Because that summer, there were worse things than Swedish speed demons stalking the hedgerows.
OUR SAVIOR HAD been cleaned up for Friday dinner.
I hadn’t seen his haloed face in ages. But as Rosie and I walked through the front door of Moira’s two-story on the road facing the bay, he was back and all shiny, as if he’d recently been dunked in Woolite and lovingly hand-dried. Last time I’d seen him in one piece was the final evening our parents were still with us. A customer had given him to our mother and father as a kind of joke, and it stuck. He was made of blue and yellow plastic and posed with both arms out to the sides. The beard had been dyed brown once, but had flaked off, providing a full view into his power and glory, in this case a 40-watt lightbulb. Plastic Jesus had been blown into the street that night, and Auntie Moira had saved him from the trash heap. She’d dusted him off and told us girls it was “a blessing from the Almighty.” She had put him in a box by her bed and taken him out once in a while to remember her only sister by. Even the few religious nuts left in town backed up at that point and left the stage to her.
Róisín and I looked at each other without a word as we glanced around the house. Moira had got worse lately. A portrait of old Eamon de Valera, that sexy beast, hung in blazing black and white by the coat rack. All grannies and aunties loved him, don’t ask me why. She might have picked Bill Clinton; at least he knew how to party. A rosary hung over Dev’s face like a necklace. He would have liked that.
“Howya, Aunt Moira?” Rosie asked, and smiled dutifully, like a girl who’d never had to be driven over to the hospital by me in the dead of night only three days earlier and have her stomach pumped.
“You’re late, my darlings,” Moira said, but smiled and took our coats. There was the unmistakable smell of overcooked whatever-it-was all over the entire house. The place we sisters grew up had begun to show signs of Moira’s failing self-interest and complete surrender to kookiness. The wallpaper we’d hung when we were little now sagged near the bottom of the walls, as if the house were trying to shed some weight. The fireplace in the kitchen was blocked by a chair, because our aunt recently had begun to fear accidental fires. “I’ll go up in flames, same as your mother, and that’s the truth,” she’d said when we’d been there last, and I’d hurried home without commenting. Where she’d once made sure the bed-and-breakfast guests felt welcome, she now rarely spoke to them, except to accept payment and hand out maps of the area. So customers had become scarce lately, and I couldn’t say I blamed them.
It wasn’t her fault, really. It was Harold’s.
Betrayal takes many shapes, but preying on a forty-two-year-old woman with a few good years of lying about her age left in her, that was downright cruel. Sometimes, I could still smell his cheap Brut aftershave in the far corners of the upstairs hallway. Harold hadn’t been gone six months, but my aunt’s decline had been precipitous. She never even bothered to wash except every other day now and still waited by a silent telephone for a bell that would never come. A steady diet of Mars bars she thought she was keeping a secret added to a waistline that had once been so slim even older men had been afraid to squeeze her too hard, lest they break her in two.
Less than three years earlier, Moira had been the kind of stately creature that other women her age envy and men of every age fantasize about, the same way they sneak peeks at the coolly beautiful librarian. Harold, a tourist who said he came from a place called Rensselaer—somewhere north of New York, I think it was—had been a guest in room number five. He’d paid in advance and said he planned to do some fishing. A high forehead, those massive American horse teeth, and a braying laugh signaled his arrival anywhere, but people soon grew to think he might not be half bad for a Yank. He winked at me once, but not in a creepy way. More like a big brother who knew he wasn’t cool but didn’t care. I liked him. All he had to do was walk into a room to make even the dogs inside it feel better.
One day, it was time for him to leave. Me and my sisters came home from school and found his bags downstairs, but he was nowhere to be found. It was only when Rosie snuck up the stairs and put her already trained ear to the freshly painted door of room number five that she heard more than giggling. She ran downstairs to tell us that Harold was probably staying after all. And I can still remember a sting of jealousy that he hadn’t picked me.
