Jo’s voice in my ear brought me back. ‘Why don’t you have a lie-down?’
I struggled up, protesting.
‘Ah, go on, you could do with one.’
She took me by the elbow and led me up several flights of dark stairs, telling me when to duck my head. I was a hostage with a bag over my head, Jo’s hand in the small of my back like a gun. It was quiet in her small room, lined with imitation wood paper to look like a ship’s cabin. As soon as the door was shut my strength returned to me. ‘Very cosy. Is this where you used to fuck my girlfriend?’
Jo stared at me. Her lashes were faint and sandy against her cheeks.
‘You could have told me yourself,’ I spat, ‘rather than letting me hear it from that twit downstairs.’
‘I was waiting for the right opportunity,’ she said.
‘How long were you going to wait?’ The last of my fury leaked out through the words, and I sat down on the edge of the bed, drained.
After a minute, Jo sat down beside me. We both stared at the wall. It had a huge picture of Jodie Foster on it. ‘We were just…pillowfriends is the best word for it,’ she said very low. ‘We went to bed a couple of times in total. It wasn’t a big deal.’
I said nothing.
‘Till I talked to you this week I thought you’d known. Cara gave me the impression…’
‘I did in general. I didn’t want to know the particulars, like who.’
Jo leaned her head on her knuckles. ‘What you two had was so, so permanent, I honestly didn’t think you cared about little casual…’
‘I mightn’t have cared if she was still alive.’
She nodded.
I breathed out, and couldn’t find any more anger. ‘I’ve never quite understood,’ I said, ‘how anyone could sleep with Cara and keep it casual. I mean, I’ve always found her the most extraordinary person. Didn’t you?’
After a moment’s reflection, Jo said, ‘I thought she was a bit of a dipstick, actually.’
I was first to laugh, then after a few seconds she joined in. ‘Didn’t you find her mystical?’ I asked through my coughs of merriment. ‘Irresistible? Enduringly, erotically fascinating?’
‘Nope.’
‘Oh well, I must be the only one then.’
‘Afraid so.’ After a minute, Jo turned sideways on the bed and leaned her hair against a painted knot in the wallpaper. ‘You know, I never felt guilty about the casualness of it before. But now it seems a shame that Cara and I didn’t share some grand passion. We basically just had a bit of fun with playfights and foot massages.’
‘So if you’d known she was going to die young you’d have done the decent thing and fallen in love with her?’
‘Nah, I doubt I’d have managed that. With all due respect, Pen, the woman was a nutcase.’
‘I suppose so.’ A yawn came from nowhere and opened my throat.
‘Have a wee nap now,’ said Jo, standing up and lifting my feet on to the bed. I slid down until my head was half-buried under the pillow. I could feel Jo loosening my shoelaces and tugging on the shoes until they came off. I could have helped her by bracing my feet, but I was too tired. She took down another duvet and laid it over me. Then the light went off and the door shut. I decided I was probably too tired to sleep, but would have a little rest before going home and correcting some more copybooks. Then the dark came down and ironed me flat.
In my dream I am leaning over her sleeping ear, wide awake.
Cara, my fairly faithful flooze, now is the time I could be really jealous, and now is the time that jealousy floats out of my grasp. How can I make a fuss about not being the last to see you, when you were coming straight home to me? How can I fret about who kissed or didn’t kiss you, when you are lying in a box in the mud with all our kisses falling off you like shed skins?
I am only thirty, I will not spend the rest of my life mourning you. There was nothing special about you; I could make up other stories. Don’t kiss me until I’m asleep. Get your claws out of my hair.
Then I am back in the dream of the hole in the hedge and the garden with its pale summer-house. But the scene is warmer, the trimmed hedge is sprouting, there are buttercups along the edge of the lawn. I catch sight of Cara in the maze, all brocade breeches and flying ribbons. I run after her, but get distracted by a huge hooped dress disappearing round a corner. Does death wear a dress, then, and is there any give in her flesh?
