The Visitors

by Patrick O'Keeffe

  —But what went wrong in the bar, Stephen?

  —Well, as the evening wore on, Jimmy, Seamus kept wanting coke, and I kept saying to him to leave it alone, and then something happened in the toilet. I don’t know, I think Seamus fucking asked someone if they knew anything about getting coke, but the outcome was that this person got very angry at Seamus and his friends were mad, too, and there were a good few of them. I tried to sort out the hassle, but I was drunk, but Seamus was even more drunk, and he was in the wrong, Jimmy, but you still have to stand up for him, and so we were told to leave, and we did, but I had a hard time telling Seamus that we had to, that there were a million fucking bars we could go to, and so we left, but outside he pulled me into the street, waving his arms and screaming, and a car came at us menacingly, and I pulled him out of the street in the nick of time and told him he needed to cop himself on, and he shouted at me that I was a bollocks and he shoved me against a wall and I shoved him into a lamppost and he said he never wanted to see my fucking face again, and I told him I didn’t want to see his. Then he took the train back to London later that night, Saturday night, but his plan was to stay till Monday morning. I didn’t say good-bye to him. I stayed in the room. The door was open and I could hear him shoving things into his bag and mumbling under his breath what a cunt I was, and I was a lousy fucking friend, but I didn’t go out there and say good-bye to him, I didn’t know that would be the last time I’d see him. How the fuck was I to know?

  —You weren’t, how could you—

  —Poor Seamus. That whole family, Jimmy. They were mad. They never got over the father dying. Was that it? Do you ever hear a word from Kevin over there?

  —He got in touch a few days ago. He wants me to go and see him. He sent a stranger with the news. But I am not going to see him—

  —Sending a stranger. That would be Kevin. Make a fucking drama out of it. Too easy to pick up a phone. But go and see him. Why don’t you?

  —I was never close to him. I have no money—

  —I’ll send you the fucking money. He’s sad over Seamus. He wants to see someone from home—

  —Thanks for the money offer. However, I’m not going.

  —However. However what. What the fuck’s wrong with you?

  —I’m an upside-down fucking beetle trapped inside a shut matchbox—

  —You’re between chapters.

  —That’s one way of putting it.

  —So you won’t go and see him—

  —I said no, didn’t I—

  —But did I ever tell you what Seamus told me about Nora the night before he went to London and three weeks after I went to Manchester?

  —You didn’t.

  —We were out of our fucking skulls, and Seamus was crying, going on about how much he was going to miss everyone and he didn’t really want to go because he was afraid he couldn’t handle London, but he kept saying that he had to go, but Seamus told me that Nora tried to burn down the shed two days after Michael was buried. Can you believe it, two days after the funeral and small Nora with a canister of paraffin and a box of matches! He said Nora was screaming and crying, I gave my life to this man! I gave my whole life to this cold man! Can you imagine gentle Nora saying and doing something like that—

  —I can’t. Can’t, Stephen—

  —And so Kevin found the key to the shed, I forget how, but Nora caught Kevin right when he stuck the key in the lock. Caught him and she got the key back from him somehow, and it was later that same day that she tried to burn down the fucking shed. Michael still warm in the grave. And Nora flinging paraffin at the shed like she was lighting a funeral pyre. Imagine that, Jimmy.

  —But Stephen, he might have been making it up—

  —Fucking nonsense, Jimmy, and you know that, but after that thing in Manchester I rang him in London. This was about a month after. I got tired of being mad at him, so I rang him because I was going through a hard time myself, the job had ended, and I didn’t know where I was going to end up next, this was before I heard news about the job in Berlin, and I thought it was so stupid that we fell out, because we were such great friends, and you hold a hot coal in your hand long enough you only end up burning yourself, but for a full week I left messages, but he never rang me. He was gone. He’d made his decisions. Or lovely snow-white spoonfuls of coke made them for him.

  —The girls, they’ll hear you. They’ll learn all about who we really are soon enough.

  —That they will, Jimmy, but Seamus and me were so fond of each other. You’d never think people that fond of each other could ever fall out. Fall out and never again talk. Makes me think, Jimmy, that our nature is not love. Love being a gaudy fucking present you give to someone once a year, like at Christmas. Something you do that pleases yourself. Making yourself feel better about yourself. Keeping people on your side till you find out they’re of no use to you anymore. When Seamus and me cycled the roads as children we promised each other we’d be the best of friends till the day we died, that we’d let nothing ever come between us, no matter what blunders we made, no matter how the fuck we turned out. But you were very close to the sister in Dublin.

  —You’ve asked this too many times before, and I’ve told you this too many times before. We were friends. We were young. New to the city—

  —We all thought there was something between you and her—

  —Here we go again—

  —You were so moody then when you visited from Dublin, which wasn’t too often anyway, but even Tess thought there was something—

  —The mothers said we should meet, and so we did, like I told you many times before. We took Sunday walks. We went to see films—

  —You and her had a thing for each other. I can still hear it in your fucking voice, the way your breath goes. You don’t think I know you, so why don’t you just tell me the truth—

  —If you don’t stop I’ll hang up the fucking phone—

  —I’m only joking you. You’re always so fucking serious. You turned out exactly like our father.

