The Carnival at Bray

by Jessie Ann Foley

  Aíne leaned in and kissed him. Maggie felt shot through with sudden jealousy—not because her friend had found love first, but because Aíne, for all her academic intelligence, was not the kind of girl to appreciate such poetry. What drove her was ambition, not passion. But Maggie, who had been raised on song lyrics as their own kind of poetry, felt tears in her eyes. She wiped them away fiercely. She’d die before she let them know what words meant to her. From her slumped position under Paul’s arm, she called, “Don’t make me vomit.”

  “I wouldn’t expect you to appreciate Tibullus,” said Paddy imperiously. “You’re from a rough crowd, is what I’ve heard.”

  Maggie sat up.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means I heard what happened to your uncle outside the Quayside. Got a right belting, I heard. And broke Rosie Horan’s brand-new front door in the process.”

  “What do you know about my uncle, you nerdy little prick?” She scrambled to her feet, the liquor beating in her temples.

  “I know he’s a scumbag who likes to start trouble, and that he got what was coming to him, is what I know.”

  He smiled at her, a mean, goading smile, while Aíne watched from the safety of his dorky arms. Maggie grabbed the empty whiskey bottle from Paul’s hand and threw it at Paddy’s smug face as hard as she could. He and Aíne both ducked, and it shattered against the red polka-dotted surface of one of the magic teacups, spraying shards of glass all over the tiny space.

  “Owww!” Aíne squealed, covering her face with her hands. A piece of broken bottle had knicked her in the soft indentation right below her eye, and blood began seeping from the wound.

  “For fuck’s sake!” Paddy yelled, nestling Aíne’s face into his chest. “Mad bitch. Must run in the family, I guess.”

  “Maggie,” Paul said, stumbling to his feet, his hair sloughing along the tarp roof, “are you all right?”

  “Oh, I’m fine,” she laughed, kicking some glass shards in Paddy’s direction. “Never better.”

  “Maybe we should take a walk?”

  “Anything’s better than hanging out with these two losers.” She threw open the tarp.

  “You could at least say you’re sorry,” Aíne whimpered into Paddy’s sweater.

  “Yeah, well, I’m not.” She looked back, once, then slipped through the tarp’s opening and let it fall behind her. The whiskey’s powers hit her square in the face when she and Paul emerged into the cold night. A wildness lapped in her chest, bringing out things in her that she hadn’t known were there—What’s happening to me? Did I really thrown that glass bottle and hurt my only friend? Maybe it was Lynch thing, striking out at the people you care about and not being able to apologize. Or maybe that was just a human race thing. Maybe I’m just like Kevin.

  “Don’t worry about the two of them,” Paul said. “They aren’t much craic anyway.” He put an arm around her waist and they lurched through the tarp village. When they reached the Ferris wheel at the edge of the carnival, Maggie’s head began to swim. She leaned up against the ride’s cold iron base.

  “I don’t feel so good,” she said.

  “Are you going to gawk?” Paul asked.

  “Maybe.”

  “See, I’m fine,” he laughed. “Takes more than a little whiskey to get me drunk. I’ve been drinking with my older brothers since I was ten.” He stood back to look at her face, to see if she was impressed by this fact. She tried to smile at him but her head hurt. He grabbed her waist and kissed her, his spit cold and wet on her lips. She kissed him back, her eyes drifting shut, her mouth lolling open. The wind came in icy blasts on her cheeks and forehead. She felt his cold fingers yank up her sweater and squeeze her breasts roughly. Above them, the empty Ferris wheel carriages creaked. He pulled her sweater off and then, after some fumbling, her bra, and dropped both pieces of clothing on the wet ground. Why bother spending twenty pounds on a lace bra from Brown Thomas, Maggie wondered, when the boy won’t notice anyway? She could feel her nipples pucker and tighten in the salted wind. He began to suck them, hard, and she grimaced, looking over his head into the water and at Bray Head, silent and ponderous in the distance. It didn’t occur to her to tell him to stop. With his free hand, he yanked at the button of her jeans, pulled down the zipper, and stuffed his hand down her underpants. He found her warm opening, and twisted two fingers inside. Her breath caught sharply as the tight tissue inside of her unknit itself and gave way. Then the strangest thing happened. The pain of what he was doing to her somehow made her feel better. A memory floated before her, of Samantha Steinle, a weird, quiet girl from her Chicago neighborhood who, in seventh grade, had taken Maggie into the bathroom stall during recess, unbuttoned the cuff of her school blouse, and showed Maggie the patterns of razor marks that she’d scored herself with from wrist to elbow.

