The Visitors

by Patrick O'Keeffe

  —I know this part, my dear, I said.

  —But I didn’t tell you, my dear, that this was the summer I thought I was going to be a painter. I’d studied it in an art history class that spring. I’d taken classes in high school and college, so I went to an art colony in South Carolina. And a few days after I arrived was when my mom called. Dad then called me. He called ten times a day for a week, but I never picked up the phone. He left messages, crying, apologizing. He said he loved me, but I let him cry, and I cried when I listened to his messages. My boyfriend came to visit. We hiked the mountains. We drove to the beach. We smoked pot I scored from some dude I met. Another message from Mom said Dad had moved into an apartment. I had told Luke about the photograph. And I never again saw the woman. I have often wondered who she was.

  —Maybe they weren’t screwing, my dear. They were just hanging out, you know—

  —They were screwing, my dear—

  —If you think they were, then they were, my dear—

  —Dad married my stepmom less than two years later, my dear. And my stepmom mails gifts on my birthday, the Fourth of July, Christmas, Hanukkah, my birthday, of course. And I write my stepmom a card every time she sends a gift. I tell her how the gift was exactly what I wanted, but I’ve never liked one gift she mailed. In fact, my dear, I’ve hated every one of them. You will think me very ungrateful, my dear—

  —I’m more interested in the cabin and the motorbike, my dear.

  —The cabin was sold. Luke and I call it the first victim. The motorcycle was the second. I laugh now, but not then.

  —I believe you there, my dear, I said.

  —But I looked forward so much to visiting the cabin, my dear. The beautiful house I grew up in was dull compared to it. And I’m sure the new people have torn it down and sold the property. They bought it for that reason, I imagine. I was driving close to there last summer, and wanted to go see it, but I was afraid. I loved the big front room. I read so many books at that window, while my parents ate out in the evening with friends who lived in other summer homes. The light was beautiful in that room. The sky turned this shade of pink over the water every evening. I called it the pink hour. The small boats bobbed on the horizon. But I apologize for going on, James. I just wanted to tell about the car ride. But you must tell me about a journey you went on with your dad.

  —Is this one of the games you played in the car—

  —It’s just something on my mind—

  —It sounds to me like a game—

  —It’s not a game, my dear. We are waiting for your new friend. You begged me to come along. A fun day in the country, you said. And we have not seen each other in a while—

  —We haven’t, but I think this is something I got myself into—

  —A short trip. Stop fretting, my dear—

  —I’m not fretting—

  —You are, my dear.

  —You were mad with your father, I said.

  —Back then. But I love Dad. Dad is very kind. Dad is Dad.

  Dad is Dad, Zoë repeated—almost sang it, when she stepped off the futon. The fridge door opened. Water poured into a glass. The fridge hummed. A cloud shifted. Sunlight filled the yard. I lit a cigarette. I kept on staring at the corner.

  —Sorry, I should have put on some music, Zoë, I turned and said.

  —Don’t apologize, James. And you don’t have to tell me anything—

  —I’m beginning to think he’s not going to arrive.

  Zoë touched my shoulder. She placed the glass on the sill.

  —He’ll show up, my dear. He wants to see this aunt—

  —Who would think the homeless would be so impolite—

  —Just tell me your story, my dear—

  —Arrive, won’t arrive, my dear. I was around the age you were, my dear. My father was buying hay. It was raining when we started out, but then the sun appeared, and we stopped at all the churches we passed. My father did that, when he went on the road. He could not pass a church without going into it and kneeling for a while, and so going anywhere with him took time, because there were many churches. But we were on the road for a while, when we came to an abbey. It was Glenstal Abbey, which I didn’t know then. There is a castle next to it and a boarding school for boys. There were trees, stone walls, and trimmed hedges. I had never seen anything so lovely. My father drove in and parked. Flowers—roses, definitely, big bushes of them—but also copper beech trees, crocuses, lilacs, and hedges of rhododendrons, and we walked through a garden where cucumbers and rosemary and parsley were growing, and more flowers. My father knew this place, I think now that he did, but I only think it because I’m telling you. He ordered me not to touch anything in the garden. I obeyed him. I always did. And he reached into his coat pocket and brought out his beads and started praying, mumbling, like in ecstasy, or like a lunatic, depending on your thinking. Maybe he was just praying that he would get the hay at the price he wanted—

  —It’s a very good reason to pray, my dear, Zoë said.

