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My Coney Island Baby

Page 11

by Billy O'Callaghan


  She felt no pride in her selfishness. And even if what she and Michael were doing was more than merely selfish then that was still how she saw it. Then and still. Even with other elements factored in, and even after years of trawling for new angles of reasoning.

  The first full day she and Michael spent together, she had undressed from deep within a trance. The drinking and dancing were part of the night before, and Michael, perhaps sensing the magnitude of her fragility, was gentle. He held her beside the bed and they kissed standing up, with a depth of concentration, slowly conquering their initial terror. The curtains were drawn so that their nakedness could feel easy, but it was a morning still shy of noon in late summer and the sun was blazing, and the pleated off-white polyester was too thin to make any kind of stoppable difference to the impact of the day. He kissed her mouth and then her neck, taking his time, studying her face on one side from the centre of her chin to the small tight lobe of her ear, because it was all new, every taste and texture. Between connections, the whispered press of his breath lay hot on her skin against the wetness he’d caused, and he returned again and again to her right ear and was careful with it, following the whorls of cartilage with the point of his tongue, taking its rim, its lobe between his teeth, pinching little dimples into its pulpy flesh. She could feel his fascination as a thing of genuine wonder, even awe, and it made her smile. And while his mouth worked with passion, his hands were far more considerate, caressing and savouring her small breasts, tracing a swathe down over her ribcage to her hips. Educating himself to every nuance of a body still at that age good for long miles. When he moved her to the bed and stood a moment over her, appetite brightening his face as she lay down, she stretched out and, so suddenly exposed, shuddered with a shock of fear and excitement. Her breath felt slight inside her, reedy in her throat, like whispered laughter.

  That first time had the sense of something sacred. Their bodies were freshly discovered landscapes, lush with ridges and undulations, dense from inch to inch with secrets. She clasped him in a kind of half-embrace as he bored against her, and she found his flesh slick and smooth as wet glass when her hands ran down into the sweep at the small of his back. She mouthed her love somewhere in the midst of things, but he waited until he had crawled clear of her and lay exhausted at her side. So that it would mean more and so that they had only open ground between them. There was nothing like it, and he said as much, sighing the words long and soft in the shattered aftermath. Stunned to staring, having been knocked whole seconds out of sync with the world. And she stared too, and smiled, believing him, recognising the absolute quality of his truth. The room sweltered, and in the tamped light her skin shone with his sweat and her own and her eyes sparkled silver.

  Yet as precious as they might have been, it wasn’t just the collisions that mattered. When apart, they each felt famished for the other, for the details of one another’s existence, and on the days they came together, even the smallest morsels of revelation were savoured. He told her about his job and the ups and downs of selling, and she spoke of her writing and the things she hoped, one day, to achieve. Not awards or prizes or great wealth, but in terms of work. She had ideas, and ambition. He didn’t. His job was becoming more and more a torment, but work paid the bills, and ensured survival. And where he came from, that mattered above all else. Until he met her, he was the living dead, and the only time he wanted to be himself instead of someone else, anyone else, was when she stepped into his day. Then, magic happened. As if they were sixteen again, they discussed their tastes in music, books, films, food, their favourite everything, colour, smell, places to see, time of day, time of year. Because they’d agreed right from the beginning not to look forward or to make plans that couldn’t be kept, their pasts felt emphasised. While walking the pier, especially during the fine months of late spring and summer, Caitlin would often recall the Coney Island of her childhood and teens, the times when she persuaded Madge, or Madge and Pete, to bring her out, or when, later, she came in the company of friends from school. She’d remember aloud the heat, the pickle-and-mustard sweetness of the hot dogs, the music, the noise, the screams and laughter of the crowds. The happiness. Michael would hold her hand and smile, trying to imagine how it must have been, and what she’d been like, so young in the sunshine, splashing around in the cold lit water, building castles in the sand and running just to run. His own past felt so much further removed, which gave the sharing a greater intimacy, and he’d wait until they were locked safely in some room and the world was simply them before opening up. She’d lie in his arms or with her cheek against his chest when he talked about Ireland, and his island, Inishbofin, such a world away from here that it might never have existed at all outside of dreams but in fact was there still in its details whenever he reached out for it. Inishbofin, a crop of land caught hard and stubborn as a nutshell somewhere in between the folds of open sea and huge, relentless sky, and the place he still knew better than anywhere else on earth, despite his years apart from it and the manner of his leaving. Because of the restless light, a place of uncertain colour, not just the expected shades of grass or water but reds and yellows and all sorts of inlaid others, smears running one into the next like something escaped from a frame, scarring the scene in wild hillside tartan. Every time he spoke, a new suggestion made the surface, a detail long forgotten, inconsequential in itself except that it had happened, and that it belonged to him.

  Speaking like this gave their silences an astonishing weight, because neither one of them had ever been so willingly undone. They’d look at one another with embarrassment, and with gratitude, for telling and listening, and for each wanting so much those pieces of the other’s life.

