"Momma, I'm just about ready to tell God to carry his own sack of groceries. And if Dad hits you again, I'd suggest you do the same. I just don't give a cold-assed damn about that chunk of theological bullshit."
"Jo!"
"Sorry, Momma, but that's the way it is. I've had it. She's your crazy daughter, not mine."
Jo bit off her next words and hung up. She stared at the instrument, sitting all innocent on the kitchen counter. You could talk all you want, but that didn't mean you'd communicate. It was the main reason why she only talked to her mother about once a month--a kind of predictable catharsis.
Sometimes she thought Momma's delusions seemed worse than Maureen's. Married since seventeen to a drunken, abusive brute who cheated on her every chance he got, and she chewed out Jo for insisting on a test-drive before she got serious about a new man. Hell, Dad was probably at the root of half of Maureen's troubles. "Man" equaled "Pain."
And all that treatment their parents had paid for was private, the soul of discretion, no records without a court order. It left nothing to show up on a background check. The little twit could lie when she went for her gun permit.
God.
Jo shook her head. She wouldn't kick her baby sister out. She couldn't. Stone-ass crazy or not, Maureen was the only family Jo cared about. Some ways, Mo was still the five-year-old redheaded mirror with smudged cheeks and scraped knees climbing trees and babbling about what the wind in the leaves was telling her. She was still the warm body sitting snuggled up against her older sister while Grandpa told stories he had heard from his grandpa, the scared voice in the darkness during thunderstorms when they had shared a room. Maureen just never grew up.
The hell of it was, between these "episodes" they got along as well as sisters ever did. Some of Maureen's spaced-out fantasy world might even be fun. Not the part that had her carrying a gun, or the part that called a phallus a torture instrument. Jo didn't have a clue where those came from.
They had come early, she knew, pre-puberty. 'Way back as far as Buddy Johnson. Whenever Jo brought a boy home, Maureen would cringe away. That fear went back as far as Jo's enthusiasm the other way.
But Jo thought she wouldn't mind a world in which the trees talked, in which Grandpa O'Brian's Bean Sidhe howled for the death of a wicked chieftain, in which the Puca drummed his hooves three times on the hillside and a door opened down into the realm of the fairies. It sounded like a nice place to visit.
And the Lurikeen's everlasting pot of gold would be useful as hell.
Fat chance of that. Well, maybe little Mo could just vanish under the Sidhe hill for a night and come back ten years later. Cured. As much as Jo loved her sister, some problems didn't have acceptable solutions.
Others did. She picked up the phone again.
Five rings, and a groggy voice answered. A groggy, male voice, grunting, and she felt warm all over.
"David?"
"Uh."
"What the hell you doing still in bed?"
"Gotta sleep sometime."
"I didn't get any more sleep than you did and I'm up. Put in a full day at the office, even."
"Um. Takes more out of a man. We give out, you take in. Hard work."
"Look, Maureen's pissed."
"Wha' about?"
"Us. Last night. She still thinks I stole you from her."
"Got no cause. Why last night? Not our first time."
"Wake up, damn you. Maureen's funny that way, you've got to rub her nose in it about five times. She still hoped you were coming over to see her."
Sounds of movement came over the phone: a crash of something knocked over, muttered cussing, a few coughs. Homo sapiens became vertical on the far end of the line. It had taken the human race a million years or so. There was no reason to expect it would get easier on a daily basis.
"Jo, let me get my head together. Your sister thought I used to be interested in her?"
"The man is slow, but it sinks in after a while. Now she's throwing things and foaming at the mouth. You got any suggestions?"
"Jesus."
"He ain't available. Try again."
The phone line crackled, and this time it wasn't long distance. The noise had to be in the local system--Alexander Bell must have installed the damned wires himself, back in 1883. And done a lousy job of it.
"Jo, I swear I never gave her cause. We talked music and Irish legends. Closest I ever got to her was touching her hand across the table."
