Other Words for Smoke

by Sarah Maria Griffin

  Dedication

  For Helena

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Concentrate, and Ask Again.

  Prologue

  The First Summer

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Vignettes from Other Summers

  Question: What Is a Summer?

  Mae, One Summer Later

  Forty Something Summers Previously

  Rossa, Two Summers Later

  Forty Something Summers Previously

  Forty Something Summers Previously & a Number of Hours Later

  Rossa and Mae, Three Summers Later

  Bevan, Three Summers Later

  Five Things Audrey Tells Sweet James, Every Sunday for Three Years, Until One Day He Does Not Show Up

  The Second Summer

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  What Rita Said to Mae

  What Rita Said to Rossa

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Books by Sarah Maria Griffin

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Concentrate, and Ask Again.

  Prologue

  Nobody knew what made the three of them from Iona Crescent up and walk out of the world. The rumors were different, depending on who you spoke to. Accident, attack—nobody could say for sure, except for Mae Frost and her brother, Rossa. They were there when it all happened, but they were sworn to silence in the way so many survivors of horror are: their tongues held by something beyond their control. Mae wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to say any of it out loud, even if she was asked. That second summer, away up in the hinterlands where the suburbs kissed the mountains, had stolen the words from her. The language that matched her confession was lost.

  Afterwards, when dear old Rita Frost and her ward, Bevan Mulholland, were gone, the national media descended on the twins. Microphones and cameras desperate to harvest their sorrow and turn it into headline ink. Lucky was what those headlines had called Mae and Rossa. Lucky, like spotting a bright penny on a pavement, lucky like two magpies seen together for joy. Lucky, like the twins’ escape had happened by chance.

  Not a trace of Bevan or Rita was found. The twins were discovered by police and the fire brigade, sitting on the roadside at the end of Iona Crescent, holding each other. Streaked with soot, hands bloodied, but otherwise unharmed. Seventeen, the pair of them, wide-eyed and gaunt for months. They’d never be the same again, said the papers. It was a miracle, whispered the neighbors. Those lucky, lucky kids.

  All they told the journalists was that they ran for their lives. They would cast each other looks, Rossa and Mae, as they said just about nothing at all under rapid-fire questioning. Shock was the disguise they wore, and it protected them from having to say much at all.

  The only detail real Mae ever gave to the tall, coal-suited reporters as they grilled her was that she hoped Bobby the cat had managed to make it out into the mountains. They always liked that bit. Their eyes would come over sad; they would say she was so brave.

  The neighbors on Iona had been far more forthcoming. Devastated, all: Rita Frost was such a sweet old lady. And young Bevan, tabloids were splashed with photographs of her, school headshots, the occasional clumsy selfie. A gorgeous, bright girl struck down before her life had really begun. Her former boyfriend, Gus, gave an impassioned missive to the national broadsheet about the strength of her character, her beauty. There never would be anyone quite like Bevan Mulholland again, he’d said.

  Mae had agreed with him, when she’d read it. There wouldn’t be anyone like her again.

  While the papers flooded with tributes, it seemed to Mae that nobody remembered that Bevan and Rita had kept themselves to themselves. That Bevan had few friends, if any—that she was a quiet girl with something hard in her eyes. That Rita had been little short of shunned by the parish for operating as a psychic medium from her living room.

  No use in remembering the harder things, the stranger things. Rita was kind and Bevan was beautiful, and Audrey—well, what would anybody at all really know about Audrey? Audrey had been gone for years.

  Rita was kind. Bevan was beautiful—this is what remained. This, and the smell. They talked about it for years, told stories of how the sky above Dorasbeg had looked tornado-gray; a disaster in the air. Great billows of it carried on the wind down over the village and the motorway: smoke, sweet and dark.

  The First Summer

  Chapter

  One

  The floor is tiles and sawdust, like dry, flaked snow. You shuffle your feet and make little heaps of the fine wood shavings, here and there. Your fruit gum tastes like nothing. You’re last in the line. When the gray-faced old man and the woman with the pram are gone, it’ll be just you and the butcher’s son, Gus.

  You haven’t looked at him just yet; instead you inspect each cut of meat behind the glass counter. That’s what you must look like on the inside, you think, running your gaze over the crimson flanks, the pastel translucency of breasts, the redness of mince.

  Gray old man leaves, paper bag under his arm. The bell on the door rings as he opens it, closes it. For a moment, the cool of the shop is disturbed by the hot summer air outside. The woman with the pram moves forward, leans over the counter, goes, “Will you do us up a chicken with stuffing and a spice rub? Cheers, now, Gus.”

  Boring. You drag your fingertips over the glass, tap your nails against it. You blow a small bubble with your gum, it snaps. An impatient sound. Gus looks over at you, takes you in. “I’ll be with you in a moment, Bevan.”

  You hum back to him. “Whatever.”

  He tuts like he’s exasperated, but you know he likes you. That’s funny.

