My Coney Island Baby

by Billy O'Callaghan

  Despite everything, even with the insinuation of the cancer, she looked good. She might, as she said, have felt old, but age, at least so far, had barely touched her features. In a certain light she could still have passed for thirty, possibly even younger. But she was right on an essential fact; whatever it was that once lay between them had long since faded.

  Michael asked for another beer. Barb thought about taking a third drink but decided against it. Mrs Wong came to the table and poured the beer, then emptied the bottle’s remainder into an unused wine glass. Simple problems have simple solutions, she said, showing little yellowish pebbles of teeth and resting a hand lightly on Barbara’s shoulder. As usual, and as expected, taking sides. Widowed since before they’d known her, she was a simple sort of woman, old-fashioned and stoic in her manner, used to enduring. Though Barb only ever addressed her as Mrs Wong, they’d developed quite a friendship, particularly over the past two or three years, and the old woman had been to their house on more than a few occasions, as an invited guest for dinner or Sunday lunch, sometimes accompanied by her son and daughter-in-law but, more often, on her own. Now, she held the empty beer bottle by its neck and stared openly at Michael before walking away.

  He drank the beer, and Barb gazed at a point some inches left of and above his shoulder. Then abruptly she reached for the other glass. Spumes of froth feathered her upper lip. She daubed at it with her tongue, then wiped herself clean with the heel of one hand.

  ‘If it’s any consolation,’ he added, ‘I feel pretty old myself tonight.’

  The family across the room had almost finished their food, and now the children were growing restless, particularly the little boy. He kept slipping from his chair onto the floor and then clambering back up to the table. The boy’s father, serious and serene, made no attempt at chastisement. Instead, he turned, reached out for his wife’s little eggshell chin, lifted her face to an angle and kissed her again. She said something in response, quietly, the words hidden only until the music broke.

  ‘Jimmy, please. People are looking.’

  ‘So what?’ the husband, Jimmy, answered. ‘Let them look. Let them see what love looks like.’

  Playfully, she pushed him away. He leaned back from her, smiling, and raised both hands in a gesture of surrender. Then the music came again, light piano, hums of violin, the same or similar to what had already gone before.

  ‘Sweet kids,’ Barb said, half in a whisper. ‘Kids like that would keep anyone young.’

  Michael finished his beer, and counted some notes out onto the table from a small roll of fives and tens, more than enough to cover their meal, the drinks and the gratuity. Very suddenly, he’d had enough.

  ‘Say I die.’

  ‘No.’

  She came out of the en-suite bathroom, wearing just a butter-coloured bra and a pair of cerise-pink silk pyjama bottoms. He stepped out of his pants and folded them carefully into their pleats.

  ‘No. I mean, speaking hypothetically, let’s say I do.’

  ‘I know what you mean, and I mean no. I don’t want to do this.’

  She stood watching him from her side of the bed. His clothes were building a neat stack on the seat of the Canterbury that had been with them almost from the beginning of their married life, a good piece that they’d stumbled across in a Dobbs Ferry antique store while enjoying a long weekend up in Westchester, and bought as a restoration project for Barbara, who at that time was looking to take up a new hobby. Eventually, because an amateur hand could achieve only so much before real expertise was called for, the Canterbury ran them some significant cash, probably double the chair’s most generous valuation estimate, but the quality and age of the piece warranted the investment, and they’d never had cause to regret the outlay.

  ‘Well, has it occurred to you that maybe I want to do it? That maybe I need to? You’re involved. I know. But think about me, for once. Is that asking too much?’

  ‘I am thinking about you. It’s cancer, Barb, but you’re not going to die. So don’t torment yourself.’

  She unsnapped her bra. Her breasts slipped from the cotton cups, medium-sized and slightly elongated, bottom-heavy but still firm, still shapely for a woman of her age. Her nipples, in the lamplight, lay like muddy thumbprints against her pale flesh. Michael stared, but didn’t react.