  —I suppose, my dear. But I couldn’t pray with the castle rising above the trees and the scent of flowers and herbs. And at this man’s house the hay was bought, the deal went down, hay bought at a price that pleased my father, because if it wasn’t at that price it wouldn’t have been bought, the bottle of Powers brought out, palms spat on then slapped, speculating about the weather and the price of cattle, the lack of jobs, the dreadful politicians, and last Saturday’s horse races. The man’s wife brought out the whiskey. She served little glasses of it, with a splash of water—she used a teaspoon. She smiled down at me when she put a tall glass of lemonade and a thick slice of sponge cake before me. The table was covered in an oilcloth. Two red geraniums bloomed at my elbow. A gray cat was sleeping on the windowsill outside. I put my hand through the window and petted the cat—

  —How beautiful, my dear—

  —It was, my dear. Indeed, it was. But on the drive back we stopped at the abbey again. It was darker now, on the ground, but not above the trees, and the place was silent but for the crows cawing in the big trees. My father stood in the same place and took out his beads and prayed. And he warned me again to not touch anything, maybe thanking God now for the price he got, that was all there was to it—

  —Good karma, my dear—

  —Karma, indeed, my dear. But we drove away from the abbey, and on the drive home he talked about the year he spent in England. He had never talked to me about that before, although I had heard it around the house that he had once worked in England. I was still too young to be curious. And we weren’t a family who talked about those sorts of things. His year in England was the year before he met my mother. He was home at Christmas, and he met my mother at a dance and never again went back to work in England.

  —You’re losing it, my dear, but keep going—

  —Thank you, my dear. My mother, she had a small farm. I think her whole life was about waiting to marry and have children. I don’t think she imagined much beyond that. That and God were it. She talked to God like I’m talking now to you. Maybe the glass of whiskey caused my father to talk, but he was in a good mood. He told me he liked working on the buildings, the hardiness of it, meeting men from all over. He said the Connemara men were the worst—you are not going to understand any of this, my dear—

  —I’m liking your story, my dear. And your new friend has yet to show—

  —He won’t appear, Zoë—

  —Yes, James, he will—

  —Well, the Connemara men spoke only Irish, and it was their version of Irish. They were the toughest, you didn’t want to get into a fight with them, because you weren’t just fighting one of them, you were fighting a tribe, and one Connemara man was more than enough for any man to fight, though the Connemara men were highly valued as laborers. All the building sites wanted them. These men were proud of their strength, and they sold it to whoeve
r wanted it, for the right money, of course, which wasn’t much money, just enough for lodgings, food, and pints of beer. And then my father tells me that he never slept that year. After work he just walked the streets of Kilburn and Camden, he never went back to the digs he was staying in, he never went to the pubs, he was so homesick, he said, so he sat on park benches for the hours when he wasn’t working, and he slept on the benches and got up the next morning and went off to work, but I have no idea why he told me all of that then. Maybe, like you in your dad’s office, you just happen to be there—

  —Oh, my dear—

  Zoë took a quick sip from the glass.

  —And so there I was, my dear, sitting next to my father, not watching him, but having to listen to him, to endure him, and I never liked to look into his face, though his was a handsome face, narrow with strong jawbones, pale, with tiny red veins that spread out along the cheeks—you remember things that are of no use, you remember things that are of no use, he used to say to me—but I listened, I had no other choice but to listen to him, and I watched the fields and the meadows, the cows and the houses that drifted past so slowly, and I thought I was never going to be home and free from that car and him and his voice—

  —I imagine that’s your new friend at the corner, my dear, wearing the baseball cap, Zoë said.

  Her finger was pressed against the screen. I reached my hand up and wiped dust from it. The backpack was at his feet. A loose bunch of flowers lay atop it. The shirt was tight across the shoulders, but it otherwise fitted him.