  Gus snows the pimpled chicken skin with salt, pepper, something red from a canister. Stuffs it with bread crumbs and sage and onion and butter. Puts it in a little tin dish, wraps it in cling. Keeps flinging you looks while he works. The woman with the pram passes a fiver over the counter. His latex gloves are still covered in the rawness of the bird as he takes the green note. You lean back against the arc of the counter, the skin on your legs sticking to the glass. Chilly.

  “What’ll it be, Bev?”

  Gus’s voice is flat, like he’s not interested in helping you—rather, like he’s playing at not being interested in helping you.

  “Bones again, if you have them.”

  You slide your eyes up him, his bloodied apron, his denim shirt. This is his da’s shop. He’s still in school, only working for the summer. He’s got a pair of cheekbones you could sharpen a knife off. Starving green eyes. Cornfield-fair beard and woolen hat over tufts of straw hair. Safety hazard, that. His ma told Rita that he’s got notions of moving to London after school, getting out of the family trade, starting over. Wants to do tattoos for a living. You can
see a couple of inky surprises peeking from under his cuffs.

  “More bones?” He is incredulous. “Using them to pick your teeth?”

  “Soup.” You flip out your phone, thumbing open the lock screen, posing indifference. “For Rita.”

  “Give it over. You’re smudging the counter,” he snaps, hands on his hips.

  “Make me,” you reply, popping another small bubble.

  “What kind of bones?”

  “Whatever you’ve got.” You don’t take your eyes off your digital feed, but you aren’t reading it, not really. He loves it, your indifference getting right under his skin.

  He hisses and disappears behind thick plastic curtains to get you what you’re looking for. Good boy.

  You start to sing along with the radio while he’s in there, loud enough given there’s nobody else around. It feels like the stations have only been playing four songs this summer, all of them bangers. You sway side to side along with the chorus, raise your arms above your head, kick the sawdust. Beat’s easy, words dark. Pay me what you owe me—you sort of lose yourself in it, synth overtaking your limbs a little. It’s cold in here to keep the meat fresh. The hairs on your arms rise.

  Gus comes back, holding a blue plastic bag weighed down with bones. They’ll be wrapped in cling, then yesterday’s paper. You smile at him, still dancing. “Take a break? This is such a tune. . . .”

  He shakes his head. “Christ, Bevan. Give it up, would you. Stop yourself.”

  You lean over the counter and he passes you the blue bag. It rustles. “Never. Dance with me?”

  You don’t really mean it or even want him to—you know he won’t—but hot red discomfort climbs his face. He sets his teeth, exhales through his nose. “Are you trying to be funny?”

  You’re not trying. You’re hilarious.

  “Suit yourself.” You shrug, kicking up the sawdust at your heels like glitter as you leave the shop. The bell rings as the door opens and closes on the summer tune and the flustered boy, lit up like a Christmas tree in June. You did that.

  On the walk home you try as best you can to hold on to the rush you got from his eyes on you. You stick in your headphones, scuttle through the village quick as you can. The village is what your ma and Rita call it. But Dorasbeg isn’t much more than an intersection of a few busy roads. There’s a looming church, three chippers, a school, two pubs, a string of shops, a Supervalu, a butcher, and a barber. A credit union, a pharmacy, a newsagent. All clustered together like a clutch of old ladies at the hem of the looming Dublin Mountains. It’s nice here, sort of. Pleasant, but for the disquieting presence of the old Magdalene laundry1 by the river. You’d always thought that was an uncomfortable thing, for people to live in the shadow of such a sad place.

  This one in particular put your village on the map. The workhouse for unmarried mothers was closed down after a scandal was leaked about a pregnant teenage girl who died after escaping it, decades ago. Now it just stands there, leering history.

  But your ma always reminds you how fortunate you are to live in a place like Dorasbeg. You suppose you should believe her.

  You power down past the river that runs under the church and take a sharp left into your housing estate. Rows and rows of semidetached houses, white with red roofs. Big ones, porches extended, tasteful gardens. Glamorous, or at least trying to be. Upper middle class and labyrinthine. You lope a few turns, then head down to the end of the last cul-de-sac, where your house sits. Well, Rita’s house. You just live in some of the rooms of the behemoth. Your ma used to, too.

  Behind the house is the long garden. Behind the garden is a wall. Behind the wall is the forest, then the mountains begin to climb.

  You let yourself in, same as always. It doesn’t feel that different now that ma is gone: for a moment you forget that her coat won’t hang on the banister again; instead it is somewhere far away. It has only been a few months. You check for postcards—none, just a couple of pizza menus.

  The house is pristine, like in a catalogue—this side of the building so different from Rita’s. Your ma tried so hard to make it her own. You would have too, if you were her, but maybe not as cold as this, as orderly. Nobody really lives on this side, and it shows. Imelda kept nothing.

  She was young, still. You’re her only souvenir. The daughter with the face of a musician who let her into his dressing room after a show, then up and left. Your ma had always said you were like him, but then she up and left too, so maybe the pair of them were alike and you were something else.

  You’ve thought a lot about leaving. But not leaving the way she did. Not slipping away full of apologies and promises that the time would come when you could join her. Not the tears-in-an-airport kind of leaving. Something better than that. Less cowardly.

