Malarky

by Anakana Schofield

  —He’s not useless, I said. He’s loyal. I made him loyal the way his own father was not.

  But I noticed the colour in his face rose, the way it went when he was indignant and I thought I saw a bit of blue creep on his lips. The veins, the odd purple one across his cheek seemed more pronounced and when I saw the bit of sweat on his forehead I worried and opened the window. I kept quiet but my head was leaping, leaping with plans.

  I knew it. I knew it. He was repelled by Jimmy and it was only me who could provide for him. And that day I knew above everything else I must find a way to get some money, to have money in case Jimmy was in trouble and needing it. His father would do nothing for him, the way he might for the girls.

  Then he put the car into second gear to get on my nerves and he drove like a barrel bouncing down the mountain. All the way there, we did not speak, except for a few words that I do regret but at least I told them softly: you’re a weak man, I said and I regret the day I put my hand in yours. Confront yourself deeply within. You’ve destroyed me with your nonsense. And he came back that I was a half crazy woman who had given him nothing but a bucket of trouble and there wasn’t a man in the pub who didn’t agree I should have left you and your madness and your carryon. You! he shouted! You are the woman who has been in the hospital let’s not forget! And you! I shouted back. Should have occupied the bed beside me at the very same time! For it was you who put me there.

  He should have come back with a bigger shout, something deafening. I shoulda opened the door and stormed out, back the road and we never would have made it to the funeral and maybe the day would have been so different. Same outcome, different, somehow different. Perhaps a cup of tea could have been taken instead to calm things down. He did not shout back. He did not speak. I paid attention to how the water flew, leapt outwards from the windscreen. I thought of how much water falls on us and how we might as well be living beneath a waterfall and I wondered was I truly happy in this life I’ve chosen and decided I probably was not. I have to tell you that because of the circumstances that followed, those were the last significant words my husband spoke to me before what was about to happen. He said I was a half-crazy woman. I said he was a whole crazy man. What he meant was his son was imbued with the other half of my craziness, but he was polite enough not to say it. He was restrained you see, and I admire him for it now.

  At the church, my husband jumped from the car, banged the door in and strode away – his good jacket flapping over to reveal the corner of his shirt had not been tucked in. I thought physically at that moment he was a fine man, who looked well that day in his suit and tie. I hadn’t had a thought about him since I came to know Halim for I was always distracted by the darker, younger man’s beauty and glow and there was no getting around it, Halim had far better manners than my husband.

  —Mind the seat belt, he called back. The seatbelt dropping on the ground and becoming wet bothered him immensely. It bothered him as much as someone being buried bothers me, hence I was dawdling into the church, hoping to hold the person above the ground as long as I could. I had to run to catch up with him because it would look funny us arriving separate and I had to smile twice as hard because he was not responding to anyone who hello’d him. I did not hear a word of that service. They could have been burying anyone. They coulda been burying me.

  In the graveyard he was sneaky. He knew how unsettled I am around graves. I’m very unsettled around them. Walked with me and then lingered at the back, touched my arm, whispered he’d to go to Ballina. He’d be back to collect me at the Afters.

  —No, I protested, I don’t want you to go, I don’t want to go to the Afters, I need to go home and make Jimmy his breakfast. See Jimmy was up.

