Stay

by Aislinn Hunter

  Outside Galway proper, the traffic lights start. Angus signals out the window with his right hand and the lads turn their indicators on to follow. They hang a right onto the asphalt expanse of the Corrib Hut parking lot, shut their engines off and get out.

  “What did ye’s want?” Angus pulls out his wallet.

  “Bud,” says Liam.

  “That’s grand,” Peter agrees.

  “Gin,” says Tomás.

  “Harp,” says Egg.

  Money changes hands. A car pulls up into the space beside them. Two girls get out and smile at Liam. Angus heads for the door that reads “off license,” goes in without turning around.

  The lads lean against the side of Tomás’ truck and wait for Angus to come out with the drink. Then they’ll be off to the wake, to raise a glass for Eileen McGilloway at the house in Spiddal. Deoch an doras, a drink at the door. Liam lights up a smoke. Tries to remember the last time he saw Deirdre. Summer, maybe Salthill—the time they’d gone down to the arcades then back to his flat in Galway. Or maybe it was the walk in Cleggan. There’d been nothing after she’d gone back to Dublin, not even a call to say hello, though he did get a “Cruise the Mediterranean” brochure in the mail last October. The girls come out the pub door. The older one, maybe eighteen, is wearing a short skirt and denim jacket, too much make-up. The other carries two bottles of cider under her arm. The one in the skirt unlocks her car door and turns to Liam.

  “Would ya give us a light?” She pulls a pack of cigarettes out of her jacket pocket. When he leans forward with the lighter, she looks up at him, the cigarette in her mouth, brown eyes flecked with yellow. After he lights it she stands back up like she’s waiting for something.

  “Off ya go, now,” Liam says, watching her settle into the driver’s seat, start the engine, back out.

  Peter walks over to his beat-up Escort and pulls a duffel bag out of the back seat. Takes a clean shirt out and holds it between his knees while he strips off the dirty blue one he’d been wearing. Then he bends over at the waist and runs his hand through his short brown hair. Wipes his face with the dirty shirt in his hand. Puts the clean one on—an Irish football jersey from the Cup in ’90. Banging the heel of his right boot against the asphalt, Peter looks over at Liam.

  “Are you heading home to change?”

  “Na. Thought I’d go in like this.” He pulls at the bottom of a dirty beige shirt.

  “Fair enough,” Peter replies, knocking the heel of his left boot against the pavement, watching the mud drop off.

  The Wake

  THAT evening the McGilloway house is run through. The whole village has come out for the wake. Eileen McGilloway had sometimes held letters up to the light and read them, later giving herself away in conversations, but she was generally admired. And she had seemed as permanent a fixture in Spiddal as the old church, the pier, Hughes. The last thing Eileen said to her daughter had come over the low hum of the phone line: “Now the bread is splitting, I have to go.” Deirdre barely got in “good-bye” before the click and silence settled over the receiver. She’d made great bread, Eileen McGilloway, and there were other things too. She could knit, recite the old stories verbatim, she had a famous stew with a secret ingredient she’d yet to hand down.

  The living room is full of talk, of men in suits that haven’t been worn since Gerry Folan’s wake last winter, of women in skirts or dresses. Margaret Keating rearranges the food trays, fills them back up. Conneely is on the couch by the fireplace, his face red from the drink. Over by the mantle, a group of teachers discuss Irish history curriculums.

  “I’d not mind seeing that taken off the list.”

  “What else is there?”

  “Sullivan.”

  “That man couldn’t find Beal na Blath on a map to save himself.”

  “We should all be after O’Ceallaigh. That’s the ticket.”

  “O’Ceallaigh is right.”

  The last thing anyone had heard of Deirdre McGilloway was that she was working at a travel agency in Dublin. Every few months she’d send brochures for cruises or discount holidays to her old school friends. Eileen often had a photo of Deirdre on hand when she was sorting mail at the post office: Deirdre in Cyprus, Deirdre in France. Thick black hair and a toothy grin, some monument or the other in the background. The girl was becoming well-traveled. Word had gone round about her pregnancy and there was a fair bit of speculation about who the father might be, though it was generally agreed it could be anyone.

