Chapter Nine #5
“The Dunnes are all awful high-strung,” Julie says. Mel elbows her and she claps a hand to her mouth, horrified. “Ah, no, Jesus, I didn’t mean Sean, I only meant—”
“You’re grand,” Lena says. “They are. I oughta know.” Everyone bursts out laughing again, and after a second even Julie joins in.
For the last few minutes, Lena has been feeling someone’s eyes on the back of her head. When she turns round, she meets Dymphna Duggan’s concentrated stare across the room.
On either side of her, Noreen and Dessie are intent on conversations of their own, but Mrs. Duggan is watching Lena. She lifts one hand and beckons.
“Oh Jesus,” Yvonne says, cringing. “Does she want me or you?”
“Me,” Lena says. She puts down her glass and stands up.
“The Lord be with you,” Yvonne says behind her, as she heads off into the crowd.
It’s a long time since Lena was in a room with this many people.
What presses on her, more than the shoulder-bumps and the clatter of voices, is the smell: hundreds of perfumes and damp coats and cigarette-smoked jumpers, all clotted together along with the thick savory reek of undefined soup.
She breathes through her mouth and tries to remember the smell of her yard under rain.
Mrs. Duggan has all her jewelry out for the occasion. She’s draped with gold: curly brooches, rings, a thick crucifix. “Lena Dunne,” she says, smiling up from her banquette. Her voice is flat and slow, as heavy as her body. “You scrub up well.”
“Thanks,” Lena says. “You’re looking well yourself.”
“I’m in great form,” Mrs. Duggan says. “Great form altogether. ’Tis a while since I had a day out.” She lifts her sherry glass to Lena. “I didn’t think I’d see you here.”
“I was in school with Claire,” Lena says.
“You’re feeling fierce sociable these days,” Mrs. Duggan says. “I hear you’ve been calling in here and calling in there, handing out the blackberry jam like there’s no tomorra.”
Lena says nothing. Mrs. Duggan sips sherry and watches her.
“If you’re feeling sociable,” she says, “don’t be leaving me out, now. You brought me some a that jam before, d’you remember that?”
“I do, yeah,” Lena says.
“I thought you would, all right,” Mrs. Duggan says, with a small private smile curling her thin mouth. “I liked that. I et it on soda bread. You’ll make me soda bread, won’t you, Noreen?”
“I will, o’ course,” Noreen says promptly, over her shoulder. Noreen has been managing to keep her conversation snapping along while also maintaining a wary eye on Mrs. Duggan and Lena.
“Now,” Mrs. Duggan says to Lena. “Let you call round to me with another pot of that jam, and we’ll be sociable together.”
“I’ll see if I have any left,” Lena says.
“Ah, you do,” Mrs. Duggan assures her. “If you look hard enough, you’ll find one. Call round to me then.” She dismisses Lena with a lift of her chin and turns her attention to scanning the room.
On her way back to the table Lena runs into Trey, dodging through the crowd with the agile expertise of someone accustomed to school corridors. “There’s some fuckin’ eejits going around with sandwiches,” Trey says, by way of greeting. “They look like they’d give you the shites.”
“Don’t eat ’em,” Lena says.
“Wasn’t going to,” Trey says. “Look—” She jerks her chin at a girl meandering past with a half-empty tray and an air of distaste for the whole experience. “Someone oughta trip her up,” she says. “Flat on her fuckin’ face.”
Lena shakes off the residue of Mrs. Duggan and looks at Trey properly. “Are you starving, is it?” she asks.
Trey shakes her head impatiently. “ ’S not that,” she says. “Just, they oughta have more respect. I know your woman Rachel doesn’t care, she’s dead, but they oughta at least have dacent sandwiches.”
“They oughta,” Lena says. “Yeah.” She wishes sharply that she could ward off danger from Trey the way Yvonne and the rest do with their kids, by bitching about her eating habits or her schoolwork or her fashion sense: small piseogs, to guard kids who come from solid homes where safety has always been the default.
Trey, after the various things life has thrown her way, needs stronger stuff than that.
“Go home,” she says. “I’ve things to do here still, but Cal can take you.”
“Nah,” Trey says, unfazed by the change of subject, and she heads back to her mates, nipping around people like they’re defenders.
Seeing as he’s there, Cal goes to the john. He could do with a minute or two of quiet.
He doesn’t get it. Eugene Moynihan is at the sinks, with the water running, staring at himself in the mirror. He looks like he might have been there a while.
“For fuck’s sake,” he says, when he sees Cal. “Leave me alone.”