  ‘You know, there was a time when you’d have capsized this bed to get at me. We were insatiable then. You’d come in from work and some nights we wouldn’t even make it through dinner.’

  ‘I remember,’ he said, grinning for her sake. ‘Call it the impetuosity of youth. Before the bastards ground me down.’

  There’d been no break in the rain. Over the past hour, a wind had risen, and it beat now in flaps against the side of the house. It was weather to match their mood, yet the room was comfortable and warm, the soft lighting holding the worst of the night at bay. Michael picked open his shirt, folded it with the same attention he’d given his pants, and sat into bed. But because exhaustion and sleep were not mutually exclusive, he switched on the radio, keeping the volume low. Music had a way of deterring talk, or at least letting them feel easier about saying nothing.

  On her own side of the bed, Barbara had slipped into the top piece of her pyjamas before becoming distracted by some thought or memory, and the buttons remained undone. Her face was empty as she reached for her hairbrush. Michael watched, feeling the measured cadence of the strokes that she pulled through her hair. The brushing was a ritual, and strictly unnecessary. Even in a tousled state, her bob, full to neck-length, kept its easy style. When she leaned leftward, one lapel of her top eased away from the swell of her breast and revealed her body again to him. She had become thin. He could see her ribcage in clear lines and, beneath her throat, the channel behind the prominent ridge of her clavicle. Even before she’d finished with the brush, he sat up, set the alarm clock, then lay back down and closed his eyes. It wasn’t about sleep, it was about escape.

  She cleared her throat in a soft way. ‘I might read. I’m not sure that I’ll be able to concentrate but it might help to take my mind off things.’

  He opened his eyes, then closed them again without looking at her. ‘Fine.’

  ‘You’re tired. Won’t I be disturbing you?’

  ‘It’s fine. I probably won’t get to sleep anyway.’

  The bones of his body were leaden, but his mind had again begun to churn. He knew the signs. Insomnia had marred his recent weeks and months. He drew a deep breath and waited.

  After a minute or two, he felt her climb into bed beside him. Their bodies didn’t touch, but a balance shifted. He had to struggle for calm.

  She kept a small, frequently replenished pile of magazines on her bedside locker, and she reached for one now and began to amble through the pages. He listened, as he did with the rain and the music, trying to let the whispers of the paper wash over him. Even an hour of sleep would be something. Gradually, though, curiosity set in, and he began to wonder if her particular magazine selection could be identified simply by the sheer weight in sound of the pages turning. He found himself picturing the various copies: the short yellow-trimmed squatness of the National Geographic; the airy loose-leaved swagger of Rolling Stone; Esquire, thickset and stylish but, even without wrong-stepping, not really her bag at all; the New Yorker, pitching indulgence and sophistication, in an ironic way far more her thing. He listened for clues, but all he heard was the slick rustle of paper, shuffling along at a rate which indicated that she was settling mostly for the pictures, maybe reading the captions but not much else.

  And then, eventually, she gave up trying and returned the magazines to her locker.

  He waited, with not quite bated breath, for the snap of the bedside lamp’s switch and the plunge into a deeper darkness. But nothing changed. For long seconds there was only the noise of the rain and wind outside, and in the room, the murmur of Springsteen, low but audible on the radio, singing an old song, ‘Stolen Car’.

  ‘Are we fini
shed?’ she asked, at last. Taking him by surprise.

  ‘What?’

  ‘As people, I mean. Is this all there is for us?’

  The answer was no, of course no, but suddenly it felt like such a difficult thing to say and actually mean. So he said nothing.

  ‘I still dream about him.’

  He opened his eyes but resisted the urge to move. His body was a dead weight, trapping him.

  ‘That’s natural. Don’t worry about it.’

  He cleared his throat, which helped, but only a little. The bones of her shoulders and hips could be felt through the material of her pyjamas. He knew her angles by heart even without having to reach out a hand, though a part of him suddenly ached to, just to connect again in some small way.

