Made With Love: I Love You Forever

by M. K. Shaddix

  I feel my blood ratcheting up a few degrees, but I keep a hold of my composure.

  ‘To each his own,’ Dermot says flatly.

  ‘And what is it you do, Michael? Besides holding up ferries?’ I ask.

  ‘Oh this and that,’ he says.

  Why is he grinning like that?

  ‘Sounds riveting,’ I say with mocking enthusiasm.

  ‘He’s being modest there now,’ Dermot says and chinks his glass of milk with Michael’s. ‘If it wasn’t for this man right here, I tell ya, there’d be no Aran Dairy.’

  ‘So, you’re in agribusiness?’ I smirk. That would explain the stink of BS.

  Michael shovels a forkful of cabbage into his mouth. ‘Kind of.’

  ‘Can you believe this madness?’ Dermot rattles a newspaper with his free hand. ‘They’re saying the price of milk is only going down!’

  ‘Daaad,’ Cormac whines.

  ‘It’s a shame, really,’ Michael says.

  ‘A shame? It’s a damned conspiracy is what it is! These damned multi-nationals--shower of bastards, the lot of ’em!’

  ‘Dermot.’ Clare purses her lips at him.

  ‘Well, they are,’ he says.

  ‘How are things in the States? Any upswing?’ Michael asks me, his tone hopeful.

  ‘The States. Pfft!’ Clare says under her breath. ‘Sure they invented the multi-national.’

  Now it’s Dermot pursing his lips at her.

  I poke at my bacon. My city is awful, my country’s awful, my Mum--awful. The only constant in that equation is me!

  ‘America also invented jazz,’ Cormac beams at me.

  ‘And rock ‘n’ roll,’ Michael nods to him.

  ‘And the car,’ Dermot adds.

  I smile faintly. At least the men in the family have my back.

  I realize I’ve been holding my breath and, as the chill falls off the conversation, I let it out slowly, even hazard a smile. Clare humphs into her dinner, then cocks her head towards Michael and smiles sweetly at him.

  ‘How are your parents, Michael? Are they well?’ she asks.

  ‘Flying it. Dad’s non-stop, as usual. In London every other week. That’s got Mum half cracked. It’s the two of us most of the time, even with her giving him pure hell over it. I think she had this idea he’d hit sixty and close shop. Anyway,’ he waves his hand in front of his face and chuckles to himself. ‘She got this old hound in to replace him. Lord knows from where. He sits in Dad’s chair for the dinner.’

  ‘You’re not serious,’ Dermot whoops.

  ‘I am. I keep saying it to her, “You’re giving him an awful complex, carrying on like that!”’

  ‘Your father or the dog?’ Dermot spurts.

  Michael laughs along with him, too loudly, too easily.

  ‘You have a dog, Julie?’ Cormac asks me. ‘I want a dog.’ He stares down his mother.

  ‘By the way she boxed Nessa Tigh’s horse on the ferry, I’d say no,’ Michael chuckles. Dermot and Cormac double over in hysterics, and even Clare lets fly a giggle.

  Why is everyone laughing at me?!

  I have a very strong and very sudden impulse to make him feel as small as I felt on the ferry.

  ‘You’re right. I don’t have a dog,’ I say and he turns toward me, face full of infuriating earnestness. ‘But while we’re talking lifestyle choices, did you say you live with your parents? That’s very…post-modern.’

  ‘Is it?’ He blinks at me and then seems to settle on something. ‘It’s a long story.’ Instead of the awkward pout I was going for, a sad, almost furtive cast comes into Michael’s eyes. Clare glowers at me.

  Great. Now I look like the asshole!

  Dermot scrambles to the sideboard and shares out drams of whiskey. ‘We should have a toast.’

  Michael raises his glass, good sportsmanlike.

  I finger my own glass. Would it be very bad manners to not join in? It seems a bit ridiculous, toasting myself, especially when Clare’s looking down her nose at me like that. But I don’t want to risk offending Dermot! He’s been so very kind to me. I raise my glass, and Dermot, Michael and I tip back our whiskeys.

  ‘To family!’ Dermot whoops.