  —Stick the fucking knife all the way in, Stephen.

  —But you know what I think now, Jimmy?

  —I know I’m going to fucking hear it—

  —Blank. We’re from men who picked their holes in public, but you didn’t know the first thing about them. Blank, I’m fucking telling you—

  —He spoke directly to God morning, noon, and night. That’s not blank—

  —Whoever the fuck he spoke to, he went at life like an animal. Nothing in there. Going at life like an animal. All those years when all he did was grumble and grind his teeth and tell me to do this and do that and to get out of his way. Do this. Do that. Do this and that at the same time. But I gladly got out of his way. I got as far out of his way as I could—

  —You did, Stephen, but there was something in there—

  —Nothing was in there.

  —There must be. There had to be. I need to think there is—

  —You’re going to college, so you obviously know better than me—

  —I’m hanging up on you—

  —Only pulling your leg, Jimmy. So rarely do I hear from you. Waiting for Sharon to come, Jimmy, so that I can wash the kids and put them to bed. But I am going to be thinking about things I don’t think about anymore, thank fuck for that. But they were so close. You’d have to admit that they were so fond of each other. They were like lovers.

  —Who are you talking about now, Stephen?

  —The old man and Michael. Who do you think? But what do you think they talked about?

  —They talked about John Garfield films, and they talked about their neighbors, and they talked badly about politicians, and they talked an awful lot about the horse races, and Michael talked about the jobs he was doing and told his jokes. The old man, he never laughed at them, but Michael went on telling them. You remember Michael and his hat in
the church porch?

  —The hat, of course, the fucking hat—

  —He took the hat off that one moment when the Communion bell rang, and by the time the sound of the bell had faded he had the hat back on and tilted. I stood in the porch a few times when I didn’t go to Mass with him and her, but I also remember walking through that porch and Michael standing at the back and the father would just ignore him. Walk on by. That was the only time the father did not acknowledge Michael. The rich house on the hill of love thy neighbor as thyself.

  —But what was that hymn the father liked to sing? He sang it so well. The only one he ever sang.

  —It was “Hail, Queen of Heaven, the Ocean Star.”

  —“Pray for the wanderer, pray for me.”

  —That’s the one, Stephen.

  —But the truth is, Jimmy, I don’t remember Michael too well. I was too young, but I remember the morning he died.

  —He died at the table. He was eating an egg. He was about to go to work.

  —He didn’t die at the table. He fell off a ladder. He was putting a new roof on a hay barn. And he had a heart attack and fell off the ladder. Up at Mearas. Close to where Auntie Tess and Auntie Hannah lived, up where the father was born—

  —You’re thinking about someone else. Michael died at his table at home. A man came to the door and told us. The mother invited the man in—

  —It was Mick Maher. That’s who it was. Maher, who stuttered when he got excited.

  —It wasn’t Mick Maher—

  —I’m more than positive it was Maher—

  —The only time I remember Maher in the house was when he visited because his two sons and Anthony had vandalized the National school. They put small holes in the windows of the new toilets. Stained glass, and they put round, small holes in each window. They used a pellet gun, I think, and there was war over it. They had to write apology letters to the teachers and the canon after. Why would those boys do that to the fine school toilets? How could they be so brazen? That’s what the adults said, the mother and father included. But those boys were getting back at the teacher for all the beatings and insults she inflicted, for all her pain that she punished us with—

  —But how’s Anthony? I never ever hear one word from him.

  —Hannah says he bought a house in Dunmanway. Like you, he’s busy raising children. And he’s making lots of money. Cash was what he wanted. And he didn’t even have to leave home to find it. So all his dreams have come to fruition. I never hear a word from him—

  —But how was the old fella after?

  —After what, Stephen?

  —After Michael died, what do you think?

  —It must have been terrible for him, then the mother a few years after.

  —But how’s Tess, our fine thing of a sister?

  —I’m going to ring her when I’m finished with you. She quit the nursing job. She’s taking painting classes, and she broke up with her boyfriend. So Hannah tells me.

  —I often think of her paintings on the wall of the girls’ room.

  —The only things that survived after the pop star photos were torn down.

  —The paintings were lovely. The one of the farmyard, the hay barn at different times of the year. The one with the dogs lying under the trees down the paddock.

  —But remember the one she did of the pump house? Remember that one, Stephen?

  —That one was the best, Jimmy. The sheepdogs in that one, too. On either side of it, like they were guarding it, but why did they marry at all?

  —Who?

  —The father and mother, who do you think.

  —Why are you asking me that?

  —You dwell on these things. You have the luxury. You’re going to college.

  —To increase knowledge is to increase suffering, and fuck you—

  —Fair enough, Jimmy, but I should go to Mass for Seamus. I never go. I’m raising a shower of nonbelievers. But I’ll go for Seamus. Light a few candles. That won’t cost me too much. Say a prayer. Sharon is nothing in that way, and she should be here soon with her sour mood and dark circles under the eyes.

  —I’ll let you go then, Stephen, I have to ring Tess.

