The Carnival at Bray

by Jessie Ann Foley

  They climbed upwards, pushing away wet branches and snapping twigs. Maggie kept slipping, her Converse useless in the slick mud, until finally Paul took her hand. It was cold and not very comforting. She made up her mind that she would not kiss him.

  As they continued their climb, breathing hard, their halting conversation petered into silence. Finally the trees fell away, the sky broke open, and they were standing on a grass bowl jutting out into the world, moonlit water stretching dizzyingly below, and stars, so many stars, crowding the sky.

  It was the most romantic place possible for a first kiss. Such a place did not exist in Chicago. In Chicago, a boy might touch you for the first time under the blue line tracks, or in some hidden corner of a floodlit city park. Such water, such sky, was not possible back home. If I can’t feel any romance in this place, Maggie thought, then I might as well just accept my future as a lonely old cat lady. Paul’s mouth was eager but not hideous in the starlight, and he put two firm hands on her waist, leaned in, and jammed a cold, limp tongue into her mouth. She didn’t know what else to do, so she opened her mouth a little wider, trying to clear a breathing passage, closed her eyes tightly and concentrated on not drooling. His tongue began waving back and forth as if a tiny drunk man was weaving his way down the hallways of her throat. Then he began moving it in circles. Clockwise. Counterclockwise. Maggie opened an eye and saw, over Paul’s ear, the moon and the water spread out behind him. When would it be over? He finished with a flourish, rearing his tongue back and striking forward, like a cobra. Then he pulled away with a sharp suck. Maggie wiped her mouth. Across the moon-bleached grass, Aíne and Paddy sat at the edge of the cliff, legs dangling over the crags below. He had his arm resting on the small of her back and as she turned to receive his kiss, her features softened by the stars and the water and the wind blowing her plain brown hair, Maggie saw her for a moment the way Paddy must have seen her at the HMV. When they finally kissed, Aíne’s eyes fluttered shut and her fingers spread open in the grass.

  “Should we go back and leave them to it?” asked Paul suddenly. His eyebrows sagged with disappointment—it was clear he hadn’t enjoyed their kiss any more than Maggie had. They made their way back down the hill, and she slipped a few times on the descent, but Paul only called, “You okay?” from a safe distance behind her.

  “Where do you live?” he asked when they’d reached the edge of the carnival.

  “I’m up the Strand Road about a mile,” Maggie pointed.

  “Oh,” he said, relieved. “I’m straight in the other direction.” He pulled her into a stiff hug, then, and they parted ways. As she threaded her way through the maze of white tarp toward Colm’s house, a storm wind kicked up. Maggie stopped for a moment to watch the wind froth the glittering expanse of water, to listen to the sand make whispering sounds as it billowed across the air. And then, with a great whoomph, the tarp that covered the Space Odyssey came free, blew right off the hulking machine, and propelled into the air, wavering and blowing over the open water like a low-hanging cloud, until the wind died for a moment and it floated down like a great ash leaf and splashed into the water. Maggie watched it with a sense of elation, glad that the moment belonged to her alone, that she didn’t have to discuss it afterwards with Paul, that it didn’t have to mean anything. The rain began then, a deluge that drowned out every other sound, and Maggie pulled her hood tight around her face. She took one last look at the tarp, which was now far out on the horizon, floating on the water like a great paper crane, and ran the rest of the way home.

  She opened the back door quietly, kicked off her sodden shoes, and tiptoed past Ronnie’s bedroom, which was teeming with sleeping bags and the glossy heads of snoring eleven-year-olds. The spillover of girls had been given her own bed, and Laura had made up the couch in the sitting room, cozy with blankets and flannel pillows. Maggie brushed her teeth and changed into her pajamas. She did not think she was tired, but fell asleep almost immediately.

  She awoke in the darkness. The rain was an insistent splashing against the windows, and the sound of hushed voices drifted from nearby.

  “Stealing from my mother again, and it can only mean one thing—”

  “Treatment for it—”

  “You just don’t get my brother, baby. The more you tell him he has to change—”

  It was her mom and Colm, whispering in their whiskey voices. The little clock over the fireplace read 2:42 a.m.

  “Ask yourself whether you want him around the children at Christmastime!”

