Chapter Eleven #4
Cal looks at her, her squared shoulders and her furious gray glare all ready to go no-holds-barred, and he wants to sit down.
There’s too much on the line, it’s too heavy.
As fast as the kid is growing, this is probably the last time she’ll ever look at him and believe he can fix everything, if only he’d try hard enough.
“That’s not the point,” he says. “Point is, we need to win here. That’s not gonna happen if we go off half-cocked.”
Trey’s fist is clenched around her crumple of sandpaper. “Then what’m I supposed to do meanwhile? ’S not like I can lay off Tommy and it’ll all be grand. We done nothing on him to begin with, and he’s still after us. Are we supposed to just leave? Or what the fuck?”
Cal wonders if he ought to say yes. “No,” he says. “You’re not going anywhere. I’m working on this. Just give me a little more time.”
He half-expects her to throw the sandpaper in his face and slam out, but either she’s gotten too big for that or, somehow, that last thread of faith in his omnipotence still holds.
Trey lets out an explosive noise of sheer frustration, but her shoulders loosen from their fighting stance. “Make it quick,” she says.
“I will,” Cal says. “I promise.”
He makes sure his tone is firm and solid, but he has no idea what he’s going to do.
Tommy is all around him, immobilizing, a straitjacket.
Cal realizes he was being na?ve when he imagined the townland had become something other than its usual self.
This has been here all along, a substrate running beneath the land.
He just hadn’t dug his feet in deep enough to feel it there, till now.
He finds himself a piece of sandpaper and gets to work on the other arm of the chair. Trey goes back to her savage scrubbing. Cal keeps going, steady and even, and little by little her rhythm slows to match his.
Tommy, when he hits, hits home.
Cal spends Tuesday morning at Sheila Reddy’s place, putting in a carbon monoxide monitor and fixing up the roof.
He likes roofing. The land around here is flat, with only gentle rolls right up to the sharp rise of the mountain, so even being on a cottage roof expands the view for miles around.
Off on the horizon, dark trees blur into the sky like watercolor.
The roads follow curves smoothed by centuries, through the web of stone walls dividing the land into swatches of subtly different shades, and the houses are neat and cozy as pottery ornaments carefully placed among the fields.
From up here, this looks like the place Cal thought he was moving to.
Sheila, when she gets back from work, climbs up the ladder to join him.
This comes as a surprise: Sheila isn’t the sociable type.
Cal has made sure to maintain some level of regular interaction with her, seeing as he appears to have partial custody of her kid, but the local flair for small talk passed Sheila by, and their conversations have always been pretty minimal.
She’s loosened over the past year or so, since she moved down off the mountainside, but she’s still a hard woman to know, and Cal doesn’t fool himself that he’s come anywhere close.
He’s straddling the rooftree, working out a nail, when her head appears at the top of the ladder. “Afternoon,” he says. “This wasn’t as bad as I expected, from what Trey said. Just a few slates missing, few more broken. Another half-hour oughta do it.”
Sheila examines the roof. “How much were the slates?” she asks. “And I’ll pay you back.”
“No need,” Cal says. “I had ’em left over from doing my own place.”
Sheila nods. “I got custard doughnuts,” she says, touching the pocket of her hoodie. “If you want tea with them, come down to the house.”
“Just doughnuts suits me fine,” Cal says.
Sheila swings a leg over the rooftree to face him and looks around at the view with a touch of a smile. The breeze catches strands of hair that have escaped from her ponytail. “I always wanted to get up on the roof of my house,” she says. “When I was a kid. We never had a ladder long enough.”
“I did it one time,” Cal says. “My granddaddy whipped my behind.”
“I’da done it anyhow,” Sheila says. “Nothing stopped me, back then.” She settles herself against the chimney stack, pulls a pink paper bag from her hoodie pocket, and hands Cal a sugary doughnut. “I talked to Rory,” she says. “He’s not happy, but he’ll keep us on, for now anyhow.”
“Well, that’s good news,” Cal says. “Rory have any ideas on why Tommy’s hassling you?”
“He reckons Tommy’s a prick, is all.” Sheila bites into her doughnut with satisfaction.
“Tommy wanted this field,” she explains, through a mouthful, “and Rory told him to get fucked—they never got on. Tommy could buy himself another field instead, but he can’t stand being told no. He’s like a spoilt child.”
“Huh,” Cal says, considering that. He never underestimates the force of offended entitlement, but this explanation seems to leave a lot unaccounted for. “Maybe.”