  Dermot walks in through the open door and surveys the crowd. He spies Fitch leaning against the settee, looking around at the framed photos and odd objects Eileen had used to fill the room. Porcelain statues of dancing women in colourful dresses lined a bookshelf, a collection of glass bells arranged beside them; above them, a wall of photos of Deirdre that spanned the years. Eileen’s wedding photo is in the middle, a black and white of her and John McGilloway, who passed away not long after. Fitch looks at these and over at the old Victrola set up by the stairs, his gaze coming back to the living room, the crowd of people who stand holding glasses, eating the sweets the bakery prepared. He sees Dermot and lifts the glass in his hand.

  Fitch has cleaned up for this. He wears a pressed shirt, is clean-shaven, a fresh nick on the chin. Egan, his lab, sits beside him, whipping his tail against the settee leg, nostrils working at the salmon dip that’s fallen onto the carpet a few feet in front of him.

  “Off,” Fitch says, low, and the dog backs away.

  Dermot knows that Fitch and Eileen were together some thirty-five years ago. That Fitch had gone off to get his teaching certificate in Donegal and came back two years later to find her married to McGilloway. Apparently they’d not said a word to each other since. At least that’s how Conneely tells it, and he generally has the story.

  “How’s it?” Dermot asks.

  Fitch nods and looks away.

  Through the archway to the kitchen Dermot can see one of the local kids at the sink. Another boy, a red-head, watches his back. His eyes meet Dermot’s and a second later he whispers something to his cohort and the two of them stop what they’re doing and straighten up. Dermot walks into the kitchen, takes out a cigarette, lighting it as he goes. The counter is littered with bottles and plastic cups.

  “Good evening, son.” He lays a hand down on the fair-haired boy’s shoulder. “Shame about Eileen McGilloway isn’t it?”

  Dermot can feel the nerves run through the boy’s body as if he is electrically charged. The red-headed kid who was standing guard looks at the linoleum then walks out of the kitchen.

  “It’s a shame,” the boy says, without looking up.

  In his hands, a plastic bag sits bottom-heavy in the empty sink. The smell of beer pervades the kitchen. The boys have been taking the last swills from the abandoned cups, dumping them into the bag, hoping to make a getaway. Dermot reaches over and pulls the bag up; a thin stream of lager comes out of a small hole in the bottom.

  “And what good does that do?”

  He sets his cigarette down on the counter, grabs a cup out of the closest cupboard. Pours the stream of beer into it. When the cup is full Dermot says, “Now drink it.”

  The kid takes the cup but doesn’t drink.

  “What’s your age?” Dermot asks, leaning back against the counter, scratching an itch under his beard. The kid looks up at him.

  “Twelve.”

  “So, be a man.” Dermot indicates the cup.

  In the sink the beer has spilled out and is almost gone. The boy, looking around, drinks, swallows, drains the cup. Then, he waits to see if there is anything else, eyes the floor for a minute before setting the cup down on the counter.

  “Off with you, then.”

  The boy leaves the room, looking confused. The red-head, his mouth hanging open, is waiting by the stairs. Dermot, waving them off, picks up his cigarette. The ash falls onto the linoleum. He kicks it under the cupboard with his shoe.

  The telly in the living room’s been turne
d on to a game of snooker. Three or four of the younger lads watching it. Keating gives them a look as she goes past. The last of the evening’s light comes in the big window. In part of the room there’s an air of indifference, as if this is just another occasion in which to act by rote.

  “I’m not for the water myself.”

  “You wouldn’t know you were on the water, a ship like that’s so big.”

  “It’s all you can eat now isn’t it? In the price of the ticket?”

  “Shuffleboard. Movies. Theatre even.”

  “I’d go daft with the same people day in and out.”

  “How’s your Aunt’s health by the way? We had her out before the stroke to Moycullen.”

  Mrs. Meehan, who worked as a teller at the AIB before it closed, is talking to Deirdre, the girl’s belly huge under her black skirt. Deirdre is saying how just that afternoon, tidying up for the wake, she found a shopping bag of baby presents. “On the floor beside the bedroom dresser. Yellow booties and a green shirt in case it’s a boy. Flowered dress and a bonnet for a girl.” Meehan eyes the girl’s belly then purses her coral lips. “How long now?”

