The Visitors

by Patrick O'Keeffe

  She gathered up the tea things and I could still hear her tears. And my heart was still swollen. And I clenched my fists to my sides and kept looking at her. And she had all the things gathered up and she stood there staring at me and her eyes still wet and I was about to go over to her but she put her hand out. I don’t know what to do I said. I don’t want to go back down this hole. You have to go she said. We have other people to think about she said. And I had nicely forgotten it. The other people to think about. Like you can’t ever shut them out like when I shut the shed door behind me at night. I have someone in dublin she said. Im great with him for a while she said. Im engaged to Nora madden I said. Engaged with a while I said. I know she said. Hannah told me she said. She told me a million times she said. I don’t think Im too happy anymore Tess but I have never been so happy in my life and I will never forget you as long as I live I said. I wont forget you michael she said but I have to go in and finish a few things at clearys and face hannah again and I have to pack my bags for the train tomorrow. And I have to go back down this hole and now that I know what it is and what I might have done I hope I will never come back out of it I said. You will come back up out of it she said.

  Thirty five days since she died. More than a touch of autumn in the breeze this evening. I clanged the shed door shut. Tom was by this evening and we went for a walk. Kevin and some other few young lads out of the road kicking the football and I told them to be careful with the cars coming around the bend getting faster every year it looks like. Nora shouted out at him to put on his jumper or hed get his death of cold. Listen to your mother I said to him and he went in immediately. Nora came out then and asked tom if he wanted a cup of tea and he said they were just after it at home. Decided we would walk the road and not go into the fields. A few showers of rain earlier and the fields would have been wet. Had to leave the job I was doing early. Was hoping to be finished with it this week but that will not happen. Was walking the road for a bit and who did we run into but daly on his bicycle. He was on his way back from the junction and was in a very good mood as he always is. He shoved his hand down his pocket and counted out the money and handed it to tom. Then went on about people he saw over at the junction. Some holdup with the dublin train being late. A tree fell down on the tracks. He said to tom he remembers his young sister getting off the morning train on the Monday of the second week of July. The lord have mercy on her soul he said. Daly said another few words. He was looking at me and I was looking at him and then away from him. I remember him down in the mines talking about her. Making remarks about how grand she was but hes not the sort to do no more than talk. All talk with him. And I was not in the mood to be listening to him at all but you have to pass people off around here or god knows the things they’ll make up about you that might alltold be true. About ten minutes after he left and we back to the walking. Tom says to me out of the blue it was not an accident at all. The young sister he said. Not an accident he said. She was in a bad way for a while he said. The nerves mad at her he said. Eating away at her he said. Didn’t I think when she was here this summer that she was odder than usual he said. She spent nearly the full week in the sitting room where the mrs put up the bed for her. It was in the telegram he said. We dont know who posted it at all he said. But whoever did wanted the truth to be aired he said. They had their mission and they didn’t keep their mission to themselves he said. Bringing trouble on people is what they were up to if you ask me he said. I don’t want to know anything about them he said. Wanted her buried there and everything he said. Said they would look after all of it he said. Said there was her real home and not here he said. Said she wanted to rest there he said. God forgive all of us he said. God forgive me he said. I said nothing because there was a choking inside of him and we went on walking. God forgive me he said one more time. And the choking still in him. And we went on walking. He took out a hanky and ran it about his mouth and his eyes. We went on walking. When I have the job done at walshes ill have the rest of the money I said. Tom nodded and we walked the rest of journey to the cross without saying anything more. He kept the hanky out and he kept swiping it at his face. Sure what can you do he said at the cross. I didn’t say a word. I did not look at him. I could hardly wait for him to go away so that I could be with myself. He went his way without saying another word and not looking at me at all and I stood for a while and watched after him before I turned toward home. But I didn’t go home immediately. I walked into cahills big field that at one time was owned by the lennons. It runs by the roadside and around the cross. I sat underneath one of the big elms. It was cold enough and the cows were out in the grass. The grass was dying. No more of it would grow again till the spring. The ground was getting cold. The ground was getting ready to go to sleep for the winter. I heard voices far away. Farmers talking in a haybarn or a cowshed. The voices died away after a few minutes and I was more than thankful. Thankful to be on my own. And the night was falling down on top of me like time falls down on top of you and I squeezed my eyes shut and for the first time I could see her walking down a Dublin street. I could see her stepping up steps with the umbrella open. Shaking the raindrops from the umbrella. I could hear the click of her fine sharp heels. On top of my thighs and my belly and across my back and my fat hairy arse. And I could see her buttoning up a raincoat. Turning a key and pushing in the tired out door of the house she lived in. I could see all that like the gift was given to me there and then. And I could see her having a chat with her friends. That she liked it when people liked her. That she thrived. That she might live. That she might live. That the people you love might live. That you might love the people you live with. That it all might be different. That the world might not be the way you fashioned it. That she and me might be like we once was. That you could have those three days back. That we might be like that first time we was when I found there was someone else in the world apart from myself. I could see that smile at the corner of her mouth. A smudge of lipstick on fine teeth. I could see her picking up the post from a table when she got inside her door. I could see her waiting for a bus to take her to someplace I don’t know and will never be to. She holding the purse in front of her. Her head bowed and the horse hair falling over her face. I could see her taking her shoes off at night and sitting before a mirror and brushing her hair. I could see her standing at the sink washing under her arms with a sponge. I could smell the sour armpits. The smell I first smelled in coughlans field. Washing the tits until the nipples were pebbles. Streams of water running down her thick sides and onto the floor. And she rubbing the sponge up and down over her lumpy navel and the sponge going around and down the crack of her arse to her lovely hole. I could see all that. The gift was in me. And I stood up from the tree and crossed the ditch and walked down the road home and the young lads were still playing football and when kevin saw me coming he waved. He was running and laughing along the road. He was dancing in the air around him. It was very close to dark and his hand going into the air and he called me and I held my hand up to him and did my best to smile but he would have seen no smile anyway me being far away and it being close to dark.

