by Dorien Kelly
And woke Vi, too. She sent one hand venturing for the telephone, which seemed to be near her right ear.
“’Lo,” she croaked once she’d retrieved it, her throat dry as a crone’s.
“That you, Vi?”
“’Tis.”
“You’d best come home,” Danny said. “I’ve got all but one of Nan’s pieces inside, and none where you wanted them, I’ll wager. The last is sitting out front, and I’m thinking it’s going to freeze over before we can make proper room for it.”
Vi shot upright, sending the duvet off Liam in the process. “God in heaven, Danny! What time is it? Why did you not wake me earlier?” Without waiting for an answer, she dropped the phone back into its receiver and scrambled from the bed.
“Troubles?” Liam asked, his voice also rough with sleep and no doubt the excess of the past twelve hours’ emotions.
“Nan’s furniture is at my house and I’m not,” Vi said.
Liam swung his long legs from the bed and stood. “Then let’s be quick.”
All Vi had was the dress she’d worn the prior evening, so she pulled it back on, wishing for time for a shower and a change of clothes.
They were downstairs in a matter of minutes, then nearly out the door when Dev stopped them.
“This arrived for you earlier,” he said, handing Liam a fat courier’s envelope.
Liam thanked Dev, and on they rushed.
Vi was traveling the coast road to the village and feeling thankful that the rain had stopped when she glanced over and saw Liam frowning at the package.
“Who is it from?” she asked.
“My attorney.”
“Aren’t you going to open it?”
He turned it face-down. “Later. I’ve got enough troubles to digest at the moment.”
“It could be good news.”
Liam snorted. “If it were, Stuart would have called, just for the bloody novelty of it.”
And to that, she could say nothing. Vi returned her attention to the road, and soon they were at her small home. Vi parked, and she and Liam exited. On the short walkway in front of Vi’s house stood a brightly painted kitchen cupboard and two elderly women.
Vi called a good day to Breege Flaherty and her flatmate, Edna McCafferty. With their children long-grown and gone from small Ballymuir, the elderly women had thrown in their lots together and taken a flat in the middle of the village.
“That’s a grand piece,” Breege said to Vi as she and Liam grew near. “Did you paint it yourself?”
“My Nan did, actually,” Vi said.
“Would you look at all the bits and pieces attached to it?” Breege said to Edna, who was using an already damp handkerchief to dab at the raindrops also decorating it. To Vi, she added, “Are you thinking of selling it? Young Danny hiding inside wouldn’t bargain, and Pat left the property altogether.”
Vi glanced at the front window where she saw Danny skulking about.
“We’d never get it up the stairs,” Edna pointed out to Breege.
“Which is well enough, since I’m afraid it’s not for sale,” Vi said firmly. If she showed any inclination to bargain, Breege and Edna would have her occupied till nightfall. The two older women were sharp indeed, hiding their skills at their favorite avocation behind kindly faces. Danny had been wise to retreat, and Pat wiser yet to flee.
“Ah, well,” Breege said, her attention now wandering to Liam, “it seems as though you have more than one new thing in your life.”
“All quite old, actually,” Vi said, earning a wry quirk of the mouth from Liam. She introduced him to the two women, then left him to fend for himself under their questioning while she slipped inside and got Danny to help him muscle the cupboard in.
An hour later, Vi had showered and dressed in fresh clothing for the day. Nan’s cupboard had replaced Vi’s prior one in the kitchen, which now blocked the entry to the back hall, waiting to be moved elsewhere. While Vi resettled her belongings in the painted cupboard, she smiled, imagining her mother’s reaction once she saw this.
The first time Mam had been in Vi’s kitchen, she’d been appalled to see that Vi had ripped out the modern fitted cabinets and replaced them with a large, free-standing oak cupboard. This new iteration, with its vivid primary colors, would send Mam around the bend. Mam…something niggled at Vi’s memory.
“Damn!” Vi dropped a handful of forks onto the cupboard’s wide top and hurried to the front room, where Liam was reading his packet and Danny was lounging.
