Malarky

by Anakana Schofield

  Somehow she is not satisfied.

  The arrangement of him sitting was all wrong. He should have been on his feet or back. The two positions she witnessed her son. All the details of what she imagined – never mind the outcome – were not satisfying. It must be in the execution that the triumph was felt. The triumph that sent her husband returning to Red The Twit. Somehow she wants what it is she has seen, exactly how she’s seen it. A need to be under two fingernails at the same time.

  —So . . .

  she hears Halim say unhesitatingly,

  —tell me all about the birth of your children?

  But she chooses to let it pass.

  In the car back, neither of them say as much as she hopes they will, but a few times he thanks her for the visit and says I had a good time, like he wasn’t supposed to. She responds with random questions on whether he wears glasses and where does he buy his food?

  —You’ll come again, won’t you, she asks him. His exams are looming. Does she have an email? No, no she doesn’t. You could write me a letter, I am always behind that back door, she smiles.

  The rain at the bus station makes it hard to make out the buses but she chitters out that if he misses the bus she’ll be happy to drive him and sure, she could drive him anyway, but no he’s keen not to inconvenience her.

  When she pulls up the car, he turns and places his two arms around her and she notices as he pulls backwards, that he fondles her breast lightly through her jacket, a polite departing afterthought that calms her. He bends down to his knees, puts his two hands on the seat and thanks her, before pulling his bag on his back and walking away. He does not look back at her. And this is good.

  Our Woman finally understood why Jimmy took up with men this way. There was something nice about it, she decided. Even when it was raining.

  She scrutinized her husband. Again.

  Back from Tubbercurry with little to report: The trailer, unsurprisingly, no good, fellas should not advertise things dishonestly. Their described state reflected nothing of the truth he rumbled. How those words rag at her? What is to become of us she thinks wondering if the evidence of what she had done this afternoon might be written all over her?

  She was surprised how easy it is to move into another part of her day after the explicit activities of the afternoon. She’s between regret and resignation, a nowhere in particular spot.

  She looked at her husband and had the strongest feeling he never put a finger on Red the Twit, despite what Red said, for how could he lay with such a good feeling at him, as the one at her, and betray nothing of it. He’d looked so thoroughly miserable all these months and if he was having this kind of fun, surely his demeanor would have improved.

  To tempt him, she boldly asked.

  —Two men, homosexuals, what is they get up together? How would they manage it?

  He eyed her astonished.

  —What else, he said. Sodomy. Sodomy is what they do. He was shook. She could tell. She shook him alright.

  —Is that it? she said. Nothing else?

  Light off.

  Unwritten bedroom regulation.

  —What are ya doin’?

  —You’re tickling me.

  —Stop would ya.

  —Where are you goin’?

  But she kept going.

  —Stop that now. Stop it.

  —What are you at?

  But she kept going.

  By final ascension she calculated it was the only time she had successfully managed to shut her husband up.

  Two in one day.

  A new calculation has taken up residence in her right brain. How to divide her desire between what she wants to do with her husband and her new, more unusual desires of what she must do with Halim? Overwhelmed by the disparity, I am reckless, I am now reckless, she thinks.

  She is no longer paying careful attention to cleaning the cups and has noticed the tea stains remain on them after washing. The bathroom floor had begun to maintain its puddles. Specks of black gather around the taps. The towels folded with such regularity now take their time to arrive back on the shelf and stay dirty and slung on the towel rail.

  One morning Himself shrieked: Which in this pile is the clean towel?

  Unprecedented.

  Only when a protest was erupting on the Six One news in front of me, did I allow myself to think about Halim. One of them Middle East places, you know all the red, green and white, the big banners and the bandanas tied around their heads that makes them all look like mad lost pirates. I was sitting on the sofa beside my husband when them scenes came on.

  —Where’s that, is that Syria? I sounded excited, but my husband did not notice and my husband, who’s very good with the news, said don’t be silly it’s the West Bank, it’s them bloody nutters again, blowing each other apart. And I waited a few minutes and sighed.

  —Well whether they’re nutters or not, I said, they’re lovely looking people. Look at the great faces on those young men, see the elasticity in their skin and the beards make them look wise when they’re all but twenty.

  Then I counted to seven to see did he take note of it. Had I heard the weather forecast today was his only reply.

  I was transfixed. There was a fella, a bit of a look of Halim, his fist going up and down, more of a beard on him, and words just flying out of him and the translation was slow in catching up and back to Eileen Dunne. Her hair was so incredible straight and scientific in its exactness, after the surge of fists and arrhythmic flags.

  —Wouldn’t it be great to speak every language in the world like that man?

  It was the daftest thing to say since the fella obviously couldn’t speak every language.

  —I like the way the women are all tucked in neat to their scarves. There’d be no wind at their ears.

  Silence.

  —I think they’re great, them fellas.

  —They’re a bunch of bloody nutters and sure we’ve a country full of them now to go along with our own.

  —I hope Jimmy gets one like him, I raised my voice a bit. One who’ll be passionate for him. Someone who’d fight for him.