  When together, they felt absolutely right, but the empty spaces between held a lot of room for questions. Caitlin liked to indulge negative fantasies, finding something delicious in that suffering, as if by telling herself lies she could somehow heighten the truth, and she enjoyed the stab of guilt when, maybe during their next date, Michael would pass some remark, or make some small gesture, that couldn’t fail to clarify his feelings. Like the day he produced a copy of the journal that had just issued her most recent story, ‘Reserves’, her fourth published work, and holding up a cheap ballpoint pen asked her to autograph it for him. She had already received a copy by mail, but the thrill of being presented with it so unexpectedly, and in such an alien setting, was immense. That he’d gone to the effort of actually tracking her work made her want to cry. She rolled naked onto her stomach, leafed through the journal and admired again the fine heavy-grade paper, elegant font choice and cover design. She found her own story about a third of the way in and read a few sentences from a random paragraph, seeking the tune of their music.

  He wore a zebra-patterned zoot suit and burgundy-colored stove-pipe hat even on his days off, boasted a permanent gap-toothed grin, and spoke a lot about what was important and what was not. He himself was Canadian born, he said, twisting the waxed handlebars of a long drooping mustache in some imagined time to the words. He had grown up in a small, cold town in the mountains, and his ancestry was a succulent melting pot of Irish, French and Scots, spiced with delicate infusions of Ojibwa and Cree.

  Taken without context, these were the words of a stranger. She remembered writing them, and rewriting them, working them for pace and rhythm, but dislocated from their plot line they did not feel part of her. Yet there was pleasure in knowing that she had written them, and that Michael had cared enough to seek them out. He lay beside her, teasing a hand over her body, allowing his touch to linger along the backs and insides of her thighs, and again at the swell of her ass. He seemed hypnotised by what he was doing, which made her smile and then laugh. She thumbed in a leisurely fashion through the journal, then with an exaggerated seriousness reached for the pen and hurried her signature onto the white space above the story’s title. Autographs were something new to her. As a child she had filled the back pages of school workbooks with efforts at her signature, veering
, frequently in a single attempt, between delicate spools and great florid sweeps, working always and ever towards illegibility, the generally accepted criteria for a truly impressive mark. But that was a long time ago, before cowardice set in. What she put on the page now was far more measured: To Michael, the best always, Caitlin ——. Simple and aloof, but implying more to a knowing eye. He took the journal and happily read what she had written, understanding without need for explanation, then thanked her with the sort of kiss that can’t tell lies.

  Almost from the beginning, she knew this for what it was. Michael let her feel; with him, she existed at a different height. The sex was part of the reason, but so was the way he’d look at her, with a bite of his lip pinched between his teeth and his stone-blue eyes transfixed, and how they were with one another, walking the pier, especially in summertime, swapping small talk, taking turns chewing on shared hot dogs or slices of pizza, certain without ever saying as much that they’d live for ever, and that they’d always be this happy. Once, out on the boardwalk, her shoelace had come undone, causing her to stumble against him. He’d caught her, then stooped to tie the lace. She tousled his hair, and while still on his knee he took her hand in both of his and offered a pleading proposal. Passers-by stopped and applauded her impassioned affirmative, and cheered the following embrace, assuming in their innocence that what they were witnessing was real. Michael laughed and kissed her, and for those few seconds she believed too, because promises become lies only when they fall short of their intention, and that day neither one of them had ever felt so young, or so happy or full of life. For those seconds of a summer’s afternoon, easy in one another’s arms, they were entirely who they wanted and needed to be.

  Sometimes it seems unclear which of her two lives is the greater reality. Once she has slipped back into her homely skin, the afternoons spent with Michael, heightened by their rationing, take on the sensations of a dream. Against their memory, the world feels staid, and empty.

  She floats through her days, her mind lacking focus. The sight of Thomas awakens her guilt, but in a pleasurable way, and she often indulges in fantasies of confession, playing it out as it might one day happen, even knowing that it never will. Dropping the news over dinner, maybe, trying to soften the bombshell to merely atomic level with just the right tone of contrition and, in an effort to avoid potential tragedy, putting nothing with bones on the plate, favouring instead the bulk comfort of a mutton stew or spaghetti bolognese, soft dense food that demands deep breaths and wholehearted endeavour. Or, if the kitchen table should feel too exposed for such revelation, targeting those few still minutes in bed after the alarm has rung them back to life, to inform him that they are lost to one another. Telling him what he surely already knows but putting it all into words so that there can be no further room for denial. A clearing of the throat, and a whisper, ‘I’ve met someone else,’ filling the holes left by dreams. Adding that she is sorry, as the silence turns blue, needing that said, even while each word from her mouth wrecks him like an axe wound. Because she is sorry, and always will be, though only for causing him hurt. She doesn’t have it in her to be sorry for the rest, because that’s to do with need. Her heart has earned its coldness. And in her fantasy she lies there beside him, not oblivious to his pain but out of determination untouched by it, focusing mainly on the tide of her own breath and waiting for the moment when she’ll have to look up, just to know for certain that her words have impacted and, if they have, to witness the full clout of his anguish.

