(I’d smiled at boys until then, and they’d smiled back at me. Tried more than just smiling often enough. Now I noticed that a girl could smile the same. Different. Better. The same.)
Molly Malone knew I needed what she had to give. She reached under the cart and pulled out a box. Inside were six of the shiniest, happiest-looking mackerel I’ve ever seen. I shook my head, “I can’t afford that.”
“Yes, you can.”
“No, really,” she was smiling at me and it made me smile at her, smile even though I was confused and chilly and annoyed. “I can’t.” I reached into my pocket and pulled out the few coins. “This is all I have, and I know my mother would want me to bring back some change.”
“You came out to buy fish heads and innards and wanted change from that?”
I shrugged, “You can’t blame me for trying.”
“No,” she agreed, “so try this. You can take the fish, and keep your coins. I have a different price in mind.”
She nodded me closer to her and I took those steps willingly. I could smell the river now, and now the sea, the rocks and the waves and now the wide ocean bed. I could smell it all on her. And more. Could smell me on her.
I stood before her, she on one side of the cart and myself on the other. I was dizzy and interested and frightened and excited. I was sixteen.
She was speaking very quietly, and I had to lean in to hear her better, so many people around, other stall-holders, late like Molly, clearing up after their long day, shouting to each other, shouting to us too, laughing at us I thought perhaps, a few people pointing, one or two shaking their heads, a man called out, “There she goes, Molly Malone at it again” and another spat, calling after his friend, “Damn me, how she does it, when I can’t even get a bite.” I heard them, but I didn’t hear them, because what Molly was saying was so strange and so unexpected and yet also so right, that I couldn’t seem to take in what they were saying while I took in what she was saying. Asking. She was asking.
“So, it’s a trade, a barter really. I don’t want your coin, but I do want to see you. Naked. You take the fish now, and then later, tonight, or tomorrow, when you can get away, you come to my room – I’ll give you the address, don’t suppose you’ve been to that part of town too often, but you’ll find it easy enough. You’ll come to my room and you show me yourself. In your skin.”
I stared at her. “That’s all?”
She laughed, “Isn’t it enough for you?”
And I don’t know where the bravery came from, maybe all those brothers, maybe the way she was leaning in, smiling, maybe it was just that I was sixteen, but I answered, “Is it enough for you?”
She leaned back, folded her arms across her apron, the smile gone, her look as appraising and judging as ever it was when she stood on the dock and chose which fish to buy and which to leave.
“You’re pretty enough, true. And you have lovely skin. Nice hair when it’s down I expect. But it’s only six mackerel, child. Don’t give yourself so cheap.”
I wanted to tell her I was my own to give as I saw fit, that I certainly was not cheap nor meaning to be, that she didn’t know me though I knew her, we all knew her. I wanted to tell her so much. I said nothing. Held out my hands for the fish box and was off. She shouted the address after me. I wrote it in willing and kept it in my breast – from where it fell down to the pit of my stomach, the top of my thighs, the place between. And stayed there.
In any other family, a sixteen-year-old returning home with flushed cheeks and a full box of perfectly fresh fish might occasion a question about the purchase of those fish. Might even make other members of that family suspicious, would certainly urge them to ask how much exactly I had paid for the fish. Not in my home. I hadn’t been in the back door a minute when two of the big hulking lads that, astonishingly, come from the same mix of flesh and blood that I do, were on me, one had me in a lock from behind, the other had taken a running dive at my feet, both of them pummelling me for not being home sooner, not providing their meal sooner. Then our mother was in the tiny kitchen as well, and the boys shooed out to join my father and their gut-clenching baby brothers – you’d think that lot hadn’t been fed for a week or more – a chunk of bread handed over to make them quiet and a reach up to add a sharp-knuckled rap on the back of the head of the one a step older than me. I was standing so close to our mother he couldn’t tell who had given him it, so though he turned and growled, he didn’t dare hit back.