  “Hurting myself is the only thing that makes me feel better,” Samantha had said. Now, with Paul’s fingers twisting inside of her, his teeth on the thin skin of her breasts, she finally understood what Samantha had meant.

  He pulled his hand from between her legs and she heard the dull clinking of his belt buckle, the sharp exhale of a zipper being undone.

  “Put your mouth on it,” he whispered into her neck, his forearm a heavy pressure on her shoulders, and she crouched on the wet ground, her naked spine facing seaward, the puddles soaking into the knees of her jeans. He put his hands on the back of her head and pushed her closer to his thighs so she was nearly choking on it, and then his whole body stiffened and he moaned in just the way she’d heard her mother and Colm moaning through the thin walls of their bedroom. To stop herself from vomiting, she spit it out on the wet ground.

  Paul walked her home soon afterwards. He kept opening his mouth to say something, but she wouldn’t look at him, so he didn’t. In front of her house, he leaned in to kiss her good-bye but she ducked away and his lips landed on the cold shell of her ear.

  “Well—I’ll ring you, or something,” he mumbled. Maggie saw that he had not tucked his shirt back in, and that his shirt tails were all wrinkled along the bottom.

  “Sure.”

  He turned, shambling toward the road with his hands in his pockets. In the morning she found a streak of bright red blood in the crotch of her underwear. She balled them up tightly and threw them in the trash. Then she took a long, steamy shower, even though she knew her mom would yell at her for using all the hot water, and she held her hands over her bruised breasts to protect them from the stinging water. She never thought she’d be one of those girls who gave her body to someone she didn’t even like. But then, she thought, looking up at the tiled ceiling to stop herself from crying, wasn’t that what growing up meant? Wasn’t it just a succession of actions and incidents where you break your childhood promises to yourself and do the very things you always said you wouldn’t do? And how many more promises would she have to break before she came out on the other side?

  Though she was only six when it happened, Maggie could still remember the months before the breakup of her parents’ marriage: the silent suppers, the late-night arguments, her dad slamming out the door and staying gone for days at a time, her mom spending spring nights out on the back porch with Joni Mitchell’s Blue album and a bottle of white zinfandel to keep her company. So on the night before New Year’s Eve, when Maggie awoke in the middle of the night, looked out the window, and saw her mother slumped on the back stoop with a glass of West Coast Cooler in her hand, humming along to “A Case of You” while the headlights of Colm’s truck faded toward town, she was struck with the realization that maybe Kevin had been right. Maybe this time next year, they’d all be back home, curled up on the pullout couch at Nanny Ei’s and watching the snow sift down over the crisscrossing alleys of Chicago. She’d grown to love the mountains and the fields of Wicklow, the smell of the sea, the way old and young mingled with each other in the pubs. She’d grown to love afternoons in front of Dan Sean’s fire, the constant small talk about the weather, and
the Irish poets she studied in Sister Geneve’s English class. But these things, taken together, could not make up the fabric of a teenager’s life. After what happened at the magic teacups, Maggie once again was friendless. Eoin, too, seemed like nothing more than a receding dream. If she didn’t have anyone to miss in Ireland or Chicago, what difference did it make where she lived?

  The thought of spending New Year’s Eve with her mother and stepdad because she didn’t have any friends of her own was plenty depressing. But on the morning of the holiday, Colm showed up at the Quayside with his toolbox and a sheepish apology and asked Rosie Horan if he could fix the door he’d broken in his brawl with Kevin. His penance made, Rosie forgave him, and the family made plans to ring in 1994 at the Quayside. Suddenly, the night’s prospects didn’t seem so dismal: Eoin might be there. With renewed hope, Maggie blasted Nevermind and put on her black miniskirt and the blue turtleneck that Nanny Ei said brought out her eyes. She curled her hair with Laura’s hot rollers and rimmed her lashes in smudged black liner.

