Stay

by Aislinn Hunter

  Michael racks his brains for the exact translation from Irish. “Wet or soft ground, or—”

  “Soft ground. Good enough.”

  Listing them off on his fingers, Dermot recounts for Michael some of the more interesting finds in Irish bogs. “A man’s hand in 1978; horsehair tassels; seventeen pounds of bog butter in small parcels, brought up here and there over a period of about a hundred years. A wooden wheel in Doogarymore. The Altartate Cauldron in Monaghan. The occasional clump of mediaeval animal dung. Musical instruments. Whole forests. The Lurgan boat out at Addergoote.”

  Michael knows most of it, but listens to the drone of Dermot’s voice, the odd list. “The plane itself didn’t have time to sink. They hauled it out the next day with ropes and cattle. Did I tell you about a hand in ’78? And roads and bridges that the bogach took over. A thousand-year-old farmstead. The best pair of shoes as owned by old man Conneely’s father who, one night heading home from Screeb, walked a bit off the path, dropping down to his knees in the muck.”

  Michael looks up at Dermot and shakes his head. Goes back to the bottom of the pit. Sticking out of the peat beside his right hand, he notices a thick piece of material, a kind of thread. He shuts his eyes and refocuses. Brushes the dirt away and with his fingers moves the clumps that surround it aside. Above him, Dermot is still yammering on. The part of the thread that was buried underground comes up out of the divot Michael clears with his finger. He brings it towards his face. Up close he can see it’s only a root, uniform enough along the top to be spun thread, the part he’s just unearthed uneven, the white roots more fibrous looking than the length Michael had first seen. He tosses it up towards Dermot, who doesn’t notice it hit the back of his leg.

  After an hour of pacing outside the pit, Dermot steps in to help Michael dig. They’re three-quarters of a metre down into the soil and there’s a layer of calluna roots underfoot, like a thin mat they have to trowel through. Dermot watches Michael to see how much force he’s using in the digging. Watches him jab the trowel into the ground, heave the peat by the shovel full over the side of the pit and onto the dump site above.

  “You’re grand company now,” Michael says, after a long silence. The two men have taken opposite sides of the excavation site and they back into each other every now and again. Michael makes quick work of his end; Dermot takes his time.

  “What’s that?” Dermot says.

  “What?”

  “You’re whistling.”

  “Didn’t notice.”

  “You were.” And Dermot whistles the tune back at Michael, trying to place it.

  “Brandenburg. Bach.”

  Dermot stands up and stretches, looks out towards the machines in the next set of fields. Before the work started here, there would have been clusters of gorse and fern all over the bog—cottongrass, heather, asphodel. This time of the year there’d have been mounds of pink and yellow flowers, curlews near the lough. He knows the arguments for conservation, even goes that way himself when push comes to shove, thinks there are better ways to power the country. But the sight of the Lurgan boat, the idea of it being pulled out of the peat—fifteen metres long, an internal keel, some four thousand five-hundred years old—that’s another story. The ground giving history back. Something returned to you, long after it had been forgotten.

  When the wind starts to come west across the bog, Dermot hunkers into the pit, leaning his back against the cut-away edge. Michael had wondered about Abbey, and Dermot snorted through his nose, said he’d heard she’d called to the pub, left a message for him, that she’d taken a few more shifts.

  “But I thought she was due back four days ago?”

  “She was.” Dermot left it at that.

  “What about the fence?”

  “It’s half finished.”

  “Going well?”

  “It’ll stand.”

  Sitting in the pit, his jeans damp, Dermot reaches over his shoulder and grabs at the top layer of the bog, pulls a clump of peat from the ridge overhead, brings it down and breaks it apart in his fist. “I might go to Dublin.” He says it slowly.

  “After Abbey?”

  Dermot looks over at Michael, who is digging out the peat in front of him with a trowel and then dumping it unceremoniously over the side of the pit.

  “To live.”

  Michael stops, turns to look at him. Sits back on his heels. “Dublin?”

  “Maybe so.”

  Michael shakes his head.

  “I’m as lost here as I would be there,” explains Dermot.

  “What about money?”

