Gone

by Martin Roper

  * * *

  Manhattan is frozen with heat. Not even memories are left in New York. Life moves too quickly there to let memories gather anywhere. Street signs still the same: Jane, Horatio, Little West Twelfth, Bethune, Perry, Ninth Avenue. Pearl, Fulton, Canal, Elizabeth. Lafayette, Dominick, Cornelia, Bedford, Commerce, Barrow. Gansevoort. Restaurants with their cluttered greedy tables. Small bricks that give the buildings their quaintness. Turn a corner off Seventh Avenue and find a quiet step to eat one of those Middle Eastern take-away thingys. And it’s early morning and sleepy workers hose clean the sidewalks all over the tired and dirty city. A Mexican sitting on the corner by the flower shop. His shirt. Welcome to America. Now Speak English.

  Gone with the rush of the subway. I thought there was some sense to the way I was living, something unique about it all and that one day I would be rewarded and my choices—even the callous ones—would make sense. There is nothing left now except the bad decisions and the indistinct path of words leading the way to a semblance of integrity.

  The meat shop is gone on Gansevoort Street, magically converted to an architect’s office. I peer in through the shutters. The old hoarding that advertised the butcher’s wares hangs inside the new trendy office, a hip relic of the past. Someone will pay money for it one day. I go to Florent for coffee to steel myself. But Florent is closed. I walk to the Serivalli playground on the corner of Thirteenth. The sound of a car passing on Eight Avenue. Even the Empire, lit with red and green, seems deserted. I go back. I have to face her.

  I ring the bell and wait. His name still on the door. Robert Tansey. RIP Robert Tansey. A garbage bag moves in the doorway and I leap back looking for a rat. A hand touches my knee and a frail voice asks for change. I stare down at the darkness. The smallest I have is a ten. Have a good day, says the voice. Music from the top of the stairs. I decide to use the key. A black man, immaculately dressed in a black suit meets me at the top of the stairs. The hallway has a new smell. Ray Charles singing with that smile of his.

  —How can I help you?

  —You can’t.

  —You rang my bell.

  I stop on the stairwell and look at the man and point past him at the open door.

  —I rang that bell.

  —Right. You rang my bell.

  I try to look beyond him into the apartment.

  —How did you get in here, Sir?

  I hold up the key, a black man and a white man facing each other. America’s defeat.

  —You have a key to my apartment?

  His blackness soaks into me. He appraises me a second longer.

  —Just a minute, Sir.

  He closes the door quietly. Suddenly her absence is apparent. She is gone. The apartment as it was flashes through my mind, the bed up against the window, the scattered books, the night I awoke to her watching the video of her wedding, the first time I was making tea and reaching for the blue jug with sugar in it. I run down the stairs and out into the street, I run until I am breathless at Thirteenth Street.

  I think of Kahlo dying on the veterinary table and my crack afterwards about the N word and wonder if she rented it to the black as a last joke. Gerry might know where she is. I phone from the street. No answer there. No one will be around. Bill. Bill might be in town. Bingo. Bingo Bill. I ring information to find somewhere to rent a car. It takes twenty minutes in this 24/7 city to find somewhere that can rent me a car. I have to take the train from Grand Central to White Plains.

  People want to help, that is part of the problem. We are insane, all of us. I feel insanity flowing through my veins, the insanity of being human. The painter living in the Baird house. That was what she was and happy in it. She needs nothing from the world, the purest form of madness. Then there are those on the periphery of it, those who sit and drink on porches. They are close to it, feel it in the July heat, smell it in the corn, hear it in the clacking of the corn leaves but they do nothing, they neither welcome it nor dismiss it, they sit paralysed with their own awareness.

