Jenny Rose

by Mary Anne Kelly

  “Hmm.” Johnny held it up close.

  Aunt Bridey, from the stove, cast approving looks at the two of them.

  Well. It was Johnny this and Johnny that. They all tripped over themselves getting tea for him, sugar for him, how about a nice washcloth for him. I sat there with my black and sugarless tea. Certainly, I didn’t mind. I’m just mentioning this, the way people are.

  “You’ll have to drink that tea swiftly now,” Aunt Dierdre admonished Johnny. “You wouldn’t want to miss mass, yourself.”

  I snorted but nobody even looked at me. They trickled off in their different directions and I was left there with him.

  “You’re going to mass?” I said.

  “Sure.” He yawned. “When in Rome…”

  “You.” I pulled my chin in to create a tortoiselike ring effect on my neck. “Who never goes to church.”

  “What? I go.”

  “Really? When?”

  “Sometimes I go. St. Patrick’s. Funerals. Like that.”

  “The whole place will crumble.”

  “I thought that was the point.”

  He infuriated me as a rule, but now I wanted to sputter. Now I was supposed to stand beside him in God’s house where he thought he could rope me into forgiveness?

  “You’re not going like that,” I hissed, pointing out his wrinkled T-shirt. It didn’t look as though he’d slept in it. It looked as though someone had taken it in their hands and crumpled it into a ball and squeezed it and squeezed it.

  “Come on.” He made an irritated face. “Of course I am. Nobody cares what you look like.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” I snarled. “You just want to make me look bad!” I went to the cupboard and lugged out the ironing board. “Give it,” I demanded.

  He looked at me under heavy lids.

  I remained.

  He stripped it off, watching me, and handed it over.

  Narrowing my eyes at him I held it up to my nose. It smelled, however, not bad at all. It was an eye-opening smell but not a bad smell.

  I had no intention of standing there doing my wifely duty in front of the rest of them. I know how to move quickly. I had the iron plugged in and hot before Bernadette turned her hair dryer back on so by the time the fuse blew there was enough heat in the iron for me to just finish my job with a tzack, tzack, tzack. I’d handed it back to him and was putting the board in the cupboard when Bridey came trotting in with a candle.

  “Aunt Bridey,” I said to distract her from seeing the iron cooling on the stove, “Molly rescued some of those sketches of Jenny Rose’s.”

  “What?” She turned, her tiny hat with the nylon veil shivering in place.

  “Yeah. I was so pleased.”

  “Don’t mention that just yet, dear,” she shushed me. “We wouldn’t want to upset Dierdre.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “It’s the first Sunday mass she’ll have gone to without Peg to come home to, afterwards. They used to go walking all the way to Abbeystrewery cemetery. Every Sunday, like.” She shook her head. “So don’t upset her now.”

  “Oh, okay.”

  Just then Uncle Ned came back in. He was holding a cardboard box. “What have you got there, Ned?” Johnny said, expecting yet another fishing lure.

  “It’s Peg,” he said.

  “Peg!” We all stood up.

  “She came last night. Danny Sullivan brought her on his way to Sharkin Ferry.”

  Nobody said anything.

  “Maybe,” Uncle Ned proposed, “we could drop her off at Abbeystrewery.”

  “Drop her off?” Bridey held her cheeks. “You’ve got your share of gall! We’ll bring her down to the church and register her for a decent burial tomorrow is what we’ll do.”

  “Rubbish,” Uncle Ned said. “Why should we wait for tomorrow? Those blaggards only want our money and for no good reason. We can dig a hole as well as they can. Before church.”

  We looked at him. “Well, there’s no sense to payin’ good money to strangers when I’ve got seven shovels meself. And it’s not as though we have to dig deep.”

  “It was her favorite spot,” Dierdre thought out loud, combing her perm nervously with her fingers. “She used to make sure she had a new battery and she’d sit there and play on her calculator while I dumped out my purse and straightened it out. I did it to please her. It drove her mad, my cluttered purse. She loved life best there, I think, amongst the dead.” She looked around at us. “Well, I mean, because things were so neat and orderly there. You know the way she was.”

  “I don’t know what to think,” Bridey said, eying me and then the box suspiciously, not sure if this was even legal. But no one could come up with a good enough reason against it.

