by Lisa Alber
Footsteps approached. Detective O’Neil smiled, friendly enough, as he assessed her with blue eyes shaded with what Merrit thought of as Irish police, or Garda, skepticism. At least when it came to her. Inside the house, Danny’s voice rumbled low among a medley of male voices. He’d arrive soon enough to question her.
She scooted over on the bench to provide space for O’Neil. He sat and leaned back against the house with an expansive sigh and flattened his accent until it resembled a stoned John Wayne. “And how does a pretty wee lass like you find yourself within spitting distance of a corpse?”
Merrit couldn’t help smiling. “That’s inappropriate, isn’t it?”
“Ay.” He waggled his eyebrows, unrepentant. “My mom used to say I had such a mouth on me, I’d land tits up in a peat bog someday.”
“Making you the comic relief to Danny’s straight man.”
“Worked, didn’t it?”
“For a second.” She lapsed into silence, once again caught up in her own thoughts. What was today? It had to be close to the Ides of March, a day of prophetic misfortune. She leaned against the house alongside O’Neil, her heart heavy with more than Elder Joe’s death. “It’s Liam. He’s sick again.”
“Oh Jesus. The lung cancer returned?”
“After nine months of remission, I thought we were in the clear. You can tell Danny, but please don’t go broadcasting it all over the county. I haven’t had a chance to process the news myself.”
“What a thing you must be feeling,” he said. “I’m sorry to hear it.”
Merrit nodded her thanks, realizing that O’Neil was the first person in a long while to acknowledge her feelings about her father’s illness. “I’ve been told that I’m only here for what I can get out of him.”
“People say that to your face?”
“You know they do. It’s a common pastime around here.”
Liam, her father, was first and foremost a matchmaker who presided over an annual matchmaking festival. Such an arcane and unusual profession—in this modern era, who would have thought?—yet the Lisfenorans loved to point out to her that the local economy depended on the tourist income from the festival each September. And more importantly, they insisted that tradition must be followed, integrity maintained, history respected. In other words, the festival, the village, the entire county was doomed without Liam’s particular skill.
“You don’t sound keen to be the next matchmaker,” O’Neil said.
Merrit swiped at the shiny egg goo that had splattered her boots. “As life trajectories go, it wasn’t what I expected when I arrived. Now I’ve lived here for eighteen months. Eighteen months. I can’t believe it. What have I been doing?”
“Being a daughter, I expect.”
“Difficult at times, that. Liam’s been acting the maggot.” She paused. “Did I use that phrase correctly—‘acting the maggot’?”
“If you mean he’s acting a right jerk, then yeah, spot on.”
“That’s not quite what I meant, but he’s grouchy—”
“Narky.”
“What?”
“For ‘grouchy.’ As in, he’s a right narky old bastard.”
“Hah.” Merrit had never spoken to O’Neil at length before; he had a nice way about him, for a Garda officer. “Yes, Liam’s on the road to becoming a right narky old bastard.”
“There you go.” He stood. “And here we go.”
Danny appeared and sat down beside Merrit. For the first time, she noticed a smattering of grey near his temples. He was a tall, lanky man who had grown too thin. He’d lost his usual facial contours and now his nose appeared beaky, his eyes too big, his cheekbones sharp. He slouched with elbows on knees for a moment, scrubbing at his face, and then straightened.
Elder Joe and Danny had known each other for years—this Merrit knew. And she also knew Danny well enough not to express condolences. Instead, she preempted his first question. She knew the drill by now.
“I arrived around ten a.m. to pick up eggs. I heard the television so I knew he was at home.” She waved toward a battered van. “Van’s here, too. When he didn’t answer my knock, I tried the door—”
“To confirm, the television was on when you arrived?” Danny said.
“Yes. I turned it off before I called the guards.” Some of Danny’s coiled tension transferred itself to her. She shoved her hands into her jacket pockets. “The door was unlocked, so I went inside to fetch the carton of eggs. Organic. From Elder Joe’s hens. The carton was waiting for me on the stand near the front door.”
