Jenny Rose

by Mary Anne Kelly

  “She was pleased with herself. And she wasn’t so nice to me. She was hard on me. ‘When we were girls,’ she’d rattle on to Dierdre, ‘no one had to tell us to do our studies.’ She wouldn’t say it direct to me, though. ‘Remember, Dierdre,’ she’d say, ‘how you would help your mam do dishes? You wouldn’t have to be told, would you?’ She was never satisfied, Peg. Always vexed with me. It’s not about blame, though, is it?”

  “It is if you killed her.”

  Those dark eyebrows drew together.

  “Not you,” I hurried to say. “I was only thinking, if someone had killed her.”

  “No one killed her.” She pushed herself back from the table with scorn. “It was very dark. The lights had gone out in the storm. It happens all the time. She just made a mistake, the poor old thing.” Her eyes filled with tears.

  “Thank God you weren’t home,” I said.

  “I was off in my studio. I was just coming home. A minute later…”

  I’d gone too far. I reached for her hand. “Jenny Rose, I’m sorry. I had to know.”

  “I did care for her, too, you know. At least some. As blunt as she was … I mean, I knew her me whole life.”

  I said, “It must have been hard for you, especially growing up with the stigma of being someone else’s.”

  “I keep tellin’ ya. There never was a stigma on me.” She raised her thumb up and tackled a cuticle.

  I reviewed again the plastic-covered menu.

  “There was the once, I remember,” she said, her voice dreamy.

  I sat up, interested.

  “It was in the lane. Comin’ home after school. All the bigger girls had said I could come to their club. They had a garage left over from this Protestant chef. He’d had it built as a holiday house and then lost all his money gamblin’. Nobody wanted it because it was drippin’ with lime and all moldy, y’ see. But this coven of girls took it over. Oh, I’d admired them for what seemed years! They had fancy ways about them, and clothes! Terrific clothes, not made over but bought in stores in Cork and even Dublin. They were very free, sassing the nuns behind their backs and filthy mouths on them. They did what they wanted, like. They’d make a nice fire and cook themselves glassy Chinese noodles. Oh, I thought they were so grand. This one time they said I could come.”

  Jenny Rose took a deliberate sip of her water. “I remember the walls very well. It was dark and cool and there were black lorry pneumatics to sit in. Filthy things, but soft as jelly. Lovely. And shades you could pull down made out of the Evening Star. And they had rules. Stiff rules you had to follow. Meg, she was an older girl and the one I liked best, she told me to stand in the middle of the room. I did. Then Kathy Belgooly said, ‘Now show us your britches.’

  “‘What?’ I said, goin’ cold. I was frightened because I believed they would hurt me. I had heard they did Indian burns on your arm. I’d seen little girls’ arms with red welts.

  “‘What else do you think you’re here for?’ one a them said, real mean, like. ‘Your mother’s social connections?’

  “I just looked at them. I didn’t even know what social connections were. I’d just gotten first honors in art from Sister Ancilla, and believe me she was tough. I thought they’d liked me, see. Wanted to be friends. I knew there were second form girls there, too. It was like … I dunno … no one had ever been deliberately cruel to me before. It was such a shock.

  “Then, ‘You heard her,’ Meg told me, cracking me with her elbow. She was the one I’d liked best. The one I’d so wanted to be like.

  “‘No,’ I said. I wouldn’t.” Jenny Rose took another sip of water. Her hand trembled.

  “You poor thing,” I broke in.

  “Not for the reasons you think,” Jenny Rose said. “It was because I didn’t have those little bright underwear I thought you were supposed to have if you were a girl, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday type. With little pictures on them, of shovels and sand-pails. And hearts. If I’d had them to show I wouldn’t have hesitated. But my underwear was gray and frayed and a spittle of wee had come down out of fright.”

  We both laughed out loud.

  “But the thought of them seein’ it was enough to seize me with fear of death,” she went on, “and I wouldn’t. I stood there rigid. One of the girls said, ‘Tell her to shut her mouth. Why does she always stand there with her mouth open, like that?’

