My Coney Island Baby

by Billy O'Callaghan

  ‘What do you mean when you talk about starting afresh?’

  ‘I can’t make it much more straightforward than that, Mike. What’s confusing you?’

  ‘But are you serious? I mean, is that what you really want? Or is it just what you think you should be saying, knowing that I’ll be the one to back away?’

  His hand is still pressing into the muscle of his left thigh, and she is startled to see that he has stopped wearing his wedding ring, and astonished that she didn’t notice earlier. Without it, his hand and fingers look clean, pipelines of bone webbed in greyish skin. There’s not even a mark where the ring should be.

  ‘Let’s stop talking about this,’ she says, bowing her head.

  But there is an edge of hardness in his voice. ‘We can’t, though. The tide is coming in. You’ll drown in Peoria. We both know it.’

  ‘And you’re the lifeguard, is that it? Well, I guess I’ll just have to take my chances, since you’re so busy saving someone else.’

  He starts to say something, catches himself and draws and spends a long whispering breath. Then he closes his eyes.

  ‘She’s dying.’

  ‘Stop. I told you, I don’t want that, and I don’t want to talk about it. It’s not my fault.’

  ‘I’m not saying it’s your fault. It’s nobody’s fault. But it’s a fact.’

  ‘They’re treating her.’

  ‘It’s largely palliative. The doctor as much as told me.’

  ‘You’re not God, Mike. You can’t know. Miracles happen every day. Not water into wine and walking on open seas. Real ones. Ones that count. I’ve read that, during the time of Jesus, the population of the whole world amounted to a little over two hundred million people. Now, in this country alone, we’re heading for double that number. In the world we’re talking seven billion plus change. A couple of thousand years ago, miracles stood out. But today, how would anyone even be able to keep track? They happen so often now that we’ve even stopped calling them miracles, but that’s what they are. People are constantly climbing down from their crosses. The rate is still probably one in a million, but if you think about it, those aren’t such bad odds. So, stop, okay? And don’t mention it to me again.’

  She is, once more, close to tears. When she glances at him, she finds his face open with concern for her, wanting only good things, and to be presented with some way of providing them. He’s almost an old man, in facts if not in actual numbers, and yet he is, just now, childlike too, and grief-stricken. In the past, feeling one another’s need, they’d have taken turns professing the depth of their love. But it’s become unnecessary.

  Up ahead, the overweight woman has decided to tie her bonnet. She has fat hands, with short but nimble fingers that taper to points, and she plucks at the strands of ribbon in a dainty, practised way, tying a neat bow and measuring the legs and loops by feel towards some acceptable balance. A small gold ring with a colourless stone adorns her left pinkie. Embedded in so much flesh, its delicacy seems absurd, yet even from a distance it is striking, and undeniably pretty.

  Back when she still wrote, such details seemed often to rise up from the world for Caitlin, begging to be explored, and to be allowed to develop and even fester, with patience and good fortune, into a story. She continues to notice but, because that part of her life feels done, no longer looks so closely. But this, now, catches her eye, and again, just this once, she lets her mind run.

  Ring and hand are clearly mismatched. Did the woman herself put it there? Caitlin imagines her, the bonnet lady, saving up, determined for once in her life to indulge this want, stockpiling dimes and quarters over a span of months, perhaps even years, building and counting stacks of coins at the kitchen table, during all those late hours when sleep can’t or will not come for dreaming. And when the right number hits, dressing up in her best garb and visiting a store or even several stores, selecting this particular ring from a wide range of what falls within her budget, knowing by instinct precisely what she wants and searching without compromise until she is satisfied. Maybe. Or perhaps it had been a gift, the doing of a parent, some elderly mother or father producing it as a token of love from a little burgundy velvet clasp box on the morning of some special birthday or Christmas. Both possibilities feel likely, but in a story there’d be a third card to turn: the thrilling chance that the ring might possibly be the keepsake of a lover, a man who could, without flinching, look beneath the rheum of fat to where the real attraction lies. This is an intriguing thought, stunning in its hopefulness, the notion that no one is as solitary as they might seem, that there is always somebody somewhere who knows you and, more importantly, who wants to know you. Somebody for whom the rest of the world is an addendum.