  And that night no word would come to me. The next night no word would come to me. The night after that no word came. The night after that one no word came to me and I walked out to the docleaves behind the leanto and relieved myself and when I came back in I pushed the chair back and put my head on the desk. Fell sound asleep squeezing the biro for dear life in my hand. It was so long since I slept and she came to me. She was there like when she stood at the verge of that hole the summer I dug the well up at clearys. And the heart so big then. She was wearing a new dress. The color of it was gray but it was a light gray and not a sad gray and she did not look sad at all. And she says to me sorry michael it took me so long to come to visit you. And I said what did all that time and all those years matter as long as you are here now. My life was shorter than a minute she said. I cant believe how fast it all went by she said. You were looking after p
eople I said. You looked after so many people I said. I kept myself very busy she said. You never nursed the sickest of all I said but my life is still going and the children are getting older I said. I never met them at all but I saw them at the distance at mass she said. The eldest girl and the eldest boy look like you in the face she said. They can face the world she said. So they all say to me I said and I have no idea how the children are going to turn out or where they will end up but like so many born around here they will end up not here. Life is the devil I said. A pigs house I said. Only sometimes it is she said. You would know better than I would I said. In spite of all my misery I look at the children sometimes and have this blow of happiness I said. Like a bony fist to the jaw I said. I look at Nora and think what a devil ive been and how little room I kept for her in my heart and how to be truthful I blamed her for things that were my own doing. I am a coward I said. I am and I know it I said. And there is no other word for it I said. How was your life I said. I enjoyed much of it she said. But things got to me in a bad way at times she said. I saw some few men and I enjoyed them. But I worked very hard in the hospital she said. You looked after all them sick people and I was always very proud of you I said. In the end I put everything I had into the work she said. Work was the only thing that worked for me she said. I found no other way to manage it she said. It was always hard coming back here but I looked forward to it so much she said. Summers toward the end I didn’t want to come at all she said. But Id see you Michael for those two Sundays in the church porch she said. I was fine then she said. It was great to see that you were still in the world she said. I could stand this world if you were in it she said. I looked forward to it much I said. That’s all life is michael she said. Most of it so easily forgotten. Most of it we are not there at all but I was so glad to see how fine you looked she said. That would keep me going for a long time she said. That would feed my life she said. Feed the heart and feed the soul she said. My friends would say I was a fool and my life is a dream but I would say to them that the dream is fine with me she said. A dream might be all it is she said. Would we have been different if we married I said. Would we have been happy I said. Would you and me have been different people than the people we turned out to be I said. You can never know she said. How could you know she said. I could never imagine us making each other miserable in any way or shape or form I said. It might have all turned out unbearable she said. It might have been dreadful she said. Don’t say that I said. You know theres no truth to that I said. How can you say that I said. We got to live it the best way of all she said. I want you to think about it that way from now on she said. You and I were the luckiest people of all she said. I want you to remember I told you that she said.

  I woke up after that. The bulb had gone out in the shed and it was pitch dark. The gift was gone from me. Gone for good and the air in the shed was damp and dead and freezing cold like the air was when I was down in the copper mines. And this terrible shivering all over my skin like there was fingers touching it. And outside the dark shed the leaves on the birches ticked in the most mysterious way. A way Id never heard them ticking before.

  If I wrote to her then I would write that the day I stood at the altar and married she was the one on my mind. The day my daughter was born she was on my mind. The day my son was born she was on my mind. The day the twins came screaming into the world she was on my mind. That’s all Id need to write.

  3.

  I lay on the bed and listened to the stream. That evening years back on the cobblestone path, the two men in the shed looked like phantoms conjured up out of the Sweet Afton smoke. That smell of new wood was mixed with the cement dust. I stood there ever so obediently. Ever so innocuously. Staring through the smoke and trying to hear the men against the thumps of the ball. Nora’s shadow appearing then disappearing on the windowpane. He at the back of the shed. Me at the front. The Nissan lorry with the black stripes along the sides was parked in the driveway. A red wheelbarrow crusted with concrete lay upside down in the truck bed. Shovel handles sticking out. The moon rose above the silver birches. And the air turned chilly in the fading daylight.