  I was raised on lies. There are none more powerful than the lies of the mother. My mother’s lies were as natural as her milk. She lied about everything. It was her nature. Fear made her lie, and cunning made her successful at it. She never hid her lies from me; I was her conscience as she was the conscience of her mother. She didn’t like her daughter, Ruth. She preferred the company of men, unlike most women. She knew Ruth would grow into a woman she could not trust but she knew my loyalty was unshakable. The blind trust of the son. I was seven when I saw her come out of the Carlton cinema with the man. I was on the mitch from school. She looked happy. I didn’t understand why she was coming out of the pictures with a strange man but I thought of my father at work reaching into a corner to finish a ceiling. I knew it was wrong and I knew not to say anything. I had no mother from that day on. I looked at her like she was a movie star, observing her. I watched her live an automatic life at home. I watched her work and talk. My mother talked endlessly. But she was not living in our home, she was acting a life she had constructed and it was flawless. I never hated my father for his stupidity but I couldn’t feel sorry for him either. Without bitterness, I felt he was living the life he deserved. I learned the value of silence and observation. Rarely is there a need to ask questions. Words can say whatever they like but bodies can’t, bodies can never lie with any conviction.

  I was sure my mother would be caught, or that she would be killed in an accident but that didn’t happen. She simply left. I remember hearing the famous story of the woman on the radio saying her husband went out for cigarettes one night and didn’t come back. I didn’t believe her, it’s one of those stories that exist forever. The woman was in love with her story, in love with the rejection. My mother didn’t smoke. She just left. I was sure, too, that my father would meet someone right away. Men don’t like to be alone. They always meet someone. He didn’t. He just kept working and Muriel helped with us. He never lied to us. She isn’t coming back I don’t think, he said, but I’m not sure. We’ll just get on as we are. There was a programme on the telly my mother liked called Quicksilver. I loved watching it with her. The man who did the program was called Bunny Carr and my mother said he looked like a rabbit. He didn’t but she knew it made me laugh. Give yer man a carrot will ya, she would say. Jaysus, RTE must pick out the most stupid cunts in the country for that quiz, they never have to give much away. Coinín Gluaisteán she called him. I always thought she would write me a letter. Dear Stephen, you understand. I know you know about the world and you know about your own mother and it doesn’t matter about the rest of them.

  She wrote no letter. She thought I was as stupid as the rest of them. Women work on the assumption that all men want is a fuck and that listening to men and nodding at men is enough. But I could see through women and had none of it, none of the learned ignorance, the convenient confusions they propagate.

  My father painting. I was devoted to him. The grace of him on a ladder, reaching up to dab paint into a cornice. There was always the right amount of paint on the brush. I would foot the ladder for hours watching him, waiting for a drip to fall from the hairs of the brush. Drip, I would say on the few times it happened. I didn’t know the word perfection but perfection describes his work. He measured a room for wallpaper simply by walking into it, and when he papered it he only ever measured once with the first length, then he would cut the rest with the large scissors without even looking at what he was doing. It was as if everything was in his fingertips and not his eyes. Ruth didn’t see the work he did with his brushes. He used wallpaper and paint to cover ugliness in the way my mother used lies.

  * * *

  I am the last one to drive onto the ferry. There’s a salty freshness in the air; it seems hard to imagine it’s still New York I’m breathing. A loud colourful crowd playing Frisbee. Another crowd playing croquet. Everyone seems to know everyone else. Adirondacks scattered on the sloping lawn like tired swans. A redhead threatens to throw the Frisbee to me and I turn away b
efore her gaiety forces me to join them. I sit and watch, memories of customers running through my mind. That Jewish woman who kept changing the colours just so she could devour Gerry with her eyes for an extra couple of days. A waiter asks what I’d like. A bucket of stout, if you’re paying, Muriel used to say. Wine glasses stand on the arms of the abandoned chairs. Too hot for wine.

  —Lemonade. No ice.

  Each choice is a battle. Why New York is impossible. I regret the prospect of the lemonade. I could handle a vodka. For the sake of calmness. He comes with the drink.

  —What is so difficult about remembering lemonade with no ice?

  The waiter nods without apology.

  —Tell you what: why don’t you trot back and bring me a Pimm’s cup.