I run and run till my lungs are burning up, and finally corner her. She turns, her gauzy hood falling back. Was I expecting decay behind a mask of powder, or the grin of bone? She has my face. It is my own face that looks back at me, almost understandingly. Then she turns and runs on, after Cara. I can hear their laughter in the distance.
I woke slowly. It was still dark. My eyes flickered open but the rest of my muscles stayed flat. This had to be what a kite felt like as it was tugged into the sky.
The door opened, and a cup of tea came through, with Jo behind it. She was still wearing the same cotton jumper. ‘Is it morning yet?’ I whispered.
She looked confused. ‘It’s only about half nine; I didn’t think you should sleep too long or you won’t be able to tonight.’
I sat up and, dizzy, leaned against the wall. Jo tucked the duvet round me and gave me the cup of tea. ‘How you doing?’ she asked, sitting on the edge of the bed.
‘I’m all right. Sorry to be so pathetic.’
‘You’re not.’
‘Well, ranting and raving and having to be put to bed…’
‘Ah, don’t be so scared of showing a bit of human need.’
‘Yeah, but you shouldn’t have to look after me, it’s not like we’re old friends.’
‘So where’s the queue of your old friends?’ asked Jo, resting one ankle on the other knee.
I turned my head away.
‘I’m not being a bitch, I just think you need a few more. I’m here, and god knows I’m old enough.’
I took a long swallow of tea, though it scorched my throat. ‘I hate being weak,’ I said between my teeth.
‘Look, you’re not weak just because you’re not a bloody monolith.’
I blinked up at her.
‘Besides,’ said Jo, ‘I wouldn’t mind building up some credit by looking after you a bit. Any week now I’m likely to hit the winter blues, and it’ll be me doing the leaning, and I need someone a bit older and wiser than the babelettes I share a house with.’
‘I’m only thirty, you know,’ I told her.
‘Yeah, but you’ve always seemed more solid than the others.’
‘That’s just my size. People have always treated me a year older for every pound I put on. At fifty I’m going to start fasting and the years will slide from my hips.’
Jo grinned, and took a mouthful from my mug.
I let my head loll back against the wallpaper. I ran my hand over it. That was how automatic love became; the dry ripple under fingertips. ‘I talk to her, you know,’ I said.
After a tiny pause Jo said, ‘Cara?’
‘But it’s like talking to God. You have to sort of guess the answers. Pick up the mood.’
A tiny snort. ‘I gave all that prayer business up decades ago,’ said Jo. ‘Decided it was all in my head.’
‘Well, of course. Everything’s in our heads.’
‘No, but I mean it wasn’t real.’
My jaw cracked wide in a yawn. ‘None of this is real. All that’s real so far is that my girlfriend’s not back from holiday yet and I miss her,’ I said with my eyes shut. ‘I’m going to be so bloody lonely this winter.’
‘No,’ said Jo sternly. ‘One or the other, take your pick, but not both.’
I stared at her.
‘Ah, come on, you know that real loneliness is having no one to miss. Think yourself lucky you’ve known something worth missing.’
I said nothing for a long time.
‘You took it better than I thought you would,’ Jo resumed more brightly. ‘About me and Cara. A cou
ple of days ago you had me really scared.’
I gave her a small smile.
‘It really wasn’t that big a deal,’ she repeated. ‘Like, I’ve been to bed with most of the women at this party at one time or another.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Fiona calls me Fat Slag.’
‘You let her?’
‘She’s got ex’s privilege. Anyway, ever since their tenth anniversary party I’ve been calling her and Sinéad the Role Model Couple, which really pisses them off.’
‘I never guessed you had such a reputation,’ I teased her.
‘Ah, I blame my irresistible bosoms.’
‘Not a patch on mine,’ I murmured, breathing in to inflate them.
Jo let out a little wisp of laughter. ‘So,’ she asked after a minute, ‘is the sister still around?’
‘No, she went off…just last night actually. It seems longer.’
‘Did you make up your mind about her?’
‘What about her?’ I asked.