  “But the girls love Kevin—”

  “—the price of being a fuckin’ addict.”

  Maggie squinted at the square of light leaking in from the kitchen doorway. She felt so drowsy and cozy in her nest of blankets that she couldn’t be sure whether or not she was still asleep. What was it with this place, this life, that made you so unsure if what was happening to you was even real? She rolled over, curled back into her nest, and was dropped again into her dreams, where a giant tarp made shapes in the water, undulating and wet as a tongue.

  “Pancakes!”

  Maggie awoke from the sweaty entanglement of her blankets and sat up. Morning sunlight streamed through the sitting room windows, and Ronnie’s friends traipsed past her, still in their pajamas, on the way to the kitchen. She threw off her covers, padded to the bathroom, and looked at herself in the mirror. She prepared herself for the interrogation, sure that her mom would take one look at her face and know that her daughter had been kissed. It was just something that stained you, Maggie thought, a subtle change like the first inkling of real breasts, noticed only and immediately by one’s mother.

  The kitchen was a flurry of activity: little girls chattering around the table and passing syrup back and forth, Colm hiding behind his newspaper and sipping tea, and Laura running around the kitchen in an apron, frying and mixing and pouring and serving pancakes.

  “Morning,” she said brightly, the thin red rim beneath her eyes the only sign of a hangover. “You want some pancakes?”

  Maggie looked at her mother and blinked.

  “Mags! Pancakes! Chocolate chip or plain?”

  “Uh—chocolate chip. Thanks, Mom.”

  Laura slid the pancakes off the griddle and onto Maggie’s plate, then went into the cupboard in search of powdered sugar. Maggie brushed a finger across her lips. If something in her face had changed, her mom certainly hadn’t noticed. But Maggie didn’t blame her. It wasn’t kissing that changed you. It was the feeling that changed you. The weak-kneed, stomach-dropping, hand-trembling, heart-fluttering feeling. And in kissing Paul, she hadn’t felt anything.

  Sister Geneve was Maggie’s theology and English teacher, a nun of the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary with Q-tip hair and octagonal glasses. She didn’t wear a habit, favoring instead frumpy brown knit sweaters and the same kind of cheap black slacks worn by McDonald’s cashiers. When she walked, half-smiling, down the halls of Saint Brigid’s with her slow gait and dragging pant hems, even the leaving cert girls who spent their weekends steaming up the backseats of cars found themselves unrolling their skirts and wiping the lipstick off their mouths. Everyone wanted to be better for Sister Geneve.

  On the last day of school before Christmas break, instead of discussing Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave” or reading yet another article about the lives of the saints, Sister Geneve wheeled a television into the classroom and played a video about the birth of Christ. The story of the Nativity was as familiar to Maggie as the rote prayers she recited at the beginning and end of each school day, but this particular version included a prolonged labor scene, with the Virgin Mary heaving and grunting, a terrified Joseph holding her by one splayed leg while the barn animals looked on.

  “There’s no need for giggling,” called Sister Geneve from the back of the classroom. “This should be a reminder to all of you that Jesus was a real person, born to a real woman, placenta and all. He was a human being, girls. Even as he was divine. This is the mystery of the Holy Spirit.�
�� Then, she returned to her needlepoint, as Mary bellowed one last time and squeezed the savior out into the world.

  Aíne and Maggie sat next to each other, passing notes about their plans for Christmas break. Aíne was going to spend most of the holiday at her grandmother’s house in Kilkenny, and was worried about how she would survive without Paddy for a whole week and a half. The two of them were already saying “I love you,” and Aíne had saved up to buy a new bra—a forest-green velvet and lace number from Brown Thomas that had come wrapped in tissue paper and cost almost twenty pounds—because she was planning on taking her shirt off for him on New Year’s Eve.

  “Then what?” Maggie scribbled, lobbing the paper on her friend’s desk.