“Do you usually walk in unannounced?” Danny said.
Merrit clenched her hands together. He knew her well enough to know the answer to that question. “As need be. Drop off the money, take the eggs. It’s a weekly routine. He doesn’t always greet me at the door.”
“Right. Go on.”
“I grabbed the eggs, but once I got inside, I could … sense, I guess, that something was off. The air was thicker.” Her lungs tightened in reaction to the smell memory. She pulled an inhaler out of her purse and pumped two shots of spray into her lungs.
Danny didn’t comment. He didn’t need to. He knew the drill with her anxiety just as she knew the drill with his questioning technique. She glanced at him. Expression still neutral. She supposed that was a good sign. “The smell before there’s a recognizable smell. You know what I mean.”
“The smell of death, yes,” he said. “It’s the blood.”
She swallowed, thinking back to her arrival in Ireland and how she’d first met Danny. Another body. Another bloody death. Danny didn’t need to remind her that she would once again be the talk of the town, reinforcing her status as unwelcome guest and interloper.
“That’s pretty much it,” she said. “I stepped into the living room, checked that he was deceased—”
“Obvious, I’d say,” O’Neil said.
“Oh yes.” She exhaled sharply to rid herself of the remembered smell, of the image of desperately bright area rugs that had led her straight to Elder Joe. “That’s when I turned off the television.”
“Did you hear anything?” Danny said.
She thought back. “The opposite. Even the hens were quiet. It was eerie. I thought I saw someone, though. When I retreated to the kitchen to call you—the guards—I swear something moved out there, almost blending into the gravel from the quarry.”
“A fox?” O’Neil said.
She shook her head. “A person. The movement startled me and I dropped the eggs I was still carrying. When I looked out the window again, I didn’t see anyone.”
“How sure are you that you saw someone?” Danny said.
“Pretty sure.”
In front of them, the jagged gravel expanse sucked up what little light penetrated the cloud cover. Without turning her head, Merrit tried to observe Danny. He fiddled with a pair of used latex gloves, stretching and rolling them around in his hands. She didn’t consider him the agitated type.
“Did Elder Joe say or do anything in the last few weeks that struck you as unusual?” he said. “Did he mention visitors, arguments, problems?”
“God, no. We weren’t friends like that. He didn’t talk much.” The words right narky old bastard popped into her head. “I bought eggs, that’s all.”
Danny slapped the gloves against his thighs. “We’ll contact you if we have any follow-up questions.”
“Except,” she said.
“Except what?”
“Except last Saturday he asked me in for tea.”
“Not all that surprising, I’d think,” Danny said.
“That’s exactly what it was—surprising. Elder Joe could take me or leave me as far as I could tell. His invitation didn’t make sense. Maybe he was that desperate with loneliness.”
He squinted at her, seeing her rather too well, she thought.
From inside the house, a flurry of voices and footsteps approached. The paramedics carried a gurney out of the house. The sight of an elderly man who wa
s not Elder Joe and very much alive jolted Merrit to her feet. “Who is that? He was inside the house?”
Danny patted the bench beside him. “Sit, please.”
She sat back down. “But who was that?”
“What happened with tea?” Danny said.
The paramedics loaded the man into the back of the ambulance and, within a minute, sped away. “Tea? Nothing. I made my excuses. Elder Joe reacted as if I’d offended him.”
“Maybe you did,” Danny said. “Knowing him, I wager he’d finally felt comfortable enough with you to extend a friendly gesture only to be rebuffed.”
“I didn’t ‘rebuff’ him.” Merrit stood. “Are we done now?”
“For now. We have your fingerprints on file. We’ll use them for elimination purposes.”
Here we go, she thought, getting his parting shot in. He wasn’t all that neutral when it came to her; he simply hid it better than most of the locals. After arranging a time with O’Neil to give her official statement, Merrit trotted to her car, eager to get out from under the looming gravel dunes.