Then my mother was on the box, dragging it out of my hands and ripping the top off to see what was there. She wasn’t quite as cool as the boys.
“Molly Malone gave you this?” “She did.”
“Why?”
“I asked her.”
“You paid her?”
“I did.”
I lied.
And my mother knew I was lying. I wasn’t sure what would come next, the lecture about Molly Malone’s type or the back hand across the mouth or the fast hug our mother specialized in, the one that made none of her children ever feel left out, and none of us ever feel like we had enough of her either. What came surprised me. She smiled. She nodded. And then she shook her head.
“With all these men around in the house, I’m not surprised you wouldn’t want a woman’s company sometimes. I know I do.”
And even as she was speaking, she was lifting out pans and putting on the water, and handing me the knife for the potatoes and taking up a couple of onions herself.
We feasted that night. My mother could always make a little go a long way, but with a lot to start – she was a culinary queen. And my father knew it too, kissed her fondly before, during and after the meal. The eldest brother and I exchanged looks. The baby was only four years old and we’d all been glad of the break. The house didn’t need another.
We had finished clearing the table, done with the washing up, the next-up brother had put the two little ones to bed, our father was reading to the older boys from the sports pages of the paper and I said to my mother, “I might just pop out.”
And she didn’t look up from the pan she was putting away, just nodded, “A breath of air?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll not ask where you’re going.”
“You can.”
I had my lie all planned, but she chose not to make me lie to her, she’d have hated that, spared herself the pain.
“I’ll not.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
“I doubt that.” She stood up then, I could see her knees were hurting her, her back aching as it always did by this time of night, and then my father called from the other room, and already she was moving away, starting to go to him, heading for him as she always did. Our mother loved our father.
She stopped by the door, “Do you want one of your brothers to walk you?”
“I don’t.”
“Be careful.”
“I will.”
And that was it.
* * *
This is it.
I’m standing in Molly Malone’s room – a wide, fringed shawl covers the window, another is thrown over her bed, a third sits on the back of the single chair. The shawls are of red and purple and deep green, they are the only colours in an otherwise bleached-clean room, floors and walls scrubbed pale, as if she never lights the fire in here, as if there is never any wood smoke or candle grease to mar the walls, the scoured floor. Maybe there isn’t, it’s a cool room. Not cold, but certainly cool. Molly Malone’s room smells like driftwood, sea-washed day after night after day. It smells of clean linen. She has told me that beneath the shawl that covers her bed, the sheets and the pillow-case are ironed. This is an extravagance of time and effort I can’t imagine, but from the scent of the bed, warm lavender, I have to believe her. The room also smells of lemons, there is a wooden bowl of them on the thin table, one is cut in half, she is sitting on her chair and watching me, she is rubbing her hands, her fingers, her nails with the sharp flesh. She pours water from a cracked jug into
a chipped bowl – there is the same picture of a courting couple on both – and washes her hands, wiping them down on her skirt. She has changed since I saw her in the market. She is wearing a clean skirt, no fish-blood or dried guts, a clean skirt, now with two long, dark marks from the wet hands, her own hands, down her own thighs.
“I’m ready.”
This is the third time she has said so. I don’t know why I’m waiting, I know what I came here to do, am happy enough about it. I’m supposed to be shy about my own body, want to cover it, but in truth – other than from my brothers’ prying eyes – I really don’t mind. Never have. I like what I see in my small bedroom mirror a great deal, like it far too much I’ve been told.
“Look in that mirror any longer and you’ll see the devil himself come up behind you,” our grandmother always used to say. She’s dead now, and there is nothing behind me but Molly Malone’s bed. The problem has not been that I’ve needed to shield myself from myself, rather that I’ve never been asked to show anyone else before.
I’m being asked to show now.
There are not many layers to remove. Once I decide to start, it is quickly done.
“And now I’m ready,” I reply.