“Danny, where do you want Mam to dine tonight?” she asked while riffling about on a shelf for the phone book.
“Argentina?” he suggested.
“With you,” she clarified. “Hadn’t I mentioned that?”
Danny pushed himself from his armchair and stood, hands clenched, as though readying for battle. “Holy shit, Vi! You’ve set me up.”
“You and Pat, both, but I prefer to view it more as sparing myself,” she replied as she thumbed through listings in Dingle, the closest town of size. “And on this, you’d best not cross me.” She glanced up at him. “Have had a visit with her?”
“She arrived this morning before I’d had time to choke down my coffee, and thanks for the warning, too.”
“Sorry. I’d meant to give word, but last night wasn’t quite as planned.” She gave a nod of her head toward Liam, whose attention was focused elsewhere.
Danny eased off a bit. “Pat’s with her now. She wanted to see Michael’s workshop. Fine timing, too, as he’s off to Kenmare, delivering a table.”
“Smart man,” Vi murmured, then lifted the phone and dialed a small bistro across from Dingle Harbor where the food was good and the final bill within Pat and Danny’s means.
“You sure you don’t want to come along tonight?” Danny asked.
Vi didn’t bother to comment.
He muttered in the background while she confirmed they were open in the off-season and made a reservation for three Kilbrides.
“All set,” she said to Danny. He stomped upstairs like an overgrown infant. Liam kept riffling through the papers he’d been sent, seemingly oblivious to the game of pass-the-parent occurring in front of him.
Vi settled on the sofa next to him. “And the news?”
He returned the papers to their packet. “An offer on my company’s assets.”
“Is this wanted?”
“No, it’s the carrion birds gathering.” He glanced at his watch. “Nearly eleven. I’ll be needing to make some calls. I suppose I should get to Muir House,” he said most hesitantly. “Would you mind giving me a lift?”
“You can call from here, or if you like, come to the studio with Rog and me.” The words had been automatic, and once they registered in her mind, their full import shocked her. She detested having people in her studio and survived the comings and goings of tourist season only because the tourist’s euros patched her moth-eaten pockets.
“I’ll stay with you,” Liam said. “I keep feeling at loose ends…as though I’ve misplaced something, and then I realize it’s Meghan.”
Vi had much the same feeling when Rog wasn’t about, but decided she’d best not share that. She didn’t mean to make light of Liam’s situation, but she still had this wee crosdiabhal sitting on her shoulder and muttering angry words, much as Danny had just done. She wanted rid of it—to be fully accepting of fate—but wanting and knowing how to lose the demon were separate acts.
“Well, come along to the studio,” she said, “though I’m sure once I start painting, you’ll find Roger better company than I.”
He leaned over and kissed her, stopping only when Danny and his sizeable shoes came clomping back down the stairs from the gabled room he shared with Pat.
“Watch her,” Danny said to Liam. “She only seems nice.” With that, he exited.
Vi and Liam soon did, too, driving to her studio where she got about her business, first hiding the Beltaine and Samhain paintings with Liam in them while he was occupied on the tel
ephone. She tried to keep her ears to herself as he talked with his mam about Beth’s arrival and the details of getting the balance of Meghan’s belongings back to her.
Even with Vi’s half-listening and Roger’s distracting snuffling about her feet, she was struck by a pang of yearning for some sort of normalcy with her mam. It was that hope, futile as it was mad, that sent her back into Mam’s orbit when her other siblings were pleased to stay in the fringes of her universe.
Liam finished his call and dialed another. Vi continued to stare at her empty canvas seeking wild Lughnasa inspiration and getting only fun-obliterating Mam-vibes. Finally, she moved to a less intimidating pad of paper and pencil. Liam’s call, briefer than the first, ended. He came to stand behind her, wrapping his arms about her waist.
“I’ll be hearing back from my attorney soon. I hope you don’t mind that I gave him this number.”