  —Ice?

  His voice is friendly, his expression unreadable. I can do nothing but admire his polite rudeness.

  —It always has ice.

  I look away. I hate this kind of money, people on the edge of the really big money. I regret coming. A hammock is swinging between the trees. A woman’s leg trailing to the ground. A Silver shoe at the end of a slim leg. Fireworks go off suddenly but she doesn’t move. I scoop the ice out of the lemonade and take a gulp. A young child spread-eagled on her chest. She scratches his back and he giggles. His head hides her face from view. He giggles again. The ruby ring on the finger. I swallow the rest of the lemonade. I feel caught, naked. Florent has teamed with the redhead in croquet. He laughs too much. He waves a welcome to me as if he only saw me the day before yesterday. The weekend is elaborate foreplay for him. As soon as the waiter comes with the Pimm’s I take the drink wordlessly and walk away, over to her. Halfway over to her I shout back to the waiter, Hey. Good Pimm’s, more as a warning to her than as an apology to him.

  I stand between her and the sun, my shadow falling across them. The child lifts his head and scowls at me. She smiles, as if she knew I was coming.

  —Have you noticed the grass is so green here? Shamrock green. Emerald green. Paddy green. Green as the Irish themselves green. Take a seat.

  The playfulness of her tone is so disarming that I almost believe she has expected me to arrive at this very moment, as if everything has been leading to this. I sit in the adirondack beside them.

  —Coleman and I were just discussing that, weren’t we?

  Coleman, child runt, nods his skinny head resentfully.

  —There are only two homes on the island to ignore the summer drought laws. The guy who owns Victoria’s Secret and our host. What does that tell you?

  —People come here to feel decadent without having to actually do anything. Fallout from the AIDS generation.

  —Concise and comprehensive. Who knew? Thanks for the explanation, Stevie.

  —How are you?

  —I’d love a cigarette.

  I take my jacket off and take a cigarette out of the pocket.

  —Ugh. Not Parliaments.

  I put the cigarettes back in my pocket and drape the jacket over the arm of the chair.

  —It was a joke, Stevie. Remember irony.

  —Sister of bitterness?

  She smiles and tickles Coleman. He giggles into her neck. She picks up my jacket and takes out my cigarettes. She caresses the fabric of the jacket and nods approvingly. She taps the cigarette box on the child’s head and takes one out. I try again.

  —So. How have you been doing?

  —I’ve been doing. Y’know, New York. You have to keep doing. How have you been doing? Sorry about your sunburn.

  —One layer burns off and another appears. You know the way I am.

  —No. I have no idea the way you are.

  Coleman tugs at her.

  —Can we go for a ride in your car Auntie?

  —Coleman, why don’t you go and see how long you can hold your breath in the pool?

  She glares at me and clings to the child. Auntie. I wonder is he related, if her family are here. I didn’t even know she had a nephew.

  —Go away, handsome.

  —You left Gansevoort Street?

  —This is true.

  She looks at me, waiting for me to go. I wait. Silence was always the best question with her.

  —It was time. Listening to the hockspit of prostitutes lost its charm. It just seemed to get complicated—living there. I’m gettin’ old kid.

  I could have had a life with her. Anyone could see that. And a decent one. She wasn’t tied to Gansevoort Street after all. She just needed to be pushed. I could have done that: opened my mouth and demanded it of her.

  —I think we will go for that ride, Coleman. Hey, Stevie, hold our hammock?

  She winks at me.

  —Chill out. Once around the park is better than nothing. Always too serious. Your stuff is boxed in Claremont if you want to pick it up. I was tempted to dump it but I couldn’t do that to the books, even your books. I told the doorman there might be some Irishman coming by one of these days.

  —In Claremont Avenue? You’re with that dealer guy?

  —Nope. I’m not with anyone. Claremont is mine sweetie.