  “‘Mouth-breather,’ Laurie Margaret said. One of them laughed. I opened my eyes to see who. It was Bernadette. They all just stood there lookin’ at me. ‘Ach. Kick her out,’ the big tall girl with great mounds of ginger hair ballooning from under her arms said.

  “Meg took me to the door and opened it. She didn’t look at me and I wouldn’t look at her but I could smell her, loud with lily of the valley cologne and perspiration. We went right past my big cousin Bernadette. She narrowed her eyes at me and she said, ‘You’re some relation!’ She pushed me roughly into the lane. I left my schoolbooks in there, my drawings in there with them. I was so ashamed. I thought I was really finished. No one would ever talk to me again at school, that was sure. I would be an outcast. I walked home and it was warm, like now. I remember the earth was lush and I kept standing around looking at it, taking comfort in the wet warm green, and safety. I can still see the little leaves of green clover. I didn’t want my life to go on. I walked slower and slower. Peg stuck her head out the door of our house. She was just about to yell at me. Then she must have seen that I was crushed because she didn’t yell. She just held the door open for me, looking quite gentle. I think she never wanted to be too affectionate for my sake. So I wouldn’t be afraid of her. Because she knew I knew the way things were. She let me in. She made me cinnamon toast. I remember her puttin’ it before me. She’d put it on a Sunday plate. I was so grateful to her. I think I loved her then. She showed such restraint, you know? No third-degree, just made me feel safe. I don’t know whoever brought my books home. It’s funny, that. I was just a wee girl. And I remember it like it was yesterday.”

  Jenny Rose sat there for a minute, entranced, remembering. Then she shrugged and admitted, “So there was that. I dunno. Right now, I’m still sort of glad she’s gone. For the sake of no yelling. I can’t bear that yelling. It’s just that I feel like I’ll start to miss her later. Down the road, a bit.” She shivered.

  I didn’t say anything. We just sort of stayed together, waiting for the kettle behind the counter to boil. “Then how come you didn’t try and find her to come back for the funeral?” I said after a while.

  “Liam tried. He did. But there was no travel bureau. There was no hotel booked or anything. Just the flight. And it was through the airline, and they’re not ones to give out information, if they even knew anything, which is a bit farfetched. So you see, short of scouting about Paris, there was nothing to be done. Anyway, he was asking for the wrong person. There was no Peg Mulligen off to Paris, was there? It was Dierdre who’d gone, after all.”

  “I still don’t understand. Why was Peg wearing Dierdre’s ring?”

  “Oh, right, you went off to bed before Dierdre told us. Well, you know the part about Peg supposed to be goin’ off to Paris for a vacation on her own. A little time off. I guess they’d been gettin’ on each other’s nerves. You know, the way people will. I’d heard them arguing before I took off for the studio, as a matter of fact. I didn’t take much notice, though. They were always at it. I remember thinking I was glad Peg was off to Paris. Now we’d have some peace and quiet. Before Peg was about to leave, Dierdre took off her ring and gave it to her. Made her put it on, for all the years, she said. So Peg knew where she belonged, more likely. But then, Dierdre said, Peg announced she didn’t love her anymore. She didn’t want the ring. That’s why she was really going away. To give Dierdre time to adjust. She wept and carried on. There was that storm comin’, you could feel it, Dierdre said. Peg said all right she wasn’t going anywhere! They had a terrible row and then Dierdre took Peg’s ticket and left. More for spite, she said. She waited
at the airport most of the night for the ticket sales to open and then she changed them to her name. It was on her Visa card, y’see. Mostly to show to Peg when she came after her. To show her she meant business. She said she couldn’t believe it when Peg never came after her. She was so sure she would. She always had done. It was part of their game. They were always at it, those two. Then she just decided to go off. Why the hell not, she thought. To pay Peg back, like. It would teach us both a lesson. Do us both good. Let us pick up after ourselves for once. She’d had enough.”

  “But why didn’t she call you and let you know what she was doing?”

  “Well, she knew Peg would tell me what happened. There Peg was, probably waiting for Dierdre to cool off and come back. Meanwhile, poor Peg was exploded up into the air and couldn’t come then or ever, could she? Couldn’t tell anyone anythin’ again.”