  Then he’d a face like a thundery thunk on him alright. Oh Jesus. Up he jumped, changed the channel and didn’t speak a word to me until the lottery numbers were drawn, when he observed aloud that the number 7 was being drawn too frequently and there was something suspicious about it.

  It was important to keep the girls in my gang calm. I was strategic. I phoned. I called in. I had to keep them all calm. I have a tactic for each of them.There was a remote chance they might call up and take a stroke at the sight of Halim straddling my chair. The way to keep them out of my kitchen was to be in theirs.

  Once I was back in their armpits, they took a relaxation over me, I could see it. I could see by the way they sat, the way they told me the news of the day. Suddenly the demands were gone. They just wanted me here and here I am.

  Episode 10

  The doctor phones her early. Can she come down? He wants to check her blood sugar. It’s most inconvenient for she wants to head to the Blue House first and begin.

  Days after Halim graced her sofa Our Woman had a problem with her washing up liquid. A cheap LIDL purchase made in Poland or Czech – it won’t clean the plates and dishes properly, no matter how much she uses. She paid attention to her breakfast chattels this morning, rubbing the outside rim of a cup 45 times and imagining it as some part of Halim’s body. The green scrubber attrition for such a thought she sandpapered her cuticles in accidental punishment. Everything that lay in her sink reminded her of her visit to the virtual stranger’s body parts. Everywhere she placed her gaze, chunks and angles of his flesh seemed to blaze up at her. She still had her hands in the sink an hour later. Her cups were not traversing their way to the draining board instead they were rubbed, replaced and rewashed in the sink.

  Our Woman’s brain ached, as though fingers were separating it inside her head. A pain above her eye. Surely to God the washing up liquid could not ind
uce such misery, it must be something more.

  Should she be disturbed by her behavior? Was this headache the manifestation of it? Had it caught up with her now, nipping her viciously and variously through her day to remind her of the plunge she’d taken into that man’s groin? She wasn’t sure. The revisiting of the plunge, yes, well that made her wince, but in truth, she was merely consumed plotting how soon she could repeat it all over again.

  Is there anything as lovely as a nimble, young man the way that sweet Halim is nimble? I thought as I put the butter onto my husband’s bread. He loves his butter thick. The pristine condition of Halim’s skin, all flat and elastic and not swinging and flopping and clouting ya with the remnants of every pint he ever downed. God love them all for youth is far from wasted on the young, it is age that is wasted on the old. Give us some sweet suck at youth instead of all this wallowing and wounding. I’m sick with the wounding. For what have I done to have that twit deliver me such news? 15 years I waited on a sodden marriage proposal that was 15 years coming. And these days I’d duck whatever is coming, for I am sure there’s to be more. I have my hand out now for whatever might fit in it.There are times of the day I don’t give a flat toot about what I am after doing. I think bally-ho and off I go and why not, but then I think of the face on the girls were I to tell them and how they’d suck air in so swift they’d fall over. Ah. I’ll have a piece of fruitcake and think no more on it ’til this lunch is made. I must go to Ballina again and look for better washing-up liquid.

  Halim visited again. No pie, no preparation. Just tea. Just could you help me with my English. That morning she read his essay, but was busy thinking of the parts of his body she had yet to see. The upper arm area between collarbone and triceps and inside his arm. The aforementioned left and right sides at his groin to higher up the sides of his stomach to his armpit. Areas that have become unappealing, drifted to paunchy droop, on her calloused, crocodilian husband.

  The essay read. The tenses corrected. A few spellings changed.

  —Tell me about your pregnancy. I want to hear everything, Halim said.

  She offered a hot drop as distraction which he accepted, but in doing so patted the sofa. Come sit. She asked him if he likes college?

  —How many children have you? Halim, sitting, but not as close as she indicated.

  —Three. All grown up. London, London, Dublin.

  Does he want to see pictures, but he was not interested in pictures. He was not interested in their lives. He was singularly interested in how they arrived in the world.

  —How long you married when you conceived the first one?

  She thought about the question, considered correcting his grammar, and found it peculiar but was it anymore peculiar than the aged helping themselves to his young flesh? Help The Aged she mused, Help The Aged Help Themselves to the Young. She can see the poster campaign. Watch her! Paws off! Stamped across it.

  —I don’t understand the question, she admitted.

  Now she understood the question.

  His trousers remain open and the back of her cardigan still rumpled where he lifted it. Slightly startled she lifted her head, pressed her hair behind her ears and both her hands return and resume sharing the book. She plunked half of it upon his left knee and the discussion about the book recommenced. His hand stayed at the back of her waist, as though it might respond again with sufficient invitation, she does not press her weight against it. But she did steal a glance at him, to see what, if anything had he made of what just took place, and he smiled at her, a knowing nuzzle of a smile that confirmed that whatever had taken place was damned alright by him. It was important in these situations not to say too much, she thought. There was a relaxation at her, she hadn’t known in a very, very long time.

  —You have sexed with many men. He announced.

  She shakes her head, her eyes say it all. Not at all.

