The Walking People

by Mary Beth Keane

  How? Her children asked, each in their separate ways—Julia with a sigh, James with raised eyebrows and a shrug, Eavan with the same question over and over and over: "But how do you know?"

  "I just know."

  "But how?"

  "It always works out."

  "But how does it work out?"

  "It just does," Greta said, and then reverted to the line she'd been using with each of them since they started school and began to question how she knew things, how she came to her decisions. "Some things you know in your brain, and some things you know in here." Greta placed a hand on her chest.

  "Your rib cage?"

  "Don't be fresh."

  "I'm not. Your upper intestines?"

  "That's not where your intestines are, is it?" Greta looked down at herself and saw that her hand had migrated south.

  "But Mom, we've sent out close to eighty invitations. How will you know how much food to buy?"

  "I'll know to stop buying when I have enough."

  Early that morning, before Michael's alarm, Greta had stared at the clock, its neon orange numbers two inches high and casting a glow over Michael's face, their bed, Greta's bare arm. It was 5:13. She sighed, thinking, I've not had one single wink of sleep this night. But then she turned gently, careful not to let the cool air under the covers, and felt her pillow wet with drool. Well, maybe for an hour or so, she thought. Maybe a few minutes here and there. Michael shifted, threw his heavy arm over her, trapped her arms at her sides. The alarm woke up, sent its shrill wail directly down Greta's spine. Michael closed his eyes tighter.

  "Ay," she'd whispered into the dark as she tried to free one of her trapped arms. "Last day."

  "Last day," he'd repeated, and held on tighter while the alarm continued to sound. He moved closer, nestling his chin against her shoulder until they were like one of those prize eggs at Easter, where the smaller egg is tucked inside the larger. Slowly, slowly, she pushed back with her elbow until she made contact with his stomach, and then she kept pushing. He sat up abruptly, threw back the covers, swung his legs over the side of the bed, and pressed every button on the clock until it went silent. Greta watched the shape of his back as it bent, began to lean, his head drooping off toward his pillow. Outside, the sky was as dark as midnight.

  "Five-eighteen." She nudged his rear with the ball of her foot. When he was finally standing, she threw back the covers on her side, stood up, felt her way across the room until she laid her hand on the thick cotton of her robe. "I'll get the kettle," she told him. He was stretching, extending his arms like wings and then tucking them back in beside his body.

  "Stiff," he muttered, clenching and unclenching his fists. Yawning, he reached down and rubbed the muscles at the front of his thighs, rubbed his hips, put his hands on his waist to drive his thumbs into his lower back. He cursed, coughed a few times to loosen the dark phlegm in his throat, hopped up and down once, twice. Above the elastic waistband of his boxers his stomach curved to meet his broad chest. A good stomach, Greta thought. Full. Healthy. Well fed. Not like the gaunt 1960s or the fat '80s, when he seemed unable to pass a bakery without stopping in for a slice of pie. Every hair on his body was gray.

  "Bacon and eggs," he said, pausing his kneading fingers to listen for her response. When she didn't answer, he looked over and smiled at her. "Last day," he said.

  She switched on the lamp next to him.

  "Oh, you're mean," he said, shielding his eyes.

  "Five-twenty-one," she said.

  To be at work in time for his shift, Michael had to leave their house in Recess by 5:45. Without traffic, he'd be at Thirtieth Street and Tenth Avenue by 6:15. This would give him forty-five minutes to park, change into his gear, get over to the cage, and get down the seventy stories to the tunnel. It didn't used to take so long. Years ago, he could get out of his street clothes and into the tunnel in twenty minutes. Less. Lately, he couldn't shake the feeling that he was forgetting something. Once he was dressed in his work clothes, he'd have to look himself over, bend to confirm the boots on his feet, wiggle his toes to feel the thick socks beneath. He'd pat his chest for his folding ruler, his back pocket for his flashlight. Three times in the last few months he'd gone over to the supply shed to get another hard hat, only to have Donahue, who kept track of everything, reach over and rap on the hard hat that was already on his head. Each time, he had put his hand to the top of his head, astonished to feel the hard plastic, the knob at the back that tightened the strap. The first time, Donahue had laughed and laughed, shouting after him from the door of the shed as Michael made his way across the site to the cage. The second time, he'd just looked at Michael with eyebrows raised and told him to get more sleep. The third time, he didn't laugh, didn't smile, only placed his hand on Michael's back as he walked with him across the yard.

