Síle considered various arguments she could make. Her knee was aching again. She thought of suggesting they ring room service for breakfast.
What came out of Jude's mouth was, "I can't do this." Síle waited: Silent, for once.
"All this. Any of it. The waiting," Jude growled. "I know I should be grateful that we've been able to meet six times in seven months, I know we've got it so much better than most. But I'm tense all the time, it's like this gigantic rubber band about to snap in my face..."
"I know. I know," Síle crooned, "it's brutal, it's the pits—"
"But you've got the knack," Jude interrupted. "It's as if you can breathe at these altitudes."
"No I can't."
"Well, you seem to."
"How does it help," said Síle frantically, "to moan and groan? Are you trying to pick a fight on our last day?"
"No," said Jude, so low Síle could barely hear her. "I'm trying to say this is over."
For several seconds, the only sound was the delicate whir of the heating. Síle spoke in a clipped voice. "I don't know what you mean. It's clearly not over, is it? I mean, here we are, the feelings haven't evaporated overnight." She waited. "You mean you'd like it to be over, is that it? You don't want me to visit, you don't want to come to Dublin, to e-mail me or ring me or think about me?"
"Sometimes," said Jude into her kneecaps, "I almost think it was better in the old days—simpler, anyway—when you just waved good-bye to the ship or train, pulled your shawl over your head, and got on with surviving." The pause stretched out like spun glass. "Let's face it, Síle. When you're gone you're gone, and we don't even breathe the same air."
Síle stared at her. But couldn't deny it.
They were oddly courteous with each other after that. They packed their bags like zombies. Jude offered to come to the airport, but Síle said it made more sense for the taxi to drop Jude off at the bus station. Their hands were only inches apart on the backseat. "I'm sorry," Jude said, once. Síle spent so long trying to think of the perfect reply—the magic phrase that would move her lover, persuade her, catch her in a web all over again—that the moment had passed. They kissed good-bye like strangers.
Living History
I'll go no more a roving
with you, fair maid,
A roving, a roving,
since roving's been my ruin
I'll go no more a roving with you
—ANON
The Maid of Amsterdam
On All Souls, November second, it was 1867 Day, when the inhabitants of Ireland, Ontario, were possessed by the spirits of their ancestors. Or that was the idea. Jude stared blank-eyed at the passing parade. In her head, voice mail replayed over and over.
Me again. I can wait, while you're thinking about this, Jude; I just need to know roughly how long I'm going to need to wait. Ring me back, leave a message; that's all I'm asking.
1867 Day was Jude's idea, though it was inspired by other living history projects she'd visited, like Plymouth Plantation. She'd picked the year because of Confederation, when Canada West had become Ontario, a province of the new nation. She supplied each participant with a fact sheet about the resident of Ireland, Ontario, he or she would be playing, as they were on November 2, 1867: Patience Toofer, forty-one, spinster, raising two sons of dead sister, runs a laundry, pocks from scarlet fever ... From the sofa-bound vicar's mother to the bloody-nosed brawlers drying out in the cell, everything going on today was researched, everything was real.
But over the four years Jude had been running it, the locals had come to claim 1867 Day in an increasingly flippant spirit, and now it struck her that the whole thing had degenerated into a feel-good family day out. Marcy the travel agent went by waving in leg-of-mutton sleeves that were at least twenty years too modern; when Jude had pointed this out this morning, Marcy'd said, "Let's not sweat the small stuff," in a most un-Victorian way. Hugo and Lucian from the Old Stationhouse Guesthouse were dressed right but swung their pitchforks over their shoulders like dapper golfers. A boy ran by with headphones on over his flat cap, and two tiny nuns followed on pink scooters with tinsel streamers flying from the handles.
Why had Jude ever thought that playing dress-up would give people any real insight into the strange, intractable past? These comfortable citizens of the twenty-first century hadn't the least idea what it was like to hack a space out of an endless forest; to grapple with a bureaucracy for roads, schools, or churches; to somehow settle what had been a mosquito swamp. Nor did Jude, for that matter, she reminded herself grimly; she'd just read lots of books.