  —I need to give the kids their baths. Read them something or play them a song. That’ll make Sharon happy, though it all depends on how her day at work went. You put women to work like men and they act exactly like them. Like pure bollockses. But when the girls and Sharon go to bed I can have a few beers and smoke a bit. Play the piano for a bit—

  —You have lots of work in the buildings.

  —Too much work, and you’re at that bakery? Is that where you are?

  —I take the hours they give me. I should get another job, but I study, or sometimes I do. And I take and teach a few classes.

  —You were never one for hard work, Jimmy—

  —Don’t criticize what you don’t understand—

  —But, Jimmy, think of the mad conversations you’d have with Kevin. When you have children you have other things to think and to worry about. That might be the best reason to have them, so are you ever going to get married—

  —Mother of Christ, Stephen—

  —Hold on, I hear Sharon’s car at the corner. I need to stand with the girls. They’re all dusty and sweating from kicking the ball. When they’re knackered like that they start crying. And I’m not in the mood for their tears. I too have my own tears. But you shouldn’t be so afraid of the phone.

  —I can’t afford this call—

  —It’s me you’re talking to, so fucking afford it. I’m just trying not to think about Seamus or any of you.

  —I have spent my entire life doing that—

  —We all know that, but I’ll think about it when it’s dark, and the girls and Sharon are safely in bed. But come over and see us. The girls would like to meet their moody uncle. I tell them about you and I tell Sharon about you.

  —I miss you frightfully, Stephen.

  —So come over and see us, can’t you, Jimmy. We’ll have a barbecue. We’ll invite our friends and neighbors. I’m growing my own plant. I’ll play the piano. Play you Gershwin and Chopin. Play you the old songs. You’ll have your own room on the third floor. The house is huge. We’ll pick lemons from the tree in the front yard and make fruity drinks like they do over there. The country where Bill is still the king. Bill who helped bring peace to our homeland. I’ll send you the price of the ticket. Pay me back when you’re a professor. And I surely think you should go and see our neighbor. He won’t fucking bite you—

  I pushed open the screen door and walked across the warm grass to the shadows of the evergreens. I tried to hear the traffic but Stephen was crying in the doorway of the girls’ room. Crying and smacking the door handle up and down. In his other hand was his tie. The color was gone, but the wide end of the tie was touching the floor. Tess was sitting before the mirror. Her eyes were done, her shining hair tightened with hairpins. Hannah was down in the kitchen with Anthony and our father. She was frying rashers and eggs for us. And Stephen was crying that his shoes weren’t polished. His mother polished them every Saturday night. Tess left the room and came back with the polish and the brush, and she knelt before Stephen and asked him to pull his pants’ legs up and carefully she polished each shoe. When she was done, she stood and snatched tissues from a box on the dressing table and handed Stephen a few and told him to wipe his eyes, and she wiped her hands with a few and asked Stephen to hold his head up and expertly knotted his tie and buttoned his jacket. And Tess sat Stephen before the mirror and brushed his hair with her own hairbrush. His blond hair curled up at the shoulders. She rubbed mousse into it and pulled the stiff strands out between her fingers so that it looked like a clown’s hair. Our eyes met in the mirror and we sniggered. Our hands covering our mouths. Auntie Tess’s red curtains were drawn all the way back. Tess liked to look out at t
he cows grazing beyond the barbed wire. The click of the kitchen door handle made me turn from watching the cows. My father’s slow steps were on the corridor. Tess parted Stephen’s hair at the side and layered it around his ears. She squeezed his shoulders and whispered into his ear that he looked like a pop star. The used tissues were at their feet. The head of my father’s shadow touched Tess and Stephen. Tess laid the hairbrush on the dressing table and folded her arms. Stephen stood and shoved his hands down his pants’ pockets. They both stared into the corridor. My father could not see me sitting there on the edge of the girls’ unmade bed.

  —Don’t make me late for your mother’s funeral Mass, he said.

  I was standing underneath the maple and smoking. Birds and insects made their slow summer noises overhead. Two or three cars passed. The maples cast their shadows on the parked cars and SUVs. The couple across the way were sitting at their porch table. Each was reading. One looked up, then the other did. They waved, I waved. Both studied at the university. I gave them free loaves from the bakery. They invited me to dinner on their porch. We ate, drank wine, discussed movies, books, classes, students, professors, politics. We enjoyed each other’s company. And they all the time asked that I tell about where I grew up. And so I told them about the small farm, the vegetable and flower gardens, evenings after school spent picking stones from meadows, planting, spraying, digging, pitting potatoes, hay being cut and saved, calves being born, the routine shit about the Catholic church, the IRA, breaking the necks of chickens, knifing the throats of pigs, the one state-owned TV channel and the one state-owned radio station when I was a kid, the time indoor plumbing was installed, where you did your business before that, the belligerent teachers, milking cows by hand every morning before boarding the high school bus, and milking them again in the evening. Of course, I told only what I wanted to tell, told it with humorous pomp, but then afterward that stinging, chronic feeling that you’d hurt someone who loved you in an especially cruel way. But you told it in the first place to hurt that someone.