  “I’d get by. I could find something.”

  “Dublin’s changed.”

  Dermot pulls a cigarette out of his pocket, puts it in his mouth, roots around for his lighter. Taps his left pocket. Finds it. Shielding the cigarette from the wind, he tries twice to light it.

  “It’s very cosmopolitan, very EU now. You won’t recognize it.” Michael is still shaking his head.

  “That’s what I was hoping.”

  That evening, mud is tracked into the house, but Dermot doesn’t say anything. It would have never crossed his mind before, but Abbey had started to straighten the cottage up, put things away. She’d even kept at Dermot to take his boots off by the door when he came in. Today he leaves them on and as he heads to the refrigerator, clumps of mud drop off, scatter over the kitchen floor. Michael’s boots are just as bad and when he sits down at the kitchen table, falling into the chair, a layer of dirt drifts down off him.

  “It’ll be the death of me, that bog.”

  Dermot winks at him. “You’ll conquer it yet.” He opens the fridge, leans in and moves a few jars around on the metal racks. “Any preference for dinner?” Flagon comes into the kitchen, stands behind him. “I’ve cheese for a sandwich.” He backs out holding a plastic Spar bag.

  “That’ll be grand.”

  “Dublin?” Michael says again.

  “It has to be something.”

  “But Dublin?”

  “Spiddal. Galway. Dublin. An leabhar céanna.”

  Dermot waits for Michael to beg for a translation. When the sandwich is ready, Dermot places it on the table in front of Michael, who ignores him, bites into the sandwich, swallows without chewing.

  “That means it’s the same book, that it’s all the same,” says Dermot. He walks over to the kitchen window and moves the curtain aside, leans over the sink and looks out. The framers have started on the interior of the nearest bungalow and they’re pouring the foundation of the bungalow just down the road.

  “Do you want another sandwich?”

  “Might do.”

  “I’ll have to go for bread.”

  Michael puts the last bit of crust into his mouth and wipes the crumbs off the table and onto the floor. “Don’t bother, I’m grand.” He stands and puts his hand on Dermot’s shoulder, looks out the window at the bungalows. “She’ll be back. Give her a few more days.”

  “Will she?”

  “Yes.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  Dermot goes into the front room, turns on a lamp and sits at the big table. A series of books he’d pulled off the shelf are spread out around him. Michael picks up The Life of Anselm of Canterbury. Opens it and flips through it. A number of pages are dogeared, and he discovers a handwritten receipt for eight pounds, dated 1972, at the start of Chapter Four, Hanna’s Books on Nassau Street. Another piece of paper, crisp, falls out a few pages on. There’s a passage underlined in black pen: “He does not exist in place or time, but all things exist in him.”

  Dermot looks up. “Anselm is it?”

  “It is.”

  “Useless wanker.”

  Michael smiles, puts his hand on Dermot’s back. “I’m off.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Closing Time

  ABBEY throws a chip across the sidewalk and into the grass. A duck waddles up from the edge of the pond. He’s nearly there when a seagull darts at it, hops a few
feet away with the chip in its beak. Stands in the shade of the park bench guarding it. Abbey checks her watch. She’s due back at Connor’s at six for the evening shift, has been taking work left, right and centre, doesn’t care how many hours. And Veronica has agreed to spread it out on her cheques so it doesn’t reflect the fact that yesterday, for example, she worked fourteen hours. Suspicious, she’d asked Abbey at the end of the night if she was trying to save enough money to fly home.

  Abbey misses Dermot. She hadn’t thought it would be like this, had expected more of a choice. Maybe it’s Dermot’s silence, the act of letting her go, the fact that he’d let her have the last word, even if it was a lie. She was supposed to have returned five days ago. He hasn’t called, and Abbey’s given up on phoning the cottage, has started to leave messages for him at Hughes.

