at Doolough and parking the European car with its awkward gearstick and handbrake and clutch. If Star had come to Dublin with me, I wouldn't have been able to speak half as freely.

  As I walked into the kitchen, lunch was being served but as soon as I crossed the threshold, I kne
w something was wrong. My father looked like a towering tyrant and Star like a frightened child. The smoke of anxiety I remembered so well from childhood immediately swirled up in me. I stopped, afraid to speak, knowing any word or action would unleash the menace that was waiting to pounce. "Oh, here she is," he said. "In time for the food. And arms swinging, of course."

  I looked at my hands and forearms, not knowing what he meant.

  "Not so much as a loaf of bread to contribute to their keep."

  Our keep? We had brought presents when we arrived. A book, handkerchiefs, whiskey for him. Flowers and chocolates for Rose. He wanted a contribution to our keep?

  "Nothing but complaints from the moment yez arrived. Coffee, how are you. And showers. It's far from that you were reared but in you come with your notions and your nose in the air, snooting around the place."

  Star's eyes were opening white circles all round her irises.

  "And all your talk about America, America. If America is so damned fine, what are yez doing here?"

  His face was swelling, like a red party balloon. I tried to keep my voice calm. "Are you saying you want us to go?"

  For the first time in my life, I held his black, blazing gaze. A familiar throb-throb-throb began to beat in the space between my eyes but I didn't drop them, and I wouldn't have if I'd had to stand there looking into his hatred to this day. He was the one to break off. His eyes sunk to contemplate the toe of his boots and I felt my heart surge.

  From the side, Star said, "We should go, Mom."

  "What about you, Rose?" I said. "Do you want us to go?"

  Rose looked from us to Daddy, panic-stricken. He put his hand in the air and flicked his wrist, a wave that dismissed us or her, maybe both.

  "You can leave her out of it," he said. "It's nothing to her; yez are not her people."

  Star stood up, a loud scrape of her wooden chair on the tiles. "Let's just go, Mom."

  "That child needs the strap taken to her," he said. "In more ways than one."

  "You lift one finger to her," I said. "And I'll call the police."

  "I am the police, you little fool."

  "Not any more, you're not."

  "Oh God, oh God, oh God," wailed Rose. "Stop. Let's all be friends."

  "Come on, Mom."

  My father let a guffaw. "Would you listen to them? Should they stay or should they go? It's our house you're talking about, or have you forgotten? Go. Go on. The free hotel's just closed its doors."

  Star was in my room, waiting for me to finish packing, when Rose came in.

  "Oh, no," she said, seeing what I was doing and Star's case, already packed, on the bed beside us. "Please don't leave. He doesn't mean it, honest to God he doesn't. You should have heard him before ye came. He was all excited. Come back and let's sort it out. Or let him sleep on it. He'll be grand in the morning. We'll try again tomorrow."

  Star looked at me as if to say, don't you dare.

  "I'm sorry, Rose. I left here because I couldn't put up with the likes of that. I'm certainly not going to let him turn it on my daughter."

  "Oh, this is terrible, just terrible."

  I zipped my bag closed. "I'm sorry."

  She saw I meant it. "I better go back down, so," she said.

  "Of course. Goodbye, Rose. Thank you for everything."

  "He's not as bad as he makes himself out to be."

  "I know," I said.

  Star snorted.

  "Did you take the dress?"

  "Dress?"

  "Your m... The blue dress, from the other wardrobe."

  She saw from my face that I hadn't.

  "Have you room?"

  "Yes."

  "Then please," she said. "I want to think of you having it."

  She slunk away, back to her kitchen.

  We hefted our cases down the wooden staircase and outside to the car, feet crunching on the gravel. Then we stood on the doorstep for a little while but my father did not appear.

  "What should we do?" I said to Star.

  "Let him go to hell," she said. "Come on."

  I thought of the last time, sneaking away by night with Brendan. "No, I'd better say goodbye. I'll regret it if I don't."

  "What did you ask for if you didn't want my opinion?"

  I pushed open the door, and stuck in my head. He was in his seat at the head of the table, where we'd left him, his back to the door. "We're off then," I said, my voice grating with falsity. "Goodbye and thanks for having us."

  "Goodbye and good riddance."

  Rose moved towards us.

  "Stay put, you!" he growled, stopping her in her tracks.

  "Goodbye, Rose," I said, a sort of apology, as I closed the door behind.