Did you get the letter I couriered? Will you at least read it? It took me half the night to write. I'm in a bad way here. Come on, Jude, pick up the phone; you owe me that much.
Gwen stood beside her. "Have you seen Tasmin, over by the mulled cider stall? Really getting into the spirit."
The girl was breast-feeding her baby through an unlaced bodice. "Looks more like a seventeenth-century harlot than a nineteenth-century farmer," muttered Jude.
"You're just jealous of those tits," Gwen joked. "It's all going good, eh? Very festive."
"It's not meant to be festive. It's meant to mean something."
Gwen's eyebrows rose.
"Sorry. Ignore me."
The messages replayed themselves in Jude's head till she felt like a lunatic. The worst were the abased ones.
I know I was careless, I didn't look after you well enough, I mustn't have loved you well enough; I swear I'll do it better if you'll give me another chance. Please? Jude, please?
"You know, this could last for years," Gwen remarked.
Jude watched the bedraggled procession of decorated carts down Main Street. "No, they're nearly at the turkey factory already."
"Not the parade. You, in this state of suspended animation. If you ask me, which you haven't," added Gwen after a second, "I still think you should have hung on in there."
Jude's mouth was frozen shut.
"It's like childbirth, or what I've heard of it: You can always bear more than you think. When I first took up with Luke," Gwen confided in an undertone, "the first six weeks, I didn't imagine I could do it for long. The squalor of being so secret, and brooding about his wife—I really thought I was going to have to call the whole thing off. But it passed."
Jude turned and looked at her. "Great, now you've been unhappy for three years."
Gwen's eyes were hard. Jude had never seen her cry, and perhaps she never would. "I'm not setting myself up as an inspiration here. My only point is, you can get used to anything."
"Then someday I'll get used to being on my own again."
A sigh of exasperation. "Are you still refusing to talk to the poor woman, even?"
Jude knew she'd never done anything crueler than this. Síle lived and breathed talk: Silence choked her. To leave her in limbo, to refuse to even acknowledge any of her messages, was an act of brutality. But Jude could find no other way.
Fucking hell, Jude, how can you cut me off and pronounce the case closed?
Joe Costelloe went by in a pair of anachronistically clean overalls (Eddie Bauer, said the big label). After a minute, Jude said, "I want a clean break, not like Joe and Alma."
"That's nothing like," said Gwen scornfully. "They're divorced, but they still share a toilet!"
Jude, I'm telling you for the last time: Pick up the damn phone!
She was being beckoned over to the information booth to deal with some crisis, and Gwen said she'd go try a candy apple. Jude held onto her friend's sleeve briefly. "Bear with me."
"As if I have a choice," said Gwen.
There were two new messages when Jude got home, many hours later. The first was in the rapid, malevolent voice of a crank caller.
I don't understand, and I don't forgive you either. People think you're so strong: What a joke! You hadn't the stamina to hold onto me for even a year. You hadn't the balls.
The second was nothing but low sobs.
As soon as sh
e'd got off the Greyhound from New York, Jude had done all the right things, just as if she'd been packing away an exhibition: She'd taken down the framed photos (Síle on the Triumph, Síle asleep on the couch, Síle and Jude sitting on a giant vegetable marrow), taped up the box of letters and e-mails, put away the atlas so she wouldn't be tempted to turn to the British Isles page. Every time something reminded her of Síle—an espresso pot, a crookback gourd—she put it in the basement. This time last year the house had contained Jude and her mother and all the clutter of their joint lives; now it was beginning to have an uninhabited air.
Always Jude felt the tug, the hook in her ribs. The fish can't be landed. The thousands of kilometres between her and Síle should have provided insulation, padding, soundproofing, but somehow they didn't. If only the woman had never come to Ireland; if only the town hadn't become imprinted with memories of her. The stool she'd sat on in the Dive (third from the wall) still bore her silky stockinged ghost.
It's over, it's over, Jude kept telling herself, like a mantra. But the phrase didn't seem to mean anything. Like those teenagers who boasted, "I broke it off with him on Saturday night but Monday lunchtime we got back together": These weren't actual events, only declarations. Why were people such fools as to think they could stage-manage love's confusing entrances and arbitrary exits? All Jude could see to do was suffer through, keep her mouth shut, get to the end of one day, then the next, then the next. In the hope that one day she would get her life back.