  For a long time, leaving actually seemed possible. But the opportunities that arrived didn’t linger. She knew what to say, but couldn’t speak the words. And she suffered. The facts were less certain than the fantasy, because hers was only one side of the tale. Right from the beginning, she and Michael only ever talked of other things, not this. And there had to be collusion before either one of them could risk so much as a stick of the homes they’d built. Her frame held itself constantly open to a bullet or a blow, but she endured because of her faith in a good ending, and because she could convince herself easily enough that where they were then was not where they’d always have to be. But months stretched into a year, then two years, then five. Then uncountable. At some point, her writing softened and stagnated. Somewhere else along that way, other things were lost. Time blurred the edges, fires burned out.

  For Thomas, life kept pace with his expectations. All their married life he’d fought hard to keep them in comfort. He paid whenever a bill came due, and worked the long hours without complaint. Caitlin sometimes caught a giveaway hint, a stain or scent, on his shirt collar, but said nothing. Because there was nothing to say. No matter how many times it happened – and it wasn’t often but often enough to be considered a relatively regular thing – she’d feel a tuck in her heart. The first few times she’d even cried, but then a feeling of shame would overtake her and she’d drop the shirt into the wash-basket and just walk away, telling herself in such moments that at least he was being discreet, and sensible enough to commit his adulteries on the company’s clock.

  Things had rusted into place for them as a couple. Silences lasted longer between them, spaces had opened up and they often went entire days without looking one another in the eye. He worked and earned the money, and she, being the one at home, cooked and kept the place clean and tidy, and on evenings when her mood or other exertions put her down or sent her early to bed, the kitchen was always stocked with decent wine and the freezer was always full. He never complained, and most of the time, especially after the first few years, hardly seemed to even notice. Though they stopped short of an outright acknowledgement, they’d become separate people.

  One Christmas, the eighth or ninth of their marriage, he gave her a beautiful mid-sized Moleskine notebook with pages a shade of light sepia. Their lives by then were financially comfortable, but gifts never mattered much to either of them. She had the things she needed, and didn’t care for the flattery of necklaces and bracelets. The notebook was a token, something to place beneath the Christmas tree alongside the wallet or the tie that she’d wrapped for him.

  ‘Put one of your stories in it,’ he’d said, when he picked up on the vagueness of her expression.

  She had held the notebook clutched to her chest for several minutes, standing beside the lit tree and gazing out through the window. Snow was falling without hurry on the frozen street, the morning had the twilit heft of chimney smoke, and nothing moved in the world except for the air. In two years she hadn’t written so much as a single sentence. That part of who she was had run dry. For a time she’d fought the inevitable, but it was like singing into the wind. She stared into the falling snow and wondered if this was his sweet way of trying to prompt her back into the game, if he’d noticed what was off about her, the firmness gone from her gait, the loss of the tensile strength that had always so gripped her and battened her down when she was in fullest flow. But even as she considered this, she knew it to be false. She doubted that he could remember the last time she’d given him anything of hers, published or otherwise, to read. In his mind, writing was the stuff of hobby, the way all art was, and sport, and anything else that didn’t matter one heartbeat to his physical existence, and he indulged her in the same way he’d have indulged her taking up origami or violin lessons or learning to speak Urdu.

  His values fit in neat rows. Order matters, or the impression of order, and how you are perceived by the world at large. He is stubborn and single-minded, a sensible, pragmatic, practical man, generous within reason but blind as death to anything set even an inch the wrong side of necessary.

  ‘We might be moving,’ he said, one morning ten days or so ago. He’d just drained the last of his coffee and had straightened out the folds in the pages of the newspaper so that it could again appear as new. Part of his routine, the ritual of getting ready to leave for work. ‘Illinois.’

  She’d just looked at him. The rumour had been in the air a while, though always until now in too flimsy a way to
be properly contemplated.

  ‘Peoria. Nothing is certain yet, of course. But it could be great for us. It means a big promotion, with a nice bump in salary. And money goes a lot further out there than it does in New York. Peoria’s a small city, about three hours from Chicago. We’ll buy a house, a nice place. We’ll be well set up. The talk is that I stand a good chance, but nothing has been decided yet. I expect to know one way or the other in the next couple of weeks. If it does happen, though, it’ll probably come down pretty fast.’

  He stood from his place at the table then, and his gaze fell past her to the window beyond, and the dim morning cracking open outside. In his suit, with his chin raised a little, and in the kitchen’s raw electric light, he looked handsome, young somehow, a reminder of the man, the boy, she’d married. Spared a glimpse of her own reflection, Caitlin imagined herself at that young age, too, with everything before her, a life yet to be spent. All her mistakes not yet made. The room around them felt as still as a piece of art, with the details as they have always been, and it seemed impossible that the world beneath their feet was turning, and not only turning but spinning wild and hard. He remained in that position for a long moment, frozen into his own past, then nodded his head once, to himself, and left the room, saying his goodbye only when the front door was open in his hand and even then just calling the words back at her, throwing them down behind himself as an afterthought. The door clicked shut before she could raise a response.

 

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