  The first two times Michael forgot about his hard hat, he saved up the story to tell Greta when he got home. "That Donahue," she'd said, rolling her eyes. Exactly, thought Michael, smiling along with Greta as if it were Donahue who'd put the hard hat on his head and then caused him to forget it. Greta urged him to go to bed earlier and stop falling asleep in front of the TV. She started getting up when his alarm went off to make oatmeal for him to eat before he left. Eavan mentioned something about ginseng, so Greta began laying out one ginseng pill next to his multivitamin and his cholesterol medicine. The ginseng made his piss smell strange, he complained. Piss is piss, Greta said.

  He didn't tell her that it had happened once more or that one morning, just two weeks before his last day, he'd taken the train with the others down to the dead end of the tunnel, a twelve-minute ride at the train's slow pace, and had looked above him and beside him at the tunnel walls and couldn't for the life of him remember where he was going. He sat up to look around the shoulders of the man in front of him and saw that the tunnel narrowed to a point and then disappeared. He looked behind him and saw the same thing. They were going on a trip, he decided. A journey. It was nighttime. It was raining. He looked over his shoulder once more to find Ned Powers, his friend. "Where to?" Michael had asked, and Powers laughed so hard he nearly fell out the side. Michael laughed too, and the joke spread up and down to every member of the crew. When the train finally stopped, Michael was relieved to discover that he knew exactly what to do, where to stand, which tool to reach for. Still, the entire shift seemed off, like a picture that was always slightly askew no matter how many times he walked up to the wall and nudged it at this corner, that corner, a little here, a little there. Later, back on the train that returned them to the shaft, he kept his mind fastened on the movement of the machinery, the work they'd just done. He focused on the cage, its rust recently covered with another coat of reflective yellow, emerging in the hazy distance.

  "Don't expect this treatment every day," Greta said as she slid two eggs onto his plate and placed it in front of him. The clock in the kitchen read 5:37, and Greta reached over to snap up the blinds. "It'll start getting light soon," she said as she brought the saucepan from the stove and spooned out the beans. She reached for bacon that was resting on paper towels on a plate on the counter. "Another few weeks and the sun will be up at this hour."

  "As of tomorrow morning, I won't be up at this hour, so the sun can stay where it is."

  Greta watched him work across his plate, his head bent so low he could have stuck out his tongue and lapped up the stream of egg yolk that had gotten away. "So," she said. "Will they have something planned for you, do you think? Something at lunch?" From the fridge she took the bag lunch she'd prepared the night before. She placed it on the table next to his plate so he wouldn't forget it.

  Michael coughed, reached for his mug, sipped the steaming tea. "Of course. The whole shift goes to Tavern on the Green, and after lunch they present me with a cake with one candle for every year on the job. And a gold watch."

  "That's it, wise guy. You've had enough." Greta took the plate out from under his nose and jerked her head toward the clock. He pushed
his chair back, stood, rubbed his belly, reached the hall closet in three long strides.

  "What are you doing?" Greta asked as she watched him pull his heavy winter coat off the hanger.

  "My coat," he said.

  "It's supposed to get up near eighty today."

  Michael frowned, put the coat back on the hanger, patted the pockets. "Fine. My keys, then," he said. "I'll just take my keys."

  "Michael," Greta said, taking his hand in both of hers and bringing it to her mouth, "you haven't worn that coat in months." She squeezed his fingers as hard as she could, then repeated what she'd already said. "Okay? Months, Michael. Now go on. You'll be late."

  She reached around to the wall where he'd hung his keys the day before, and pressed them into his hand.

