This phase of our friendship would last for many months.
* * *
A year had passed since Stevie had met Ron. It was autumn again, my favorite time of the year. Now I walked home with Jeanette every day through the crisp brown leaves. Since the air was turning chilly and we both had poor circulation we would display our grey-purplish hands to each other and joke about their corpselike hue. That was our little ritual, which we usually went through before Jeanette left me for the day to catch her bus back to Finglas. It took her a long time to get home.
I got the impression that her family had moved around a lot. I couldn’t imagine that, remembering no other house clearly than the house in Dundrum. I told her it was called Lourdes Villa; my tone of disgust made her giggle.
“Well, we once lived in a dump called Bourneville. Like the chocolate bar!”
“Gosh,” I said, impressed. Cadbury’s Bourneville, a bittersweet dark chocolate, was my favorite flavor.
“Do you remember what Starbars used to be called?” I continued. “About five years ago, maybe more.”
She looked puzzled for a moment, then her face cleared. “Oh, yeah. Nunches!”
And we fell into laughter. I had begun to discover that it was possible to look on the world as a source of amusement rather than in the malicious light with which Susie, for example, regarded it.
I remember one moment clearly from those first weeks of walking home together. David Bowie’s “Let’s Dance” was a popular hit, and Jeanette turned to me one afternoon and quoted a line from the song, which I was singing under my breath:
Put on your red shoes and dance the blues,
pointing to her own shoes (red) and mine (blue). We were wearing flat pumps, all the rage then; I had bought them because they looked like the kind of shoes Jeanette wore. And indeed she thought they were nice. She said so. Susie had scarcely ever praised anything I wore or owned.
I tried to put Susie out of my mind. The raw hurt was healing, helped by Jeanette’s presence. I did not, of course, tell her I had been Susie’s friend. It would have embarrassed me to admit that I had been cast aside. Jeanette didn’t ask questions about my lack of friends, though. She said that she’d always been happy with a few close friends, or even one was enough.
I knew that we were different from the others at Fintan’s, in that way and in other ways. For example, Jeanette’s attitude to boys was strikingly different from the greediness of Susie or Carlotta. If what they expressed amounted to desire, what Jeanette expressed amounted to disgust. I heard the words come from her lips with approval, with relief. She didn’t like boys.
“I once kissed a boy at the Gaeltacht. It was disgusting. I ran into the toilets and vomited.”
I gasped, but with a strange pleasure. God, she was so extreme! But I knew what she meant. I didn’t say much about my own attitude to boys, since I didn’t really have one, or indeed know any. I told her about the awkwardness I’d felt with Joe, and how I’d told him I didn’t want to see him again.
“I’m just really not that interested,” I concluded, my calm tone masking a certain anxiety. Was this too much to admit? But Jeanette nodded and said: “I’m not either.” Then she added:
“I never want to get married.”
“Same here. I’ve known that for a few years.”
“I want to have an interesting life. With no responsibilities.”
Well, you will, I thought, looking at her. There was an air of recklessness and even desperation about her at times. But to me she was always sweet, then. Her eyes were soft and tender; they were a dark brown, almost black, fringed with long lashes. Behind her thick lenses they looked huge, almost fluid.
She said she had a hard time making eye contact with people. “And they think I look unhappy. When I go past workmen they usually shout things like “Cheer up, luv!” I hate that.”
“Yeah, they do that to me too.” In fact, I often tried to avoid them, or else snuck past in a hurry with my head bent. “Smile, lovey,” one of them had yelled to me once. It made me feel miserably self-conscious. We could laugh about it, Jeanette and I, but only because it was also a source of shame.
“It’s none of their business what I look like,” Jeanette concluded.
Whenever she looked at me I did not have the reaction I did with almost everyone else: lower my eyes, glance away. I could meet her gaze without fear and without anxiety. I knew where I was with Jeanette, or if I didn’t quite, I was sure that it wouldn’t be somewhere that I didn’t want to be.
* * *
On one of these late September afternoons I came into the kitchen to find my mother at the counter, stirring a cake mix in her huge beige mixing bowl.
“Is Stevie around?” I enquired, popping a grape into my mouth.
“He isn’t, no.”
I shrugged, sat down at the table and poured myself a cup of tea. My mother worked away silently; this was not unusual. What did strike me as odd was an opened letter lying against the salt cellar.
“Oh, what’s this?” I asked, turning it over. I noticed the Kells postmark.
“It’s from your uncle John.” My mother’s tone was studiously normal.
“God! Really? Can I read it?”
My fingers trembled as I opened up the plain sheet of paper. It was quite short, the letter, a note really. It read as follows:
Dear Susan
It was easy enough to find out your address from the Dublin phone book. You’ll be glad to hear I married a few years back, Patricia is her name and we have two young children. What I must write to you about is that Father passed away very suddenly about six months ago.
Mother is not well, in fact the doctor says that she won’t live long. I hope you will find it in your heart to come and see her some time soon. She doesn’t say much about you, but I know that she often thinks of you and the children.