“I can ignore his call as well as any other,” she said, then tilted her head back for his kiss, which he granted.
“That I’m sure you can.”
Vi set aside her pencil and turned in his embrace. “Are you wanting to sell your business?”
“Christ, no! What I’m wanting is for my partner to be dealt with, business to resume, and my life to go on as it was.”
Seventeen-year-old Vi would have cried, “But what about me?” Adult Vi kept silent the hurt of the cut to her heart.
“Of course,” Liam said, “I’m also wanting to climb Mount Everest without oxygen tanks, and I’ve got a far better chance of that.”
“So what will happen?” she asked.
“I’ve a feeling it’s either sell it myself or wait for the banks financing me to do it on worse terms. I’ve plenty of assets…crane-barges, diving equipment, and even the fast boats that my partner used for a bit of pirating, but no cash to tide me over.”
She wanted to give him something, to return at least a measure of optimism to his mood, for she could bear no more. “You know, you might still—”
His glare was fierce. “Don’t say ‘find the gold.’ Just. Don’t. It will be bloody weeks until Duncarraig calms enough for me to go about my search without a parade of fools behind me. And that will be too damn late.”
“I’m just looking for some way to make this better for you…coddle you a little,” she said, reminding him of just last night, when his mood had been lighter. “Shall I paint your toenails? Or better yet, Roger’s?”
He chuckled at least, and for that she kissed him. When she was done, both of them were smiling like a pair of love-drunk fools.
“I don’t suppose any of these paints of yours are water-soluble?” Liam asked while tracing a fingertip over the curve of her right breast.
“I’ve some fingerpaints I keep for school visits,” she replied, much liking the course of his thoughts. Painting his body would be the best preparation for a Lughnasa celebration scene that she could imagine.
“And a lock to the door, too?” Liam murmured, kissing the side of her neck.
“Aye,” she said, then sighed at the pleasure of his touch, impermanent as it was. She was about to suggest that he turn that very lock while she closed Roger in the back room, but wasn’t quite quick enough, for her offer was interrupted by the chime of the front bells.
“It’s messy in here, Violet,” Maeve Kilbride said as soon as the door closed behind her. “How ever do you manage to sell a thing?”
Vi stepped from Liam’s embrace. “I sell what I mean to,” she replied.
“Hello, Liam,” Mam said in a tone neither cordial nor hostile. She unbuttoned her coat and held it out as though waiting for a butler. Vi hurried to take it.
While she hung Mam’s coat on a peg at the back of the studio, getting a “Mind the fabric!” from her, Vi listened to the ease Liam showed in talking to Mam. Easy when she’s not yours, Vi thought. As she approached, her mother’s frown deepened.
“Pat and Danny will be driving you to Dingle for supper,” Vi said, scrambling to take hold of the conversation before Mam could trample her. “It’s a lovely town, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy having a look about.”
“I suppose,” her mam replied.
While she spoke, the phone began to ring.
“Shall I?” Liam asked, gesturing at the thing.
“As often as you choose,” Vi said.
Liam took the call, then reached for his papers, where they sat atop a display case. While he spoke in stern tones to whomever was on the other end, Vi summoned some chat for her mam and even succeeded in keeping control for a minute or two. Then Mam launched one of her infamous announcements.
“They’ve started whispering about me already, you know,” she said.
“Who?” Vi asked, unable to imagine Jenna or anyone at Muir House treating her mother poorly. But that was half the challenge of conversations with Mam, trying to make the leap from topic to topic. The only assured constant was a Mam-centric theme.
“The women in my tea group, of course.”
“Surely you’re imagining it,” Vi said, then afforded herself a glance in Liam’s direction, but he was deep in conversation. He looked nearly as ill-tempered as Vi was beginning to feel.
“Oh, I know that pitying look,” Mam said. “I saw it often enough when the twins went to visit you.”
Vi conquered the smile trying to fight its way out. Even after nearly a full year, Mam still referred to the boys’ decision to move to Ballymuir after finishing school as a “visit.”