  ‘Here, here,’ Michael says.

  This is all too much for Clare. She pushes back from the table with a low grunt and clomps into the back kitchen.

  ‘Is she alright?’ Michael asks.

  ‘She’s grand, sure. Just getting the custard,’ Dermot says, ducking after her into the kitchen.

  I feel as if all the air has been sucked out of my lungs.

  ‘I might step outside. Get a bit of air,’ I say. I try to make a graceful exit, but my hands have gone to shaking and, when I try to shove them away into my pockets, I slam a shoulder into the doorjamb.

  ‘Julie, are you alright there?’ Michael’s on his feet.

  ‘I’m fine.’ Never better. I’m in a strange place with strange people, every one of them clambering to either celebrate or shun me!

  I trip outside and brace myself against the paddock wall. Smalltalk isn’t something I can manage just now.

  ‘I should get home,’ I can hear Michael saying to Dermot. ‘Thanks a million for dinner. Say it to the missus for me.’

  ‘I will of course,’ Dermot says. There’s the flat, smacking sound of back-patting, and then a high five from Cormac.

  I hear Michael hop down the front steps, his boots crunching on the gravel drive. He’s coming over alright. Feck it anyway.

  ‘Small world,’ he grins at me and leans back against the stone wall.

  I nod, but I don’t bother to look at him. ‘Smaller every day.’

  ‘Your Dad, he used to rent a place just up the road from ours when he came over in the summers from Galway. Kicked the ball around with me.’

  And now I suppose you ‘know’ something about me? The presumption grates me, but I can’t help but feel a tug in my heart. He’d known my father. Maybe that explains the strange magnetic pulse I feel when I’m around him.

  ‘I was sorry to hear,’ he goes on. ‘Very sorry.’ He looks off into the fields, then down at his boots. ‘Seems an age ago now.’

  ‘It was,’ I say.

  ‘And you’re only here a few days, is it?’

  ‘Four and counting.’

  ‘We must seem like a right bunch of yokels to you. The first time I went away, it was Paris, I couldn’t believe such a place could exist. All those people living and dying on the same forty-odd square miles.’

  ‘I’ve always wanted to go to Paris,’ I say as much to myself as to Michael.

  ‘You should go then.’ He says it so simply, like Paris was a shop at the end of the street. ‘Then come back here and have a proper visit.’ His tone isn’t cloying, like Cathal’s. By the way it opens out at the end, I can tell it isn’t for himself he’s said it. It’s for me. I turn to face him, and our eyes lock.

  ‘I might do that.’ But then again, I probably won’t.

  ‘Do, yeah.’ He smiles at me, and this time I don’t feel the urge to reel back and slap him. I actually feel a little sorry for him. Standing there. Stupidly handsome for the Irish boonies. He may be one of those rare types who can’t be ironic.

  ‘I should head,’ he says and straightens up. ‘Mum’ll be up waiting.’

  Say what? I gape at him.

  ‘I’m joking,’ he laughs. ‘Listen, if you get down to the factory, say hello to Bridie for me.’

  ‘Wouldn’t that make Clare jealous?’ I smile.

  ‘S’pose I left myself wide open for that one,’ he smiles back at me. ‘Would that put us even?’ he asks.

  ‘I’d say so.’ I make certain the words come out flat. If this lad’s head gets any bigger, it’ll blow.

  He nods goodbye and takes a step into the dark, but then turns back to me. ‘It’s funny, you inheriting St Enda’s.’

  ‘That’s one word for it,’ I say, uneasy at the thought of the place being, even for a few days, in my name.

 
‘You know what I think?’

  You’ll tell me, I’m sure.

  ‘I think Josephine had something in mind, bringing you out here.’

  ‘Yeah, revenge,’ I laugh.

  Michael’s face falls flat and serious. ‘I was thinking more along the lines of starting over.’

  ‘Right.’ Inserting foot firmly in mouth.

  ‘I’ll see you so,’ Michael says. He’s smiling again, that infuriating, drop dead gorgeous smile of his.

  ‘See you.’