  Outside was a crossroads and a post pointed you in every direction. I read the names off to myself. They read like poetry. Carberry, Clonakilty, Bandon, Kerry, Bantry, Kinsale, Baltimore.

  “Baltimore?” I whirled around in my seat. “There’s a Baltimore in Ireland, too?”

  “More like there’s a Baltimore in America, too.” Jenny Rose laughed at my ignorance.

  “Is it far?”

  “Not far.”

  “How far?” I grabbed the shoulder of her pullover.

  “Hey!”

  “God. I’m sorry. It’s just so many things have happened at once. My driving up a Hundred and tenth Street the other day set off this whole chain of events! And it’s as if it was all waiting to happen. Like it’s all flooding over.” I must have shut my eyes. “I’m just so tired of pretending.”

  She was very interested.

  I sat back in my seat.

  “This is about a guy, right?” she said.

  “No-no-no-no-no-no-no.”

  “C’mon. I’ve told you my stuff. You can tell me yours.”

  “I can’t.” I went for another of her cigarettes.

  “Right,” she said. “And next time you can buy your own.”

  So I told her. Everything.

  “What ever is the problem?” she said when I was done. “We’ll just drive over to Baltimore. I’ll swipe Bernadette’s car.”

  “Oh. Perfect. Just what I need. A gorgeous sidekick.”

  “I’m flattered,” she admitted. “So you could just go on your own.”

  I shook my head. “It’s not that simple. I’m married, remember?”

  “But you just told me about your husband and Portia McBabbit—”

  “McTavish. Portia McTavish. That doesn’t make me any less married.”

  “It would me.”

  “I take my marriage vows very seriously.” I sniffed. I gaped at the itch-riddled dog in the gutter. I hadn’t hated my husband during the whole time, really. I’d hated her. I knew why he loved her. She had that same teasing, mocking, you-can’t-get-enough-of-me eyes I’d once had.

  “You’re daft,” Jenny Rose shot at me. “The man you love is here in County Cork and your husband is having an affair back in the States and all you can think to say is, ‘I’m married.’ Somber as a judge.”

  “Now who’s being romantic? Anyway, it’s complicated.” It was complicated. She couldn’t understand, never having known Johnny’s helpless eyes, admiring me those years ago. She hadn’t held his child. Or watched him become a tender, loving father to Dharma. The tightknit feeling we, all of us, had, going off in the car as a family to Brooklyn when we’d go visit his old partner, Red Torneo. We’d be laden with pastry from Bonelle and a good bottle of Chateauneuf du Pape. The children’s report cards. The aroma of sauce and fusilli through the house on a Sunday. The ball game downstairs and Rachmaninoff upstairs, year after year. It wasn’t only love. My family was my culture.

  I said, “When I met Johnny, he was like, it sounds very silly now, but, he was my Taj Mahal guy.” I laughed. “Our love was my work of art. The palace I built. My masterpiece. Oh, Jenny Rose, you’re so young. You don’t know yet that there are ten or twenty short moments or sayings we build our entire lives around. Little scenes that give life meaning, things we refer to when we have to make a decision. Years ago, I’d have run away without looking back. God knows, plenty of times I almost did.”

  “Yeah? And like what stopped you?”

  I took a breath. “When Johnny and I fell in love, he was looking through my photographs. Believe it or not there actually was a time when that man seemed to care about what I did—”

  “The first throes of love…” Jenny Rose tut-tutted with a case-hardened cynicism beyond her years.

  “Well. He still thought there was money to be made. Anyway, he couldn’t get past this Taj Mahal. I told him how it was a tomb, built by this man for his wife. She’d said build me something that all the world will marvel over and boy did he! Johnny loved the way the tile hearts would light up a certain way at full moon, he just went crazy for the symbol of love this man had created, to work at it every, every day. ‘It’s not enough he loses his wife and has to remember her every once in a while, when he hears their favorite song or on their anniversary,’ Johnny said to me out of the blue, one night lying in bed. ‘He’s got to make it that he remembers her while he’s walking the dog … while he’s washing his face … it was nuts how he loved her. Claire,’ he told me, ‘his love for her was Zen.’” I looked at Jenny Rose. “That’s why I never left him.”