  “Two weeks.” Deirdre pushes her palm into her side; the baby is kicking again.

  “I’m fifty-eight,” Meehan says. “I’ve six children. That’s what ended my career in theatre. I was once a Dublin girl, too, you know,” she added. Her thinning brown hair is wound up in fat curls and pinned about her head. “Eileen had even come down to see me perform at the Abbey Theatre. Rode the train as I remember. It was Synge.”

  “Mum always liked the theatre.” It isn’t true; as soon as the words are out of her mouth Deirdre realizes she is lying. Though if Meehan is telling the truth, it stood to reason that Eileen liked it once. She puts her hand on her stomach again. The baby is pushing against the outer wall, low down. Touching her pearl earring between her finger and thumb, Meehan sighs. “Well, who’s to say what tomorrow will bring?” And she kisses Deirdre on the cheek, holds on a long time.

  Deirdre rests her glass of juice on the mound of her belly, and when Dermot walks up to her, she turns round and the ice cubes jingle.

  “Sorry about Eileen. She’ll be missed.”

  Deirdre is looking at Dermot, her head tilted and her eyes scrunched. He wipes his arm over his mouth in case some of the crackers he’s just eaten have stuck in the beard, in case there’s something at his nose.

  “Dermot Fay isn’t it?”

  He nods, gives the mouth a wipe again.

  “My mother said you’re over in Canada.”

  “No.”

  “Sure?”

  “I’ve not been.”

  She looks over his shoulder a minute then looks back up at him.

  “She was always the gossip, but I was sure. You’re the ex-professor?”

  “It’s my …” He stops. “It’s Abbey who lives with me. She’s Canadian. I’ve not been.”

  Deirdre’s eyes come back to his face and she tilts her head, distracted. Maybe that was it, he was living with a Canadian, the ex-professor who lived in the old cottage. The baby is giving her a hard time of it. “These things happen,” she says, as if that explains everything, putting her hand on his hand before looking away, trying to find old friends in the crowd.

  The body is laid out upstairs. People trek up and down the narrow steps to the bedroom and the conversations become more hushed around the top of the stairwell. “She looks grand,” Marianne Lynch exclaims, passing by Deirdre as she pulls herself up by the wood railing. “Just as in life,” someone says. “Francis, have you had the butter tarts? Aren’t they lovely?” The voices, the lilt of exclamation and plodding tones of consolation, traipse down into the din of the living room as the wake-room door opens and closes. And then it’s just Deirdre and her mother, the others having discreetly left the room. Deirdre looks at Eileen and starts to cry; the body is stiff-looking, the smile too forced. She tries to imagine the smell of bread rising in the oven, the lavender hand lotion that was her mother’s favourite. Instead, there’s the stale smell of the powder that someone patted over Eileen McGilloway’s face; there’s the smell of the lilies on her chest, although they look almost fake. Deirdre has it in mind to sing something, tries to think of her mother’s favourite song, but nothing comes. So she sits on the edge of the bed and watches the body’s almost imperceptible roll, the head moving a quarter of an inch as if trying to face her. Deirdre puts her hand out to touch the eyelids, wants to feel the flutter of her mother’s eyelash, tries to think back to butterfly kisses given at the end of the day, Deirdre’s head pushed into the down pillow, her mother’s chin gently touching hers. Deirdre reaches across the bed to her mother’s face and the tips of her fingers touch the cold skin.

  Downstairs, Dermot, along with everyone else, looks up to the ceiling when he hears the resounding scream.

  The Space Between

  THE moment Deirdre McGilloway reaches down and touches her dead mother’s face, she feels her first serious contraction. Stunned, she lets out a high-pitched scream. Downstairs, people consider resurrection, the possibility that Eileen McGilloway was only sleeping. But those who had seen the body laid out know better. Dermot is the first one up the stairs, taking two steps at a time and then miscalculating the landing, going down onto one knee before finding his feet again. When he bursts through the door Deirdre is seated on the bed, her black skirt pulled up to her waist, trying to look over her belly to the space between her legs. He walks over to her and kneels down.

  “What is it?”