  He disappears around the side of the house and then reappears, waving from a bicycle. It’s one of those garish, monster wheel kinds, not at all the sort people tear around New York on. I can’t decide if it makes him look foolish or daring. I also can’t decide whether or not to wave after him. I flash him my best Miss America wave (totally ironic, of course). As Dad would say, ‘What harm?’ I’d never see him again.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I go to bed praying for rain, a big black squall of it, to blot out the morning sun and let me sleep. My prayers are answered. Sort of. I wake to a filmy drizzle, but it isn’t dark, not even close. Six in the morning, and the sky is shot through with that obnoxious gray light that’s just bright enough to keep you awake and just dull enough to keep you drowsy.

  Damnit.

  I toss and turn, head squirreled under the sheets, in a last ditch effort for a snooze, but give up when one of the donkeys plants himself beneath my window and goes to hawing like a mad Romeo.

  Okay, Okay, I’m UP!

  I pull Clare’s sweater over my head, slip into a pair of Mum’s old slippers, and shuffle down the hall to the kitchen.

  I pry open the fridge, a squat tub of a thing like the one Kate and I shared in college, and poke around. Eggs smeared with chicken shit (that fresh!), a sheaf of carrots, some cheese, all manner of pork. There’s a pitcher handy, so I pull it free of the door and give it a whiff. Is it milk? I hate milk, and this stuff is clotted over with a hump of yellowing skin. Is that cream? Cream I can do. I tip the pitcher to my lips and gulp. My mouth is overwhelmed by a tinny, animal taste that seems like it should be familiar, but also triggers my gag reflex. I shoot to the sink and hang my head over the side, sputtering.

  It’s only then that I see Clare. She’s standing in the doorway, arms crossed in the same attitude as last night and the night before, except now she’s smiling, like she might fall down laughing smiling.

  ‘You don’t like it?’ she asks. ‘That’s straight out of the cow!’ She has to turn away and pretend to fiddle with the kettle to keep from laughing outright. ‘Is it not like that in New York?’

  ‘No. No it is not,’ I say and wipe at my mouth with my sleeve. Her eyes bulge a half a degree. Ah hell. She’s noticed the sweater.

  She coughs and then erupts into a fit of laughter. ‘That looks,’ Clare sniggers, ‘very well on you!’

  Just then, Cormac breezes into the room with Dermot two steps behind. Clare bites at her lip and becomes suddenly very interested in yesterday’s paper.

  ‘You’re up early today, Mum,’ Cormac says.

  ‘It’s a market day. Same as every Friday,’ she says matter-of-factly.

  ‘I’m only messin’,’ he says and knuckles her in the shoulder. ‘What up, Jules?’ He sticks a fist in my face, and I bump it.

  ‘What up.’

  ‘They’re dropping like it’s hot out there,’ he says.

  ‘Three last night, another one this morning,’ Dermot adds. The two of them heap butter, cheese, and tinned sardines onto thick slices of brown bread.

  ‘Wash your hands, will you!’ Clare clucks at them. They go on eating, and Clare goes back to the tea. I catch the boys passing a sneaky smile back and forth.

  ‘Sorry, what’s dropping?’ I ask them.

  ‘The calves.’ Cormac says it like I’m a complete moron.

  ‘Oh, right.’

  ‘Come on! I’ll show ya!’

  I open my mouth to protest, but Clare does it for me.

  ‘Julie doesn’t want to see a shed full of heifers. She’s from New York.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ I say defiantly. It’s little cows, right. How bad could it be?

  ‘Suit yourself,’ Clare says.

  Oh, I will.

  ‘And be back at noon. Mr. Heaney’s coming round with the paperwork.’

  Be here with bells on.

  The lads swill down their tea, I pull on my neon Converse, and we march out the back door through and into the first of a series of fields, all of them electric green and slick with dew. The donkey’s braying again, this time as if his life depended on it.

  ‘How was Sinéad when you looked in on her?’ Dermot asks Cormac.

  ‘Close.’

  Dermot considers the donkey, which is pacing now as it barks.

  ‘I’d make that very close.’

  And the donkey knows this how?