Jo sighed. "You don't know Maureen. Holding hands is the equivalent of unprotected sex, to her. I'm surprised she didn't ask you for a blood test. She's scared of men."
"Oh, lord."
She listened to line noise for a minute, wondering if David was calculating the genetic odds on hereditary insanity passed to any hypothetical children of any hypothetical future union of the Marx and Pierce bloodlines. He wouldn't be the first man scared off by exposure to her crazy sister. Mental illness had to be about the worst skeleton you could find in any family closet.
Used to be, people kept their skeletons locked up decently in an asylum. Jo had to live with hers.
"Jo?"
"Right here."
"Look, I'm not going to give up seeing you just because your sister's screwed up. We can't sleep together over here, five guys living in an open loft. I don't think you're interested in that big an audience."
She giggled. "I don't know. Performance art is big these days. Maybe we could sell tickets."
"Bullshit. Jo, I'll talk to her, try to smooth it over. Look, we've got a gig tonight, down at The Cave. Why don't both of you come over and we can sit out a set. Tell her it's not her fault, not your fault, not anybody's fault. She might not throw a scene in public. Look, she's a nice kid, but I'm not interested in hauling that kind of baggage around for the rest of my life."
"You and me both, lover. You and me both." She swallowed the rest of her comments. "I'll try. Maureen's not all that rational."
"I'd noticed. See you tonight. Manim astheee hu."
"Yeah, and my soul's within yours, too. Cut the blarney, you fake Irishman. You know ten words of Gaelic, and five of those are mispronounced. Damn good thing Dé hAoine doesn't ask you to sing for them."
"Hey, Marx is a fine old name of ancient Eiru. The group just doesn't ask me to sing 'cause they're jealous of my voice."
"Like I'm jealous of Maureen's way with men."
Jo hung up and stared at the phone again. She felt warm just from talking to him. Maybe David was The One.
She thought The Cave was a good suggestion. It called itself chemical-free, which was a euphemism for drug-free, which was a euphemism for alcohol and tobacco free. God knows, they served coffee. She could use a little of that particular psychoactive alkaloid right now.
She'd made fun of David, still asleep at four in the afternoon, but she felt drained. And a little sore in assorted private places. And very, very happy with some portions of her life.
So what if Maureen was mad? Mad Maureen was mad. It had a certain symmetry.
The phone bleeped, quietly, an electronic purr intruding into her thoughts. It was probably Mom calling back, not about to let her own daughter get in the last word of an argument. Either that, or one of those click-and-an-empty-line calls she guessed was a computerized dialer that had hooked another fish first. Screw Verizon.
That was an interesting thought. God knows, they were phallic enough, with all those thousands of telephone poles.
The phone insisted.
"Hello?"
"Maureen?"
"No, this is Jo. Maureen's out, right now. Can I take a message?"
"Uh, this is Brian, Brian Albion. I walked her home last night, and I wanted to check to see everything was okay. She wasn't feeling well when I left."
Jo filled in the words he didn't say. Like, she was stone drunk, and he wasn't sure she could find the pot.
"You the guy who told her how to fix her Toyota?"
"Yeah. When a car like that refuses to star
t in wet weather, it's usually the ignition."
He sounded saner than she'd figured, from Maureen's rant. So much for witches and warlocks.
"Well, you were right. She's out driving it now."
Jo paused, gears starting to mesh and turn in her head.
"She won't be back for an hour or so, I guess. She really didn't say. Give me your number and I'll tell her you called."
"Uh, I'm going out again. Maybe I'll call back later."
Meaning he didn't have a phone and was calling from the bus station. Or was married. Jo's sixth sense about men kicked in. She'd heard that one before. Still, he could serve as a diversion.
"Try about six or six-thirty. We usually eat around then, and she doesn't like to miss the news. We'll probably be going out again later."
"Okay, I'll do that. You're sure she's fine? She was acting a little strange last night."
"Brian, Maureen always acts a little strange. That's who she is. She said some nice things about you, though. That car has been a bitch."