  “Whoa,” said Colm when she clicked out of the bathroom in her knee-high boots.

  “When did my beautiful little girl become a beautiful woman?” Laura said, reaching out and tucking a soft curl behind Maggie’s ear.

  “Mom, don’t,” said Maggie, but she had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling.

  The pub was sweaty and smoky and packed. The DJ played Tom Jones while women in sequined sweaters with hairspray-frozen updos and men in pressed shirts and good jeans waltzed together in the cramped spaces between tables, giddy to be dressed up and free of their children for the night. The Christmas lights that Colm and Kevin had ripped down had been replaced. Colorful strands were tacked neatly around the newly repaired front door. Tinsel was draped along the liquor shelves, and a table by the front windows held aluminum tins of ham and cabbage and fried potatoes.

  “There’s no other kids here,” Ronnie sighed, shoving into the booth next to Maggie while their mother disappeared with Colm into the crowd. “What are we supposed to do all night?”

  A pair of white-permed women spun past their table, sloshing their glasses of Guinness and black currant onto the floor, singing along with great passion to “Delilah.”

  “Well, for starters, we can laugh at all the drunk people,” Maggie said. She stood up and smoothed her miniskirt while a man in a yellow rugby shirt wandered past dreamily, a big piece of ham hanging from his mouth. “I’m going to get a Cidona. You want one?”

  She made her way to the bar, ducking and dodging the impromptu waltzers, the women sticking New Year’s crowns atop their hairstyles, the molten tips of cigarettes lolling from between fingers. She arrived to the counter just as Eoin emerged from the beer cooler balancing a stack of pint glasses. He was dressed, without regard for the holiday, in his usual Liverpool hoodie and track pants. He placed the glasses beside the sink, looked up, grinned at her, and lifted his hand in a small wave. Seeing him behind the bar, sleeves pushed up to elbows, thick, muscular arms sloshing glasses through soapy water, Maggie felt the painful throb of her bruised breasts, remembered the stinging wind at the Ferris wheel, the cold puddles soaking into the knees of her jeans. She shook away the memory and waved back.

  “Move over,” she said to Ronnie, sliding back into her booth with two glasses of Cidona.

  “Who was that boy you waved to?” Ronnie demanded, sticking a straw in her drink.

  “Jesus, you’re nosy! He’s just a friend of mine.” Eoin’s back was turned now, and he was bending down to open a case of beer. Maggie could see a thin strip of white skin along the waistband of his track pants.

  “A friend as in a regular friend or a friend you do it with?”

  “What?” Maggie looked at her little sister. “Where the hell do you learn this stuff?”

  “School,” Ronnie shrugged, sipping her drink innocently.

  “Well, he’s a friend as in a friend. Do you even know what doing it means?”

  “Do you?”

  “Drink your Cidona and be quiet,” Maggie said. “I told you I’d explain all of this when you’re my age.”

  Midnight came and went in a blur of hugs and fizzing champagne. Laura and Colm made out in the corner; Maggie and Ronnie sat in their booth and spun noisemakers above their heads. In the crush of the packed pub, Maggie looked for Eoin but couldn’t see him. Maybe, she thought, if he was anything like her, he’d fled to the quiet, cold safety of the beer cooler to ride out midnight without having deal with the pressure of finding someone to kiss when the clock turned. As soon as the confetti had sifted to the floor, the tables were pushed back against the walls to make room for the set dancing. The band began the Siege of Ennis, and Laura and Colm dragged Ronnie and Maggie from their booth to pair off into sets of four.

  “I don’t know the steps!” Maggie yelled over the hitching of the fiddle.

  “Me either!” Laura yelled, grabbing her hand. “Just stomp your feet and act like you do!”

  She led Maggie out into the crowd, back straight, knee bobbing in time with the fiddle, and when it was time, she began to move, dragging her daughter along behind her. It was in these moments that Maggie loved her mother in the way she’d loved her as a little girl: Laura Lynch, her dark hair falling around her shoulders, her green, mascara-coated eyes laughing, her purple dress tight around her soft body, the radiant beauty who could fake the steps and nobody would ever know the difference. Her confidence was so powerful, it was easy to believe that her mom could fix everything in Maggie’s life with a wave of her slim wrist.