She started the engine and turned up the heat. Elder Joe had caught her off-guard with his invitation, and the sorry truth was that she hadn’t wanted to drink tea with him anyhow. She couldn’t recall how she’d begged off, but she remembered his last words to her well enough: Ay, well, you’re that way, I suppose. But mark me, you might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.
Which made no sense at all. She could swear the locals enjoyed confusing her with their most obscure sayings. As Merrit drove past the quarry, she felt a pang of regret for sidestepping his gesture of friendship—or whatever it was. Perhaps he had something on his mind, something related to his death. There could be a lesson here.
four
Sunday, 14-Mar
I woke up this morning to the chill of an overnight frost that silvers the hawthorn along the hedgerows. Their branches on the verge of green appeared petrified until sunshine thawed them out, and now it’s a gorgeous day with yellow gorse lending its vanilla and coconut scent to the breeze.
This won’t do. Munge-ing on about what the breeze smells like is all very fine, but not what I’m supposed to be addressing. I can hear you loud and clear in your most unprofessional manner: “Annie, cut the shite.”
Right. I’m supposed to be “processing” and “healing.”
The problem is that I’m not a reliable narrator anymore, even of my own life. I doubt what I had always taken for granted about myself, my objectivity, my insights into people—everything my training enhanced feels like a lie now.
Fact: News has circulated about a “suspicious death.”
Fact: Today I’m going to the wake even though I don’t know the victim.
Fact: Something niggles at me—yes, a fact buried within the sorry news, but it eludes me at the moment.
There. Objectivity. Not so difficult, after all. You now have a summation of my day with no undue effort from me. I’d rather forgo undue effort, if you don’t mind, not to mention forgo my usual cycle of self-recrimination and regret. This is a difficult time as it is, and soon to be April, the month of resurrection, the earth nodding its way toward summer, a pretty pagan season. But I’ve always found the notion of resurrection creepy because I envision undead beings scuttling under cover of night.
I’m not sure what I mean by that, so never mind. The only thing that scares me these days is him, out there somewhere. I helped resurrect him in a way, didn’t I?
God, I’m a sick person. Given my life choices, especially moving here to County Clare, I expect I deserve whatever comes.
five
Nathan’s head sagged toward his chest, and before he realized that he’d fallen asleep, he jerked awake again. Dazed, he depressed the power button with his foot, and the potter’s wheel decelerated, circling ever more slowly. His eyelids drooped again.
The vase he’d just thrown listed to the right and then caved in on itself. Irritated with himself, he grabbed the cutting wire and, with a practiced movement, sliced the lump of clay from the wheel and dropped it in the plastic tub he used for his slip. His right hand ached. He’d opened up the scabs on his knuckles again.
“Dad,” Zoe said from behind him. “You’d better hurry now. For the party?”
He turned and caught his breath as he always did when it came to Zoe. He still couldn’t believe she was his daughter, this creature. A sun break through the clouds turned her blond curls into a halo shimmer around her head.
“Not a party, a wake,” he said. “EJ helped me when I first moved here last year.”
“I’m sorry.” Her somber expression didn’t last long. She tucked her arm through his and swung along with him as he made his way into the kitchen. “I’ll be your date. If we were back in the age of Jane Austen, I’d proclaim the wake my coming-out to society.” She raised his hand and twirled under it. “I’m glad to be here.”
After a pause Nathan wasn’t quick enough to fill, Zoe squeezed his hand. “It will be like before. You’ll see.”
He squeezed back, and she seemed content with that. “I’ll get dressed.”
He closed his bedroom door and dropped onto the bed, staring at a hole in the wall. He wasn’t sure which before time Zoe had meant. Did she mean before Susannah’s death? Or after Susannah’s death when it was the two of them for a short while? Probably the latter.
The problem was that with Zoe back in his life, he felt as slick as the sludge he cleaned off his potter’s wheel at the end of each day. There wasn’t enough of him left for her to mold into anything. She’d be disappointed when she realized this.
Without glancing at the mirror he began to undress. He opened his closet to find all his shirts ironed and hanging on wooden hangers. He ran his fingers along the hangers until they clacked together. So now he owned wooden hangers, and Zoe considered this afternoon’s wake in the Plough and Trough Pub her coming-out to his friends. She appeared to be bedding down for a long stay. Making up for six years without him.