  The bonnet lady’s chewed nails had been painted an ivy green at some point, but only traces of that colour now remain. Caitlin can see the woman in mid-polish, leaning into the milky pool of a bedside lamp and working the little brush with intense concentration, her whelk of a tongue pinched between her teeth, the green polish gleaming iridescent in wetness but finally crusting over into something definitively bland. As an act it straddles a borderline between pathetic and sweet, the tiny ill-conceived gesture towards beauty. And yet, there is something heroic at play here, something that awakens a painful innocence.

  Considered in such terms, the ring really could have been a lover’s gift. Certainly, there is some deep sentiment attached, as evidenced by the sheer determination of its wearing. Love and maybe only love could be the viable motivation for keeping on from the peak of those high, hopeful moments to the straight ruin of this cold day. Love, or the promise of love, a whisper of it, to keep her reaching towards beauty, to justify all that time spent striving to please or to at least sate some illusive inner aesthetic.

  ‘I don’t want you to go. I can’t lose you. I’ll bear anything except that.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mike.’

  ‘You don’t have to be sorry. Nothing is finished yet.’

  ‘I think it is. Time has beaten us. When we were young, we still had it in us to run, but we were afraid of everything. That’s life. When you’re struggling to keep everything upright, the sky is always thunder, and we’re constantly hunched against the next downpour. Perspective, and a recognition of what’s really important, only comes with age. And by then, it’s too late.’

  ‘No, it’s not. It doesn’t have to be. Look at yourself. You’re not even fifty, for Christ’s sake. At least let us die before you have us buried.’

  She smiles, but it is a picture of sadness.

  ‘I’ve needed this, you know? In my life. I can’t even tell you how much it’s mattered. What you’ve given me, and what we’ve given each other, has kept me from turning to stone. To feel that I’ve been loved, that I am worth something in the mind of somebody else – that’s been my miracle. I don’t want to lose you either, Mike. I need you. But Barbara needs you more. Especially now.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think I’m saying goodbye.’

  ‘Please, Caitie. Not yet. Not until we have to. There’ll be another day for us. We’ll make another day. Call me tomorrow. Forget work, forget everything. That way, if it has to end, we’ll finish things properly. But please, if I ever meant a thing to you, call. Promise me that you will.’

  Ahead and across the aisle, the young couple really begin to go at it. The girl is transfixed by something far deeper than the carriage’s ceiling. She has her big dark eyes half-lidded and her dishevelled mouth hangs open, the tip of her tongue curling out from one corner. Maybe she has heaven in her sights. And the boy, against her, kissing and licking her neck and the lobe of her ear, makes the sound of a dog lapping at a bowl of water. One hand has burrowed inside her blouse. After a minute or two, either in response to his mouth, his hand, or a combination of both, the girl produces an oddly tactile humming that seems to live somewhere between her nose and the back of her throat, a noise that is nearly tribal, or primal. It is hardl
y suitable behaviour for the train, but Caitlin is in no way offended. Because they are so young, they can get away with this. As long as they keep their clothes on.

  ‘I’m the one to blame. I should have done the right thing a long time ago.’

  ‘It’s not always easy to tell right from wrong.’

  ‘No. But we’re not too late. Barb will die or she’ll live. I’m not essential to the equation.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Go home. And don’t think about it. Don’t think about anything. But call me tomorrow.’

  At the next stop, the bonnet lady gets off and more people board. Three here; then, at the next station, five; and then more. The line is getting busy. Caitlin considers each of them as they enter and fill the seats, but something has switched itself off inside of her and she no longer pays close attention. These people are real enough, but somehow without essence. Yet their intrusion has tipped a balance in the carriage’s intimacy. Even the young couple seem to sense this, because they stop fondling and sit upright again, waiting with a patience which runs hard against their age to get to wherever it is that they need to be.