It is so easy to be naked here. Cool, yes, but easy. I enjoy her gaze, am delighted to have someone else see this, see me, witness me. All of me. Her heavy gaze on my shoulders, my arms, breasts, belly – there – thighs, calves, feet – there – breasts, face – there. Molly Malone’s eyes dip from my breasts to there, then rip back from there up to my breasts. I don’t know if she’s disappointed or delighted. Maybe both.
Perhaps both.
Both. Like me.
And then. Molly Malone naked. Five feet five in her bare feet, tired feet that stand all day, begin standing at first light, even in summer, waiting on the dock, tired splayed feet from years of hard waiting, and then the walk from the dock to the market, walking with her barrow, walking the cobbles and walking them hard. Molly Malone does not have pretty feet. Molly Malone naked and lying back on the bed, that back that has lugged lobster crates and crayfish pots, that has carried sacks of cockles and heavier ones of mussels, that back that bends and stretches all day as she reaches and weighs and parcels and sells. That back rests now, against the mattress and calls me, to rest on her. Molly Malone, reaching to me with strong arms. Upper arms with muscles delineated, Dublin streets have forged these muscles, forced these muscles, the old barrow with rutted wooden wheels pushed up and over, up and over, day after day after day (not Sunday afternoon, not Monday), upper arms strong enough to push from the dock to the market and back. Every day, twice a day. And her forearms. Molly Malone has fine dark hair on her forearms, shading the sinews that reach around the bone, embracing the tendons that years of shell-cracking, shell-piercing, shell-opening have made clear and sharp and strong. She does not have the pale skin of a lady, Molly’s skin is mottled and freckled and lined, it is skin that has seen both sun and rain, skin that needs both sun and rain. Molly Malone has sold me sweet little crab claws with these good, strong arms, and I have been happy to watch her move behind the barrow, behind her apron, behind rolled-up sleeves. Now I watch her move on old white sheets.
It is night, there is no barrow, no market. We are in her room, and I am watching her, awaiting her. Her hair, which smells of clean linen, soft cotton, which is spread out across the darned sheet, across the thin grey blanket, beneath the coloured shawl, spread across me, her hair smells sweet and like night. It is night. She is not sweet. Her hands which, under the lemon, smell of soft shells ripped open, of mean claws tickled apart, of oysters smoothly shucked, of tiny shrimps tucked into perfect round pots, of fat grey prawns pinking with heat, her hands which smell of fish and of shellfish and of wide, wild oceans she has never seen, will never see, are on me. Molly Malone has hands that are wide and open and they hold me, I am both wide and open, full and ready. Molly Malone has hands that could clasp a small woman’s waist or a young man’s neck – hands that have done both – and now they clasp me, all of me.
This is the mussel. Open on the willing shell. We do not cook our mussels here. You can add your French white wine, your butter, your herbes fines, you may love your moules marinières, I’ll take mine raw, and fresh, and from the shell. Dive in. I am the diver and I am the pearl. Tonight I search not the pearl, but the cockle. Small flesh, winkled out, called out. I call her out, my Molly Malone. In a while, a good enough while, she calls me back. And, calling to each other, we are one. A one that is made of three. One of her and the two of me. (We understand our trinities well enough in this city.)
Time passes. We spend many nights together, my Molly and me, and are happy to do so. My mother is happy too, relieved, I think. She always knew it would show itself one day, that I would have to show myself one day. If I was going to show anyone in this city it was safest I should show her, Molly Malone of the stories and the songs, Molly of the cockles and of the mussels. Molly who is not squeamish, who will gut and scale and rip and cut and open and taste. Molly who has always been happy to taste it all.
She did die of a fever. And no one could save her.
But I’m not sure that many tried.
I tried. My mother tried too. Even the big brothers helped, and our father. Carried broth, brought cloths, lit candles. Prayed. Once or twice.
No one could save her.
I left not long after, there was nothing for me there, not by then, not when so many people knew me as Molly’s . . .
Well, as Molly’s.