  “Follow my lead,” Laura yelled over the music. The dancers began to move in synch, and it was true: only about half of them really knew the steps. But everyone was laughing and everyone was trying, and as they lifted their arms, twirled around, and switched partners, Maggie found herself thrown, chest to chest, with Eoin.

  Laura spun off like a purple top, and the music reached its maximum clip, the fiddler working his bow, the accordion player pushing and pulling his instrument to keep up.

  “I don’t know what the feck I’m doing!” Eoin laughed, but he possessed an athlete’s grace, and when he grabbed Maggie’s hands and spun her, she was nearly lifted off the floor. She threw her head back and whooped, her hair flying behind her, her skirt spreading around her thighs like an opened umbrella. He put a hand on her back just as he’d done the night she’d met him in the field, clinging tightly to the fabric of her blue turtleneck, holding her steady as she twirled. By the last verse of the song, the crowd had worked itself into a sweaty, frothing roomful of joy; even Rosie Horan joined the dancing, leaving the clutter of glasses at the bar.

  Then, the accordion player closed his instrument and the fiddler dropped his fiddle to his side, leaving behind no sound but a humming in the air and the panting of the people, and before anyone could even cheer, the whistle player stood, a wiry little man with deep creases in his forehead, and he played a long, sustained note that trembled in such a way that the wild joy of only a moment ago was replaced entirely with something else, a deep feeling that was not quite unhappy but that matched the strange mix of celebration and mortality one feels at the wintry ending of every closing year. At the sound of the trembling note, couples moved closer to each other as if drawn by an invisible force, and Maggie could feel the heat off Eoin’s skin as he moved into her. His close-cropped hair held a sweet muskiness. She closed her eyes to avoid her mom’s ogling or Ronnie’s spying, so that she could forget everything but his body near hers and the spare, sad notes of the whistle.

  Rosie took her place in front of the musicians. The dancers, still catching their breath from the Siege of Ennis, eyed one another and nodded in anticipation. Rosie began to sing along with the whistle:

  A Róisín ná bíodh brón ort fé’r éirigh dhuit

  Tá Na bráithre ‘teacht thar sáile ‘s iad ag triall ar muir—

  The Irish words were completely foreign to Maggie but still strangely familiar, like the time onl
y a week after they’d moved to Bray, when she had walked past a woman on Adelaide Street who wore the same perfume as Nanny Ei. She felt Eoin’s body tense, straining to listen. Rosie bowed her head at the end of the verse while the whistle played on. Maggie whispered, “Do you know what it means?” He nodded against her cheek.

  “Tell me?”

  She could feel him hesitate for a moment, but then he relaxed and pulled her closer to translate, his lips moving in her hair: “Little Rose, don’t be sad for all that has happened to you.” His hand moved up her back and she felt his warm palm through her thin sweater. His lips skimmed the ridge of her ear: “Over mountains did I go with you, under the sails upon the sea.” She no longer heard Rosie singing, only the whistle and Eoin’s voice against her ear: “Fragrant branch, every mountain glen in Ireland will quake someday before my Dark Little Rose will die.”

  The song ended in an eruption of applause and whistling. Rosie smiled and gave a little bow, picked up her bar rag, and resumed taking drink orders. Tom Jones came back on the speakers and the world inside the pub began to move again. But Maggie and Eoin were no longer a part of it. They stood still together in the middle of the close, smoky bar, and his lips moved away from her ear and found her lips. She felt his kiss in every cell of her body, trembling, legs weak, cheeks flushed. It was undiluted happiness, of a kind so intense she didn’t think she could stand it much longer, it would break her open and reveal all her tender parts. She pulled away and met his eyes, which were bright and shining and seemed to reflect everything she had just felt.

  “I’ve been wanting to do that since the minute I saw you,” he whispered.

  “Me too.” Somewhere far away, as if in a dream, Maggie heard her mother laughing and the Tom Jones song asking, “What’s new, pussycat?”

  “Come with me.” Eoin grabbed her hand and they slipped out the back door and into the cold dampness of the alley, and he kissed her again, the air sparkling around them with light snow, her back cold against the stone wall.