  —I need you to bring me home. I need the car to bring me home. But he’d turned on his heel and I didn’t like to raise my voice beyond the four cries where I uttered his name and implored him to turn back to me a minute. The crowd now surrounded the grave, I was starting to stand out, shouting at the back of my husband who refused to hear me. Above that grave, as they began to move the coffin, I was crying inconsolably, crying in a way I had never cried, for a cousin I’d no knowledge of. I was crying my loudest howl over my husband’s ability to prevent me making the decent breakfast my son deserved this day, that there would be no one in the kitchen when he came out from his bedroom. My third prolonged bout of howling came nearly out of the depths of my groin, I offered it the way we offer prayer, I offered this howling to the misery my husband was going to Ballina this day to reach for the Red Twit. I was crying over that woman lying in the box and weeping gratitude to her for lying there. I could have nearly thanked her for dying and told her the truth that I knew there was only me left to care about my son, that his father had given up on him. I said a louder Amen than those beside me and a man and a woman either side of me, whom I could not name because my eyes were so blurred, linked my arm and handed me tissues. They held me up. Probably thought I was the dead woman’s sister. Was it disrespectful to cry about unrelated things at a funeral? I did not doubt that it was. I was crying for my son and for the husband who made me wait 15 years to marry him and now had given up on us. I had to get myself home to Jimmy urgently that was all I knew.

  My husband went to his grave in a hurry to get to Ballina to be with Red the Twit and it was the pressure of that hurry and his rebounding thoughts and guilt over Red and I, that caused his heart to over pump itself to a sudden, unexpected halt. At least he died with a purpose in his step and an active thought in his mind, rather than say dying lifting up a bucket or moving a gate.

  Had he arrived in Ballina and reached her front door, he would have found Red born again to chastity, so better for him not to greet that rejection and then to have come home to me and Jimmy more dejected and angered. He might have attacked Jimmy that night for he was so viciously angry with him that morning, and he was angry with him for reasons the boy could do nothing about. He was angry with him for having the audacity to love a man or several of them. He was angry with me for having the determination to love my son in spite of that audacity. I wanted to tell him at times: do you think this is easy for me? Do you not think a mother has romantic ideas of sending her son into the arms of a woman she can then disagree and fight over her grandchildren and know that her son has married beneath himself and that he’ll pride his mother above any woman he ever takes into his bed? Do you not think I have cried while listening to innocuous country music on the radio of rodeo love and knowing that my Jimmy will only have men for company and that his life will be ruined because of it? I have come to terms with it fueled by the determination to save him from the financial ruin.

  That is what I have done about it.

  Then to go and die on me. In so public a manner. It was the battering I deserved. I see it now. I walked into the wall that day.

  Episode 20

  Whatever of Bina’s promise, her pretend son delivers Our Woman to a different fate. Drops her at the hospital gate, and just before he flees, could she give him a few Euro for petrol? Our Woman would clank him about the head, except she’s minus an arm. A concerned citizen of Letterfrack lifted her up, bringing her in to disaster, for – I found this woman at the gate confused – when they find you at the gate they pay too much attention to you. Precisely what she does not want. Breeze in, get a bandage on it, breeze out, and have the lad wait for you in the car park.

  Bina had instructed:

  —Give him 1 Euro.

  —the paper.

  —tell him don’t move!

  Our Woman told him, stay here, don’t move, but watched him disappear, grinding his clutch unhealthy as he departed. The hospital claim she is incoherent. Her story doesn’t make sense. They seem convinced her husband or son had beaten her. She insists they are both deceased. No one had beaten her. Top of her thigh odd place to get a bruise – the nurse. You’re awful cold, what has you so cold, how long were you outside? – the doctor. Do you know where you are? – unidentified blur of
a person.

  It is an awful messy show with none of them saying what the other wanted to hear and it worked out the way these predicaments do, Our Woman again interned on the ward protesting there was a young man waiting outside for her and as soon as he had the packet of cigarettes finished, off into the dark he would drive. I only need a bandage, Our Woman proclaims. At least leave me on a trolley like they show on the news.

  Bina sits unhappy. She ponders aloud how it all went wrong, while her biro did a word search. The cover of the puzzle book showed a woman in a low cut top, who looked like she’d catch her death wandering in these parts thus adorned. Our Woman looked at the woman on the puzzle book and wondered where did she live?

  —Lookit, that little fecker I’ve taken him off his retainer . . . Bina rattling. I’ve told him if I ever see him I’ll take a stick to him. What right had he dumping you at the gate like silage. He’s a fucker.