  She turned her head and gazed at him. ‘It doesn’t feel natural.’

  ‘Of course it is. He’s part of your life. That won’t change.’

  ‘Do you think about him?’

  ‘I don’t have to. He’s there.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Barb.’

  ‘Please, Mike. I need to hear. I need to know that it’s not just me.’

  Michael sighed. ‘At first, he was in my mind all the time. I could think about nothing else. But the world has only a limited tolerance for grief. The first year or two, he was everywhere. So I did what a lot of people do – I threw myself into my work. I cried twice a day. Honestly. It became routine. I’d feel the tears coming on and would go and lock myself in a toilet cubicle. I learned to weep in a silent way. Trial and error, but I got there. Sometimes I’d catch people watching me after I had returned to my desk, but no one ever said a word. And gradually the tears came less and less, and eventually they stopped falling altogether. But I haven’t forgotten him, I’ve never forgotten. He’s still with me, and there’s not a day goes by that I don’t miss him.’

  The space gaped between them, oppressive with insinuation. Michael wondered if she could feel it too, or if time for her had simply brought acceptance. He was unprepared for how much pain he felt at the realisation that, were he to reach out for her now, she was as likely to pull away as she was to turn in to his embrace. Or that, worse still, she’d simply lie there and bear him. Because who had given up on whom in all of this? What had always seemed so clear now felt anything but.

  Her smile in profile had a wretched shape to it, turning her haggard.

  ‘When I dream of him,’ she whispered, ‘he is nothing like I remember. Sometimes he’s a boy, sometimes a teenager. Occasionally he is a man, fully grown. It only happens a few times a year, and there’s never any kind of order or pattern to it. But it doesn’t seem to matter because I always know it’s him. He might look different, but he hasn’t changed at all. They’re just dreams, but I don’t know, they feel so real that it’s like I’m glimpsing some alternate reality. I can smell the salt and vinegar of his skin, I can hear his laughter and his breathing, always making his words a little heavy, as if he’s been running. He talks, but I never think to ask him the questions I want answered. I think I’m just happy to listen. Sometimes, his hair is thick and a little wild, and when I touch his arm or shoulder his body feels as strong and hard as a tree. In the dreams, it’s almost as if I’m the ghost, I’m the one who has died or faded away. I know it’s ridiculous, but I often wonder if what I see goes beyond dreams.’

  Michael counted breaths, not yet trusting himself to speak. He thought about the unseen pieces that made up the world, the insects in the forests, the chemical elements of the air, the mountains of rock shifting and boiling tens and hundreds of miles beneath the surface. And set deep down in his chest, his own heart beating life throughout his body. All necessary links in a chain, all existing, but on a level beyond observation.

  ‘Does he seem okay?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘In the dreams. Does he seem okay? Does he look happy?’

  She bit at her lower lip. The idea that he might have been anything other than happy had not occurred to her.

  ‘I think so. Yes, I think so.’

  Every inhalation felt suddenly precious. He often thought about this, and had come to understand it as a question of awareness. Each detail held its own singular importance, yet also lent support to everything else. Scientists put the rate of death at two people every second of every day. And, at the same rate, four new lives began. Universal connectedness was a comforting thought, but the greater truth seemed to be that every soul spun through its days and nights alone. Watching the victims of famine or war on television, witnessing their screams and mutilations, their sad-eyed, fly-bitten faces, bellies like gourds swollen to bursting point, made him want to weep, yet within minutes or an hour he’d find himself laughing about something innocuous. Even though it was human nature to want to care, people really only truly noticed one another in moments of collision. Love was real, but a delicate flower in need of constant nurturing. It bloomed for a while in brilliant ways, but too easily wilted.

  If this were to be his final breath, would he even know? Would the end announce itself, or prefer to work in secrecy so as to prevent panic until the last possible moment? Thinking about this, he tried to focus on the breath in his mouth, but the idea arrived too late for due consideration and he found himself too suddenly out of air. An instant later, a tide of new breath poured through him, but any relief he felt was tempered by the understanding that, whether recognised or not, this would be how the end would some day come. He decided that, given a choice, he’d rather the flank hit than an advance warning.