  Michael closes his eyes and keeps them closed. In this state he carries the full clout of his years; still, creased, greying all over and all the way through. Turning ever so slowly to dust.

  Caitlin links her arm inside of his. She has death in mind. An end is coming, and she is frightened at the thought of letting go. At her touch, he opens his eyes but doesn’t move, and in profile he looks stiff and put-upon, and she knows that he is thinking about many things at once, about them as a couple, where they are going, where they have been, about the swinging compass points of Barbara’s cancer, about work, things left undone and building like walls around him. She presses her mouth to his shoulder and whispers his name, tasting the fabric of his clothes as a sweetness within her swallow, the wiry filaments of the clipped wool, the succulent dampness where the evening’s sleet has caught and dissolved. Michael. Needing it said, needing to feel the shape of it still.

  Parting now is the biggest mistake. He is close to a decision, but the hours of night, the silence and the things he’ll have to see, will wear him down again, and allow his old fears to dictate. It doesn’t have to be this way, of course; they are on a train, and they have choices. They can get off at the next stop, pick a direction and start running. Or they can stay aboard, and keep riding until the train runs out of track. The key is to keep moving. Make do with pocket cash until they can get to a bank, stick a pin in a map and just go, heedless of the consequences, until they’ve found a new sky under which to live. Just as Pete, her stepfather, probably did, all those years earlier. It all feels so suddenly possible that she almost says it aloud, and maybe it is only the taste of his clothes in her mouth that keeps her quiet.

  With the moment of their separation imminent, another five minutes, give or take, there’s nothing for it but to accept what’s been won or lost, and to settle. As gently as she can, she takes her hand back, releasing him. Again, he half-turns, and she is sure that, in his eyes, she glimpses the notion of a kiss. But either he hesitates or she does, and if the chance was there at all then it is quickly gone. Which, she decides, is probably for the best, though she knows that she’ll regret missing it. Any kiss now, without adding further to the chaos, can only be a kiss goodbye.

  His hand has stopped kneading, and lies crumpled against his thigh. There is something almost birdlike about it, the way the bones live so close to the surface, the way they shift in little twitches as if to a pulse beneath his papery skin. Her heart fills all at once with pity, because no one understands him the way she does, and nobody else will ever care to look so close. The smallest shift in his expression transforms him, a residue of his past making the surface and echoing some deep-seated insecurity. She has seen this before, often, and though its impact is almost always fleeting, the plaintive quality of it never fails to move her. His eyes become a compilation of small sadnesses. That he is entirely unaware of it is something that catches her just right and one of the main details of him that she’ll miss to the point of tears if he really is to slip from her life.

  ‘I’ll call,’ she says, giving in. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t forget.’

  ‘Thanks. Try to make it the morning, though, if you can. Because in the afternoon I need to be at the hospital.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘They’re putting a line in. I don’t want to go, but it wouldn’t be right for me not to be there. No one is saying so, but I think it’s kind of a big deal. With doctors you learn to look for the shadows around the words. They’re calling it a line. Barb is being put under for it, so it’s surgery, really. I don’t have the exact details other than that it’ll be used for administering pain relief. Morphine. She’ll be out for an hour or two, at least. But I also have some ends that need tying at the office, so I’m looking at an early start. I’ll be in from seven, until lunchtime.’

  ‘Fine. I’ll do my best.’