  —You have sexed with a man who has made you pregnant three times.

  —Uh ha. Yes she has three children so if you wanted to see it that way you could.

  —How did she know?

  —How did she know what?

  —That her husband would make her pregnant where another did not.

  He infers she has had a long line of men. Glory be to God. But there is a man beside her on this couch with his trousers open, so how can she avoid this question?

  —What precisely is it you want to know?

  —I want you to sex with me and tell me if you can tell any difference?

  —Grand, she says, but right now she has to get the dinner on and must put the potatoes on to boil.

  She wants to consume, rather than be consumed. She wants to consume exactly as her husband has. She calculates there are two or three more things she must understand until she can release him from their arrangements. And in seeking to understand them she had overlooked he may have his own demands.

  A drop to discontentment. Halim goes awful quiet on Our Woman.

  Fatigue at the prospect it might never be repeated, that she’ll not have her answer drills her into the ground, she caves in at the kitchen table spreads out her arms and folds her face on them and allows herself to dissolve. The bump of her skin against the dining wood, water from her eyes puddling where it should have no permission, she gives everything up to that wood. What if he will not come back?

  All reason and common sense are being squeezed from her forcefully like remnants of toothpaste out of the tube. I have ventured into wasteland I’d rather not tread. I am broken, she thinks.

  Halim she hears nothing from. All dwindles to silence. An inescapable silence for she’s certain he’ll send a signal. If nothing else he’s a man full of questions, and there’s few in this neck of the woods who’d answer them. She tries to imagine Bina responding to his inquiries about childbirth Bina’d crack him about the kisser. These days Bina is besieged with conspiring. She’s a morning, noon and night conspirer and she concludes every story with the words you see there might be something going on we don’t know about. There might be something more going on, Our Woman thinks.

  In her mind endless scenarios play out from Halim having died under the wheels of a bus, despite the erratic nature of local buses (2 per day), to him raw with despair at what he allowed her to do. What if he’s devout? What if he’s some kind of devout she cannot spell? A kind of devout where the punishments are high. Perhaps he’s gone to his religious person overcome with gloom, wailing she seemed like an ordinary housewife. I had no idea she was going to attack me and to be honest I felt sorry for her.

  —What’s wrong?

  —Can she help him?

  —Of course she can.

  A work locker. A lost key. Shirts in locker. Only one shirt. College this evening. He needs his single shirt washed and has no way to do it between work and school and he fears they are trying to sack him at work and can give them no excuse to aid them. They’ve talked to him about personal hygiene. They’ve complained about the state of his uniform. They won’t let him cut the padlock off. No because they want to sack him.

  —I’ll come and collect it.

  —Can you bring me a tee shirt to wear?

  She can. She’ll see him in thirty minutes. What time does he start work in the morning? Nine, he pants.

  He’s waiting, agitated on the corner they agreed on, sits into the car, removing his jacket and unbuttoning his shirt. She pulls a shirt of her husband’s from her string bag she uses to transport vegetables, brushing a piece of cabbage from the cotton.

  He repeatedly thanks her as he does the transfer. He’s awful worked up. Not at all, she says. Not at all, sure it’s nothing. But he’s stranded, how is he going to get it back? She’ll bring it of course. The same spot. I’ll bring it early she says because Himself will want the car. He leans over on departure and pecks her cheek. It’s a boyish quick peck.

  Once washed the shirt must rotate. It hangs above the range until her husband comes in from the fields. She removes it to the airing cupbo
ard when she hears his feet on the path. After the dinner is taken and he’s gone within to the fire, she whips it back above the range and calculates she can risk it hanging there, deciding Himself will not notice. Beautifully oblivious after Prime Time, he exits again saying he’s to go back the road amid grumbling about the state of the country and how Fianna Fáil will drive them all into the ditch.

  —Headfirst into the bloody ditch is where we are headed, he laments.

  Is he taking the car?

  He thinks he might.

  He might call in on a neighbour.

  Once the car is gone the shirt is safe. The shirt hangs and dries until Joanie calls in and her eyes immediately light on it. That’s a lovely shirt, she says. Eyeing it. Joanie’s seen it and she’ll tell the girls and they’ll all be lookin’ for it when they visit.

  He comes again, Halim does.

  Asks strange questions.

  Again, he only wants to know about childbirth. She gives him details of her children: names and ages, hoping he’ll respond with a clue to his own age. But no, nothing, so then she talks about their different personalities, searching his face lightly to see is this the information he is after, but his eyes dart at her and away from her and he’s not interested in their Leaving Cert results or their potential in the world of plumbing, or nursing, or Áine’s banking exams. He turns his thumbs, forward then back, frustration, something in the conversation is frustrating him, and this is difficult, she wants him comfortable, he must be comfortable for the circumstances already shriek sufficient with discomfort. Her, the old pillow she is, and him, so taut and well sprung. Warmly she keeps her eye on his, while considering whether to touch his arm and when she does, lightly just the top on his wrist, he blurts it out like she’s given him an electric shock. . . the birth, the birth, how was it?