Moira did more than blossom. With Harold staying around, the light behind her eyes, which had long been absent, flared brighter than when the sun reflected over the waves. She kissed him too hard and too often, and in public, but didn’t care who saw it. And whenever she had her peculiar ideas crawl onto her shoulder and whisper in her ear, Harold could always be counted on to talk her out of her tree. She rested her head on his chest when they sat together on the couch. I felt perfectly at ease letting Harold take over the responsibility we had shouldered since we were little. He told me that, at last, he’d “found the woman I never want to leave.” And so we began to make ourselves scarce to let them have their privacy.
I know; don’t even say it. If you’d heard a line like that, you’d run for cover. And I should have, too.
Because the Dutch girl made him break his promise in five seconds flat.
Aunt Moira had come home from the market early that day, wanting to surprise Harold with dinner. She hadn’t even put the bags down when she heard the moaning from number five. She opened the door and found Harold on top of a little backpacker named Kaatje. Moira had just stood there, mouth moving in silence, wearing the new floral dress she’d bought to be pretty for him. She was still clutching one shopping bag as she realized he wasn’t going to stop, even if he’d been caught. Kaatje’s technique and her firm Coppertoned skin apparently outweighed the shock of being caught by a quarter mile.
“Could you ask your maid to close the door, Harold?” the nymph had even asked, reaching around and squeezing his bony arse to bring him closer to her shaved crotch without even so much as looking at Moira. Harold had finally turned to the figure in the doorway and stared dumbly as if to say, Will you look at this young girl? Can you blame a guy? Only then had Aunt Moira taken a step back and closed the door. She cried when she got downstairs but did it so discreetly that nobody but the saints could hear.
Harold left with Kaatje before nightfall. He only took his passport and whatever cash and traveler’s checks he found in the register, while Moira hid in her bedroom for the rest of the day, beating her head with her fists. He didn’t leave a note.
And now, with nobody to talk some sense into her darkest moments, Moira’s eccentric ideas sprouted once again like hungry snakes busting out of a broken jar. Only this time they began to make us uneasy. Plastic Jesus was one thing, but other notions had taken hold. As Rosie and I made our way through the hallway to the dining room, we saw all the landscape paintings were gone. No more scenic lakes and tumbledown castles with deer all around. Instead, our aunt had bought statues of the saints, cast in white plaster, and lined them up like mute security guards every few feet. It looked like God’s Army was expected to charge at any moment. There was a new brittle energy to her walk, I noticed, but said nothing. I knew she’d soon have another one of her “episodes” unless I could prevent it. Except Rosie wasn’t helping.
“Did the nuns have an early Christmas sale?” Róisín asked her aunt, saying what I had only been thinking, her voice innocent but spoiling for a fight.
“Go on, girls, sit down and eat,” replied Moira, refusing to take the bait, and nearly smiling the way she did when we were kids. She ushered us into a room we remembered as a place where damask napkins and clean glasses had blocked our view of each other as children across the spit-shined mahogany top. Now the table was chipped, and our aunt had folded blue paper napkins with the name of Finbar’s realty company into glasses that would never see better days, from the look of them. The source of the smell stood right on the threadbare linen tablecloth, in which pale gray chunks of meat gasped for breath like beached seals under a hot sun. Every veget
able in sight was dead on arrival. The potatoes were, as always, overcooked to the point of being pure muck, and—as usual—Moira had accepted my fresh produce and stashed it far away. Friday dinner was always her show, since it was the only time we all came over anymore.
Me and Rosie sat down, and I kept an eye fixed on her, just in case she felt like tempting fate or me some more. An impish smile was getting ready to crack my little sister’s black makeup when she noticed the sofa bunched up against the second fireplace, like an early season stopgap against intruding Santas. Only a look from me averted another smart-arse comment cooking in her goth brain.
There was one empty chair. Aoife was late. Again.