All true statements. Thus she washed her hands of his future problems. It was time to cast a fly over the trout.
"Uh, Brian? Do you like Celtic music?"
"Yes, if it's good. More the traditional performances than the modern fusion stuff, I guess."
"So does Maureen. That's where we're going tonight, a place called The Cave. I think she wants to talk to you. Be polite and she might invite you along."
"Thanks."
She set the phone down and stared at it. Interesting. So that was a Welsh mage. He sounded like a normal human being, worse luck for him.
Jo had been raised to believe in lightning rods. Based on a random sample of Maureen's comments, this Brian character could be in for a rough evening. And it was just the sort of thing Maureen would do, meeting the poor bastard in public. The Cave could be a safe chance to sort things out.
Whatever.
That was his problem. If he came along, Maureen might not spit quite as much venom. She could calm down even faster than she blew up. Hell, supply a substitute and she might not kick and scream at her "loss" of David, might even start to realize she'd never had him in the first place. Just inviting a man back to the apartment once didn't give her ownership.
Put her and this Brian character together in a public place, Maureen would probably act normal. Jo had seen it happen before. The paranoia seemed to be a one-on-one thing.
And maybe the magic of the fairies would work where modern psychiatric medicine fell short. A man who could faith-heal a Toyota might sort out the tangled web of Maureen's brain.
Or maybe he was just as far around the corner and would never notice.
Whatever.
If they could ever get Maureen's head sorted out, the next question was cutting back on her drinking. God help her if they tried to work on both at once.
One problem at a time.
She couldn't throw Maureen out. It would be like kicking a puppy.
A puppy with a .38 Special.
Chapter Seven
Dé hAoine. It meant Friday in Irish Gaelic. Brian thought it wasn't a bad name for a Celtic garage band. The group's lead singer had explained it in his opening spiel: Friday had been the only night the band could practice when they'd first started playing together, so the name just sort of stuck--the Friday group.
The Cave was also a fitting name. He'd done a bit of recon after Maureen's terse agreement to meet him here, checking on exits and security. The club was a barn of a place, an old storefront right off the streamside parking lot behind the post office. It smelled musty, like it probably got a bit wet at spring high water. The dominant theme was black: black walls, black ceiling of exposed steel joists and concrete, black carpet, black tables and chairs and snack-bar. They'd even slapped black paint on the outsides of the pinball machines and pool tables in the game-room. The interior decorator hadn't spent a hell of a lot of time on the color schedule.
Apparently it was mostly a teen dance-club, with huge speakers and disco lights hung by chains from the ceiling and a control room that would have done credit to a recording studio. Brian could almost smell the raging hormones over his coffee. However, tonight was an older crowd and much quieter: Dé hAoine was acoustic.
He hoped Maureen would be as quiet. She radiated tension. He tried to guess the cause, between her glares at her sister and a guitar player in the band, and the way she bared her teeth at him in a parody of a smile.
Touchy. She made him think of sweating dynamite.
The fiddle finished a run, was answered by the penny whistle and the rattling thud of a bass bodhrán. The group seemed competent enough. With a little more practice, they could move out of the basements and get some real crowds. They still had some rough edges here and there, but what they really needed was a different singer. His voice was good enough, but the accent was pure Downeast Maine. Each time he stepped up to the mike, he spoiled the illusion of a Dublin pub.
"Grá mo chroí mó cruiscín,
"Sliante geal mo mhuarnin,
"Grá mo chroí mó cruiscín lán, lán, lán,
"Grá mo chroí mó cruiscín lán."
The music lilted along, innocent enough if you didn't understand enough Gaelic to know it was a man singing a love-song to his jug. Brian guessed that covered at least nine out of ten in the audience. He didn't know about Maureen, or that peculiar twin image of her she claimed was her older sister.
He spent the next verse studying the two of them. They made a living case study in how actresses turned chameleon in different roles: no single detail of one differed from the other, but the sum made two totally distinct people. It all lay in their body language.