  “I wouldn’t like to spread her to the wind, though,” Dierdre specified. “She wouldn’t go for that. If Jenny Rose wouldn’t mind, I could use the box she made me for my underthings.” She went and got it and put it on the table for us all to see. It was a big tin tea box painted with dark and Persian jewel-like stripes. It seemed almost comically appropriate. We stood admiring it. That Jenny Rose had some talent. I couldn’t help being glad for Johnny’s fatherly pride. I just couldn’t help it.

  Dierdre put her black hat on. There were glass lilacs on the ribbon. “I’m ready as I’ll ever be,” she said.

  In the swing of things I went to get my hat as well. It’s one of those scarves from Dharamsala. You wind it around your noggin’ a few times and you’re all set.

  The fuse box was visited, then we made a tight parade in front of the house—I walked the bike—and we marched up the hill toward the church. People tipped their caps.

  Abbeystrewery is a sort of unusual place. It would have to be, with all those thousands of people under the dirt, all of them hungry. Still hungry, for all I knew. It’s an appropriately lumpy meadow of grass, strewn with dandelions, Celtic crosses and Virgin Marys. There’s a little sign memorializing the coffinless bodies buried there. But for the rest, you’re on your own.

  “Where will it be, Dierdre?” Uncle Ned stood ready with his small shovel. He’d hidden it under his coat.

  Dierdre went right to the spot. “That’s where she’d eat her biscuits,” she told us, holding on to a crumbling stone wall. Wild roses grew in and out of the holes. She patted the spot. Uncle Ned broke the grass. Johnny grabbed the shovel from him and proceeded to dig.

  “You can’t do that,” Uncle Ned said out of politeness.

  “Your sister’s ass,” Johnny said back.

  “Get a move on, please.” Bridey looked around uncomfortably.

  “I just wish Jenny Rose was here,” Dierdre said.

  “She wouldn’t have come,” Liam said, lighting a cigarette. He was wearing a little black coat.

  Dierdre put her downy cheek alongside mine. “Did you notice how Brownie won’t come?” she said. I thought she was trying to tell me there were ghosts and I shivered obligingly. Then she said, “That’s because we never let her. People don’t like dogs doing their business where their loved ones are. See?”

  Brownie paced the periphery.

  “There you have it,” Uncle Ned said about the fine hole.

  Dierdre knelt down. She wiped the ground around the hole of weeds and loose grass. “Say a prayer, one of ya,” she whispered.

  “Which one?” Bridey said.

  “Say the Memorarie, Bridey,” Dierdre said. “She liked that.” So she did.

  Dierdre placed the crownlike box in the hole, then drizzled in a handful of dirt.

  Liam and Uncle Ned sang “Holy God We Praise Thy Name.”

  “Take a picture, Claire,” Dierdre said.

  “Really? Now? I have no light.”

  “Have you no flash?”

  “No.” But I took one just the same. Each of them stood behind a lit match.

  Dierdre leaned all the way over and pressed her lips to the dirt. “Lie here,” she said.

  “We’ll come back on her name day,” Bridey suggested.
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br />   Liam shoveled the rest over and we all patted it down.

  I saw Bridey put two slices of bread underground while she thought no one watched.

  A red car came up the road so we went guiltily toward the gate.

  Dierdre took my hand. “Do you think she can see us?” she asked sincerely, pebbles stuck to her cheek.

  “If she can,” I told her, “she’ll be glad it was this way.” That seemed to cheer her up and she walked to the front, going arm-in-arm with Liam.

  A holiday atmosphere had taken hold of the dark countryside. Intent men in rubber waders and tremulous, steadfast women with umbrellas were setting up camp, lowering checkered blankets onto the tarpaulined ground, picnic baskets already unfolded, for the air was fresh and appetites, unused to the ferocity of life before dawn, hearty. All the fishermen along the Ilen looked away. They knew they weren’t supposed to start until after mass. Even the Protestants knew that. I looked for Temple but he must have found a private spot. In hopes of a rendezvous, I like to think.

  The church drew near. Oh, no, I thought. Not that I don’t enjoy mass, I do. But now I intended to savor my sins and didn’t want any golden rays of conscience encroaching upon my fun. No, my plans were to sit, disgruntled, in church and think of other things, like LA and annulment and a new, big-studio life. I didn’t want to turn tenderhearted on the inside, the way prayer can and will make happen if you let it, it never fails. Temple Fortune was what I’d been dreaming of. I had to be capable of realizing dreams. Without dreams you were lost, right?