  “Then I might have to go back and buy the matching knickers,” Aíne’s responded, raising her eyebrows coyly as Maggie unfolded the paper. Maggie rolled her eyes. Aíne’s transformation from dorky valedictorian-in-the-making to lingerie sex goddess had taken all of three weeks. But then again, as Maggie had seen with her own mother, falling in love turns people into strangers and fanatics, people with a wild faith in their new beloved that borders on the religious. Paddy might be a pimple-faced HMV cashier to the rest of the world, but Aíne saw the promise behind those clunky glasses, and had already pooled her dreams with his. The top boy in his class at Saint Brendan’s, he planned to study political science at UCD, and his eventual goal was nothing less than becoming the first Taoiseach from County Wicklow. Aíne believed that together, she and Paddy would rise above their blue-collar beginnings and become part of Ireland’s elite, with a redbrick palace in Sandymount and a cottage in Connemara where their well-heeled children could play in the surf. If it wasn’t all so nauseating, Maggie might almost be excited for her.

  The angels sang, the three wise men came, and finally, the video ended and the bell rang in two weeks of freedom.

  “You know,” said Aíne, as they headed down the hallway, “we could probably convince Paul to go out with us on New Year’s Eve. I don’t think he’s got another girlfriend.”

  “I don’t have a nice enough bra,” Maggie said, laughing off the question. The truth was, she’d be perfectly happy if she never saw Paul again, and she was quite sure he felt the same way.

  A sleety rain had begun to fall, so they said their good-byes quickly. Maggie clicked open her umbrella and headed toward home, picking her way through the slick courtyard of Saint Brigid’s. As she crossed through the steel entrance gates, she saw a spectral figure standing across the street, wearing a sodden leather jacket. He was the only person on the street without an umbrella or a hood, and pieces of dark, wet hair stuck to his face while the cold drizzle slipped down his collar. He was smoking a cigarette, cupping it beneath his palm to protect it from the rain, and exhaling in great clouds of smoke and precipitation. Maggie stopped short.

  “Uncle Kevin!” she squealed as he flicked his cigarette into the street and pulled her into a bear hug. “I didn’t think you were getting in till tonight!”

  “Just landed an hour ago,” he said, his voice muffled by the wet shoulder of her coat. “Had to come see you before I did anything else.”

  Her classmates streamed by them, trying not to stare. Maggie knew exactly what they were thinking—that this was her much older American boyfriend, and he was wearing sunglasses in the rain, and he was smoking with brazen disregard for the dour nuns standing guard at the school gates. They never had to know that he was only her young uncle, and with his simple hug, Kevin had provided her with the one thing she’d lacked since she’d transferred to Saint Brigid’s: mystique.

  “Nice monkey suit,” he said, holding Maggie at arm’s length to check out her blazer and knee socks. “You look like a member of the Hitler youth.”

  “Yeah, well you look positively anorexic,” she responded. “I practically walked past you, you’re so skinny.”

  “I’m on the rock star’s diet. You ever seen a chubby Kurt Cobain? A portly Keith Richards? A plus-sized Lou Reed? I have an image to attend to, Mags. I am hungry, though. Take me somewhere I can get a Guinness and some haggis.”

  “Haggis is Scottish, idiot.”

  “Listen to this!” He swung an arm around her shoulder. “Three months in Ireland and she’s a goddamn cultural ambassador.”

  They walked past Martello Terrace, down by the harbor where boats rocked in the shallow tide and seagulls strutted, pecking at fish bones and hamburger wrappers, and past the shuttered carnival. It was a dark afternoon, and the only people around were clumps of school kids, horsing around happily in celebration of the end of the term.

  “So this is Ireland,” he said, stopping to look across the water at the dark blur of Bray Head.

  “Yeah, this is it,” said Maggie. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

  “It has a soggy sort of grandeur, yes,” he admitted, “though I resent it for stealing you away from us.”

  They walked down the Strand Road to Harry and Rose’s, a chipper that was popular with the older Saint Brigid’s girls. Maggie had never been there before, but she wanted to show him off. They ordered snack boxes, and when they sat down to eat, Maggie was able to get a good look at Kevin for the first time in months. He didn’t look well. His hair, which had grown longer, was tied into a limp, oily ponytail at the nape of his neck. His skin was pallid and slick, as if it had been boiled raw, and his face was so thin she could see his bouncy Adam’s apple and two slices of cheekbone. Even his teeth were mossy looking, like he hadn’t brushed them in a while. His eyes, always his most arresting feature, bulged in their sockets, stream-water clear and dangerously blue.