  Closing her take-away container Abbey looks around for a trash bin. Her cod has gone cold. On the next bench two girls wearing green and white Dunnes uniforms eat sushi and complain about their manager. Their hair up in clips, as if they work in a kitchen or bakery. Abbey stands up and heads for the gate, drops her container in the bin. Eyes the statue of O’Donovan Rossa. Once out on the sidewalk she waits with a dozen other people for the light to turn. A couple on the other side of the street carry grocery bags, the backs of their hands touching. The last time Dermot came to Dublin he and Abbey had a picnic in Stephen’s Green. He bought a bottle of wine, grapes and cheese at Dunnes, and they sat over by the northeast corner of the park, away from the benches. The weather was miserable—cold for November, and damp. It started to rain. Eventually they went over to Kildare Street and got into the Mini. His hands on her in the car, the two of them laughing. What is different now? How have things changed between them? Part of her is afraid of him. At least that’s what he says—that she’s afraid this is it, that if she stays with him she’ll be circling his moods, his needs, the rest of her life. That she’s afraid he might need her the way her father did. Abbey recalls the look on him, on Dermot’s face, when he said it. Standing in the kitchen after a fight, a broken tea pot on the floor between them, and the realization that it might be true, that he would insist she be subservient, that he didn’t know how to be with someone any other way. But she’s not afraid of him, not in the way he thinks she is. What she’s really afraid of is that she’ll give herself to him fully and it won’t be enough.

  ——

  At nine, the pace in the restaurant slows. Abbey goes over to the work station to polish cutlery. Every minute or so she checks the call-board lights in the dining room to see if either of her tables’ meals have come up in the kitchen. Holding two butter knives in her left hand she runs a clean rag over their smooth faces, then over the fat handles. The cutlery reminds her of her mother’s silverware, a place setting for eight that was given to her mother by her grandmother as a wedding present. Abbey remembers how heavy it was when she was a kid, how the handles, mediaeval looking oblong bulbs, got bigger until the bases seemed to fill her palm. For a joke her mother would tap her on the head with them when they set the table at holidays. Abbey would pretend to fall over, unconscious, onto the floor. The good set of silver was the only ornate thing Abbey could remember her parents having. After her mother left they never used it, even though none of their everyday cutlery matched.

  The number six comes up flashing on the overhead call board. Abbey drops the knives into the tray and they make a loud clunking sound. She walks into the kitchen and Dan and Devin, both in their chefs hats, are pushing steaming plates across the metal shelves in her direction.

  “Roast Pie, Lamb, Halibut and Risotto!” Dan shouts. He glares at Abbey.

  “I’m right here, asshole.” Abbey makes as big a smile as she can muster.

  Dan shows Abbey his teeth, runs the back of his hand over his forehead. “Go fuck yerself, Princess.”

  “It’s not a roasted potato, it’s supposed to be baked.” Abbey puts the Halibut back down on the shelf in front of Dan. He checks the order and then turns the plate around. Looks at the offending spud.

  “This is supposed to be baked!” He turns to Devin, shouting, even though Devin is beside him. Abbey can tell the kid is almost shitting himself. Devin’s maybe eighteen, nineteen, and Dan is at least forty. Devin picks the roasted potato off the plate with his hand and sets it on the cutting board. Abbey gathers up the three plates that are ready and starts to go out.

  “Wait!”

  “I’ll come back for it.”

  “You’ll fuckin’ wait!”

  Abbey stops and stands there a second, the heat from the kitchen on the backs of her legs. Devin calls, “Almost!”

  The plate on Abbey’s arm is steaming, hints of basil and pepper, the musty smell of the grains, fill the air. Abbey hears the whirr of the microwave and starts heading out; it’ll be two minutes for the potato and the plates are hot, her back is aching. Dan says wait again but Abbey is already nudging the double doors with her hip, heading out into the restaurant. When she comes back less then a minute later the halibut is up and the potato is open, a curl of butter, sprig of parsley inside.

  “Thanks.” She grabs the plate and turns to go and suddenly Dan is behind her, his hand around her throat, forcing her chin up. The plate in Abbey’s hand tilts and the food, then the plate, hits the floor. Abbey’s hands go up to her neck but Dan’s palm is against her throat, pressing into her larynx. She can’t breathe. Things become confused. Her father is holding her back; her mother is across the street and Abbey wants to run over; and her father’s hands are on her. But not like this. Devin is in front of her now, yelling, “For fuck’s sake, let her go!” Heading out the doors to get help. And then it’s just the two of them, Abbey in shock, trying to get a breath, digging her nails into his hand. Dan loosens his grip, just enough to let her breathe, his chest pressed against her back, mouth to her ear. “Now let’s see ya try that again.”