  I sat in the backseat of my father’s car. Golden ribs of straw were stuck to the stained and torn seats. The head of Hannah’s doll was on the floor. I kicked the head under my father’s seat and it kept rolling back and I kept on kicking it as the car rolled along. My aunt was sitting silently in the passenger seat. We had picked her up at the Junction. My father drove like time had stopped. He didn’t like driving the main road. But to me then that journey was like going to another country. Houses brightly painted in the passing villages. People I didn’t know glanced at through the car window. And Aunt Tess kept touching her radiant horse hair. She touched it the way I sometimes long to touch the glass of a painting in a museum. Her nails were this brilliant red. Before the month was over she would fling herself under a Dublin bus. But that day she would have been thrilled. Being so close to seeing him again after the year’s wait. On Sunday he would wear the hat with the feather. Una or Nora would have brushed the hat for him.

  Kevin was back with a while. He’d come to the door and knocked. He’d turned the knob and pushed. I was standing behind the door. I held my breath.

  —Jimmy, are you in there? There’s someone out here who can’t wait to see you.

  Then he was talking loudly in the big room. I went and lay on the bed.

  —Jimmy must be out walking in the trees. He locked the door before he went, darling . . . Yes, we will eat out on the deck . . . Anton put the picnic table there especially for you. He put a nice tablecloth on it. I told him you liked the white and red squares . . . Did you put on the bug spray? Your mother warned me that you put it on, darling. She warned more than once . . . I will so start the grill if you help me. I’m grilling chicken because I know my darling likes it. Anton will bring the corn he grows himself . . . That’s the plan. We’ll stick to that . . . Yes, there’s soda in the fridge. Okay, you can have one. But you should have orange juice, darling. But have a soda if it’s what you want . . . Daddy has everything his darling wants.

  I got up from the bed and went to the window. The grass was sparse because of the trees. The Lenape Indians made their paths through those trees before they were either butchered or banished to Ohio. A bird flew across. I thought it was a blackbird. And I left Tess out of the story I told him about the apple pie. Tess was the one who opened the red gate. Tess ran ahead. I walked beside my mother. I carried the plates and the forks.

  Right up until the day before you left, you and Tess made up stories about the things your parents said in the kitchen. Their remarks about neighbors with more land and money. Sure their money is killing them. Never brought them a day’s luck. And their remarks regarding the moods of hens and ducks. She only laid three times this week. I don’t know what’s come over her at all. And me and Tess acted out things about the National school teacher. We lay on the girls’ bed. Our heads were at the bottom and our bare feet were propped on the pillows. I had opened the window and the wind blew at Aunt Tess’s red curtains and the smell of cow manure spread through the room. Our faces were very close and Tess was telling you how to do it to yourself. Doing it to yourself was what Tess called it. I can’t believe you don’t know that yet, Jimmy. You don’t need other people at all, Jimmy. Never once do you need them, Jimmy—but my mother on the path with her covered pie was telling Tess to behave herself. My mother’s box of letters abandoned on the wardrobe floor of that flat on Botanic Avenue. That shoebox was what was in your head when the plane wheels touched a runway at Logan Airport. A feckless and cowardly act it was. Though maybe you did actually forget. And your mother demanding that Tess go inside this second and wipe that muck from her eyes.

  —Don’t you dare go down the paddock in front of the men looking that way! Is it Queen Maeve you think you are!

  But Tess ran on and pretended not to hear our mother’s words. Tess skipped into the pad
dock. She was wearing her pink dress and her red hair was down and her arms were spinning like the spokes of a windmill. The two dogs ran alongside her. Their tongues were out and very long in their shadows. They used to wait on the hall doorsteps for her and when she appeared they barked and wagged their tails. Crows circled the poplars. In one of Tess’s paintings the crows were bright red splashes of blood on a white wrinkled sheet pegged upon a sagging country clothesline. Kevin stepped down from his father’s ladder the moment Tess opened the gate. He and his father dropped their tools. Dropped them like they would rocks. With sighs of relief. Michael messed with his John Garfield fringe. He was smiling at the three of us. Love for my dead aunt might not have been killing him in that moment. He put it away in the daylight then let it roam free at night in his shed. Tess pranced around Kevin, who was lighting a cigarette and smiling. Michael wiped dust from an upturned cement block. He sat down on it and was chatting with my mother, who knelt before him and cut the cake with the knife with the bandaged handle. I handed Michael a plate and fork first and then I handed the others plates and forks. The dogs stuck their noses into everything.

  The questions Tess will ask: Did you get on all right with him, Jimmy? Tell me, what does he look like now? Did he put on weight? How is he handling Seamus? What did he say and what did you say? Where does he live and what’s it like?