She had turgid nightmares of trudging across fields of snow that turned to black ice and cracked beneath her feet; of tangled ropes, barking huskies, grappling hooks. But one night, when she finally dropped off at three in the morning, she had a lovely dream. They were sitting on a windowsill together, a hundred stories up. Síle kissed her lightly on the cheek—heat blooming on the spot—then took her hand, and they dropped together into the air. Fearless, soundless. Jude woke cringing, as if someone had snapped on the light and ripped off the quilt.
Rizla had this notion about a trip to Detroit, that it might cheer Jude up. Eventually she agreed to a single overnight, just to shut him up. He did the driving, because as he pointed out, Jude was in such a fog these days, she'd go off the road. It was weirdly mild weather for November; Jude wished she hadn't worn such a thick jacket.
On the outskirts of Detroit, they got lost in the tangled highways. She kept the pickup's windows shut and stared out, remembering their honeymoon. What a child she'd been; it shouldn't have been legal. Downtown, certain burned-out blocks looked like Godzilla had just stomped through, though the riots had happened more than thirty years back. Steam puffed up from vents in the street, clouding Jude's vision. She thought of all those white people who'd fled to the burbs and never come back. She pictured Síle, her dark face gliding through a crowd of pallid ones.
They passed empty-eyed buildings with trees growing through them. "Betcha there's pheasants and shit in there," Rizla murmured. "Wish I'd brought my rifle."
"That would really have endeared us to the border guards."
"Ah, they like guns down here. Land of the free!"
By luck or some homing instinct from his drinking days, he found them a blues bar with a good house band. He bought Jude one of their CDs, but she felt only irritation that he was wasting money. They ate their way through a vast order of chicken fajitas. After a couple of hours they were hoarse from trying to talk over the music, so Jude suggested they move across the road to a bar with a rainbow flag she'd glimpsed on the way in. It turned out to be called Lip Sink; they sat through the semifinals of the Best Chest in Detroit competition. Jude was managing a pretty good imitation of a girl having a good time. She tried to enter Rizla's name for the prize, but he twisted the slip of paper out of her hand.
"Ow," she said, rubbing her wrist.
"That'll teach you."
He reminisced about their wild days, rides on dirt roads, slamming on the brakes to do doughnuts; he folded back her ear to find the old scar from that game of tabletop.
"Cut it out." She pulled away.
When the table beside them filled up with female twenty-somethings, Rizla grinned. "That's better. Remember that fetish night you took me to in Montreal that time, and those gals with the live snakes?"
"You're a very strange guy."
"Ten o'clock," he muttered, and she checked the clock on the wall, which said five past midnight. "Ten o'clock," he repeated, "nice little blonde!"
Jude glanced over, then shook her head.
"Thought you liked 'em girly?"
"There's girly and then there's scary, Riz. She's got sequins on her nails."
"What about her?" He jerked his thumb the other way. "In the red dress? You're picking all the straightest-looking ones."
He shrugged. "Just trying to see through your eyes, babe. Personally I'd go for the little cutie in the shirt and tie."
"Pervert!"
Several beers on, she was finding it harder to keep up the act. When Rizla quoted "Time wounds all heels, as Marx says," she snapped "Groucho Marx, moron."
"You know what your problem is, Grouchy?" he asked, sipping his beer.
"If there's one kind of person I hate," said Jude, "it's the kind who says, 'You know what your problem is?'" In the background, she realized, they were playing a CD of Irish songs.
She went away from me, and she moved through the fair,
And fondly I watched her move here and move there...
"You gotta let this one go," Rizla told her.
"This one, meaning Síle?" The name was like a sharp pebble in her throat.
He shrugged. "Roll credits. The distance wore you out: end of story. Sad but true."
For a light drinker, Jude thought, he could sound like the most sententious of drunks. Sinéad O'Connor moaned on:
And I smiled as she passed me with her goods and her gear
And that was the last that I saw of my dear.