And the reason I’ve not introduced her until now is because she was stronger than the rest of us. Róisín’s twin sister looked like her in every respect, but there could never have been any mistaking the two, even in their birthday suits. Because where Rosie emanated a calculated aggression that required buckets of eyeliner, Aoife had a kind of storybook purity about her. Remember that Irish Spring commercial look from earlier? That’s the one, but with a twist. Instead of whiny uilleann pipes and shamrocks as the soundtrack to her life, she usually blared death metal with some German fella who set fire to himself onstage. She’d sew her own dresses, choosing large floral prints, which she’d wear with anything from slingbacks to bare feet. Well, bare feet most of the time, if she could get away with it. She’d inherited my mother’s sunny “You’ll see, it’ll all be better tomorrow” disposition, and it rubbed off just as surely as Rosie’s sexy sullenness drew in the men with more rings in their noses than on their fingers. The trick of it was, where my demon child never had delved into carnal mystery with the opposite sex, her twin didn’t exactly sit in the back of the bus in that department, if you get my meaning.
When the insurance company paid us each our share from the fire upon our reaching maturity (and I’d use that term advisedly for Rosie), Aoife had bought an old green Mercedes with those figure-eight headlights and started her own taxi service. It barely kept her in hippie dresses, but she didn’t care. Whenever people said it was too dangerous for a single girl to be driving the roads all by herself, Aoife smiled and peeled back the carpet underneath her seat. She’d hid our father’s old shotgun there, and even sawed the barrel and stock off. It was ugly-looking, and the fire had turned the gray metal a bright shade of copper. “See how they’ll like that, they try anything in my cab,” she’d reply, smiling widely at nothing in particular.
Finbar had got her a deal the year before on a ramshackle stone cottage way the hell out of town in the middle of a field, over near Eyeries, where you had to watch the rams grazing by the side of the road and irises made the whole world turn yellow after it rained. The roof leaked, but she loved it. Sometimes, when I came to visit unannounced, I’d see her standing among the trees, wearing her wellies and a pair of shorts, as if she were listening to the branches and the birds, lost to the grandeur of it all. I often didn’t disturb her for several minutes, because it looked so natural. Peaceful. Something I could never feel for myself.
“I could eat a farmer’s arse, I’m so starving!”
We turned and saw herself tumbling inside, grinning and placing a cake of some kind smack on the table before sitting down. She walked over and kissed our aunt on both cheeks with such ferocity Moira momentarily forgot that she was still supposed to be grieving her lost love. Then she sat down and winked at me and Rosie. Aoife’s presence inside a room usually made it impossible for our aunt’s built-in victimhood to gain full speed. Her green polka-dotted dress was brighter than the neon-lit icon of Our Lady above the door.
“Aoife, will you say grace?” asked Aunt Moira, and Aoife was a good sport and bent her head.
“Our Father,” she started as she looked at the image, on autopilot already from years ago, “bless this food and all the people in this house, that we may enjoy what You have provided for us through Your grace.” A swift kick from me made Rosie fold her coal-black fingernails into an acceptable posture of reverence before it was over.
“Amen,” concluded Moira, and started serving the sad protein-drained remains.
“When did Our Lady get herself some Las Vegas lights?” asked Rosie, before I could stop her. Aunt Moira looked hurt and mumbled something about getting more bread before rising and going into the kitchen.
“Shut up!” I hissed. “D’you hear me, child of the night? Leave her the fuck alone!” Rosie’s cheeks reddened a bit underneath the white pancake makeup, and she shrugged as Moira came back with a basket of stale rolls at least two days old.
Aoife chewed the food as if she liked it and even told Moira how good it tasted. In gratitude, our aunt walked over and planted a kiss on her niece’s newly shaved head, where a few centimeters of blond hair made her look like some anemic boy soldier.
“Sorry I’m late,” Aoife said, as she pinched Rosie’s knee and piled more deceased meat on her own plate. “But a fucking motorcycle nearly ran into me a moment ago. Had to swerve like fuck.”
“Language,” said Moira, but she was still smiling. Aoife was her favorite by a mile.
“Oh, right, sorry.”
“What did you say about a motorcycle?” I asked, as casually as I knew how. But out of the corner of my eye I could see Róisín cocking her head and staring at me.
“He came shootin’ past Saint Finian’s Cemetery like his hair was on fire.” She chewed and shifted her pink combat boots on the floor. “Handsome fella, too.”