  Looking back through the rear-view mirror as I drove away, my vision split. I saw the house as it was now and also how it seemed to me when I was small. Into the chasm between those two tumbled all the years I should have had -- saying goodbye the first time, returning afterwards every year or two for a visit, to warm hellos and sad departures, observing the changes in the place, little on little, year on year, giving me smaller pangs of loss. Bearable pangs. Shakespeare's sweet sorrow of parting, not this wrench that somehow must be endured again.

  "Are you all right?" Star asked.

  "Not really. But I will be. You?"

  She nodded. "I am now."

  A moment of accord. A silver lining. Next to what went on in that big old farmhouse, our little three-bed in Santa Paola seemed a model of family feeling. At least now she understood what he was like and why I kept her from him. It wasn't quite the reunion I'd hoped for when we were setting out but it was something. A bond of sorts.

  "Go up and hide in your rooms and wait until tomorrow," Star said in a silly voice, a bad imitation of Rose. "When he's had his sleep he'll be a pussycat, a little lamb. Is she mad?"

  "I know. Poor thing."

  "How does she bear it? He's absolutely awful to her. And she never says a thing to his face..."

  "I'm sure her answer would be that she loves him."

  She did, poor Rose, but only because she did not love herself. She was able to live with my father, to -- in Star's words -- bear it, because beneath his bad behavior, she sensed the torments that drove him. She was more attuned to his suffering than to her own.

  STAR. CHRISTMAS EVE 1989.

  Shando says I shouldn't write this. This is Mom's book, he says, not mine. I am to be her editor, as requested, to ensure that what she wanted to say is said, clearly and unambiguously. No more.

  I think he's wrong. I think she expected me to "write back". She all but said so on that last day in Laragh churchyard. "It's your story too," she said.

  Is that not right? Can't I, too, hold a pen? So let me say that when my grandfather's time to go came, he didn't go easy. His body twitched and shuddered in its resistance and his breath scraped in and out of him. "The death rattles," Mom called it, and I hated her quiet ghoulishness at the words.

  Once, as he slipped in or out of consciousness, he called for his own mother. "Mammy!" A shout that was prayer, entreaty and accusation, all in one.

  Mom saw my face at this. "You take a break for a while," she said.

  "Are you sure?"

  "Step outside, get some fresh air. You don't need to be here all the time."

  "What if...?"

  "Don't worry, I'll call you."

  He was lying still now, except for the sound of his tortured breath, in and out. I didn't know whether he was awake or asleep. Sleep had become a thin, worn blanket for him and it was hard to tell the difference.

  When the time came, Mom called me in. But still he clung to life. On the bedside locker beside him was his jug and tumbler of water, a box of tissues, a roll of mint sweets, the pill box, half full...Mom smoothed some petroleum jelly on his lips and I moved my breath to match his: in, out, in...Steady now, not as jagged as earlier, but louder than was natural, and rasping and slow. So, so slow. I felt as if whole minutes were going by between brea
ths, waiting for him to let the air in or out, so I could do the same. In. Out. In. Out.

  Until his stopped. The sound of this silence brought me back, out of the daze the slow repetitive breathing had induced. He made another, different sound, something like a dog makes when it's startled, a growl deep in the throat, fear and menace together: Grr-uh-uh-uh.

  Mom took his hand and held it as a shudder shook him, from core to skin. How could she bear it? The same sound again -- grr-uh-uh-uh – and one more inhalation.

  I waited for the exhale, waited and waited, then I knew it wasn't coming. She realized it at the same time and released his hand. She laid her forehead down on the bedcovers. He was gone and it was so strange, how it was still his own face, yet there was nothing of him left in it.

  "Mom?" I said. She lifted her head and her eyes began to clear. I could see her coming back into herself from a long way off, remembering I was there too.

  "He's dead," she said.

  "I know."

  "I'll go and call Pauline." She stood up, brushed down her jeans, like she was brushing off crumbs. "She'll know what to do next."

  REBIRTH |RĒˈBƏRΘ| [NOUN]

  the process of being reincarnated or born again.

  the action of reappearing or starting to flourish or increase after a decline; revival.

  *

  Chekhov says that writers lie most often at the beginnings and endings of their stories, but where I am most tempted to fictionalize, to improve and alter and just make it up as I go along, is here, right in the middle. Good stories demand reverses and turnabouts, so I should like to be able to say that, after our trip to Ireland, Star's bad behavior improved, that our moment of connection as we fled my father's house heralded a new way of being together.

  Alas, no. The turbulence and tribulations continued and -- as it is impossible to stand still in life -- because it wasn't getting better, it was getting worse. I was reminded of how it was when she was a small child, the way in which I'd just get on top of one phase as she was already in the act of launching herself onto another. Trotting behind her, trying to keep up.