  “So, I quit the band,” he said, raking a fry through a plastic cup of curry sauce.

  Maggie gasped.

  “You quit? But why? You said Selfish Fetus was going to be the next big thing! I thought you had a gig lined up at the Double Door!”

  “Did. Don’t anymore.”

  “But why?”

  “Me and Rockhead had creative differences. Nail. Coffin. Over.” He waved a hand dismissively. “It’s band shit, Mags. You don’t even want to hear it. You and your teenage girlfriends probably have less drama than we did. It’s embarrassing. I don’t even want to get into it.”

  “Well, did you guys have a fight or something?”

  Kevin wiped his mouth, leaned onto the back legs of his chair.

  “Not really. It’s more that our aesthetic visions were at odds. Rockhead wanted to begin taking us, musically, in a different direction—sort of pop rock, bouncy guitars, appeal to a broader audience, et cetera, et cetera.”

  “He wanted you to start playing pop music? That’s awful!”

  “Look,” he said, “I’m not going to fault the guy. Rockhead recently knocked up this girl he’s been seeing. The kid’s gonna be born in a few months, and working at the tree nursery at Menard’s ain’t gonna cut it anymore. So I get it. He wants to stop playing these small gigs, he wants to make some real money off this thing we have going. But the problem is, he’s not going to take something that I created and neuter it into something that suburban moms can bop along to while they push the fuckin’ cart around the grocery store. Music for the faint of heart, the sedated, the ungulated. No thank you.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  Kevin shrugged, lit a cigarette, tossed the ash in the empty curry cup.

  “Gonna do what I always do. Start anew. Rebuild from the ground up. Recruit some new musicians and make a new sound. It’s 1993, and it’s an exciting time for music. Nine Inch Nails were just on Saturday Night Live. Nine Inch Nails! I mean, on network television! This is what Rockhead doesn’t get: you don’t have to shittify your music to make people listen to it. If it’s good, people will listen. Period.”

  “So who have you been playing with, then?”

  “Nobody.”

  As proof, he held up his hands and showed her the tips of his fingers, once white with bubbled-over calluses. They looked now like regular fingers.

>   “So no more Selfish Fetus at all?”

  “No more Selfish Fetus.”

  Maggie slumped in her chair, so deflated by this news that Kevin leaned across the table and cuffed her gently on the shoulder.

  “Mags, listen to me: Have you ever heard of Fecal Matter?”

  “Isn’t that, like, feces? Like, poo?”

  Kevin laughed.

  “Well yes, it is poo. But more significantly, it’s the name of Kurt Cobain’s first band. But you’ve never heard of them—and why should you? It was probably a bunch of little sixteen-year-olds—no offense—doing terrible Sex Pistols covers. My point is that every great musician needs to get a dumb band with a dumb name out of their system—I mean, come on! Selfish Fetus? What the fuck?—before they can become the artist they were meant to be.”

  “But I liked the name Selfish Fetus,” Maggie said weakly.

  Kevin crumpled up his bag of fries and smiled at her sadly.

  “I know you did, honey. But you’re blinded by familial loyalty. It’s the world that needs to love me—and it’s got to happen on my own terms.”

  He counted out the money, slowly, examining the new coins and bills, and got up to pay the cashier. They walked back to the house in the falling light, talking music, with Bray Head at their backs.

  With Nanny Ei and Kevin around, Christmas Eve at Colm’s house almost felt like home. The women cooked a big dinner, bumping into each other in the tiny kitchen, and the whole house filled with the rich smells of stewed turnips and roasting meat. Colm played a Johnny Cash album on his old record player, and since it was the only kind of music everyone could agree on, they listened to the same songs again and again—“Folsom Prison Blues,” “I Walk the Line,” “A Boy Named Sue.” Maggie watched the interactions between Colm and Kevin carefully, remembering how her mom had said there was “no love lost between those two,” but they acted civilly to each other, if a little stiff. They drank bottles of Heineken kept cold outside while Laura and Nanny Ei sipped hot whiskeys. The air thickened with cooking smells, and the television, a staple of the sitting room most evenings, stood mute and forgotten, drowned out by the chatter and the laughter. The Christmas tree was lit, shining with cheap glass ornaments purchased in a hurry from Dunne’s.