"Show's gotta go on," said Rizla. "If it was meant to be, it would have been. Some meet, right, and some part, and the world keeps on turning."
Jude turned to look at him. It was like a light snapping on; she only marveled that she'd been so naïve. "Oh spare me the hippie bullshit. You couldn't be happier."
He sat back, with a who, me? look.
"You did everything you could to sabotage me and Síle. The jokes, the needling, the bets that we'd never live together ... It was jealousy, pure and simple!"
"I don't think so," he said with a chuckle. "Wives are work. I gotta tell you, I wouldn't have you back as a gift."
"No, you don't want me back as a wife," she said; "that was what confused me. You want me single. Isn't that right? Unattached and available for long evenings watching TV, smoking dope, or whatever. Your best bud, right here to hand, no strings!"
"Aw, fuck this shit," said Rizla, rearing to his feet. "I didn't drive three hours to get my head bit off."
Jude followed him to the door, at a cold distance. Rain was lashing down. Diana Krall was singing a mournful "Danny Boy." Jude turned up her collar and stepped out into the sheets of biting rain.
"Truck's this way," Rizla barked, pulling her under the canopy of his big leather jacket. They went up and down the parking lot twice, like a four-legged puppet staggering through puddles.
"Are you sure it wasn't the other way?" she asked.
"We turned left to the bar."
"No, you dick, that was the first bar, the other side of the street."
A jeep screeched in reverse out of the parking lot, passing within half a metre of Jude's hip. "Jesus, H," Rizla roared. He left her holding the jacket over her head like an umbrella and lunged after the car.
"Riz," she shouted, "forget it."
He planted his fist on the hood with a terrible bang.
Oh no.
Through the sheets of rain she could see a head stick out of the window. "What the fuck you doing, asshole?" said the driver.
"No, you asshole," said Rizla, "you practi
cally crushed my friend, why don't you look where you're going?"
Jude felt a surge of hatred. Why did he have to do this, right here, right now?
"No, why don't you fuck off back to the hole you crawled out of?" The guy climbed out of the jeep and slammed the door.
White, thirty-looking, that was all Jude could tell through the blinding rain as she peered out from under Rizla's jacket. She wanted badly to be at home.
"Yeah, why don't you go fuck yourself, faggot?" Two more men stepped down. The shorter guy told the driver, "They came out of that gay bar down the street, I saw them, they were all over each other."
The driver spat. "This your little boyfriend, faggot?"
Before Jude knew it he'd got her by the shoulder, his fingers gripping painfully. She was about to speak; she was picking the right calming words to let them know that she was a woman, that nobody wanted any trouble, that her friend was really sorry for touching their car. But all that came out was a high-pitched gasp.
Rizla head-butted the guy, who let go of her and staggered backward, holding his face and making a guttural sound. There was something wonderful about the moment, Jude registered, even as terror was sending up its mushroom cloud in her head. Rizla and the shorter guy grunted, landing hard blows. She thought of running for help but the third guy was coming at her, he had her in a chin lock, his arm was like a steel forklift on her windpipe. There was something Jude had learned in that self-defense workshop all those years ago, something about stabbing an attacker's foot with your stiletto heel? She was in running shoes, there was no time, she was on the wet ground, how did that happen? Thrown down like a sack of garbage into a puddle, and gravel hard as diamonds under her cheek. She managed to curl up before something stove in her ribs, and the worst pain in the world came down on her hand.
Afterward Jude could never quite remember how Rizla had got her to his pickup. She was on the floor with her head on the seat and there was a lot of vomit. "Stay face down, or you'll choke," he ordered, swerving round a corner. Pain came and went in waves over her head.
The next thing she fully understood was Rizla arguing with somebody. "Listen, all we bought was a CD, I don't remember to what freaking value! Maybe ten bucks. Look, my friend's bleeding, can we speed this up? Her passport's probably in her jeans—She's my wife. Ex-wife. What do you mean, did I hit her? I told you these assholes jumped us, I think my nose is broken. No I don't want to go to the police station, I just want to get back into Canada. No we don't need an ambulance, man, just let us through!"