And I have made a good life here. There is a wife. And children. The wife is pleased to be mine, though we must – of course – hide ourselves, dress up, dress down, dress to fit. I played the girl there, I play the man here. It works well enough, and my wife is happier that way, she and our children are safer that way. We are happy. Most of the time. And if I miss my home, if I think of that black port, or the land I have left, of the city I ache for sometimes, in truth, it is mostly the water I miss. The river, the docks, the sea. The smell of the sea on the wind. My mother and father are long dead, the brothers all married too, happily some, unhappily others. No surprise there. But sometimes, when the wife beside sleeps deep – and these hot nights in this hot land are too warm, so many nights when I long for a cool room, for a cold night – on those nights I throw off the bedclothes and I lie here naked, lie here showing all that I am. All of me. And I remember being seen, for the first time, for all of me.
Then a smile comes to my lips, and a deep grin embeds itself in that place between my belly and my thighs, that place where I am both hidden and shown, where Molly Malone truly saw me. And here, in the dark, ten thousand miles from my childhood, more years than I can remember since that night, then hands that smell of a home I will never again see, touch me, take me, and hair that is washed walls and scrubbed floors and lemon halves and ironed linen fills my breath and my Molly Malone is as alive as I am. Lives as I do.
Alive.
Alive.
Oh.
Saving the World
Thom Gautier
This was in the late 1990s so it’s time I shared this tale, a tale from the days of the politically correct uptight 1990s.
One night I was making love to my then fiancée – I’ll call her X. We were fucking near the long bedroom mirror below our dresser. Seeking a visual flourish to enhance our foreplay, I asked X whether she might put on that men’s hat – her fedora – like she used to back when we first met. My question didn’t sit well. She pushed off me and then she grilled me about the request, as if I’d just asked her to get on all fours or give me a rim job. I mean, a hat – a goddamned hat fetish is hardly even a kink. “Guess I’m not good enough to make love to unadorned, naked?” I told her that went without saying. “Then why’d you ask me to put on that ratty old hat?”
I told her to just forget it. “Forget the fucking hat.”
Lilah was a work friend of X’s at one of those save-the-world non-profit foundations and I was fi
rst introduced to Lilah the night after the hat-skirmish with X. It was the foundation’s Christmas party. I am sure that Lilah and I spoke a good deal at that first meeting, but all I remember is shaking her hand and studying her long straight dark hair, her dark eyes, her little black dress, her black choker with its pearly cameo, her black teardrop earrings. Her lovely ass almost visible against the pleats of her black skirt. I remember thinking that I’d bet big money that Lilah probably would wear a hat when she made love. I also remember, later in that party, Lilah and I reached out to grab the last brownie on the dessert tray. We laughed awkwardly, one of those impromptu fits of laughter you’ll remember sharing even if you don’t know exactly why. I was a gentleman. I let her have the last brownie. Oddly, some part of me wanted to hang around her and hover, watch her eat it. But I left her alone to enjoy it, wandering back towards X, X who was too busy proselytizing about one of the foundation’s pet causes to even think about dessert. X, I realized, was losing her sweet tooth.
X and I saw Lilah socially now and then and each time between the get-togethers seemed longer than the next. Then one evening during dinner, X told me Lilah had quit the foundation. The news punched me in the gut. I realized my crush had taken me over, full-tilt. “Why’d she quit?” I asked, as if, knowing why she’d quit, I’d be able to intervene and get her back to my girlfriend’s office.
“She’s materialistic, shallow,” X said. “She’d rather leave the office at five to go shopping at Saks than stay a little longer to go the extra mile for our charities.” X’s self-righteousness irked me; I wanted to defend Lilah as if she were my lover. I knew that Lilah wasn’t shallow. Materialistic? Who the hell isn’t? “So she likes expensive handbags,” I told X. “That doesn’t make a person shallow.” I don’t think I convinced X, who took up our plates and shook her head with the kind of patronizing disapproval that I associate with nuns and spinsters.
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