  Willy Murphy came up the path, lugging his suitcase. “Mo-Mo-Morocco’s run off.” He wiped his brow with his sleeve. He was wearing some sort of safari get-up.

  “Well, where’s Jenny Rose?” Uncle Ned demanded.

  “She’s b-b-back at the s-s-s-studio,” he said, out of breath.

  “And where are you off to?”

  “London.” He blushed.

  “I knew where they were,” Johnny admitted, standing beside me. “I walked up there about midnight with old Brownie, here.” Brownie walked behind him now, tail down in deference to Johnny, top dog, her new leader.

  “Why didn’t you tell us when you found Jenny Rose?” Dierdre said sharply.

  Johnny looked helplessly at Willy.

  “You should have told us she was with you,” Bridey said.

  “Be-be-because, sh-sh-she wo-wo-wo-wouldn’t let us.” Willy struggled to cut in, the skin beneath his freckles red with embarrassment. “She wanted t-t-t-time to speak with her f-f-f-f-f-father.”

  This was such a stunning concept to each of them that no one could reply.

  I stayed in the background. Dierdre knew all along where they’d been. You could tell on her face. She’d let them be together. That was something I couldn’t imagine happening if Peg were still alive. Was she hoping it would stop Willy going off to London? So Johnny and Jenny Rose had bonded. I supposed it was good, important, even. Still, it was a new feeling for me, too. I had to get used to all this. “We were worried,” I explained. “If you hadn’t come along—”

  “Oh, someone wo-wo-would have found us,” Willy said angrily. “This isn’t like the States, you know. When someone’s missin’ overnight, they’ve most likely fallen asleep somewhere soft, not b-b-been strangulated by a raving, mother-smothered E-mail marauder, or-or-or shot to d-d-death by an over opinionated postal worker.”

  “That’s disgruntled postal worker, Willy,” Johnny cut in.

  “Yeah,” said Willy, trying to be like him.

  “Why isn’t Jenny Rose coming to mass?” Dierdre stubbed her cigarette on the worn-out sole of her shoe.

  “Jenny Rose?” Willy looked guilty for the first time. “First she had to rig Mrs. Wooly up. She gussied her up like a fairy queen.”

  “Jenny Rose doesn’t want to fish?” I said.

  “Oh, she doesn’t want old Tantalos to be caught, really. She can’t stand the idea. Poor old sadu, she c-c-c-calls him.”

  “Is she all right?”

  “Ya. Fine. Molly is with her.”

  “Molly won’t come to mass?”

  “Molly? She hates God, Molly does.”

  “Why?”

  Willy shrugged. “I d-d-don’t know. S-s-s-something about her husband leaving her, I sup-p-p-p-pose.”

  “She was delighted her husband left her,” Dierdre said.

  “Not everyone believes in God.” I sighed.

  “Sure, she b-b-believes in him.” He laughed. “She j-j-just says God plays with us like we were toys. He’s worse than if he didn’t exist, she likes to say.”

  Johnny took the lead with Aunts Bridey and Dierdre.

  Uncle Ned walked beside me. He lugged a wheeled plastic suitcase full of waterproof boots.

  The way things worked out, mass was so quick, I never had a chance to regret much. It was still dim in the church when we got in there. Then the sun edged up wearily and the stained glass windows came to life. There we stood in the middle of light and magical colors. Intricate heads of saints and angels cornered the windows. The word complicity was on my hands as I put my head down into them to contemplate the Eucharist. Complicity. Not the sin I’d imagined I’d encounter. I raised my head and beheld Aunt Dierdre. I wondered about this woman, this aunt of mine, I really did. Was she capable of murder? Always fluid, somehow boneless, she swam now in emotion, her face awash with loosened rouge. She wept quietly, but soundly, the handkerchief cotton of her blouse bosom puddled with tears. Dierdre looked different to me now, somehow splendid I thought, and not unhappy in her radiant grief. She could kill, I decided. But could she plot and plan?

  The next thing you knew we were out. Father Early was in a furious rush. He had to bless the entire proceedings and the sun climbed rapidly in June. You couldn’t hold those German anglers back forever. Lutherans, remember.