  Greta began preparing the moment the taillights of Michael's car disappeared down the block. There were a lot of things she had meant to do, but the days had gotten away from her. She meant to figure out a way to get Michael to paint the shutters outside before party day. She meant to get a new mailbox. She meant to buy a potted plant for the front step. She meant to get Michael to put a fresh coat of tar on the driveway to cover up the oil stains and the crack. She put a pot of water on the stove to boil the potatoes for potato salad. She took down the kitchen curtains and put them in the washing machine. She stripped her bed and dug out her best quilt, usually brought out only for Christmas Eve, when they had Ned Powers and a few other people over. She brought every mat and throw rug out to the deck and beat them one by one against the railing, pressing her lips tight against the dust that flew back at her. As usual, the rugs were heavier than she expected, and as she leaned against the railing, panting, she noticed that the sun had come up. She swept the driveway, the flagstones of the walkway, the steps leading up to the front door. By midmorning, taking the black cat as a sign, she decided that she needed a break, and she sat down at the kitchen table to write the card she'd picked out for Michael. No sooner had she composed her first sentence—"Dear Michael, Thirty-seven years!"—than she spilled a glass of juice across both the card and the new tablecloth. When she bent to mop up the mess, her glasses fell off her nose and cracked. It took forty minutes to dig up her old pair.

  Eavan, the swelling in her belly just beginning to become obvious, arrived at eleven o'clock with a bag of fruit and four long baguettes for making the sandwiches. When Eavan walked in, Greta was sitting at the kitchen table wearing a pair of James's old track shorts and a T-shirt she'd found at the bottom of a dresser that said THE STONE ROSES across the chest. Before Eavan had even said hello, Greta explained that she didn't want to get anything on her party clothes, which she had folded over the back of a chair in the living room and would put on just before people started to arrive. Eavan hadn't even noticed. It was common to come home and find her mother in clothes she or Julia or James had discarded more than a decade before. Once, when Eavan brought a friend home from college, Greta, after a morning spent weeding, had come in to meet the guest wearing a T-shirt that said SCUMBY RIDES THE BIG WHITE WAVE.

  When they laughed, Greta had asked, "What's a Scumby?" pulling the front of the shirt away from her body and trying to look at it upside down.

  Eavan set the bag down on the counter, and Greta began to unload the melons, oranges, cherries, grapes, apples, paring knife, peeler, butcher knife, melon baller. She placed the baguettes on the table. Eavan forgot the wine she'd tucked in behind the passenger seat and went back out to the car. She returned with a bakery box. "Shit," she said, leaving the box on the doorstep and turning back. On the way in she nearly stepped on the box, which contained Michael's favorite: caramel apple pie.

  "You losing it?" Greta asked, rushing forward to take the pie from harm's way and standing by to follow Eavan's ample behind down the hall. Greta had already predicted that her daughter would be one of those women whose arse looked as pregnant as her belly.

  Eavan put her hand on her forehead, as if checking her own temperature. "Julia has a meeting at Saks at two o'clock," she said. "She'll leave as soon as she can."

  "I have knives, you know," Greta said, reaching for the paring knife Eavan had brought.

  "Not good knives." Eavan shrugged. "Sorry."

  "Okay, well, I have spoons. I have very good spoons," Greta said, nudging the melon baller.

  "That's not a spoon," Eavan said, whisking it away and putting it back in the bag. "Did you get the meat for the sandwiches? Are the potatoes in the fridge? Cooked? Jackets on?"

  "Yes, boss," Greta said. "But first we need a cup of tea and a snack. Don't we?"

  "Mom, we have a lot to do between now and four o'clock, and you know when James comes, all he'll do is distract—"

  "It's a lovely day, isn't it? Perfect."

  "It's supposed to rain later."

  "You have too many worries, girl," Greta said, taking the peeler out of Eavan's hand and tossing it into the sink. Facing her daughter, Greta took Eavan's hand and waltzed her across the kitchen.

  "You're out of your mind," Eavan said, laughing, placing her hand on her mother's shoulder and letting herself be led across the room.

  "Party day. Let's hear some of that music you worried so much about." Greta leaned over to speak directly to Eavan's belly. "Wanna hear some music in there? Let's see if your Mama picked out anything with a fiddle."

