by Ross, Orna
Nothing.
I spent the next two days reeling around the house. Star went straight back to LA, still not speaking. I persuaded Zach to follow her down, to make sure she was all right, and I spent a sleepless night envisaging him finding a scene similar to that which greeted me when I arrived from Europe. I was a string of elastic being pulled between the two of them, stretching thinner and thinner,.
And then, with a total sense of serendipity, a letter arrived from Ireland. From my old friend, Pauline, explaining that my father needed help. He'd been taken to hospital with a circulation problem but had discharged himself. As you know, Pauline wrote, he's over 90 now and he's gone down a lot since Rose died. He doesn't feed himself properly and has lost weight. We've organized 'Meals on Wheels' and I drop in to do his meds, and as much as I can, but it's not enough. He needs cover in the house, or else to go to a nursing home -- but, of course, he won't hear of either.
By the time Zach got back from LA, I was packed, ready to leave. "Don't do this, Mercy. Don't make this bigger than it already is. We have to sit with it, the three of us, and see what it is saying to us."
"You can't be serious."
"I am."
"It's not saying anything, Zach. It's just empty, random, cruel chance and we need to put it behind us. Somehow."
"The three of us need to meet," he insisted. "We need to talk. The truth is the truth, Mercy. What is, is. That's all we have to work with."
"Even if I could face it, I'm quite sure Star --"
"She is willing."
"Star?" I was unprepared for the spike of jealousy in me when he said this, like mercury spurting up a thermometer. "Star is willing to sit down with us and talk?"
"Yes, Merce."
Could it be true? If she was allowing this, it was for one reason only, in order to corner me.
"I can't," I whispered. "I just can't."
"You're running away again, Mercy, shutting me out again."
"I'm not Zach, I swear. It's just that..."
"You swore you wouldn't do this again. You promised."
So I flew back to Doolough, weighed down by a suitcase full of diaries, determined to write and investigate my way into the truth.
This time, my father answered the door himself, chewing food. A shrunken version of the man Star and I had left five years before. He had two cavernous Os for eye sockets, and two sharp cheekbones jutting through below, all padding gone.
When he saw it was me, he turned, leaving the door swinging open, a sullen, silent child shuffling back down the hall on thin, slow, old man's legs. In the kitchen, the television was blaring. A boiled potato was on the table, split open on a plate with two fried eggs on top, oozing yellow yolk. He sat back down to his food and began to eat again, as if I wasn't right there, watching. He ate slowly, food falling off the fork, his mouth making loud suckings and swallowings. The veins on the back of his hands were swollen tributaries of blue.
I sat opposite him. "Did you get my letter, telling you I was coming?"
His hair was unwashed and the smell in the room whispered incontinence. Yellow egg leaked down the front of his shirt, mixing with older stains. What he needed was one of those plastic bibs that Star used to wear. His long life had made a child of him again.
"Are you going to speak to me?" I asked him.
Another shaky mouthful, half of it missing its mark.
"If you don't, I'll have to leave."
Beside his plate were several vials of pills in different colors. The room was in disarray, dishes everywhere, dust widespread, dirty trails all over the linoleum.
"They always were pure nosy, those Whelans."
"You mean Pauline? She's only concerned for you."
He pushed his eggs around the plate. "I'll never get out of this dump again."
"It's as nice here as anywhere. Nicer than lots of places." True, but it must have sounded hollow coming from the one who had escaped.
"It would sicken you when it's all you see from one end of a year to another. I'd like to have got out again, once more before I died."
"I could take you for a drive. We could go anywhere you wanted to go. The West?"
"Yerra, don't talk soft, girl."
I picked up the dishes for something to do, while he headed off on a list of complaints. Nothing but funerals in this damn place. Maggie Moran yesterday and don't give him any palaver about the afterlife because none of them believe in it, which can be heard clear in the way they talk about the dead.
Or else it was the young sergeant going about in the squad car like he was in one of them Grand Prix. Or children calling to the door selling flags, letting on they were for the school or the GAA, but he knew better and he wasn't going to be funding their sweets. When he had exhausted himself complaining, he sat, caught in its hangover, one knobbled thumb spinning around the other.
Then: "I tell you one thing you can do, if you want to make yourself useful. You can get a basin of hot water on the go for me. My corns are a scourge this past week."
He shuffled across to the fire, the only homely thing in the room and took off his boots. A smell of feet leaked out to mingle with the tang of cooking oil and fried eggs. I boiled the kettle, mixed it with cold water in the basin, put in a dash of Dettol.
"You'll get a towel in the back kitchen and the blades are in the bathroom press."
The towel was threadbare and grey. The razorblades were in a pack, double-edged, each in a separate wrapper.
I brought them through. "Here we go," I said, with false cheer. Instead of taking them from me, he raised one of his gnarled feet. "Will you give them a scrape for me? I find it hard to reach down that far these days."
The foot dripped into the bowl, blotchy red. His eyes, though rheumy, were as sharp as the blades in my hand. He knew exactly what he was doing. And I thought I did too, as I knelt and took his foot between my hands.