“If Tommy goes too far,” Sheila says, “I’ll spread it around that Eugene was beating the shite outa Rachel. I went over and said that to Clodagh yesterday, after your man the inspector finished with us.”
Cal seriously doubts that Tommy will take well to being threatened by the likes of Sheila Reddy. His instinct is to grab Trey and move her into his place full-time till all this is over, but even if she would go, that would just give Tommy more ammunition. “What’d she say?” he asks.
Sheila shrugs, turning her doughnut to get the bite she wants. “Not much. Pinched up her mouth and bugged out her eyes at me, like I was after spitting on the carpet, and then said she wouldn’t recommend that. I said that’s grand, and went home.”
Sheila looks nothing like Trey, but sometimes Cal sees a strong resemblance all the same, not necessarily in a good way.
The two of them sit in silence, eating their doughnuts and watching the townland go about its business at a pace that, from up here, has a dreamy, leisured air.
Two tweenage girls are cantering ponies around a field, their calls rising thin and sweet as lambs’ through the distance.
“Trey said something about quitting school after this year,” Cal says. “Doing an apprenticeship up in town. She mention anything to you?”
Sheila sucks sugar off her thumb. “She said that, all right. Sam Murray.”
“Yeah,” Cal says. He’s on delicate ground here; he has no idea what Sheila might consider to be overstepping. “You figure maybe she should finish school first?”
Sheila looks at him. Her eyes are still beautiful, a blue that’s the most vivid thing in all this muted landscape of grays and greens. “I don’t stand in that one’s way,” she says. “She’s got plans.”
“Right,” Cal says. He supposes that much is definitely true, for better or worse.
It’s not that he really expected to find an ally in Sheila, whose approach to child-raising has never been what anyone could call hands-on, but he feels let down and frustrated all the same.
“Just in case her plans change somewhere down the line, though.”
Sheila thinks this over. “Has she a fella?” she asks.
“Nope,” Cal says. He’s not going to tell Sheila about Kate, not that he has anything to tell. “I’m pretty sure.”
Sheila nods. “That’s grand, so,” she says. “As long as she doesn’t turn up pregnant, she can always change her plans if she wants.”
She crumples up the paper bag and tucks it back into her pocket. “Thanks,” she says, nodding at the roof, and she swings herself back onto the ladder and leaves Cal to it.
He finishes up the last few slates with the enjoyment gone out of the job, and heads for Seán óg’s. Sheila’s roof is ready for Tommy’s tame inspector, and Cal feels he’s earned a pint. If anyone gives him hairy looks for being a wife-beater, he can sing intimidating folk songs at them.
No one does, though. The pub is quiet, just the permanent-installation pensioners stretching their pints thin to cover a few hours’ company. They nod peacefully to Cal as he comes in, and he gets his pint of Smithwick’s from Barty and settles into the alcove to watch the racing on the TV.
He’s halfway down his pint, and the cold of the rooftop is thawing out of his feet, when the door opens and Bobby Feeney peers around the pub. His round face is puckered with what looks like worry, but he perks up when he sees Cal.
“There you are,” he says, rubbing his hands together. He’s rosy from the cold, right up to his bald patch. “I was hoping I’d find you in here; I saw your car down the road there. What’ll you have?”
“Nah, I’m good,” Cal says. “Gotta drive home.” He catches Barty’s eye and points to Bobby.
Cal and Bobby don’t mostly hang out solo, but he’s pretty sure he knows why Bobby wants a private conversation.
He feels like Bobby’s picked the wrong time, or maybe just the wrong guy, to ask for romantic advice, but he supposes he can probably be more helpful than, say, Mart.
“How’s Róisín doing?” he asks, once Bobby’s got his pint and drawn a careful smiley face in the head.
Bobby lights up like Cal gave him a present.
“Ah, she’s amazing,” he says. “Honest to God, these relationship yokes, they’re only brilliant; even better than I expected.
I always thought the bit of a kiss and a cuddle’d be great, and they are, sure”—he goes even pinker—“but no one tells you about the talking. Myself and Róisín, we could talk all day and never get bored. I didn’t even know I had anything in my head that was worth talking about, but I have. ”
“Here’s to Róisín,” Cal says, clinking his glass against Bobby’s. He keeps his voice extra cheerful because Bobby is making him, somehow, unaccountably sad. “We gonna meet her someday?”