  The pair of them take off at a trot, and I’m left in the far field eyeballing the donkey. When I reach the barn door, the smell of fear and piss hits me like a wall. An agitated ‘MOOOO’ shudders through the row of stalls.

  Is it a baby she’s having or an alien?!

  ‘Hold her now,’ I hear Dermot say above a hot, sluicing sound. The cow groans. ‘Careful now, you don’t pull before she’s ready.’

  Oh Jesus Christ.

  I slide, back pressed flat to the wall, toward the stall door.

  ‘Nearly there.’

  There’s a wet crunching in the straw, and I peek over the half door just as Cormac kneels to cradle the calf on the ground.

  ‘Good man,’ Dermot says, breathless now.

  Cormac sticks his fingers into the calf’s mouth and rakes out the mucus.

  Oh my God!

  My brain is telling me I should be grossed out, but I’m absolutely riveted. I watch as the steaming black lump of fur kicks out its back legs and takes its first breath.

  ‘Come here, girl,’ Dermot says and beckons to me with the hand that isn’t stroking the heifer. I step into the stall, very aware of Sinéad’s hind hooves. ‘Don’t mind her,’ Dermot says. ‘She’s quiet as.’

  I crouch down to the calf.

  ‘He’s as ugly as his Da,’ Cormac says.

  ‘Not unlike yourself!’ Dermot jibes him.

  ‘He’s not.’ I reach out to touch the calf’s streaming chin. ‘He’s gorgeous.’

  Cormac laughs into his sleeve.

  ‘Christen him, so, Julie,’ Dermot says.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know--’

  ‘First thing that comes into your head.’

  I look down at the calf. His eyes are squeezed shut and his mouth pursed.

  ‘Louie,’ I say.

  Cormac beams. ‘Yeah! Like Armstrong!’

  ‘Good on ya, Julie,’ Dermot says. ‘Louie it is.’ Sinéad snuffles over the calf, her great blue gray tongue ruffling back its wet fur. ‘Come on so, and we’ll give Sinéad some space,’ Dermot says and helps me to my feet.

  ‘You name all of them?’ I ask, trooping behind him into what must be the milking parlor.

  ‘Sure! They’re all individuals, same as ourselves.’ He sidles up to one of the stanchions, where a barrel headed cow stands indifferently, udders stuck into a pumping medusa of hoses. ‘Take Fionnuala here.’ Dermot strokes her flank paternally. ‘She’s a bit cracked. Aren’t you, missus?’ The cow shifts her weight onto the hoof nearest Dermot, and he gives her a firm pat. ‘Calm as you like one minute, Fionnuala. Out to kill you the next.’

  ‘She hates me,’ Cormac says from the next stanchion.

  ‘That’s because you have awful cold hands,’ Dermot laughs.

  ‘Marilyn doesn’t mind, do you Mary?’ Cormac croons from a milking stool.

  ‘You milk her by hand?’ I ask him.

  ‘Marilyn’s old school,’ he says and shoots twin streams of milk into the bucket at his knees.

  ‘Come on outside, and I’ll show you round,’ Dermot says to me.

  We walk up the length
of the barn, Dermot saying ‘hello’ to the cows as we go, and through the back paddock door. A sweeping field opens out before us; it moves like a green tide in the wind. Dozens of cows, too many for me to count, dot the field all the way to a bowed stone wall. Beyond that, the green cuts away into a silent sea. I can just make out the Pins of Connemara through the blue haze and the nearer towers of Galway city.

  What would a view like that go for in NYC?!

  ‘You like it?’ Dermot asks.

  ‘It’s unreal.’

  ‘We think so,’ he grins.

  I squint at the cows mowing away down the field. What a far cry from the mega lots in Texas and Oklahoma. ‘Are all of the dairies on Inishmore like this? Free range, I mean?’

  ‘They are, yeah. You keep your cattle indoors, you get a lower yield,’ he says. ‘And it tastes like shite!’ He sucks in a deep breath. ‘They need fresh air, and we’ve heaps of that!’

  The ad-woman in me makes a lightening survey of resource to production ratios. If Dermot wanted to, he could up his yield by at least half and, judging from last month’s invoice, it wouldn’t hurt.