  ‘And you’re certain it’s him?’

  ‘Of course I am. I know my own child, Michael. It’s him.’

  ‘Good,’ he sighed, not wanting to fight. ‘That’s something, at least.’

  The radio worked as filler. No longer Springsteen now but something of the era. Leisurely piano, plunking raindrop arpeggios and a nice thumbing bass, perfect for the lateness of the hour, the notes sullen but calm with a knowledge of grief, or at least an understanding of loss. And in time a scratched voice, Bob Seger, pent up, battle worn.

  ‘Do you think there can be anything to it?’ Barbara asked. She’d begun to cry.

  Michael shrugged uselessly. ‘Who can say? There are things we understand and things we don’t.’

  ‘I’m losing my mind. Sometimes my thoughts run wild. But talking about them is too much.’

  The tears traced a stripe of wetness to her ear. As he watched, they bristled among her lashes, then spilt again. Until he moved, he didn’t know what he was going to do. He turned to her and drew her into his arms. Far from resisting, she pulled herself against him, with desperation and something like terror in her grip.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ he told her, in a tone that he might have used on a child, but speaking it first against her cheek and then the corner of her mouth. ‘Talk yourself hoarse if it helps. We all need to make the best of things, Barb.’

  Every good piece of the past felt near, and for these few minutes they were young again, other people, or other versions of themselves, with all the old need between them. Her lashes feathered the skin just beneath his eye and her tears soaked and softened his lips. He recognised this as a transient moment, ships in the night, but there were times when that in itself could be enough. And later, after she’d finally drifted into sleep, the top of her pyjamas still unbuttoned and spread wide, her bottoms bunched somewhere at the foot of the bed, he smoothed the tangles that their exertions had put into her hair and kissed her face again, her cheeks and then her mouth and chin, and when he kissed her eyes, their rapid dream movements shifted and flickered behind their lids, as if stimulated to respond. But she was asleep, and he was wide awake. He brought the duvet up over her chest and shoulders. Her breath whispered thinly through her nose, making the barest sound. He watched and listened, then eased away from her, slipped from the bed and without even glancing back pulled shut the bedroom door and went downstairs, to make coffee, to watch some rerun ball game or an old movie with
the sound blocked nearly all the way out. And as he stood in the kitchen, waiting for the coffee to percolate, the image that filled his mind was of how fresh her unconscious self had looked, lying there eyes-shut in the lamplight, and how beautiful. Sleep had managed to turn a trick with time, but only one shard of time. Somehow, at a point in their embrace, and as if mortality’s brink really did become her, she’d regressed to her fullest flowering, to the time of their marriage’s earliest days. And in that same moment, he’d been dragged in the opposite direction, and plunged into a state of decrepit old age. Young hearts sleep, old ones sit up watching the darkness, and waiting. Long past midnight, alone at the kitchen counter, the truth of their lives turned pale and then dissipated, until it became difficult to tell who, exactly, was dying and who was cursed to keep on living.

  VIII

  Goodbye, My Coney Island Baby

  Michael faces the door to dress, Caitlin favours the window. The electric light emphasises the day’s recession. Without it, the hotel room would be lost in almost total darkness. First to finish, Caitlin begins to resettle the bed. Michael stands aside to let her pass, and watches without comment while she smooths creases from the blanket. She works as if alone, then straightens up and pulls a rope of fringe from her eyes. She seems to want to smile, but cannot. These are always among the loneliest moments of their month. Michael, feeling the need to, smiles for both of them. The expression pleats his brow and the bridge of his nose. He reaches for her, only because she happens to be so close, and grips her lightly just above her elbow. She steps against him and yields briefly to his mouth. Then her hand flattens in the dead centre of his chest, not pushing but setting a kind of boundary. Because they have already passed the point of this.