  —Mister Mysterious Walter, my dear—

  —And flowers for his aunt, my dear. How sweet is that—

  —He stole them from the park, my dear. He’s late, and I gave him that shirt—

  —I never imagined you wearing a cowboy shirt, my dear—

  —When I was a teenager in Dublin, a girl bought it for me. It was a bit of a joke—

  —Did she buy you a horse, too?

  —No horse, my dear, or spurs, in case you are curious.

  —Don’t be rude to him because he’s late.

  —I was hoping I’d seen the last of him, my dear—

  I was sitting on the edge of the bed and lacing my shoes. Zoë was pressing the screen door open. The tote bag swung in her other hand. She tapped the screen with her nails—the bare, skinny arm extended, the palm flat against the screen.

  —Let’s not keep him waiting, James. He must be nervous about seeing someone he hasn’t seen in so long.

  5.

  At the end of June, Michael located the well down the paddock from the front of our house. The next week he brought a small JCB and drilled. Two weeks later he dug the foundation for the pump house. In early July, he brought a cement mixer, hitched to the back of his Nissan van. Pipes of all shapes and sizes, cement blocks, bags of cement, wood, and heaps of sand and gravel were delivered from the creamery store. We covered them with sheets of plastic against the rain, though that was a summer of sunshine.

  When the seven-by-seven foundation was set, Michael and a bricklayer built the walls. Michael plastered the walls himself. I remember walking out our front door, out to turn in cows, or cut wood for the range, and I’d stand in my mother’s flower garden and listen to Michael whistling tunes on his ladder, and it wasn’t until I moved to Dublin that I heard those tunes again, and there I also heard the words. Songs by Patsy Cline, Cole Porter, Billie Holiday, and Frank Sinatra that the locals sang late on Saturday nights.

  That first day, my mother told Michael to be sure to tell Nora the moment he got inside the door that evening to not bother with his lunch. My mother would make his lunch, she had to make lunches for us anyway, and because of the fine weather, there were plenty of tomatoes, scallions, and lettuce. My father grew these beside my mother’s flower garden, along with potatoes, onions, parsnips, carrots, strawberries, and raspberries. Michael sat on a cement block and ate my mother’s sandwiches and drank her tea from his white enamel mug. My father sat with him, unless we were making hay, and if that was the case, Michael helped out.

  Two or three days a week, Michael brought Kevin, and they started to stay late in the evening. There was a problem with how the well was lined, a leak, something like that, I forget, but I remember hearing them nailing down the frame of the roof while we milked the cows. After they were milked, my mother and sisters made supper, which Michael and Kevin sometimes stayed for, and after supper my father and Michael smoked Sweet Aftons by the range and drank bottles of stout, while Michael retold his jokes and we watched television, and when this one program we liked to watch was over, my parents told us to go outside, run around, enjoy the fine long evenings, what were we doing indoors anyway, watching that awful American trash, but if we were going to the river we were to be careful, even though the water was low.

  High or low in summertime, we went to the river. Oh, how I loved the river so! We’d take our shoes off and stand in the warm mud below the sloping bank and we’d laugh and shove each other and slowly sink into that mud that boiled up to our ankles. Then we waded in and tore out the rushes, ferns, and water lilies, and we swatted the fat bluebottles and the clouds of midges and laid down jam jars and tin cans on the sandy riverbed to catch the tiny fish we called brickeens. We decorated the jars and cans with moss and pebbles from the riverbed and placed them on our bedroom windows. The brickeens survived a few weeks.

  Anthony stopped coming to the river with us that summer. He had stopped spending any time with his younger brothers and sisters, and when our parents told us to go outside, Anthony was allowed to cycle up the road to meet the Mahers, who had a record player and two or three K-tel records. The Mahers and Anthony smoked Majors and drank cheap English cider. Rarely had they the money to buy them, so they just shoplifted them. My parents knew nothing about any of this. Or if they did, they pretended they didn’t. Rules for boys being way more lenient than rules for girls.

  Kevin’s interest in coming to the river with us was Tess. She was sixteen. She was beautiful. She knew this. And she rejoiced in Kevin’s telling her how nice her red hair looked, how fine she was in her pink skirt, and she sat before the mirror in the girls’ room and rolled the hissing curling iron through her hair and carefully brushed on mascara and eye shadow.

