Anna
HE HAS THEM ALL IN the palm of his clammy hand. The meagre social skills I once had seem to have vanished, but not Tom’s. The desperation is radiating off him, but they all appear to like him. It was always Jack who did the charming, before.
Once, we were a very social family. Mammy and Daddy used to always be out.
I remember the smell of Mammy’s nail varnish taking over the air as they were getting ready to leave.
She always did her nails last. Peach Gloss.
It made her look so grand. She never cared that other women thought she had notions, or that it would all chip off the next day when she was setting the fire or pulling up weeds. My Mammy had standards.
‘Turf, back home I was the turf man. But there’s plenty other things I’m capable of.’
‘It isn’t often we get a capable man around here!’
Even after Daddy died, she kept herself very well, and she was always out.
None of that black shawl business. Mammy was only a widow on pension day.
By that time, the style had changed, but she still wore her Peach Gloss.
Now and again, at Easter and in the summer, she would paint my nails.
I was old enough to buy my own nail polish then, but I always liked her doing it. She was gentle.
After she died, I really wanted to be a Peach Gloss sort of woman.
To keep it up in her honour, I suppose. But I wore it only once, because the sight of it made me cry like a little child.
My hands were so like Mammy’s, but also, so frightfully different.
A taunting reminder that she would never really be close to me again.
The Peach Gloss I had was left in Kilmarra.
I can still smell it, though. Still see the sheen of it on her nails.
Your nails were always bitten. Jack never seemed to mind.
I tried to tell you a few times about how nice Mammy’s nails were.
But you didn’t take it as advice. You just smiled and told me how good I was to remember little details about my mother.
‘And will you give us a song tonight, Tom?’
‘Betty, I’ll give ye a song when Mrs Moore wants the house cleared!’
I was never much like her when I was out; tonight has confirmed that hasn’t changed.
Mammy was a real social woman. She could talk to anyone, you know, and everyone wanted to talk to her.
The same gift that you had. The same gift Tom is trying to prove he has now.
That Jack seems to have lost track of. Mammy knew the name of every person in every family in Kilmarra.
I found I could barely make it past small talk.
I stand with my handbag clutched to my side, and watch as the conversations happen around me.
Although it feels like another life entirely, it really was very recently that we were known by everyone. That Tom had a career. That Jack had the town in his pocket. Yes, it was all so recent. How quickly things change. How well you know.
Another woman goes to sing. The same one who asked Tom for a song. Was it Betty he called her? I don’t want to stare at her, but where else am I to look? She rocks back and forth while she sings. These slow, minute movements. Almost imperceptible.
It puts me in mind of you. But doesn’t everything?
Always singing. While you were clearing up after the dinner, and running around in the yard with Peggy, and reading the paper to your father.
Humming away to yourself. I remember thinking that you were such a beautiful singer, but looking back, maybe you were just persistent.
It doesn’t need to be considered, this woman before me really is a beautiful singer. Somehow she is able to put emotions into the tune. Maybe she is a professional.
While I watch her, I feel the heat of the fire warming up my damp clothes.
Stay here, Anna, don’t float off. I look around at everyone, to keep myself from drifting into faraway thoughts.
The shapes of people come in and out of my eyeline, but this singing woman always comes back. Betty, did he say?
I listen dutifully, slowly, lightly tapping my foot along with her, and wonder why music has never moved me in the way that it supposedly moves other people.
I always seem to be one emotion away from what everyone else is feeling.
I want to be on the same page as everyone.
To have an identical experience of reality.
To be moored to the same comprehensible and solid emotions as they are.
I wish I didn’t have to float away to safe places all the time; to you in the bath, or Mammy painting my nails.
I wish I understood enough about my feelings to feel safe anywhere.
Peggy finds us again, she is frenzied over the puppies. Jack bends down to lift her and sits her on the table, whispering something in her ear. For a moment I am so deep in this woman’s curling voice that I forget to shush him. Just for a moment, I forget a lot of things. Almost everything.
Black hair lit by the fire, like countless black electricity wires you’d see in Cork city.
And her cheeks reddened by the heat; freckled red apples, fit for horses.
I smell the rain drying on my dress. Right now, I don’t feel like a novelty at all.
I am just a collection of senses, near a song.
A singing woman. Amber coloured. Damp and warm. Perhaps this is what it is to be moved.
When the song ends, that feeling goes with it. And it is replaced by the heat of tears, as I remember all of the things that I let myself forget.
A ripple of clapping for her, Tom’s the loudest. He’s delighted that she has stopped, so he can get back to talking.
A new surge of confidence comes to me. All night I’ve heard about this supposed life we had in Miltown. And with nothing to gain or lose, I start telling people the little details I pick up.
‘You’ve probably never heard of Miltown. Or maybe you have. I don’t know, it’s only small.’
‘Would that be Miltown Malbay, in Clare?’
I have no idea. What county did Tom say we are supposed to be from?
‘I better check on the small girl.’
I say, and turn back to Peggy, asking her question upon question about the puppies.
Leaving somebody who I pulled into conversation all alone.
