Anna
TOM’S GRIMACING FACE GAME UP the hill and blossomed into a smile as he came in the door. He thinks he’s cute out, that I don’t see him putting on moods.
Then again, all we have done for the last year is put on moods.
I have drifted so far from the person I used to be, and lost total sight of the person I was trying to be.
All that’s left of me are the confused, troubled parts.
Sewn together and draped over me as I skulk around the new cottage all day.
Preparing meals and then cleaning up after them, so that I can prepare for the next.
Wasn’t a fresh start supposed to be liberating?
Jack seems to have less interest in leaving the cottage than I do.
It could stay this way, myself and himself, never piercing the membrane of the front door.
Maybe we could get back to the way we used to be.
Always laughing and fooling like children.
Or we could carry on as we have been all year, in a stagnant silence together.
Trying to figure out whose fault all of this is.
I’m just not ready for the town yet. Picking up Peggy from school, meeting her teacher.
Hanging around the square with Tom, being seen by people.
I’m not ready to start all that. The best way to look after myself is to cut the stitches between me and the world. Letting myself escape somewhere easier.
Like to one particular Sunday afternoon, two years ago. A place I drift off to all the time.
Sky saturated blue, the air sweet and heavy with pollen. Lukewarm bathwater, steam filling the air. A glossy bar of Pears glistening in your hands. And me, pulsating in a church-cold breeze. I feel it stinging. I still try to dull it.
You, hunched, trying to get what heat you could from the water that your father and sisters had already washed in.
You know we would have given you the first bath in our house, if you had just come over.
The soft moss of your body hair. The veins on your chest spelling my name.
A profane heaven, all obscured by the lace curtains.
Why would I choose to put myself on display below in Ballycrea square, when I could send myself off to places like this?
‘The price of pork is gone astronomic, lads.’
Tom announces himself at the door, taking off his cap and wiping his forehead.
He lands slices of ham down on the table.
So far, I’ve managed to avoid cooking fish, which Tom tells me is half the price of pork.
More likely, it’s just what’s popular here, and Tom wants to be seen buying it.
Jack looks up from the corner, listening without joining in.
Just as I think Tom is going to tell me once more ‘’tis all fish here, girl’, he launches into a new story.
John Moore, whose wife sells him the newspaper every day, is hosting a small gathering at his house this evening. Unfortunately, the invitation has been extended to the lot of us.
‘He asked for me by name, did he?’
I ask, because John Moore doesn’t know for certain that I even exist. What harm would it do him if I didn’t attend?
Only for a moment on Thursday, as we rolled into town, was I seen by anyone at all.
Those who did see me are probably beginning to think that I was nothing but a trick of the light.
A little flicker, there and gone. My god, to be nothing but a flicker of light.
‘Too much of your time is spent sat on your arse, staring out the window. It’s not healthy for a young person like yourself to sit inside all day.’
He stumbles over his words, not knowing whether to call me a girl or a woman, settling on person. He doesn’t know what to do with me, he doesn’t know what I am.
‘Since when do you have a problem with people staying indoors all day?’
He doesn’t respond to me, but adjusts his shirt and lets my comment hang in the air before dropping, unacknowledged.
‘We’ll go down for an hour. It’s proper to go somewhere when you’ve been invited, and it’s good to be seen out.’
His voice is a clever blend of curt and soft, so that I can’t accuse him of being forceful, but I can’t disagree with him, either. Peggy comes in from the garden and sits with Jack, under his arm. They talk together, quietly. She’s the only one he ever wants to talk to.
‘Ah Tom, can we not wait another few days, until we’re settled?’
I try, more sweetly. I know better than to annoy him; I’m not stupid. And although he smiles at me, he says,
‘John Moore isn’t going to wait until you’re settled.’
This obsession with John Moore. This obsession with all the strangers of Ballycrea.
At his best, Tom is an insecure people pleaser.
At his best. But he is also the oldest, and so he makes the rules.
I don’t know why I bothered objecting. I suppose it isn’t often a woman gets a gleaming new chance. I might as well use it.
‘One of us better stay here and look after Peg.’
Jack pipes up from the corner.
‘Sure can’t she come with us? It isn’t a human sacrifice we’re going to.’
Tom laughs, trying to get us to laugh along with him. Jack tries to hide the look of defeat on his face. I know Tom is only trying to make the best of things, but it feels like he’s trying to distance himself from us. From me.
‘Where are we going? Is it tonight?’
Peggy asks, and I let Jack take all of her questions.
I wish he would try to see things my way.
If he would take in the view from the window and realise that it’s a lovely place to spend every day, watching all the acres of the headland, the fields dotted with farmhouse roofs, and the little blossom of light from the town in the evenings.
Trying to trace the road we took from the square all the way back home to Kilmarra.
When Tom was a little boy, Mammy always knew exactly what to say to put him in his place.
But then Tom grew up, and whatever way I angle my ears, I can’t seem to hear Mammy.
‘Will there be other girls my age there? Will the girls from school be there?’
He doesn’t know. Sure he doesn’t know anything.
None of this would be happening if Mammy was here.
I miss her. I miss the time when she had all the authority.
I even miss the time when she had less authority than me.
She would let me stay at home if I wanted to.
She would have told me to pack more jars and stockings and thread.
All of those little things that didn’t seem important when I was trying to fit my life into a suitcase.
When I had cramps in the cart, she would have made Tom stop and get me aspirin from the chemist shop.
Instead, I had to sit in a long, awkward fear; afraid to mention it, afraid to move in case cramping had turned to bleeding.
See, Tom says he is doing so much for the family, but he doesn’t take very good care of me at all. He is doing all this for himself. I wonder would he be happier if we didn’t come with him to John Moore’s tonight.
‘We won’t be out late, Peg.’
Jack tells her, and I take this as a promise.
He sends her back outside to see if the chicken has laid any eggs.
Tom sits at the table and opens the newspaper, and I take it as my sign to start making the tea.
I move without thinking, cutting the veg and boiling the water.
All the time, I am trying to get back to you in the bath.
But I can’t get there. I am in the cottage, without escape.
One summer’s day, months from now, everything will be better.
Today will just be a piece of a past I can hardly remember.
I know it will, because I have felt the hardest time in my life fade to nothing but a little fog beneath my eyelids.
One day, you will be nothing but a smear across the back of my mind.
Jack will stand up straight and seize his life again.
We will be happier than we ever were before, one day.
When I can’t get quiet, when I can’t get myself back to your bath, I think of this.
When Jack gets quiet, he thinks of you. A soft drizzle of rain on your eyelashes in the spring. A drizzle of honey on your fingertips while baking. A drizzle of blood on the banisters. Lillian, I am pained to know this.
Dropping the carrots into the pot, I scarcely feel the boiling water splash on my arm. I scarcely realise I am speaking when I call out,
‘Shake a leg, Jack! We’re all going out tonight.’