Anna
A SUDDEN AND DEEP QUIET falls after Cathal has taken the men away. Not wanting to appear immature, I accept the new drop Betty pours out for me. I accepted the first drop without asking what we were drinking, and I feel it’s too late to ask now.
My coat and handbag on her chair. My hands around her glass. My body in her home. This might be the first time I’ve seen her in the kitchen without her apron on.
‘It’s quiet now.’
How boring, yet I find myself saying it with a little laugh, and wishing that I hadn’t.
I don’t want to bother Betty with such pedestrian observations.
I don’t want her thinking that the silences need to be filled.
I want to be in her silences, as she is in mine.
To admire all the ways that we are when we are not speaking, moving or doing.
Just existing with each other. How intimate.
Betty pretends not to be disappointed that I have commented on the silence; she must like it too.
I smile at her and wait for a smile back.
I wait for her response. I place each of my delicate feelings between her molars and wait for her to bite down.
‘It’s no harm to have a break from the lads.’
She says, and I nod. And I wish I hadn’t been nodding along so vigorously to everything she was saying about the economy, so she would know I really meant this one.
‘It’s nice to have a break from everything, isn’t it?’
She says, and I cannot tell if she is relaxed or sad or bored. Suddenly, everything stops. It’s like time has paused; Betty has paused. There is nothing but me and the texture of her breath. I hear it, and I feel it, warm and ruffled around me. And then everything comes back.
‘Yeah.’
I hate that she would ever feel that she needs a break.
Her life should be easier. So easy that a break would seem monotonous and unnecessary.
What sort of a life would we have if I was to move into her spare room?
How long would the bliss last? I wonder could we spend every evening this way.
Barefooted, perhaps in nightdresses, drinking with the moths.
Without the lads. Close. Yes, barefoot in our nightdresses.
Her, in something white, almost sheer on her raindrop body.
Something expensive. She makes me feel so expensive.
Absentminded, she pulls her hair up and away from her face.
Look how the baby hairs lie marbling the side of her neck.
Look how her tiny little veins bulge from her temples, ageing her.
And then she lets her hair back down. Isn’t it good that we are so familiar to each other, that she can expose these parts of herself to me?