  Deirdre looks around. Candlelight flickers in all corners of the room; the table lamp casts a halo onto the floor. Her mother is laid out on the bed beside her, a bouquet of lilies over her chest.

  Deirdre turns to Dermot, stares him straight in the eye. “Is there blood?”

  And he doesn’t know if she means on herself or her mother—the way people sometimes see things; how once, coming home from school, he’d gone into the kitchen and found his own mother over the sink with a dishcloth around her hand. A trail of blood from the cutting board on the counter all the way across to the sink, the yellow dishcloth going purple and his mother standing there, cold water streaming, unsure of what to do. “It’s nothing. But run get Nan just the same.” Dermot dropped his school bags and ran next door, later realizing he could’ve jumped the hedge, could’ve pushed open the door instead of knocking, waiting for what felt like ages for Nan to make her way from the sitting room at the back of the house. Even after Dermot had moved out to live in Grosvenor Square, he would go home for visits and imagine, in that instant before walking in the door, that’d he find his mother in the kitchen, leaning over something, the front of her dress, her apron, streaked with blood.

  Sitting on the bed, Deirdre starts to hyperventilate. She reaches out on either side of her for support, finds the wall with one hand, her mother’s leg with the other. It’s cold and waxen, and she screams again.

  “There’s no blood,” Dermot says, eying her white underwear. He turns and notices the room is full, half of Spiddal crammed in around the dresser, crowding the landing, although no one is stepping forward to take charge. Even the women stand there, daft. Don’t they know exactly what to do? All evening Brennan and her ilk had watched Deirdre, carping on about her—the city girl carrying the fatherless child.

  “Call Faherty!” Dermot looks at the dozen faces, the blinking eyes, the whole crowd pleased as punch at the production. He singles out Margaret Keating. “Get Faherty. She’s in labour.”

  Deirdre reaches between her legs, then brings her open palm to her face, looks at it and closes her eyes.

  “Is there another bedroom?” Dermot looks at the crowd again.

  “There’s coats on the bed in the spare.” It was Conneely.

  Deirdre lets out a low moan, rolls forward, hits her belly with her balled fist.

  Dermot grabs her hand, holds it. “Lie back.”

  Deirdre’s teeth start to chatter. She looks over at her dead
mother then back at the crowd on either side of the oak dresser, then at the statue of the Madonna on the side table. She goes to put her hand between her legs again, goes to stand up, the mattress lifting up as she comes away from it, her mother’s body rolling in the opposite direction. The crowd gasps as the dead woman’s lilies tumble loose; her hands still cleaved around a few of the stalks. Deirdre sits down again, Dermot’s hands on her shoulders. The weight makes her mother loll close once more, her head tilting, the right arm coming off her chest and hitting Deirdre in the thigh. Deirdre emits a high-pitched whine, her voice quivering. Dermot, thinking it’s labour pains, lays the girl down on her back, then walks around to the other side of the room. Tries to think of what to do. Deirdre is lying next to her mother, Eileen’s slightly swollen face tilted towards her daughter, her hand next to Deirdre’s hip. The family resemblance is startling. From the far side of the bed, Dermot lifts Eileen McGilloway by the shoulders; her lead weight a surprise. He tugs and plunks her body down alongside the edge of the mattress as the remaining flowers tumble onto the floor. With space between her and her mother’s body, Deirdre starts to breathe again, long choked exhalations.

  Deirdre looks at the ceiling with its brown water stains. She sees the hand of God reaching out from the corner, a trumpeting elephant marching away from the round globe of the ceiling light. She exhales and inhales, trying to separate the panic from the contractions.

  “Out!” Dermot yells, but the crowd stands there, old man Conneely set back against the wall but leaning forward, looking down at Deirdre, her skirt pulled halfway up her legs. In his head he’s already retelling the story. “And there was the time young Deirdre McGilloway delivered her baby next to her dead mother on the poor woman’s wake bed.” Dermot yells again, “Out!” and begins to push people, Jimmy from the Spar, Conneely, out of the room. In the hallway the new postal worker Finn butts his cigarette out in the last dregs of his glass, sticks his head in to the bedroom, peeks around the door frame before Dermot yells, “I’ll not say it again!”