In those days after I returned, I could feel my sanity quivering as I spent days and nights being drummed round the endless loop: my lover, my daughter, me, my daughter, my lover...My whole life seemed to have collapsed into this one string of thought.
Taking on my father, his moods and moans, provided a distraction. I did my duty by him, no more. And I did it for me, not him. But I did it -- and I did it well.
With Pauline's help, I changed the parlor into a bedroom and moved him downstairs. At night, I slept upstairs with my door open, so I would hear him call up if he needed anything. I slept only fitfully, on the surface, skating across dreams that left me feeling exhausted when it was time to get up. In the afternoons, I'd find myself napping in the fireside chair, falling into an unconsciousness that was somewhere between asleep and awake.
Pauline was my only connection with normality. Whenever she arrived I was shocked to see her red-cheeked smile, so ordinary and nice, breaking the trance that my father and I lived in. Each time I drank a cup of tea with her, I would feel a piece of myself wakening a little into the real time of the outside world. Then she'd be gone and I'd sink again into the regimen of pills and bed changes and the cooking of mushy invalid food.
The other hours, the alone hours when I wasn't cooking or cleaning or caring for him, I spent in my bedroom. Not writing, no spirit for writing now. Just staring, unseeing, out the window, clutching the ledge, as if I was going to spin loose and be flung off the planet.
I don't know why but ordinary, everyday things always seem to be harder for me than everyone else. When Star was small, I remember watching other mothers and the careless, expert way they would swing their baby onto a hip, or wipe a cut knee. Pauline was like that with my father but, with me, it was as if an invisible force was all the time pulling me back or tripping me up.
The fatigue didn't help. And being beside my father day after day, the effort of not remembering the last time we lived alone here together, was taking its toll. After weeks of fractured sleep, night and day had melded. I was never fully awake, never fully asleep and my bones were sore with ti
redness. Pauline advised me to exercise, to tire myself out physically.
"One good night's sleep would get you back on track," she said, and I knew she was right. I would find myself yearning for the Wicklow Hills, as if I was still 6,000 miles away from them, but not doing anything about it. I felt myself trapped in that house, held in place, even though Pauline said she would come and sit with him any time.
One day, she said she was going to have to fit him for a urinary bag, and if I could come in with her to help irrigate his catheter.
"Will it hurt?" he asked her, in a little-boy voice I'd never heard him use before. I was his daughter, but I was the intruder in their relationship. A voyeur.
"Not too much, I'd say, compared to what you're used to."
"What I'm used to is not good."
"No, I wouldn't think so."
She put her hand on his, wrapped her fingers round his twigs of bone. "You know it's important that you're not in pain, don't you, Mr Mulcahy? You know that's what the morphine is for?"
His head dropped, too heavy on its skinny neck, a lollipop on a cracked stick. Silence. Then something fell on the conjoined hands. A tear. Plop.
"You shouldn't suffer any more than you have to," she said, in the same gentle tones.
He nodded. "I'm sorry now. I'm usually better than this."
"You're surely allowed an old cry."
That annoyed him and he threw off her hand. "It's not a girl you have."
She only laughed, as if to say being male won't save you from tears, not in a sick-bed. Not even Pauline could turn my father into a good patient but she took no notice of his crabbiness.
"Should I help him wash?" I asked her afterwards, when we were back in the kitchen, having our tea.
"That shouldn't be necessary. There's a rubber mat fixed to the side of the bath and I've taught him ways to sit on the edge and do himself, in stages. He should be safe enough. So no, not yet. Let's wait and see."
"Wait for what?"
"If he starts to stink," she smiled.
I wrinkled my nose.
"I know. But let's not meet trouble half way. For now he's able to do for himself in that department. We should encourage him. It's something to give a shape to his day."
Then came the afternoon when I was napping by the fire and I heard -- or dreamt that I heard? -- the creak of the kitchen door. I opened my eyes. Or dreamt I did.
Two jean-clad legs. Long. Familiar.
I followed them up the torso, all the way to the top, to his beautiful, beloved head. Zach.
I re-closed and re-opened my eyes.
Still there.
"You didn't hear the doorbell," he said. "So I came round the back."
I reached my hand up. I felt his arm, flesh and bone. Fear rose in me. He came in close, put both arms around me, kissed my cheek. A waft of his smell and the fear abated. Dreams don't smell.
"You're real," I said.
"What?"
"I thought I hallucinated you."
He laughed. His laugh. "You might at least say 'dreamt', Mercy? Or 'envisioned'. Something that doesn't make me sound like a nightmare."
He pulled me in close, onto the white cotton of his T-shirt, onto his broad man's chest.
"Oh, Zach, we can't. I can't... Star..."
"Shhhhh. We'll talk later. We'll sort something. Just hold me for a minute."
"But..."
"Mercy," he said, stern this time. "Rest. Stop thinking. You look wretched."
"Thanks."
"We're not doing it your way any more."
"We're not?"
"No."
"Oh thank God."
I let him hold me, and for a moment I held him hard too, but it was no good. Distress and bewilderment reared back up. My daughter, my lover, me...
I pulled away.