  Bina’s filthy tongue is up! Our Woman loves it when Bina’s filthy tongue is up. All will be well.

  —Honestly they’ve no respect for nothing anymore. It’s the mobiles and the tee shirts and the satellites is doing it. You can’t trust any, only your own kind, and even them you can’t trust. You can trust no one do you hear me now?

  Bina’s talking about Joanie who’s over there in deep conversation with the nurse.

  —She’s plotting to have you locked up as we speak. Well I’m not moving, says Bina. If they try to move ya I’ll fight them to the ground. I’d nearly get a gun if it might save ya.

  —You’ll end up in the bed beside me.

  —That’s right. I will. We’ve to be sly about this. You’ve to tell that nurse on the QT I’m yer sister, any form needing signing is only to be signed by me. I’ll take everything they give me within to Ballina and have my solicitor go over it and see what it is they’ve planned for you. Don’t let them put anything into your mouth unless it’s written down.

  Bina pauses. Our Woman turns her head over on the pillow.

  —And whatever you do let them put nothing up the other end either. That’s sometimes how they sneak it into you.

  Our Woman has understood she is surrounded by people who long to shove things into her and this will be her fight. Only Bina is aware of the scale of it. Thank Christ for Bina.

  —Eat up the Quality Street, Our Woman tells Bina. I hate the sight of them.

  Bina blames Joanie. She blames Joanie for Our Woman ending up back on the ward. She tells Our Woman Joanie is having too many chats with the nurses and this will encourage them to lock her up. Joanie blames Bina for sitting too long in the chair. Would she not get up and let another sit down? Joanie thinks Bina’s greedy eating all Our Woman’s Quality Street. As Bina is blaming Joanie, and Joanie is blaming Bina, Our Woman inquires where does Bina think the woman on the front of the puzzle book lives.

  —For the love of God, Bina hushes her, don’t ask me such a thing, or they’ll have the sheets off ya and will put ya in the can. Be quiet, she said. Be quiet so I can hear what your one is gibbering on with over there.

  I will never know why I returned to Red the Twit for a second audience. It remains the clearest indication I was raving out of my mind during that time, for what woman in her right mind would seek to convene with someone who has warmed the bed with her husband. Honestly, I ask you. Do you know any? I do not.

  My second encounter was different. Unannounced, early, I landed, for I wanted to disrupt her day the way she’d disrupted months of my life. Bonier than I remembered, tobacco clavicle bony, pipettes of smoke sucked in – along with my husband – rather than food. That she might over pull on her tobacco stick, swallow her tongue and choke to death before she could answer the questions I had brought to her.

  I gave no explanation at the door, stood silent ’til she admitted me. She’d be in to me in a minute, and out for a cigarette she went. Gave me the chance to gander and I saw what I imagined I’d see. As spare as her charm, so her house sat. Evidence of magazines, the holy book, index cards, paper stuck up here and there with instructions to repent. Little in the way of clues to her life, because maybe she didn’t have a life beyond the collection and borrowing of other women’s husbands. A pair of shoes dropped by the couch. The heels on them scuffed. Pop socks bunched into their toes.

  The furniture old, dank from the days when she smoked indoors. The house, relatively new, but suffocated in the occupant’s predictable life of stale work, out to nights of hanging about polished end of the bar, up on her high heels, down on her elbows, the occasional drunk lunging her way. How would my husband have come upon her? She was a specimen, a specimen alright.

  Our Woman can see Red standing outside pubs: her tights wet from the rain, her silly toes poking out in ill fitting footwear, the wind whipping up around her hips in a too-short skirt. Today though Red returns to her living room as though she doesn’t quite belong there. Like a displaced object being shoved on the wrong shelf. Nerves at her.

  —So Philomena, Red says, can I get you a cup of tea? I am not long out of the bed.

  Our Woman does not give explications, nor indications.