‘Just, what she’s like?’
‘She’s all right. Not how I remembered, much more ordinary. I don’t think we live on the same planet,’ I added after some reflection. ‘Like, I told her this story about a friend of a friend who went down the country one December and said, “Mam, I’m a lesbian.” Her mother stiffened and asked, “Does that mean you won’t be having turkey for Christmas?”’
Jo gave a chuckle.
‘But Kate didn’t get it. She asked whether it was generally thought that all lesbians were also vegetarians. I said it was worse than that, that the mother didn’t even recognize the word. She said, “Oh.”’
‘Mmm. I’ve never figured out what to do with people who just say “Oh.”’ After a minute Jo added, ‘You know, the exact same thing happened to a friend of a friend of a friend of mine too. Maybe it’s a rural myth.’
‘More likely it’s the same woman. That friend of a friend of a friend of yours is probably friends with my friend’s friend.’
‘If you’re going to get delirious I’ll have to fetch the restraints…’
‘No, nurse, please, I’ll be good.’
Jo stood up and yawned. The desk lamp cast her huge shadow across the walls. ‘We were thinking of going to the pub about half an hour ago.’
‘I’m going over to my mother’s,’ I said, and realized that it was true.
We all stood around in the hall like bomb survivors. I collected my basket and jacket. On the doorstep, Jo turned and said, ‘By the way, there’s a place coming up here when Sherry goes to Thailand, if you’d any interest in applying…’
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘But I’m staying where I am for the moment.’
‘Well, you can always drop by for toast parties.’
‘Will do.’
She wrapped her arms around me for a minute. Unseen hands patted me as they went by. Jo found me my umbrella, and then I was away, unlocking my car.
On the way through the barely lit suburban streets, I had to steer carefully. Every tree seemed to call to me; crashing seemed so inevitable. I concentrated on getting through to the northside without entangling myself in the one-way system.
At one point I realized that this was the road towards Glasnevin. I wondered did they lock the graveyard at night? Were they troubled by Heathcliff types refusing to leave at the end of the day, stretching themselves on the fresh graves of their split-aparts? The last thing I wanted was to become melodramatic, an embarrassment to my friends. Yet I could see the appeal of scrabbling down through loose earth until you felt the wood against your nails. Rossetti buried his poems with Lizzie, then regretted the extravagance, and had them dug up; they said her scalding hair had grown to fill the coffin. I wondered whether the poems read differently, after he had tugged them free of her posthumous tangles.
I hadn’t told Mammy I was coming over. I rarely did. Wasn’t it awful how we assumed that our mothers, unlike our friends, were always in? We said things like ‘You should get out more,’ but if we turned up and they weren’t there, how approving would we be?
I parked on the kerb, blocking half of the pavement outside my grandmother’s two-up-two-down. This was the narrow house I had started from; how far I had come from it, and how far back. Minnie’s engine sighed to a halt. The panoply of pollution tinged the sky. Down the end of the street was an indigo skyline of chimneys against the orange night; it was jagged, like the graph of a heartbeat in the last minutes before it smooths out.
I thought I was coming empty-handed, but the basket turned out to have two biscuits still in it, hidden under the napkin; I wrapped them up and put them in the pocket of my cardigan. The light was on in the kitchen where my mother stuffed and addressed envelopes till late into the night. She was good at this second job; she had reduced it to the fewest possible movements. I was often on at her to take a cut of my salary as some repayment for the years I spent as a mewling child taking a cut of hers. But she always said that debts didn’t work that way, and each generation should be glad to raise and pay for the next. ‘But Mammy,’ I told her, ‘I don’t have children, so why can’t I help you out instead?’
‘Ah, your brother pays me rent.’
‘And borrows it back the next night,’ I reminded her.
Through the net curtain I could see the warm light and a figure at the table. (Cara loathed net curtains, until I explained to her that it was the only way of getting privacy in a house that opened directly on to the road.) My mother’s bird-shape was unmistakable; I took after my father instead, a solid man with spade-worn hands.
