Chapter Five #4
“Well,” Cal says, “he might be interested in the details.”
“Mart Lavin’s interests aren’t your problem,” Lena says. “Whatever he’s at, you don’t need to get involved in it.”
Trey has gone silent, but she’s watching. Trey doesn’t like it when Cal and Lena disagree, no matter how tamely. Cal doesn’t know how far her parents’ fights went, before her daddy took off for good and all, but he knows they got a lot worse than a child should have seen.
“I’m not getting involved in anything,” he says. “There’s nothing to get involved in. I’m just keeping Mart up to speed.”
“Because he’s planning on trouble. Let them make their own trouble without you.”
“This isn’t some big deal,” Cal says. The fire has taken hold; he focuses on carefully balancing another piece of wood on top with the tongs. He wants Lena to leave it.
“Not yet, maybe,” Lena says. “Give it time. I had Noreen telling me there’s sides, the other day, and trying to make me pick one.”
“I don’t mind being on the guys’ side,” Cal says. “Better’n being on Tommy’s.”
“What’s the difference? Mart’s the same as Tommy: both of them aiming to run this place and everyone in it.”
“Well,” Cal says, “I like Mart a whole lot better’n I like Tommy.”
“That’s not the point,” Lena says. Her hand on Banjo has stopped moving; she’s turned towards Cal.
“Why would you be on any side? When those lads ran Tommy outa the pub, it wasn’t because of Rachel Holohan.
It’s because of stuff that happened before you ever heard of this place.
Tommy wouldn’t sort their planning permission unless they donated to his pet councilor, or his daddy did something on their daddies back in the sixties. Nothing to do with you.”
Banjo, neglected, butts at Lena’s thigh to get her attention back. “No,” Trey says in an undertone, shoving his nose away.
“I was sitting right there,” Cal says. “What was I supposed to do?”
“You coulda done nothing. Sat there, drunk your pint, and let them sing their hearts out.”
“Those are my neighbors,” Cal says. He keeps his voice mild, for Trey. “I hang out with them. We help each other out. I’m not some tourist that just stopped here for a few pints.”
“You’re not, no. That doesn’t mean you haveta do whatever Mart Lavin wants. First it’s only singing a song, now you’re off to feed him info about Tommy, then there’ll be something else— You’ve no idea what you’ll end up doing, down the line.”
“Gonna walk the dogs,” Trey says abruptly, standing up. “Before it rains.” Back when Cal was married, if he and Donna argued, Alyssa would look for ways to distract them with something pretty, or make them laugh. Trey just leaves.
“They’ll get muddy again,” Cal says.
Trey shrugs, zipping her jacket.
“Dinner’s gonna be ready.”
“We’ll be back before then.”
Cal almost orders the kid to sit her ass down, but he’s not sure whether it would work, or what he would do next either way.
Trey snaps her fingers for the dogs—Daisy ignores the whole thing and Banjo rolls his eyes to indicate he’s too exhausted to move, but Rip and Nellie bounce up—and heads out without another look at him or Lena.
“Jesus,” Cal says, when the door slams behind them. “We could’ve saved that for later.”
Lena lifts her eyebrows. “Why would we?”
“Because. The kid doesn’t like when we fight.”
“That wasn’t fighting. That was disagreeing.”
“You think she knows the difference?”
“Then she needs to learn,” Lena says. She gets up, brushing dog hair off her jeans. “The odd disagreement isn’t the end of the world. Do you want her reckoning she’s been dumped, the first time herself and Kate don’t see eye to eye?”
“I just want her not stressed out,” Cal says. “That’s all.” He’s not sure how he’s ended up arguing about arguing, when he didn’t even want to have the argument in the first place. “And we don’t even know that she’s going out with Kate.”
“She already knows couples don’t always agree,” Lena points out. “What with her mam and dad. If we hide it, she’ll only be worrying about what goes on when she’s not around. And how’s she supposed to learn to sort things, if she never sees us do it?”
“What did she learn tonight? She walked out. She didn’t see anything that’d do her any good.”
“And when she walks back in, we’ll still be here, no harm done. She’ll see that.”
“She better walk back in soon,” Cal says. “Or she’s gonna be eating cold casserole.” He feels like he should have just kept his mouth shut, about everything.
Lena goes to the cupboard and takes down tumblers.
Cal, watching her, feels the annoyance drain out of him.
He loves watching Lena do things; he loves the contained grace that comes not from any thought of being seen, but from strength and competence.
Right now of all times, he doesn’t want to be at odds with her.