Jo confirmed his snap judgement that Maureen could be beautiful if she tried. Clothes hung differently on Jo's body, even though they were close to duplicates of Maureen's casual sweater and jeans. The red curls of Jo's hair perfectly framed her face, and whatever make-up she used merely accented those startling green eyes, so deep you could drown in them. Her blend of perfume and natural smell said "sex" to any male nose, human or otherwise, within ten paces.
Her stance, whether moving, standing, or sitting still, said "I am desirable. Look at me." Whether she knew of her blood or not, she definitely was certain of her power.
And every time Maureen caught Brian staring, her face drew even tighter.
Brian swore under his breath. He was much more interested in Maureen than Jo, but that message wasn't sinking in. Besides, Jo was also wearing a sign that read, "This seat is taken." She liked being admired, but she'd found the man she wanted. Maureen couldn't seem to read the signals.
What Maureen seemed to be certain of was her anger. Brian sensed they were actors reading from different scripts. Was her move last night a "go away closer" and he misread it? Not bloody likely; she'd looked physically ill. Was there something between her and her sister and that guitarist?
Dé hAoine finished "Cruiscín Lán" with a flourish and swapped instruments during the applause that followed. Instead of plunging straight into the next number, the lead stepped up and waved at a corner of the cellar.
"We've got something extra for you tonight. Adam Lester's in the audience, and we twisted his arm to sit in for one number. Many of you know him more as a blues-man, but he can make magic out of anything. He gave us the honor of backing him on a couple of cuts of his latest album. If you'll forgive the crass commercialism, I'd suggest you buy it. We need the money."
With the blues reference, Brian expected something along the lines of a big man as black as midnight and showing chain-gang scars on his wrists. He blinked when a skinny white stood up and strode forward, leaving a heavyset black woman behind at his table. The man wore dark sunglasses even in the murk of The Cave. Was he blind? Couldn't be, he moved through the crowd too confidently.
The new guitarist borrowed an instrument from Jo's boyfriend and ran a few exploratory riffs up and down the neck, then nodded at the fiddle. He set a beat by tapping his toe a
nd launched a stream of notes, fingerpicking and sliding with a grace beyond belief.
The fiddle chased him and pounced, and then the two instruments rolled around like a pair of kittens playing with a catnip mouse. A flute joined in, and the ball of fur turned into a rambunctious reel, one Brian had never heard before. And then the deep booming of the drum nipped one of them on the tail, and it leaped up and turned a backflip before diving back into the music.
Music as play. Music alive.
Brian glanced across the table and read peace and joy on Maureen's face, a transformation as brilliant as afternoon sun through the windows of Chartres cathedral. God, thought Brian. If the music means this much to her, I'm not just going to buy the record, I'm going to buy her a system to play it on and a house to keep the system in.
The beat increased, and the instrumental runs leaped and swirled to impossible speeds and complexities. Brian's mind buzzed just following it all. Playing? He couldn't imagine it. The skill was beyond comprehension.
Don't think. Don't analyze. Music is. Beauty is. Just be.
He flowed with the music, following it as it capered through the green grass of the rolling limestone plains of Ireland. He could smell peat on the wind, and the distant tang of the sea. How long it lasted, he would never know. The Little People came out and danced, and he danced with them, danced with their music, and lost all sense of time.
The music faded out of the sunlight, deeper into the shadows of the Irish forest. It slowed. It dissolved, gently, lovingly into the evening mists, and disappeared underground with the Sidhe. The drum remained, then echoes of the drum, then silence.
Brian blinked into that stunned silence. Speech would be sacrilege. Applause would be sacrilege. The priests up on the small altar-stage laid down their instruments. One of them stepped up to a microphone and shattered the crystal mood.
"Okay folks, time for a break. We'd love to get Ish up here to sing for you, but that would be a whole 'nother world. We can't compete. All we can do is thank her for the beauty she's brought into our lives and hope it helps to ease her pain."
The Summer Country Page 7