"Look, Mercy," Zach said, sitting back on his heels, saying a speech he had obviously prepared. "You need help. I knew it all the way across the ocean, I know it now that I have you in front of me. Let me help you."
"But..."
"Later, afterwards, when you're stronger, I will do whatever you say. But for now, just let me help."
"You mean stay here?"
"Yes."
"Daddy would never allow that."
"Allow it? Oh, Mercy, the question is, will you allow it? The question is: what can you allow yourself to have?"
I thought of what it would be like, having him around here, being a shield against my father. How tempting it felt.
"I can't ask him, Zach."
"Leave it to me."
He jumped up.
"But..."
He was gone. Within five minutes, he was back, giving me a thumbs-up.
"What? That's it?"
"Sure," he shrugged, deliberately nonchalant. "Is there tea in that pot?"
"Tell me, Zach."
"Nothing to tell. I asked him could I stay and he said yes."
"Just like that? Come off it."
"Mercy, think about it. What else could he say?"
"Anything. He could have said anything. Lord above, if you don't tell me some of the details, I'll --"
"So you can obsess over them?"
"Christ Almighty, Zach, I'm warning you..."
"Whoa, no need to swear. I told him who I was and what I wanted -- what we wanted -- and he said 'This is still my house.' And I said, 'We know that, Sir. That's why I'm asking your permission to move in.' He said, 'What if I don't give it?' And I said, 'Mercy and I would understand that to be completely your right, Sir, and we would move out.' So then he asked about himself."
"Of course," I replied.
"I told him to rest assured he'd be well looked after.'"
"Ooooh," I said, laughing. "You're good."
"You know, Mercy, it is really very simple." He took my hand. "He has no power, hon. Not unless you hand yours over."
The clock ticked, too loud.
"Think about it: if you did move out, what could he do?"
"I won't, though."
I hoped he wouldn't ask why. I didn't understand it myself, my coming back here. Not being able to cope with the California situation was only part of it. Something primitive between me and my father was in it too.
"I'm not asking you to. I love that you're compelled to care for him even though...y'know. But we could easily move to Avoca, or into another house nearby, and you could do it from there. Or get him a nurse and just visit."
How lovely all that sounded. Especially that "we".
I used it myself: "We've no money, Zach."
"We'll find the money if you think it's the right thing to do."
I shook my head, regretfully. "No. He really does need live-in help at this point."
"Okay. But if we stay here, you must drop him as a burden, in your head and heart. And I am going to show you how. We'll start tomorrow. For today, just remember: whatever he was in the past, now he's just a sad old man."
"Hmmm. I'd wait till you know him a bit better before you jump to that conclusion." I looked at my watch. "It's time I gave the sad old man his meds."
I strode in, playing brave, but it was all right. He was reading the paper, and kept his attention on it, unwilling to confront. As I went about the small chores of dealing out the pills and the water, of plumping the pillows and straightening the covers, of clearing away the assorted debris of the morning -- newspaper, lunch bowl and teacup -- I hardly looked at him. I was afraid of what he'd bring up, but also I needed time to think. A man like Zach wasn't going to want to be around a snivelling wreck for long, I knew that, but I didn't have it in me to pretend to be strong and, anyway, he'd see through such a pretense in minutes. But I was happy worrying about this small knotty question, so much easier to think about than the big one at the back of it all. Star. Star. What about Star?
When I went back out, I stood over Zach's fireside chair and said: "I know we're not going to be able to go on like this, like you're a teacher and I'm your pupil. I want you to know I wil
l be strong again."
He held his two hands up to me and drew me down until we had reversed our positions of earlier and now I was the one sitting in the floor. He pulled me in, between his knees, and I sat, looking up at him.
"I didn't think you'd get it, Zach. I can't sleep with you again. She'd be there, in the..."
He put a finger to my lip.
"I know. I understand."
"You do? But remember what you said?"
He laughed. How could he laugh? "No. I don't," he said. "What did I say?"
"You said a relationship without sex was a relationship in trouble."
He sighed, deeply, like I was a puppy who'd forgotten its training and wet the floor. "Poor Mercy. You're getting everything wrong, fretting, fretting... Here's what's going to happen. We are going to get you better. I am going to live here and help you get strong again. Then I know -- I just know and you, for now, are going to have to trust -- that everything else will work out."
"But how?"
"It will. It already has."
He must surely see that to love me was to not love her, and to love her was to not love me. The bizarreness, the injustice, he seemed to think it a trifle. It was he who wasn't getting it.
"Have you seen her?" I asked.
"Yes."
"Oh God. Is she still angry?"
"Furious," he said, eyes lighting up, as if Star's fury was something wonderful.
Tears, my constant companions, sprang up. "She loves you, Zach."
"And I love her."
That spike again. He let this statement sit there, between us, out and open. Neither of us had the slightest clue about what to do with it. After a while he says, "Aside from the anger, she's actually coping with all this rather well."
"Not like me."
"It's harder for you."
"Is it? What about you? You seem so calm."
"Oh I'm reeling too, of course I am. But I'm trusting the Source. This is in our lives for a reason. Everything will come out right, if we let it." He tightened his hold on my hands. "That's what you've got to learn to do, Mercy. Trust."