  After a short break for tea, they rolled up their sleeves and got to work. They peeled, chopped, diced, turned melon after melon into perfect bite-size balls. Greta looked on as Eavan cut slices of bacon, wrapped each around a pitted date, and drove a toothpick through the middle. They made a team in the bathroom, where Greta scrubbed the tub and the toilet while Eavan polished the mirror, scrubbed the sink and the counter, and stashed away Greta's jars and lotions, Michael's razor and shaving cream. Eavan placed a candle behind the toilet while Greta searched under her bed for the little soaps shaped like seashells she'd picked up at fifty percent off weeks earlier. When they finished, Greta put out the good towels, the new bath mat. My girl can clean, Greta thought as she glanced at the sparkling sink. My girl is a good worker, a fine, strong, capable girl.

  "The fumes don't bother you?" Greta asked. She'd been crippled with nausea when she was pregnant with James, and sometimes the sight of a pregnant woman still made her stomach turn.

  "Nah," said Eavan, and reached up on tiptoes to brush away a spiderweb. Greta saw that she had already begun to thicken at the shoulders, the neck. Head to toe, her whole body was getting ready for the baby. Greta hadn't been that kind of pregnant woman. People used to say they couldn't tell she was pregnant unless she stood in profile. Eavan would have looked pregnant in a head shot at only five months along.

  "You know what my mother used to say about expecting a baby?" Greta said.

  "That she could squat down in the field in the morning and be up again to get the tea?"

  "So I told you already."

  Eavan looked at her.

  They teamed up again on the deck, where they hoped people would gather. The weather was warm for May. The rain would hold off, Greta assured Eavan, and commanded that Eavan look at the sky, acknowledge that it was blue, stop worrying. Greta swept and then went down to the spigot at the side of the house to fill bucket after bucket of water to wash down the planks of wood. Eavan scrubbed two seasons' worth of grit from the white plastic chairs, six in all, and then stood aside as Greta splashed them clean. They used their hands to flatten the creases in the vinyl outdoor tablecloth. As they worked, they talked about names for the baby. Greta suggested good, strong names like John, Patrick, William. Mary, Ann, Kathleen.

  "We want to do a family name," Eavan said as she used her fingernail to scratch a stubborn piece of dirt from the window.

  "Michael is a family name."

  "We thought Maeve is pretty for a girl." Eavan watched her mother reflected in the glass. "Or Lily," she added. "Gary likes either of them."

  Greta, down on her haunches, with the sponge dripping water down her shin and into
her sock, looked up toward the back of the yard and shrugged. All these years later, so many miles from home, and still the children felt a connection to these people they'd never met. It was a fad now, she'd noticed. Family trees and tracing ancestors. There was big money in it. Money spent mostly by Americans, Greta guessed. She could probably count on one hand the number of times Maeve Ward was discussed by name in their house. Lily was right. Blood is thick. Greta wondered briefly how Maeve Ward had turned out, whether she was still alive, still traveling, or whether the government had settled her in a flat outside Dublin.

  "How did she spell it? Do you know?" Eavan asked.

  "She didn't spell it, love," Greta said, and ignored that bereaved look all the children got when they remembered that their father's people could not read or write. The fact that Michael had learned as an adult in a matter of months made him a genius in their eyes. They were fiercely proud of him, that much Greta could see, but she never got the impression that they truly knew how much work it had been or how much it meant to him to stand in line at the deli and read the headlines of the paper just like everyone else did. The children would never be able to understand that some days, when he'd been frustrated and Greta didn't know how to explain some aspect of putting words together in a way that made sense, it was less humiliating for him to not be able to read at all than to go to the library and check out a book intended for a first grader, or to be quizzed on the sidewalk beside a new street sign as strangers passed by. Somehow, through the years, the detail that Greta was the one who taught him had gotten lost. In the children's version he'd simply buckled down and taught himself.

  "But if you go that way," Greta said, looking up at Eavan, "I'd pick the one Americans will make sense of. Otherwise she'll be correcting people her whole life."