  Away up the stairs and into your room. Your soft bed, the big window. Pastels. The leaning mirror. The wardrobe. The room is nearly empty, one whole wall of the room totally featureless—no furniture, no interference. Barely a sign of who you are anywhere—this could be a hotel. A space that any person or any thing just passes through. The wallpaper is white roses and tawny vines and leaves, a textured and endless pattern.

  You sit on the rug, your butcher-shop bounty in your lap, legs crossed. You look up at the wall, pop your headphones out, slide your phone across the floor and away. You swallow your gum. At last you scoot nearer, so your knees graze the sideboard. You pull the plastic open, then the newsprint, then the cling. The bones are a nest, pink and raw and slivered white. They smell metallic.

  You pluck out a slender wand of bone and twirl it between your fingers, then place it against the wall like a painter with a brush full of crimson. You press, and the surface gives way like wet sand. It eats the bone and his voice says, more.2 You take another and push it in among the pale roses, the delicate vines. They tremble. They begin to rearrange. good.

  The paper garden begins to shift. A third bone. yes, he says.

  “Yes?” you say.

  And the owl arrives.

  You are so glad to see him.

  Chapter

  Two

  Rossa was carsick. His mam was driving, the radio murmuring news. His dad had his eyes closed, just listening, leaning against the window, and the heat was stifling, making his nausea roll, his palms sweaty. Mae was glued to her Nintendo, silent and hunched forward, headphones in her ears. Rossa found himself a little shamefully glad that she was being quiet for a moment. He wasn’t sure when he had started being grateful for his sister’s occasional silence, treasuring the moments when she wasn’t effusively gushing about something or other. It was recent. Their twinship, too, had become strange rather than comforting—the secret language between them had loosened at the seams. He blamed it on fourteen. He really wasn’t into being fourteen.

  It didn’t help that Mae had half a foot in height on him, like she just woke up one day with her limbs mysteriously elongated without sending his a message to pick up the pace. The pair of them were made of the same stuff; surely that meant his bones owed him an explanation. He was three and a half minutes older, too, which had always felt like a winning argument before, but now was just another check on an ever increasing list of embarrassments about his body.

  The car swung around a corner, his mother blindly pressing buttons on the ancient cassette player. Rossa jolted in his seat; Mae nearly dropped her game.

  “Paul, put our Philo on there, I can’t see if the tape’s in and I don’t want to drive us into a tree!”

  Dad tutted, as though Mam’s request was a burden. He shuffled through the glove compartment, tapes long older than the twins clacking, before stuffing the favorite into the mouth of the player. It took off midsong, and the rawness of Phil Lynott’s voice filled the car. Rossa’s nausea subsided a moment as a fanfare of trumpets cleared the tension. Mae didn’t react, thumbs twitching against the d-pad of her small console.

  “Love this,” Mam half said and half sang. Her voice was metallic, pantomiming something she wasn’t fe
eling at all. Even Rossa could tell that.

  Dad said nothing, returning to his window.

  There was a reason they were being shipped off to their great-aunt Rita’s for the summer, though Rossa didn’t know what it was. He was pretty sure that Mae knew, but he didn’t want to ask her. Rossa looked out the window at the scrolling, dull landscape. Gray and moss green. Why Rita? She was practically a stranger. They’d only met her at their holy communion and confirmation, maybe one Christmas. Why this summer?

  “Almost there now, babs!” Mam chirped, taking a sharp left into the affluent, cloistered housing estate where his great-aunt lived. The houses here were far, far bigger than the poky little terrace that they lived in. There were hardly any people around, Rossa noticed, just stately houses and manicured lawns. He closed his eyes for the next few turns, a lurching roller coaster, trying to focus on what the still air and steady ground would feel like when they got out. An hour of his mother’s driving—or more specifically, his mother in a terrible mood and unable to focus on her driving—and it was nothing short of a miracle that he hadn’t thrown up in his lap.

  To Rossa’s sweeping relief, the car slowed. Mam parked at the end of a cul-de-sac. Rossa undid his belt and leapt out of the car with such speed it surprised even him. Mae exclaimed, “Jesus, Rossa, wait for me,” unpopping her headphones, emerging from her digital adventure. Her brother didn’t answer, just flopped down onto the path a moment, heaving great undignified gulps of air. The relief of it.

  His mother and sister began unloading a summer’s worth of meticulously packed cases. Dad did not help, rather let himself out of his door and strode up to the house. He was pissed off at Mam and wasn’t even trying to hide it. Rossa couldn’t help but stare at him, marching ahead like the rest of them weren’t there.

  Before Dad was halfway up the path, the hall door opened and Great-Aunt Rita stood there in the frame. She opened her arms wide at the door, a gray shawl draped over them, and her neat white hair in a knot at the crown of her head. Glasses circular, earrings pearl, long fingers stacked with rings. And an alarmingly large black-and-white cat at her feet. Dad picked up the pace, waved clumsily to her—a boy again in her long shadow.