He sounds too weary even to be obstreperous. “I’m not aiming to bother you,” Cal says gently. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Whatever,” Eugene says. He looks down at his hands, which are loose in the sink like he forgot them there. “If you’ve changed your mind, talk to my father, not me. I don’t give a shit whether you do what he wants or not. In fact, I’d rather you didn’t. OK?”
“I’m not planning to,” Cal says. It sounds like Tommy might not have shared the details of the Donie episode with Eugene, which is unexpected but convenient.
“Great,” Eugene says. “Congratulations.”
Cal is expecting him to walk out, but Eugene just stands there. He’s swaying very slightly forward and back. Some of it could be exhaustion, but Eugene has also had a little more booze than he probably should have. “It’s all gone to shit,” he says, mostly to himself.
Cal leans against the wall with his hands in his pockets and puts on his listener face, which is an approachable blank, ready to nod mildly at anything up to and including cannibalism.
He had no intention of seeking out a conversation with Eugene today, of all days, but here they both are.
He’s interested in hearing what, besides the obvious, has gone to shit.
“I know, son,” he says. “This is a bad day. But from all’s I hear, you got better ones ahead.”
Eugene looks around sharply. “What are you talking about?”
“Well,” Cal says, “word is, come springtime you’re set to be our new councilor, or whatever it’s called. Did I get that wrong?”
“That,” Eugene says, and snorts. “Yeah. Whatever.” He goes back to staring into the sink.
Eugene doesn’t appear to have the same level of enthusiasm about this plan as Tommy does, which Cal finds interesting. “No need to be downhearted, son,” he says comfortingly. “You just ride out the rumors for a while, and things’ll be fine.”
Eugene’s head snaps around again. “What rumors?”
Cal ducks his head, abashed, like he let that slip by mistake. “Aw, hell,” he says, grimacing and rubbing the back of his neck, “nothing you oughta take notice of. People are confused, is all. You just leave them be for a while, and they’ll—”
“Confused about what? If this is that bullshit about me dumping Rachel, they can all get fucked. Even if I had been, which I wasn’t, it’s none of their business.”
“It ain’t that,” Cal says. “Mostly they’re just confused that Rachel didn’t call you, before she did what she did. Seems like she woulda.”
“Yeah. No shit. She should have phoned me. I’d have been right down to her, I’d have—” Eugene breathes hard and bites down on his lips. “But obviously she wasn’t thinking straight. Obviously. What am I supposed to do about that?”
“Nothing you can do,” Cal agrees. “But there’s gonna be folks thinking she must’ve got in touch with you some other way. Like maybe you met her that night, or she came over to your place, or whatever. You can’t blame them. It’s only natural.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Eugene says, through his teeth.
Cal judges that Eugene has had pretty close to enough, all around.
“If I’d seen her, I would have stopped her.
I was sitting at home all evening, and Rachel didn’t come near the place.
I have no idea why, because I’m not fucking telepathic, but she didn’t.
And things are bad enough already without every bored middle-aged cow in this place making up bullshit about me. ”
“You might could get your mama and daddy to tell them,” Cal suggests. The outrage sounds real, but that doesn’t mean Eugene is telling the truth; he’s in the habit of being outraged at anything that doesn’t suit him. “If they were home with you. They could set folks straight.”
“Oh, thanks. Because I hadn’t thought of that myself. Yeah, they were home with me. All night, till we went out looking. And no, they’re not going to go around explaining that to every bog-monster in town, begging them to please graciously believe us—”
“Hey,” Cal says peaceably. “Ain’t no need to get tetchy with me. I believe you. But if other folks believe you too, then you gotta know they’re gonna be saying you and Rachel must’ve had some kinda argument, or even broken up. Or else she would’ve come to you.”
The sudden jerk of anger sends Eugene off balance enough that he has to grab the sink to steady himself. “I can’t win,” he says. “What the fuck. I can’t win.”
Cal can see that Eugene means it, but he finds it hard to work up much sympathy for a guy who’s had things go his way so often that it feels against God and nature when they don’t. “Well, you can see how their minds would run that way,” he says.
“People around here are fucking morons,” Eugene says. “I swear to God, this place would be better if we could just…” He makes a loose swiping motion with one arm, and staggers a little. “Fuck it, clear them all out. Clean sweep. Start over.”
This isn’t the sentiment Cal would expect from an aspiring representative of the populace, or anyway not out loud. “Well,” he says, “they’re mostly not educated folk like you. You can’t hold that against them.”