I have felt that not informing you of our father’s death was a mistake. I hope you understand that your appearance at the funeral would have caused a lot of confusion for the family, and for yourself, I suppose. But we are eager to see you or at least hear from you after all these years. The farm is doing well and I have made alterations to the house.
Your brother,
John O’Donnell
I put it down with a feeling of bewilderment. “Are you angry?” I asked.
My mother turned to face me. She looked flushed. “No, Cathy. John’s right, the funeral would have been awkward.”
“But how horrible, to hear about the death of your father that way.”
She shrugged. “I expected to hear of it ... indirectly.”
I poured myself another cup of tea, wondering why I felt so impatient with her. Suddenly I blurted out:
“Did it never occur to you that Stevie and I might have wanted to know our grandparents?”
She pressed her lips together. “No, and remember that my parents haven’t been on speaking terms with me. So even if I had brought you children to see them I don’t know what sort of a welcome you would have got.”
“Sounds awfully grim,” I said lightly.
She frowned. “I’ve been happier away from them and they never asked to see me... Yes, perhaps I should have swallowed my pride. I don’t know, Cathy. I’ve prayed for them.”
She turned back to her mixing.
“Are you going to visit your mother?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
I looked outside. Dark had fallen; soon my father would be home. I should go up and do my homework, I thought. This was another situation that I had no control over; it was my mother’s affair. I was curious about what had happened so many years before, but I didn’t think she’d tell me. Or if she did tell me it would be in such a simplistic way that I still would not understand.
My mother said, continuing her mixing, “Perhaps you and Stevie could go there, in the summer. Do you think your brother would want to?”
“Maybe,” I said gloomily. I could not see him tearing himsel
f away from Ron for a holiday with me in the country. “It might bore him.”
My mother nodded, as if she understood this.
“Yes, it might. Well, you could go, with a friend.”
I caught my breath. Would Jeanette come? Would she want to? Would we still be friends in nine months?
“OK. That sounds really good.”
My enthusiasm was plain; it must have seemed surprising to my mother. She gave me a rather sad look.
“All right, Cathy.”
“I’m going up to do my homework.”
I started out of the kitchen, but before I reached the door Stevie entered, carrying a pile of books. I gasped.
“Stevie!”
“What?” he replied, his eyes twinkling. He had obviously just been to the hairdresser; his hair was bleached and cut in a flat top. In one ear I noticed a gold earring. He looked exotic.
“Dad will go crazy. How did you dare?”
“I’ll tell him it’s the new college look. Think he’ll accept that?”
“No way. And the earring!”
He shook his head. “He’ll have to tear it off me. I’ve wanted one for years. What do you think, Mum?”
My mother stood, hands on her hips, her face still a little flushed. She smiled faintly.
“Well, I’ve seen worse. Boys with shaved heads or purple hair. Or studs in their noses.”
“This is a more subtle, suggestive image,” said Stevie, grinning.
I gazed at him enviously. He was about to start college; he looked excited and fit. He was irresistible. He would be popular, he would go to parties and stay up till four in the morning, drinking and smoking... He would attend lectures as he chose, skipping the boring ones. He would talk in an arrogant, blasé manner about sex and politics. He would drift away from me even further. But I didn’t blame him. What had I to offer?
Without a word I slipped past. Let him read the letter. He would not be very interested and Mum would be pleased. Perhaps it would not be spoken of again.
* * *
In those days I felt that there was a huge chasm between those peers of mine who had had sex, and those who hadn’t. If you hadn’t, it seemed, you didn’t talk about it much, because you didn’t know much about what it really felt like. Unlike most people I knew, I was very interested in the theoretical aspects of sex. It made me feel far more secure to think that I had read much, much more about it than any of my classmates. While they carried on their stupid, fumbling experiments, so my thinking went, I really knew what it was all about. And that was more important because it seemed more adult. So when Jeanette began to ask me questions about it, I felt flattered. Sex was something she was curious about. She knew the basics, it appeared, but not the meaning of words like “orgasm.” It was up to me to explain, which I did without undue embarrassment, what a male orgasm was. “Ejaculation,” I said, briskly. “You know, the guy comes, inside the woman.”
She nodded, biting her lip. Her eyes were bright; she looked uneasy. Female orgasm was a little tougher to describe. I did it in vague terms, hardly believing what I was saying.
“A lot of women don’t have them,” I finished. My palms were sweating. It all seemed unreal, and I hoped it would stay that way. But I could not confess my fears to Jeanette; it was important for me to seem unflappable about sex. I listened to her fears and insecurities with sympathy. Finally I was close to someone whose experience (or lack of such) mirrored my own.
One evening we attended a school performance of The Playboy of the Western World at the Olympia Theatre in Dame Street. We watched it bemused, side by side, not relating at all, I suspected, to Pegeen Mike’s vocal despair at the loss of her lover. Who could really love or want Christy Mahon? He seemed so unsophisticated, such an embarrassment. With relief, we left the theatre.
I had asked her to spend the night at my house after the play. The next day was a Saturday. I did have a few worries about how my father and mother would behave. Hopefully they would be as they usually were with guests, remote and politely friendly. And Stevie would probably be out, or go out immediately after dinner.