  After mass we changed shoes out in the open, which I found very charming and took what I thought might be an excellent picture.

  Mrs. Wooly was set up in a lawn chair on the banks of the Ilen at the prize-winner’s desk, where a tent had been pitched. She’d been encapsuled in lavender.

  “Dayday made her dress,” I overheard Bridey telling Dierdre.

  “Not exactly haute couture.” Bernadette sniffed.

  “But Dayday’s heart was in the right place,” Dierdre defended her, applying a fresh coat of soot to her lashes. “There’s yards and yards of it. Look, shirred tulle on the bodice. She had that dress made for Jenny Rose’s wedding.” She sighed and looked petulantly off to the side. “Now there’s little hope she’ll live to see our girl married.” She filled her lungs up with air. “Still, best to make do.”

  “Good she had a dress at all,” practical Bridey added. “And Jenny Rose is young.”

  Beneath a lacy curtain of willow, Mrs. Wooly held court. Her lips and cheeks had been painted an appropriate, if occult, purple and her hair, usually yellowy white and in a long tail, had undergone a lavender rinse and then been braided and turned around the top of her head into a crown. Beaming, she smoked her pipe.

  Father Early was in charge of the money. The jar on the card table was long since full, and grave, intent volunteers were dispatched to the rectory to safekeep the overflow of tuitions.

  Most of the men wore waders. Liam had an extra pair he’d lent Johnny but Johnny was a lot bigger, I’m afraid, and the waders fit him like a size-too-small pantyhose, so I tried not to look at him.

  Uncle Ned came over to Johnny where he was figuring out his rod. “Here, lad,” he said. “Take this.”

  “No, that’s your Royal Coachman.” Johnny declined the frizzled burst of color. “Your favorite.”

  “Aye. Well. You’ll do us proud.”

  “No. I couldn’t.”

  “You do it for me. I’m not up to it.”

  “I won’t take it.”

  “Sure, you must.”

  “No. I’ve never even done it.”

  “I’ll talk you through it, if ya catch a beauty. You
’d be doing me a favor, like. You’re strong and I’m not as strong as I was.”

  Johnny smacked him on his bicep. “Whaddaya mean? You’re my man!”

  “Nevertheless.”

  Dayday herself arrived in a cape.

  Johnny strode over and greeted her with fond effusiveness.

  “I’m so sorry about old Bob, Mrs. Driver,” I went up to her shyly and said. “I was there when he died.”

  She looked at me. “He’s not dead.” She slipped from her cape and dropped it onto the tarpaulin.

  “He’s not?” I sank in the muck of the shore and took a quick step back.

  “No. But he’ll never use that back foot again. It’s broken in half, Dr. Carpenter from the surgery in town said so.” She peered at me over her glasses. “He’s a kraut and he’s only here half the year, but he’s not bad as a veterinarian.”

  “I can’t believe that cat’s not dead!” I marveled.

  There was the compulsory tribute to the descendants of the potato famine sufferers. Father Early blessed the river.

  “Aye.” Mrs. Driver blessed herself, too. “Me poor old mouser. He’s the best mouser I ever had.”

  I wouldn’t comment on that. I don’t much care for cats that torture for fun.

  “You know he’s from Malta,” she informed me.

  “Is that right?” I said, my mind drifting. Then I got it. Molly could be blackmailing Dierdre. Or else she had plans to. She suspected Dierdre. Why else would she save Peg’s furious letter?

  Fiona Ferry began to sing. Right there along the banks of the Ilen. First, she sang a holy song, “On Eagle’s Wings.” There were some shining faces, but a lot of the men fidgeted.

  Liam nervously patroled back and forth in front of Miss Ferry. Then, she sang a song about the number 7 bus and everyone had to wait. I thought everyone would walk away, but it was a wonderful song, about this bus being at last allowed to go back and forth through both sides of Belfast. It’s supposed to be some old fellow singing when they come to a red light, he watches a young worker get off and trot in front of the bus. On the corner, in front of the Pakie’s, waits the young wife with her hair just shampooed and their baby in the stroller. Both light up and smile when they get to each other and then, “they walked away home but the child turned ’round. I don’t know why, I just started to cry. Then the light turned green and we rolled away home. But the child turned ’round, the way a child will, the child turned all the way ’round.”