I didn’t have to ask to know the color of the machine.
“Which way was he going, d’ya think?” I asked.
“The next pub over, I’d imagine, judging from the direction. Why?”
“Just wondering if it’s the season for those Belgian bankers who think they’re Marlon Brando.” Each year, you see, leather-faced old men with young wives would carom all over, losing loads of cash and often their legs, besides. The gardaí always had a hell of a time cleaning that up. I figured even Rosie would buy that excuse for my growing interest.
“Too early yet,” said Rosie laconically, chewing a lonely stem of near-white broccoli. “That’s in July.”
“Oh, no, this one wasn’t an old fart,” continued Aoife, with that predatory gleam in her eye. Just the other day, she’d had to drive some retired football player to the airport up in Shannon. He never made it that far. Instead, he had spent the night at her cottage and, for all I knew, was still providing her with loads of locker-room charm. “This one was thirty, tops.”
“Ah, so many men, and only one cab.” Rosie sighed.
“Don’t you start,” said Aoife, and there was a tiny crack in her nature-child act.
“How about some dessert?” asked Aunt Moira.
IT WAS NEARLY ten when Moira reluctantly let us go, making us swear to visit next week. The sky was still promising summer around the corner and appeared nearly green out across the bay. The boats were berthed and the sails taken in. At that moment, I remember, I nearly fell in love with my hometown, just for a bit. Then the feeling was gone.
“Fancy a pint?” asked Róisín. “Too early to think about torturing the men yet.”
“I agree,” said Aoife, and took off her camouflage jacket, on which she’d painted little men chasing butterflies with nets. A warm breeze rolled up from the bay. “How does the aged member of our fair sorority feel about that?”
“I’ll drink the both of yis into next Tuesday,” I said, grinning. God, how I loved them, and Christ, they were a lot of work.
The twins looked at each other like co-conspirators and asked, simultaneously, “So would you like to lose to us down at O’Hanlon’s or McSorley’s?”
“McSorley’s,” I said, grabbing the handles of my bicycle like I was a proper Hell’s Angel. “And yis can suck on my tailpipe.”
FRIDAY NIGHT MEANT we’d have to fight for a breath of air.
Fishermen stood by the bar in their sweaters and boots, forking over fistfuls
of cash for fruity drinks they didn’t know the names of. Two Spanish lads in matching aluminum sunglasses were yelling that someone had stolen their backpacks until Clare, the waitress, told them to calm down and look behind the bar, where she’d put them for safekeeping. The whole place was always a bit too “genuinely Irish” for my money, but it was slap bang in the middle of town and poured the best pints. Sepia-toned prints of Castletownbere’s glorious past graced the nicotine-stained walls. There were rumrunners in black oilskin ponchos and IRA volunteers in felt hats with their stolen British rifles hoisted aloft, as well as newer pictures of my own students getting a prize from the mayor for not drowning in that year’s regatta. A wooden replica harp hung on the wall, along with a jumbo TV screen that normally showed rugby.
My sisters had forged ahead and charmed a bunch of intimidated Norwegian fellas into giving us the end of their table, inside the only private nook the place had. I was balancing three pints of the dark stuff through the throng when I saw a face I thought I recognized. Then it was gone. I was about to remember where I’d seen it when Rosie howled from her seat like a fire alarm.
“Baby needs her medicine, granny!” she shouted. “She wants her Murphy’s sometime in this century, please!”
“Yes, have pity,” supplied Aoife, and bent forward, to the delight of the Norwegian boys trying to look down her plunging neckline.
I laughed and put the glasses on our table. Rosie finished hers before her sister could even take a sip. I had just sat down when I heard a voice I now knew I wasn’t just pretending to recognize. It came from nowhere and from everywhere, and quickly silenced the surly drunks, the happy visitors, and the iPod-driven jukebox playing a song about the futility of love. When I located the source, I knew who it was.
Jim was already drinking in his audience like a slow pint of Guinness.
Darling Jim Page 6