What he wants is to go over to her, wrap his arms around her, and pull her close.
He doesn’t expect her to shoulder his mood and smooth it out for him, but just her physical self always improves things.
“Listen,” he says. “Things around here should settle down now, with Rachel coming home. Even if Mart’s thinking about trouble, it could all blow over.”
“Noreen said the same,” Lena says, “more or less. Once Rachel’s buried, everyone can move on.” She sets out the glasses on the table. “Mostly I wouldn’t call Noreen na?ve, but I might haveta make an exception.”
Cal dims the overhead light, to bring out the flicker of the fire. He wants the room to feel cozy, homey. Instead it takes on a contracted, huddled air, like some attack has brought down the electricity and left them cut off, with nothing to do but endure till the next thing happens.
“Hey,” he says. “I’m not gonna let Mart get me into anything I don’t want to be in.”
“You’re a grown man,” Lena says. “I shouldn’ta tried to tell you what to do. You can get involved in whatever you want, as long as you don’t expect me to get involved as well.”
“I know better than that,” Cal says.
Lena doesn’t smile. She says, “I don’t like this for Trey.”
“Probably you’re right, and no harm done.”
“I don’t mean us arguing. She’ll be grand.”
“Then what?”
“You heard her,” Lena says, “the other night. She wants that apprenticeship in town. And there’s Kate.”
Cal isn’t sure where this is going. “I thought you were fine with Kate,” he says. “And with Sam.”
“I am. They’re not the problem.” Lena goes to the sink to fill the water jug. “With how much she hates this place, I always thought she’d be outa here the day she left school. If she gets herself an apprenticeship and a girlfriend, she might end up staying.”
Among the few things Cal knows about Lena’s husband is that he was the reason she turned down a place in vet school in Edinburgh. “Do you wish you’d left?” he asks.
Lena glances at him, over her shoulder. “No,” she says. “Not saying it’s been all sunshine and roses, now, but if I could go back, I wouldn’t do any different.”
“Well then,” Cal says. “The kid might end up feeling the same way.”
Lena watches the water filling the jug. Cal thinks she’s not going to answer, but after a minute she says, “There’s you saying you won’t let Mart Lavin rope you into anything.
But you never sat down and decided it was a great idea to run the Moynihans outa the pub, or that you’d only love to be part of whatever gang wars Mart’s got planned.
You just got sucked into it, before you even had a notion what was going on. ”
Cal finds it hard to argue with this. Ardnakelty always has had this knack. It sneaks up around you so expertly that by the time you realize it’s there, you’re already neck-deep in its operations.
“Maybe,” he says. “But if I’d had time to think it over, I’d’ve done the same thing.”
“That’s your call,” Lena says. “But it’s not going to stop there. And Trey’s watching you do it. What she’s seeing is that if she stays here, that’ll be her. Getting sucked into things. Or else spending all her time fighting not to be.”
Cal hasn’t put much thought into what Trey’s future in Ardnakelty might look like, at least not in those terms. He’s been kept amply occupied by smoothing down her relationship with the place to the point where no one gets hurt, and trying to make sure she has the grades and the woodworking skills and the basic level of civilization to build herself a future at all, not to mention clothes that fit and something approaching a nutritious diet.
He wasn’t aware that analyzing the large-scale psychological implications was on his to-do list.
“Well,” he says, “we can’t load her onto a bus and throw her out of town. Even if we wanted to.”
“If she stays,” Lena says, “it’ll be ’cause of us. Not only, but partly.”
“That kid’s not gonna stay anywhere she doesn’t want to just ’cause of you and me,” Cal says. Even a little while back, he might have thought differently, but it looks like he would have been wrong.
“If you hadn’t come here, Trey’d be outa this county by now. Gone.”
“And that definitely would’ve been bad,” Cal says. “Out there all alone with no education, no qualifications, no family, no nothing.” The thought is a comfort. He may not be what Trey needs any more, but he’s been some use along the way.
“Maybe,” Lena says. She pours water into the glasses and sets the jug on the table. Behind them, the cold seeps through the window to slide along their backs.
Cal hates the thought of her in this mood walking out into the dark, and the thought of each of them sitting alone while this tight, hunkered-down evening closes around them. “Seeing as we’ve got the house to ourselves tonight,” he says, “you want to stay over?”
For a minute he thinks Lena’s going to say no, she feels so distant. Then she draws a long breath and turns to him. “Yeah,” she says. She’s not smiling, but she reaches out a hand and takes his. “Good idea.”