  She smiles as she lifts him off her and swings herself out of the hammock, smiles like a chess player savouring checkmate but it makes no sense unless it is a game, as if life is some game to her. I grew up with screaming. New York is lost there and then with her walking towards the house with the child’s hand in hers.

  I sit in the car with the door open. Ruth and me sitting in the car on Dollymount strand. I have not thought of her in a long time. Maybe I have been playing a game without fully knowing it. There is a knock on the passenger window and I jump, expecting to see my dead sister. Holfy walks around to my side of the car. A reprieve. A confession that she was joking.

  —I stole your cigarettes. By accident. Good luck, Stephen. We’ll be long enough dead and gone. Live well.

  I say nothing and don’t look at her when she walks away, don’t want that to be the last image of her. I pull out the pack of cigarettes. I’ll have to stop smoking. In the cigarette box is a card with a scribbled note.

  We shall not cease from exploration

  And the end of all our exploring

  Will be to arrive where we started

  And know the place for the first time

  I close the door and start the engine. There is time still to make the five o’clock ferry.

  The apartment on Claremont Avenue is paintings and light. Nine rooms. I wander through it as if it’s a deserted film set. The boxes are in one of the back guest rooms overlooking Grant’s Tomb. I open one, then another. They are packed neatly, too neatly for her to have done it and my temper rises at the idea of some stranger filing my tastes away, fingering my life, evaluating it, drawing a picture of the personality that made these decisions. I am leaving New York, have left it already. The film is over, the theatre empty. Everyone has gone, getting on with their lives. Catholicism. No, not that, too easy to blame it all on that. There is no one watching. God’s bitter joke. Acting a life as if there is someone who cares as much as you do yourself. I phone three thrift shops but none of them will come collect. I take the elevator down and ask the doorman if he has any use for some books and clothes. He eyes me, looking for the catch. Explain it’s either that or the trash can, none of it’s going to Ireland.

  * * *

  Getting off the train at Crewe I walk over to the timetable to see what time the connection to Cardiff is and laugh out loud when I realise Crewe is not in Wales. I had promised my father I’d never set foot on English soil. He’ll forgive the accident. I have to speak to her, to lay eyes upon her. Too long have I run from it. I imagine what every abandoned child must imagine, I imagine the conversation. The confrontation, the reconciliation, the settling of the score, the rejection, the emptiness when nothing comes of it.

  On the connecting train I stare out the window to see signs of England fading and at last glimpse a motorway sign in both English and Welsh, a reminder that like Ireland, England has conquered but lost, that t
ribes outlive their oppressors.

  Cardiff is full of rugby fans, drunk and singing. I get a room in a small B&B only when the owner is certain I’m not a rugby fan. Mr. Parker tells me I’m far too late for supper but recommends a local pub. I walk down the street and find the bright depressing place and have a pint and a sandwich. I go home and sleep well with the tiredness of the journey in me. In the morning I get up and go and buy a map of Cardiff. I could ask Mr. Parker but his friendliness decides me against it. Too many questions. I have the address, it’s only a matter of finding it. I decide against a taxi, wanting instead to walk, to feel the streets she has walked for over thirty years without us. I expect to meet her every time I turn a corner. The house in on a decent street and my heart lifts that she hasn’t fallen back into the poverty that she climbed out of with my father; then disgust. She has done well, lives comfortably, happy all these years without us. It’s a terraced house, small garden full of flowers. I hope she answers the door so I won’t have to deal with him, hope he answers the door so I’ll get to see what was so much more attractive than her family. I will ask for her by her first name if he answers, be as casual as possible.

  I push in the iron gate, close it behind me, stand on their welcome mat, stare at the door, breathe deeply, look around to see if anyone is watching but the street is empty. They’re all either at the rugby or watching it on television. Maybe he is at it, a big-bellied Welshman cheering his team. I lift the door knocker and rap gently and then see the doorbell. I stand back, waiting. Footsteps on a hard floor. The door opens and a man looks at me smiling. He is plain but gentle looking. Unimpressive. About sixty. Full head of grey hair.