I had a key, but I preferred to ring when my mother was downstairs, so that she would feel like the mistress of her own house at last. Also I liked the moment when I stood on the mat that said ‘WELCOME’ in worn letters and she opened the door. We never hugged, since I’d pushed her away in sullen puberty, but her eyes were just as good.
Mammy took a while to answer the chime tonight. Her face wrinkled gladly when she saw who it was. She had her red glass beads on. I didn’t know how many times they had been burst by a baby’s clutch, how many times she had restrung them herself on invisible thread, each time missing a couple that had rolled under the skirting-board, so the circle gradually narrowed around her throat.
‘All on your own tonight?’ I asked her.
‘Peace and quiet. Gavin will be in later, though.’
My mother led me into the dining-room, where a pool of light covered the scarred table. No envelopes nor reading glasses tonight, just a large mug of tea.
‘Will you have a cup?’
‘If it’s in the pot.’ This was a ritual answer. We both knew that she made tea with a bag in each mug.
All these familiar lines made it so difficult to begin anything new. I wondered whether I would tell the tale logically and chronologically, by starting with my realization of my true nature (play the genetic card), then mentioning my relationship with Cara, then tempering my mother’s outrage with sympathy by blurting out something about the accident. Or maybe I should begin with my loss of a housemate, getting my mother on my side, then reveal the lovers business and hope that she would be unable to bring herself to reject me at such a time. Or tell her about the death now and the thirteen years of life together some other time? Or vice versa? Or I could always tell her nothing at all except for school, weather, supermarket bargains. If I chose I could let my mother slide farther and farther away from me down a white tunnel.
I rested my fists on the table. There were crumbs caught in some of the wider cracks. I used to sit here for hours, when I was small, with the tin of Plasticine to keep me out of my mother’s hair. Other children modelled their doggies and baskets and faces, then mashed them together, but I kept all my colours wrapped separately. What I liked best was to plait worms of three different shades, then smear them together, roll and twist and repeat, and keep slicing the ball open with my penknife to check for unevenness of texture or colour. Eventually the work always smoothed the Plasticine into
a perfect dull brown.
A short cough from my mother made me look through to the kitchen. She was leaning over the sink. Lying was too easy; this particular closet door came prefabricated, with smooth edges and a sealed diamond window. I almost wished my secret was visible: a brand on the forehead, say, from Cara’s last kiss as she struggled out of sleep to kiss me goodbye the morning she was going to the airport. But no, nothing showed at all, as I sat down in the chair still warm from my mother’s thighs.
I had never been this tired in all my life. I tugged the sailboat out from under my collar. I leaned my elbows on the table and let my fingers drag on the crisp gold. I wanted to shut my eyes and float away on it, past the neck of the woods, down the estuary, out to sea.
‘That’s pretty. Is it a leaf?’ My mother had come back in with that awful Beloved Daughter mug. Her hands had light brown blotches on them.
‘A boat.’ How had she never seen it before? Had I always buttoned up my clothes to the neck?
‘New?’
All at once I couldn’t stomach another lie. ‘No.’
‘Where d’you get it?’
She was only making conversation. I could easily gloss over it, and in a couple of decades she would be dead and need never know.
‘It’s a very long story.’ The words glided out of my mouth, surprising me. ‘I’ll tell you when the tea’s made.’
This birth is long overdue, mother. It’ll be a tight squeeze. You’d better open your arms to this screaming red bundle, because it’s the only one I’ll ever bring you.
‘Grand,’ she said. ‘I’ll open a packet of biscuits.’
‘I’ve a couple of home-made ones left over,’ I said, extricating them from my pocket in their napkin.
‘Forgot the milk,’ murmured my mother, going back into the kitchen for the jug with its beaded veil.
All of a sudden I couldn’t see; my mother slid into a fish shape, the table melted into a pool. It had been so long, I’d forgotten what tears felt like. The first drop touched the skin under my eye as the sky opened and sent down the rain.