Mortifying. I’m sure it’s fine though. There must be a hundred Miltowns in Ireland.
I’m not questioned any further. ’Tis mad; whatever we tell the locals, they believe.
How easily it’s all washed away. My whole life and everyone I ever loved, all gone. Sorry, girl.
The night ends up being much longer than the hour Tom promised it would be.
Of course it does. That’s the way that things go with Tom.
It’s always just a little bit longer, I always need to try just a little bit harder.
It’s always just a little bit different from what he said it would be.
Well, it got me out of the house. It made me a little bit less afraid of Ballycrea.
Now I’ve seen the town and met its people, I know they’re all ordinary.
Ordinary thoughts and opinions, more or less.
None of them with any extraordinary power over me.
—
It ends with myself and himself up at home, standing in the frame of the back door, looking out onto the empty night. He told me to wait until the others were gone to sleep, so we could talk, just the pair of us. Many of my nights have ended this way.
Peggy curls up like a cat against Jack. Over my shoulder I see them, sound asleep. I wonder when she will grow out of that. I wonder when he will let her.
Only myself and Tom, watching as the wind moves through the long grass on the hills. Rising and falling. Like standing at the sea’s edge.
He produces Daddy’s pipe from his pocket.
Although he likes to think he doesn’t have any vices, one pint and that pipe is stuck to his mouth.
Oh, Tom has vices alright. The dark of the night and the depth of the silence come together, creating the perfect stage for us to address them.
If I only had the nerve to start, I’d stand here all night, confronting Tom.
He offers me the pipe. You used to hate smoking. Once you told me that the smell of smoke reminded you of old men. That’s when Jack gave up the fags. He was so cross for two weeks after, do you remember? I wished he would just take it back up. But he was mad to impress you.
Tom is smiling at me, as though everything is fine.
Right now, I want to dig up all that he has done.
To exhume the memories he has buried, peel back their flesh and have him witness their bones; not even beginning to decay.
But he smiles at me. And I don’t have the nerve to stand up to him. I take the pipe.
‘You’d all that Miltown business nicely stitched together, hadn’t you?’
My feeble attempt at confronting him falls flat. I want to mention Mammy. He shrugs his shoulders. I pull on the pipe.
‘Sure ’twas just to move us along. To cover the tracks. That’s all.’
When will Tom stop trying to cover tracks? When will he settle into the life he has created for himself?
‘I hope you’re okay, Anna.’
He hasn’t asked me that for a while. It makes me forget about what we had been talking about, about what I have been feeling.
It makes me think that I might not be okay; or at least, that I might not appear okay.
Sure why else would he be asking? I’m not sure what he wants me to say, or how honest he wants me to be.
So I just nod, and try to keep my face from souring.
But I feel it happening. Slowly, the smoke leaves my mouth, white against the night sky.
Of course, I know that it’s hard to come up with pleasing answers for where our parents are, or why none of us are married.
Stringing together a simple, plain backstory for ourselves will probably help us more than the truth would.
Sever the cord. Keep looking ahead. I understand what he is doing, he has helped me to understand it many times.
It just hits harder than expected when the plan is actioned and is no longer only a thought.
‘Don’t worry about it, girl. It’s done now. Let the locals spread it, and we just go along with it. It’s a small enough detail, really. It won’t be hard.’
Miltown is forgivable. Even your erasure, I could come to forgive.
But what he said about Mammy sits like a stone inside me.
I can’t move past it. Of all people for Tom to pull into his self-serving tangle of lies.
You’d think that after everything, I’d be rather numbed.
But moments like this remind me that I am an endless, expanding collection of exposed nerves. Constantly being touched and trapped.
‘I’m sorry if I upset you.’
He sounds genuine, and yet, I wonder whether I should believe him. I link his arm, squeezing, and give him back the pipe. I hope he’ll understand, I hope he’ll hear me without talking. Please, Tom, let’s just enjoy the quiet.
The breathing of the world, the howling of a far-off dog. On a hill in the distance, a house flickers its lights, winking at us both. And before us, two or three more houses light up. Life everywhere.
It’s always like this with Tom. We are always building to a crescendo that is never reached. I fall away from the fight, just like he wants me to. And it remains within me, dull and deep, like a toothache.
Thinking over it again, I manage to find the humour in it.
He is so eager to move on from the past that he has created a second past for us, and now we have two of them to manage.
Beyond this, there will be no more mention of Miltown.
Tom will sort it out with Peggy and Jack.
It will just be another thing that we never talk about.
I take in the night. I watch the navy world come alive with electric light.
The cold air and the taste of it. For the longest time, the only constant in my life has been the dark blue of the night sky.
Looking down on me as I woke up. Filling the gaps around me as I slept.
The edges of clouds, the edges of my body, coloured navy. Inescapable, soothing darkness.
A sudden tingle starts in the back of my mind and races to the front.
That woman’s singing voice echoes within me.
Acting as a harmony to each of my thoughts.
The shapes of her mouth. The flex of her tongue.
Only something to think of. A fizzing thought to end the night on.
Yes, for a long while there was nothing besides the navy sky.
But tonight, stars.