“Next they’ll layer on the false sympathy, too,” Mam said. “I’ve seen them do it before. ‘Whatever will you do now that Michael’s moved out?’” she mimicked. “He’s on holiday, I’ll tell them, and it’s the truth, too. He’ll be back.”
“Have you talked to Da?” Vi asked.
“Whatever for? He’ll just give me more of the same, and I heard enough of that while he was packing his bags.”
“Then you know why he’s left?”
“He’s not left,” Mam repeated with enough vehemence that Liam sent a concerned glance their way. “It’s a grand male holiday, chasing his lost youth through Duncarraig. He wants to be at the pub to all hours with his mates and forget he has a wife waiting for him.”
Even Mam, who was well-versed in altering the truth, hadn’t voiced that last bit too well. And Vi was finding words hard to get past the nearly-ill feeling tightening her throat. This was not her trial, not her burden to bear. Except no one else would give Mam the truth.
“He’s looking to be needed. He’s worked his whole life and isn’t ready to stop.”
Mam’s sigh was thick with exasperation. “He’s needed. He’s needed at home.”
“To take out your dry cleaning, or is it more than that? Do you even admire him anymore? When he comes through the door, is your heart lighter?”
“And you’re some grand judge of love?”
Vi looked over at Liam, who had finished his call and was now feigning great interest in the canvases stacked about. Her heart sped.
“I’m no expert, but I’m beginning to learn. And I’m not the one worrying about whispering tea groups. Is it love making you wish Da back?”
“That’s between myself and your father,” her mam snapped, color riding high on her cheeks.
“Then you’d best share it with Da,” Vi said. “I’d wager he hasn’t a clue how you feel about him.”
“You always were one for overstepping. Rules, respect, it doesn’t matter to you, does it?”
“It does matter. Very much.” It was simply that her rules differed from her mother’s. “And though you’ve made it none too easy, I love you still.”
Mam could have looked no more shocked if Vi had struck her.
“I’m going back to Muir House for a rest,” she said, turning heel and walking to the peg holding her coat. “Tell Pat and Danny to be at the door no later than five.”
After she was gone, Vi picked up her sketchbook and gathered her thoughts. She was beginning to believe that, like Ra
fferty’s gold, her mother’s good graces could not be found.
After Vi’s mam finished her grand exit, Liam eyed Vi carefully, deciding if she was fit to approach. While on the phone, he’d had the displeasure of listening to Stuart, his attorney, account how quickly matters had gone south. Liam’s four remaining field engineers had faxed their resignations just this morning. Naturally, all would soon turn up working for Midmarine Salvage, the competitor offering to buy his hard assets.
Liam had a week to consider the offer’s terms. Though he didn’t need seven days, he planned to burn every last one. He owed his pride at least that much, especially since Stuart had been told by a friend on the inside that Liam’s subpoena was forthcoming.
In a matter of days he would have to return to the States and recite chapter and verse of his stupidity regarding Alex to a room of strangers. At least, though, he could finish the trip on an upswing with a visit to Meghan. He was sure Beth wouldn’t begrudge him that.
She did, however, begrudge him Vi. That much had been clear last night. He wondered if Beth would feel the same just now, or would figure he was getting the woes he deserved. Vi’s brows were knit and she was angrily drawing on a pad of paper, her motions better suited to slashing than sketching.
“So you and your mam are through torturing each other?” he asked.
“We don’t—”
She broke off with what she was saying and a reluctant smile came to her face. “We do, I guess, and always have. Smart man,” she said, then continued sketching.
He strolled closer, wanting a look at her drawing. “Not smart, just one who’s done a fair bit of torturing, too.”
“Don’t look,” she said, shielding the sketch pad with her left hand. “That’s not what this is meant for.”
Good enough. God knew he had plenty more to look at in this chaotic place. He could see, though, where order had once rested. It was as though papers and paintings and small piles of seashells and stones had drifted down like dust, settling over what this studio had once been.