  She is annoyed at feeling hurt, and hopes that she’s kept it out of her voice. Because it’s not really his fault. What gets her isn’t so much that he should have a life beyond her bounds but that he should be so able in managing it. Yet she also knows that his apparent efficiency comes at a high price, based as it is on a willingness to compromise. Far from an ideal, these past several years have made do with limited happiness, a life that breathes largely for its Coney Island trysts, the reinvigorating frolics that keep him upright. Every kiss is so honed by a month’s worth of anticipation that the weeks between feel like dead radio air. It amounts to a cluttered existence – the pitching, selling and constant hustle of a thankless job; home’s muted plainness, and the long night-time hours shared with a woman who feels more and more a stranger to him with every passing day. All so much flotsam to be navigated. Even the cancer has this sense of detail, a terrible thing for what it is, but Caitlin knows that other men in Michael’s shoes would run, they’d pack a bag and get out, and they’d never ever look back. The definition of courage isn’t always clear.

  Still a minute or more out of the station, he shifts in the seat beside her, grips a handrail and hauls himself to his feet. Even though he remains within reach, she feels a chasm open. From her place at the window, she looks up at him. He returns her gaze, uncertain, then nods his head.

  ‘We’ll talk tomorrow,’ he says, in a tone meant to reassure. Then, almost as an afterthought, he clears his throat and tells her, lowly, that he loves her.

  These words are her nourishment. Even in their airing, she aches for them. She has heard him speak the sentiment a thousand times, has had the words in small-talk jabs on piers and street corners, in hushed sincerity over candlelit tables, and in whispers with his teeth bared hard against her ear as they clung sweating to one another in some strange bed. Its impact never fails to split her open, and yet it also never feels enough.

  ‘I love you,’ nearly but not quite a whisper, and the truth is to be had from the sound of his voice, the dry rustle of it. Shyness, sincerity, fear, reassurance. And, until now, commitment, all the commitment he could give and all that she could afford to take. Even with her heart punching heavy combinations in her chest and up into the small of her throat, aching to believe, she can feel in him a desperate urge to look away, just to see who in the carriage might have overheard, who might be watching. As ever, afraid. And such words are hard for him, and even at the five- or ten-thousandth time of saying, need to be wrenched loose. He wants to look away, but doesn’t, because doing so will lessen everything, and they can’t afford that, not now, not at the moment of their parting.

  In the end, it is she who cuts him loose. She smiles, the merest turning of her mouth. And that is enough. She stops short of returning the phrase. Said one way, it has resonance. Returned, it often frails to smoke.

  He lets her smile suffice for both of them, and when she turns back again to the window to watch for his stop, he lets his gaze go there, too. The tun
nel is soothing darkness torn open only by the occasional amber streak of a wall lamp, but her reflection in the glass, still spectral but now more thoroughly defined by the contrasts of outer dark and the carriage’s bleached fluorescent light, perches with them as a thing tethered, an accompanying second. This Caitlin, one step removed, teases like a shape from a dream, fully herself, her expression captivating in its familiarity, morsels of detail bringing the likeness alive. Even in rendered state, he can’t comprehend how any man could look and look away, having missed her wonder.

  And then, like dawn sifting the horizon, the tunnel lightens and the train slows and eases into the station where he must get off. The image of the second her vanishes or is overtaken, consumed, by the world beyond. And outside, there is only the platform, cold, blanched flashes of concrete and ceramic, scrubbed down and innately squalid.

  He stands there, drooping like a flower after a bruising of rain, one hand clenching and relaxing against the back of the seat he has just vacated. She knows that a part of him is terrified at the possibility of missing his stop, the same part of him that is always on the edge of fear over something. There is nobody in the aisle to obstruct his departure, though even if he did somehow fail to make the platform it would be no great chore to simply continue on to the next station and then take another train back. But this is who he is. The days shared with her are, truly, a step outside himself. After a lifetime spent humbled by numbers, his instincts have become smothered. Fear drives him now, penning him into easily quantifiable constraints.

  ‘Go,’ she says, but still he hesitates.

  They are sharing desolation. She opens her mouth to add something else, but falls short. Seeming to understand, he leans in and presses her with a kiss. It’s what she wants, but feels so much less, the barest thing. His mouth finds hers in the most perfunctory of ways, with a kiss that commits no sin or crime, that commits to nothing. The farewell is no more profound than the greeting.