  Veronica drives Abbey home from the hospital, tells her she did the right thing, pressing charges. Dan has never done anything like that before, but maybe, in retrospect, someone should have seen it coming. Corrects herself, “I should have seen it.” She puts her hand out to Abbey’s, tapping it maternally. The brake lights of the cars in front of them go on and off; traffic crawls down Harcourt Street, people queue outside the nightclubs. And all Abbey wants to do is get out of the car and run to Angela’s flat.

  Later, Abbey sits in Ange’s kitchen drinking tea. Every light in the flat on. Angela is out with Brendan, her mobile phone going straight to messages. After a while Abbey goes into the living room and turns the television on, curls up on the couch. An episode of Coronation Street coming on TV3. She puts a warm cloth over her throat. The doctor had said her neck will be fairly bruised in the morning.

  What bothers Abbey most are those two or three seconds when she closed her eyes in the middle of it and thought Frank was behind her—that it seemed possible he could do that to her. That even when she opened her eyes and saw Devin standing there, panicked, telling Dan to leave her alone, it still seemed conceivable that Frank was behind it all. Willing it to happen.

  When Abbey was ten, Frank took her to Nipissing Park saying they were going on a vacation. But after a quick swim in the lake, he locked Abbey in the truck for six hours while he went door to door, cottage to cottage, asking whoever answered if they remembered Karen Delaney and did she ever come around here anymore? Abbey was left in the parking-lot for what felt like days, the sun coming in through the windshield, a large wood cutout of a bear by the gate, the sign above warning hikers that there’d been two sightings in May. Frank promising Abbey ice cream before he left and then forgetting to bring some back for her. Admitting it all when she was twenty-two or twenty-three, in the phase of “just listen,” in the non-stop dirge of “these are my sins.” “I hit her you know. Once,” he said while drunk, as if he was proud of it. “Two weeks before she left.” Made a fist with his right hand as he said it. Eying Abbey to see if she’d do anything about it, t
o see if she’d move the couch cushion off her lap, stand up and walk out.

  From the moment Abbey stood on her father’s grave, he’s been with her. Memories coming back to her, images of him she’d forgotten: sleeping on the couch in Woodslee, the stubble coming up on his chin, and six-year-old Abbey touching it lightly with her fingers but not wanting to wake him. The smell of diesel on his hands after a day of work, the tar sometimes staining his clothes; Frank telling Abbey he made holes for a living, trying once to get her to put her hands around his arm muscle the way Karen would, saying, “Look at that, sweetie, your daddy’s a damn strong man.” The buggy ride in the Zehrs parking lot—Abbey, maybe twelve, straddling the grocery bags while he wheeled her around in the cart. And the year before she moved back in with him, when he was just starting to get sick, Frank begging her to take him for lunch, telling her he hadn’t been out of the apartment in days. Abbey said, “But Dad, it’s three o’clock,” and Frank looked up at her sheepishly, got out of bed just the same, opened his closet. “But I have a class,” Abbey had explained, lying. Adding “Wordsworth,” as if that made it real. Frank crawled back under the blankets, shrugging, “You bet, kiddo. Maybe another time.”

  Abbey gets up and turns off the TV. Goes to the kitchen and runs the dishtowel under warm water, heads back to the couch, pulls the afghan over her, and drapes the cloth back over her throat. The warmth feels good. Once, when Abbey had a fever, Frank, not knowing what else to do, took her nightie off and put her into an ice bath. Stood there watching her turn blue. Panicking, he called the neighbour, Mrs. Pasic, after twenty minutes. The old lady pulled Abbey out, warmed her up with a fleece towel, even brought over an electric blanket from her apartment. Told Frank that he should have taken Abbey to the hospital. She stayed there all night until Abbey’s fever went down.