  —I’d like to know how you came upon my husband? Where did you first meet him?

  Red’s silent.

  What has she to be so silent over?

  Me thinking.

  Her watching.

  Her thinking.

  Me watching.

  Her speaking.

  —Do we have to go over this? How will it help?

  —Oh it will help me very much. I’d like to know.

  —OK, she said and adds more emphasis by squeezing each hand on those smoked-slim hips. Let me think, was it Ballina? No that wasn’t it. I think I met him at the nursing home. Yes that was it. Didn’t he come to the nursing home?

  Red addresses Our Woman as though she too was involved, as though Our Woman dispatched him on his way to her and blessed him as he exited the door.

  She’s a Twit. Red’s a twit. Red the Twit.

  —I think he did. Yes that was it.

  —Nursing home? What nursing home?

  A pub, a sandwich, a stare, an accident – all explanations Our Woman was ready for. The words Nursing Home dial the wrong number. It’s the wrong dialect.

  —Yes, he called in, inquiring about a place for his elderly mother and I showed him around and gave him our information pack. It’s a very good pack like ya know. He asked a few questions and asked if it would be ok for him to come back another time and I said he’d be welcome to call in anytime.

  Small dry cough, somewhere around the neck emitted from Red.

  —He began to call regularly. I looked forward to his visits.

  Our Widow is astonished.

  —A nursing home, Our Woman repeats. And what year was this?

  —Let me think now a minute, maybe two years ago this May was when I first set eyes on him. I won’t tell you a lie, the first time I set eyes on him I thought him a handsome man and hoped ever so much his mam would move in and die quickly.

  —You did?

  —Yes you see we need the turn around on the rooms, but also if they go quick it’s easier on the son.

  —It is?

  —Yes I think I told him this. Maybe that’s why he took such a shine to me.

  Our Woman notices Red’s hymn has switched to him rather than ‘your husband.’

  —There was a lovely shade to the colour of his hair. A bit of a peaty shade.

  —Are you sure? My husband has very little hair.

  —Oh maybe that’s right, perhaps he was wearing a hat. And he’d a very nice shirt on him. I remembered being struck by his shirt. So clean.

  —And?

  —And then I saw him the few times in Ballina. One time he asked would I care to have a drink with him and he talked at length of his mother, and her illness and how much it weighed on him and I was very struck by how dedicated he was to her and I gave him all the advice I had learnt working at the nursing home.

  —And he li
stened?

  —Oh he did. He was very attentive your husband. Very concentrated.

  Perplexed, Our Woman cannot hide it. Who is this man Red describes?

  —I thought him a bachelor. He talked of how he wished he’d found love and children. That the lack of children was the biggest pain of his life.

  Our Woman must rise and leave now. She must rise and leave for the recently built front room with the aged furniture and stilted life is beginning to topple her. If she can move to the front door she’ll be released.

  —Come again, Philomena, come anytime. Red sings. I thought you would have called up before now. Don’t leave it so long the next time!

  I wish to Christ she’d stop calling me that name, Our Woman yanks the keys from her coat and scrapes her cuticle, slices her wrist in the tug process. Next time she would tell her that he’d died. Today wasn’t the day. There was to be more revelations she could tell. Red insists on giving her an awkward square hug that belongs at neither woman. Between them is the crouching shadow of her husband.

  She must think. Our Woman must think and she must think hard. She must muster that man, her husband of so many years up and back and before her from the grave. She must see him sitting in the chair and at the table. The only place, the only time, the only action where she can see him is at the kitchen table and moving objects. Only in the moving of objects does he live again.

  If there was Red there were bound to be more? For who would stop at Red. It’s in their home, every step he has taken, every hand he has placed is in her home and will be easy found. There will be brochures, there will be information packs, for he would have recorded these places he was shopping to put his mother into.

  Our Woman reflects on his mother. She laughs. She laughs hard. She was the kind of woman that would never put a foot in a nursing home.