Nathan pulled a clean jersey-style shirt over his head, the one Zoe said made his eyes sparkle.
“There you are, and don’t you look nice,” Zoe said when he reappeared.
“And so do you,” Nathan said.
An understatement if ever there was one. She wore a simple cobalt blue dress that brought out the color of her eyes. She’d grown into a tall and svelte thing, similar to Susannah, the two of them a different species of human from Nathan, who often felt as ill-formed as a lump of clay.
She bumped him along with her toward the front door and handed him a jacket. She leaned her head again his shoulder. “Do you like the hangers? Just like we used to have, right? I’ll tidy you up. It will be nice.”
He nodded rather than fake enthusiasm. Best to go along with her mood. There was nothing wrong with a daughter happy to be home with her father, right? In fact, most single fathers would welcome a daughter to take care of them and the house.
A few days ago she’d bounced in waving a black box. “You couldn’t slice butter with your knives, so I’ve had them sharpened. You can store them in this knife block now.”
Zoe had laughed when he tossed a towel over the knife block with its troop of sharpened knives. The shiny black handles preyed on his imagination, taunting him with their razor edges.
“You look knackered,” she said now. “I’ll chauffeur you tonight.”
Nathan lived in a rental house that was neither picturesque nor rustic. Suburban-style enclaves had cropped up along the main roads between villages. His housing estate, located between Lisfenora and Corofin, was more bland than mash with peas, but the anonymity suited him. The attached town home with its minuscule front patch of grass was a place to live. No more, no less. As long as the neighbors left him alone and he had space for throwing and firing, he was fine.
Nathan gripped the armrest as Zoe barreled down the road toward Lisfenora. Outside the passenger window, a fifteenth-century tower house coasted by, its walls dwa
rfing the farmhouse that huddled within its shadow. How oppressive to live with a piece of history outside your kitchen window, forever reminding you that the past casts a long shadow.
six
Danny poked his head into Ellen’s hospital room before entering. He didn’t normally arrive this late in the day on a Sunday, and he had a fleeting thought that he’d catch Ellen at something. If a coma patient’s fingers twitched while no one was watching, did they really twitch?
Ellen lay on her hospital bed the same as always, with her tubes and wires and monitors for company. The head bandages had come off long ago and three inches of hair growth shone a brighter red than her previous hair color. She’d never been partial to bangs, but now they lent her an otherworldly androgynous air, as if at any moment she’d wake up as an enlightened being.
Danny dragged a chair to the bed and rearranged the stuffed flamingo and stuffed Persian cat the kids had brought their mother for her “long sleep.” He had no idea how Mandy and Petey had arrived at this phrase, but it seemed to comfort them. He often eavesdropped on their conversations as they drifted to sleep. The nightlight threw a faint blue shimmer into the hallway, and most nights Danny sat on the floor outside the room they shared with his back against the wall, elbows on raised knees, hoping to glean insight into their emotional health.
“Easter is coming up,” he said to Ellen’s still form. “I’m not sure how to celebrate it this year. Mandy and Petey have whipped themselves into a frenzy of belief that on Easter Sunday you will rise like Jesus. Except in your case, you’ll come back to life here on Earth rather than in Heaven.” He scooted his chair closer to the bed. “Ay, I know, they’ve muddled the point of the Bible story. I’m not sure what to say to them.”
He picked up Ellen’s hand, light as butterfly wings, and massaged it. Her skin felt warm. He leaned closer to peer at her flushed cheeks. “Ellen?” he whispered. “Are you surfacing?”
Every day, all day, a moral tug ate away at him. The chances of her waking were slim, yet he couldn’t, absolutely would not, let her body die while her brain still had a chance to reignite itself. Disengaging Ellen from the life-support equipment would be the same as killing her. Or would it? If she woke up, she’d exist in a living purgatory, a nothingness. A vegetable. He couldn’t decide which was worse: death or a living death.