  —Don’t put that stuff on your face, they’ll go stone mad, Hannah used to say.

  —Let them go stone mad, Tess used to say.

  And she’d smile at me in the mirror and I’d smile back at her, and she’d press her face closer to the mirror.

  —Tell her not to do it, Jimmy. She’ll listen to you, Hannah used to say.

  —She won’t listen to me, I used to say.

  —Don’t blame me when they get mad at you, Hannah used to say.

  —Don’t worry, I won’t, Tess used to say.

  Then Tess would laugh in the mirror, and when she laughed I did.

  —You’ll get us all into trouble. That’s what you’ll do, Hannah used to say.

  And she’d tightly fold her arms and sigh and turn her back on Tess and the mirror.

  On one of those evenings in early July, Kevin sat on the riverbank. He took off his work boots and socks and rolled his pants legs up to his knees. Tess sat beside him and slipped her sandals off. They had walked hand in hand through the meadow behind the three of us. Hannah and Stephen were bent over, singing into the water.

  Bobby Shafto’s gone to sea

  Silver buckles on his knee

  When he comes back he’ll marry me

  Bobby, Bobby Shafto!

  Tess was wearing the pink skirt and the tight gray blouse that had two or three cloth-covered buttons at the neck. The skirt and the blouse, Tess’s purple coat, other secondhand clothes, and four pairs of girl’s platform shoes had arrived a few weeks before in a parcel from my mother’s old National school friend who lived in a neighborhood at the end of the Piccadilly Line
in North London.

  Kevin and Tess stood whispering in the mud. The three of us were eyeing the fleeting shoals of brickeens. I’d follow one brickeen, pick it out from the rest, but every time it got lost among the others. Stephen and Hannah were shouting with delight that there were more brickeens this evening than ever before. Kevin and Tess left the riverbank and headed toward the small hill a few hundred yards away. I waited ten or fifteen minutes before I told Hannah and Stephen that I needed to piss. They weren’t listening; they were too into their brickeens. And so I waded out and strolled up the side of the hill. At the top of it I hid behind one of the hay pikes we had made the week before. Michael and Kevin Lyons had helped. At the bottom of the hill sat Kevin and my sister. Their backs were against a hay pike.

  I had seen one porn magazine. They were illegal, but the Mahers had one. One of their Liverpool cousins had sneaked it over on the boat. And one Sunday in May, after second Mass, when I was walking the road home with the Mahers and Anthony, the oldest of the Mahers pulled his jumper up, reached his hand down the back of his pants, pulled the magazine out, opened it up, and shoved it into my face. They laughed. And so did I. It was a glossy photograph of a naked and bony young woman on all fours. A naked man knelt at either end of her. The men were hairy, fat, and older. One had a thick mustache, the kind you imagined a bandit wearing. And it all looked so brutal. The hungry look on the woman’s face, the tip of her swollen pink tongue clamped against her bottom lip, the men blissfully stroking themselves, warming up for the real action. But sure enough, I was terribly excited by it. I didn’t yet have pubic hair, but I believed that when I did, I’d fit right in, be accepted by Anthony and the Mahers, and go forth with them on their adventures.

  Long and thin goes too far in and does not suit the lady

  Short and thick does the trick and out pops the baby

  I read the story below the photograph. I don’t know if the Mahers or Anthony did. They might have got what they wanted by looking. Boys read the Beano, Hotspur, Batman, Superman, and Spider-Man, when we could get our hands on them. I read those and Andrew Lang’s version of the Odyssey and the Iliad, the Greek myths, the Norse and Irish myths, tales of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, Old and New Testament stories, The Arabian Nights, Treasure Island, Don Quixote, The Last of the Mohicans, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Lorna Doone, The Swiss Family Robinson, and Robinson Crusoe. Those books were in the National school library, which was a two-door glass cabinet that the teacher unlocked on Friday afternoons—but the story in the porn magazine has also stayed. The man with the bandit mustache told it. He said the woman chewed on the end of his penis like it was a cigar. How could you forget cigar? How could you forget chew?