“I don’t know the South side of the city well,” she said, as we walked down towards Westmoreland Street to catch the bus back to Dundrum. “It’s funny.”
“That’s the only part I do know. I never really came in to town much up till about a year ago. So I just use a few streets... Grafton Street, Nassau Street, Stephen’s Green, that’s about it.”
She smiled wistfully. “Well, you’ll have to show me around.”
I smiled.
She began, for some reason, to tell me about the scar on her face, which ran for about an inch close to the corner of her mouth.
“I got that when I was a baby. Boiling water fell on me: I mean, I reached up and pulled a pot over, or something, and got scalded.”
I nodded, looking at her face intently.
“I hate it. It’s never going to go away. And my eye. Have you noticed that?” She sounded upset.
One of her eyes was slightly turned in, so that even when she looked straight at you there was something off-centered and evasive about her gaze.
“It used to be worse. The doctor said it would disappear in about ten years. But ... I wish I could have an operation. I can’t, of course. I have to live with it.”
“It’s nothing,” I said cheerfully. “I can hardly see it, honest.”
What I did not, indeed could not, say was that those slight blemishes made her face dearer to me, more attractive, in some way that I could not define. They were flaws, but they made her seem more beautiful. I felt aware that this was a reaction on my part that other people might not have.
“Don’t feel bad about them,” I said. “They don’t make you look less ...”
I paused, searching for the appropriate word.
She glanced at me quickly, then looked away with a faint smile.
* * *
“This is Jeanette,” I said to my mother, who was laying the table.
They exchanged hellos. As I thought, Jeanette seemed very shy. I was sure my mother would like that; who could resist it?
“Is Dad in?” I enquired, hoping that he would be off somewhere, delayed.
“Yes, he’s upstairs having a shower.”
“And Stevie?”
She looked at her watch. “I sent him out for a packet of sausages about ten minutes ago.”
I smiled. Usually that would have been me, out getting the sausages, a whim of my father’s, I was sure. He always had to have large, ritual breakfasts on the weekend, what my mother called his “fry.”
“I’ll show you my room,” I told Jeanette, who hurried after me out of the kitchen. “It’s not much.”
“I share mine, with my sister Una,” she said in a quiet voice as we went up the stairs. The sounds of my father’s shower got louder. We glanced at each other with amusement as we walked past the bathroom. Then we were on the top landing. All three white bedroom doors were shut.
“Guess which is whose,” I said suddenly. We often talked about psychic messages and tried to read each other’s minds. “Shut your eyes and concentrate.”
She obeyed. Very slowly, she spun around. Pointing her finger at Stevie’s door, she walked up to it and laid her head flat against the wood.
“Your brother’s,” I said, after a moment.
“Brilliant!” I was excited.
Moving clumsily, she banged against my parents’ door. She began to stroke it with her hand, sending little shivers up my spine. I stood against the banisters in the dim light, watching her intent face, her lashes against her cheeks.
“Your Mum and Dad’s,” she said in a whisper. Then, dramatically, “I’m getting strange vibrations from this one, by the way.”
I giggled rather uncertainly and remarked:
“Well, that’s it.”
“But I have to touch them all, don’t I?” she enquired. Pressing herself against my door, she let out a little sigh. Then, unexpectedly, she l
icked it. Opening her eyes and facing me she said, innocently, “Nice vibrations, Cathy.”
“Dad painted that door with toxic paint,” I said, my heart beating. “I should have warned you. I didn’t know that you were going to get so intimate with it.”
“Thanks for the warning.” She was standing very close to me. “So do I die?”
“No, not if you ... um ...” my mind was refusing to work, “lick someone else. Then the poison’s diffused.”
We both began to laugh. She had turned bright red.
“You’re embarrassing me,” she said earnestly. “Cathy, do you think I’m mad? Sometimes I feel that I am.”
She often asked me questions like this. She seemed so vulnerable, sometimes, so dependent on what I thought. As if I were normal and she weren’t. That wasn’t the way I saw it at all.
“No. Or if you are, I am too.”
“I shouldn’t have done that.”
I gulped. “Listen, it gave me a laugh. And you got the doors right. That’s amazing.”
“Is it?”
The sound of water spurting from the shower had stopped. We could hear my father rubbing himself down with a towel, whistling as he did so.
It was dark on the landing.
I put my hand over hers. It was very cold.
“You’re freezing!” I said in a soft voice.
“I know...” She trailed off, her head bent.
I began to sense something then. A feeling that I had never had before was pushing its way to the surface of my mind. I wanted to help her, but I did not know how. I wanted to touch her face, or put my arm around her, or move my body against hers, but I was afraid of what she might do. Push me away? I could not tell what she expected me to do. That was the worst thing. And she was too shy to ever say it.
My father decided for us, by banging open the bathroom door, yawning as he did so. Our hands separated, guiltily. At least that was what I felt. What had I been contemplating? I switched on the light beside Jeanette, who was just standing, completely passive and silent.
“Hi, Dad. How was your day?”
He began to ascend the stairs, a towel around his waist. To get dressed, of course. I pushed open my door, and Jeanette slipped through.
The Leaving Page 10