  She didn’t say anything for a moment. I even thought I saw her hazel eyes fill up. But as quickly as she sank, she swam, and said, “Forget the fucking Taj Majal!” she startled me with a flash of metal. “You just remember one thing. There’s a difference between being romantic and being a fool.”

  Now my eyes filled up with tears. “And I am that.”

  “You just hold onto that picture of your husband sucking that Portia McTavish’s face. You hang onto that.” Then, abruptly, she looked surprised. “Wait up,” she said, “I have an idea. We could take the boat. We’d cruise right by the film crew. How could Temple Fortune resist? I’d be the bowsprit, the maidenhead.”

  “It would take a virgin to get that right.”

  “That’s all right, then,” Jenny Rose said. “I’m a virgin.”

  “Are you?”

  “Of course. How could you of all people be surprised?”

  I tucked in my chin. “And who would captain this boat?”

  “Why, Seamus.”

  I held onto my sides and practically slipped beneath the table laughing.

  She watched me until I was done. “All right. I’ve thought of something else. They’re filming around a sunken ship, right?”

  “They are?”

  “Yeah. That’s what they’re doing. Fancies himself the Celtic Cousteau, your Temple Fortune.”

  “He does? I do remember him telling me he’s mad for fishing.”

  She rolled up her sleeves. “We could tell them about the ship in our harbor.” Jenny Rose kept her bursting enthusiasm under the lock and key of youthful cool, but every once in a while it would overtake her and the room, the whole room and everyone would smile.

  “What ship?” I laughed.

  “Well, there is one. Murphy found it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  She gave me a reprimanding look. “Shake a leg. The bus is here. Come on.” She hugged me affectionately. “We’ll think of something.” She snatched the check while I blew my nose. She had that same pick-up-the-check bravado my sister Zinnie had. She liked to think she was the boss. A kind of a nobody’s-gonna-pay-my-way-but-me attitude. I said a fervent prayer that she would wind up marrying the wealthy Murphy.

  “Oh,” she said, “and if you’re worried about fancy Bernadette, don’t be. There’s always one.”

  “One what?”

  “You know. The village bike.”

  * * *

  We got off the bus at Auntie Molly’s Bed and Breakfast. Jenny Rose went on ahead to Bally Cashin to get things ready for Dierdre. I wa
lked up Molly’s hollyhock and foxglove—lined path to the Dutch door opened at the top. Loud classical music came pouring out. All the windows were open. Puccini, it was. Tosca.

  Sometimes, the lighting is so rare you can see the music right in it, and if you photograph it, you can keep it forever. I took three or four pictures with my old Contex, then called, “Hello! Hello!” A rusty bicycle was propped against the fieldstone wall. Nobody answered so I went around the back. The cottage was just as pretty from this angle and I picked up my camera. Unfortunately, a carton of salt was on the step, ruining the shot, making it look too much like an advertisement. I put my camera down and good thing I did. Along the path, I just missed stepping on a slimy mess.

  Molly, disheveled, popped up her head. She was on the floor, reworking the cane on a chair from the underneath. “The divil!” she said.

  “No, just me, Claire,” I called. “You said I could come, remember?”

  “I do.” She struggled up and went to go turn off the tape, then only made it lower, which I thought was nice. She went into the small kitchen. A pot of lentils sat on the stove. She wiped her hands on a clean checkered cloth, came to the door and spotted the slimy mess on the path. “What’s happened?” she asked me.

  “What? That? I don’t know. I just missed slipping on it.”

  The both of us stood there, peering down at it. Then Molly noticed the box of salt on the step. “Damn him!” she cried.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s slugs. He knows I don’t like them. I never meant for him to salt their backs, though.” She shivered. “It’s like torture.”

  “Who?”

  “Oh, Seamus. He helps me out with the yard.” She shook herself. “I don’t hold with these country ways of getting rid of pests.”

  “I’m with you.” I shuddered, stepping over it.

  “But I also don’t believe he’s a troll, the way the old people around here do.”

  “A troll?”

  “There now. Bring yourself in. Let me make you a fine cuppa rosy.”