Malarky (30 page)

—You told me come back.

—Well it's a wasted journey. The place is not for rent. And I'll hear no more about. Don't come bothering me again do ya hear?

Before he can shut the brown door.

—Where was it again you were born, where in the family were you, the youngest or the middle?

—What would you want to know such a thing for?

—You're not the youngest I am certain?

—That I am not. The youngest is gone. Cirrhosis of the liver he had and his own stupidity what gave it to him.

It's just a moment. She stares into that moment. It's interrupted by the clip of the door closing. But he has given her a moment and it means he'll give it again.

Like a mad woman she calls through the letter box.

—I remember your Granny at the front of the house. She had something in her hand she was always fixing. Bad tempered she was. I felt sorry for you all.

Silence.

—I don't know why you hold onto such a place if there's nothing good held in it for you.

Silence.

—I could make it nice and then you could come back to it.

The shadow marches back through the glass growing wider as she lifts her brow away from it. The door's pulled back sudden.

—If you don't move away from my door immediately I'll have you removed. Get gone.

She doesn't move. She examines his blushed red face and unkempt random strips of hair.

—You're awful unfriendly, she states blithely.

—What kind of a lunatic are you? Go home woman and if you cross this path ever again I'll get an order against you.

She moves away. She's light. Whatever it is, he doesn't like meddling women. She's not a bit afraid of him. He reminds her of the man on the bus, only he's upright, but inside, he's as broken as any of them.

Since Jimmy's death she's become more reckless. She says strange things she never would have dared to before. She acts on her impulses. Like now, his wheelie bin is out in the road, probably left there for days. She opens it. Empty. Then wheels it back to the door and knocks. His face is astonished. The kind of astonishment where his arms could take an involuntary swing at her. She doesn't give a hoot.

—Don't leave your wheelie bin out on the road or the lads'll turn it over on you. They're expensive. We don't have them up our way. Take care of it.

Somehow, these sentences and his slamming the door, and her, scuttling away, are in perfect unison, so there is no outright victor. She hears another bang at the end of the path, which suggests he watched her disappear in bewilderment.

On the bus she sleeps. Her face slides and smears the cold window to wake her. The fatigue of what she has to do now, to settle this situation, all is clear to her.

That night she is manic with excitement at her performance. I was terrific she thinks. I stood there and I was terrific. To celebrate, in the dark, she makes her way to his house and admires the windows with her torch.

In the Blue House today she sits on the low Chinese fabric stool amid the rubble and jumble of the life that departed here so inexplicably that day. Those waves from Jimmy's hand are still with her from the bus and new ones arrive as she sits in the house she is not supposed to be in. Her back is cramped down.
She looks at the wall and there's Jimmy now waving back at her. Hello mam, he says, it's not so bad, once you get used to the cold, sure it's not.

—But it is bad, it's awful bad Jimmy. You've no idea how this cold bothers me. I'm freezing all the time, I'm never warm these days Jimmy.

You've to get yourself a continental quilt and stitch it onto yourself now, do ya hear? He calls back and they both laugh. Is it cold there too? She asks him. Ah mam, it's freezing once you're dead, only you are numb and you feel none of it the way you do in life. I miss you so much, she tells him and she lowers her head because of the push of tears.

Then he's gone and the cold damp is down on her. With little left in the way of roof and negligible light, torch and lighter alone, she pulls the blanket round her and cramps the knees into her chest and huddles. If it was light, she could get on with something in here but because it's dark, she'll just sit and when the cold is unbearable, she'll rock a bit. She's glad to be here. Sad and glad, her strange combination.

The doctor phones her early.

—Can she come down? He wants to check her blood sugar.

It's most inconvenient for she wants to head to the Blue House first and continue what she commenced yesterday.

Nobody understands how tired widows get. At first everyone wants a bit of you. A slice. To peel the skin from the orange. Then slowly they all leave you alone unless say you go mad or get a haircut or something useful. It's easy to forget widows. They illuminate themselves once a year around anniversaries of other people dying. Then people remember they are the remnants of the person who has gone. Often about what's gone are widows, rather than the matter that they are still here.

I must appreciate why my daughters were angry with me? Grief said.

I did not.

—You kept the news about Jimmy quiet. Deliberately quiet.

And she wondered why I had done that? Why was that?

I didn't like her question. I didn't like her tunneling into me like that. I thought she'd gone bobbins. I didn't want to tell her the truth I had known long in advance of them telling me he was dead that he was dead and none had believed me.

Grief persists, nudges me a touch.

—I want to know why my daughters are angry, don't I?

This is true, had I maybe asked her the question, had she any idea what made girls so angry the way Áine has gone angry on me. I don't recall if I asked her.

—Have you ever been angry?

—I was angry once I said. I was very angry with my son once.

—And what did you do?

—I worked my hardest to have him go away. To have him out of sight, so I wouldn't have to look at him anymore.

—And that was the only time you were angry?

—No I was angry, particularly angry twice with my husband. He forced Jimmy outta college, cut him off financially. And he was perhaps unfaithful to me in my marriage.

—And which made me the angrier?

—It was another time that made me angrier it was the day he prevented me from making my son a decent breakfast. The day we went to the funeral and wasn't I racing to be home and have the breakfast made and didn't he take off to Ballina instead of leaving me home and you know how the story went.

—But you too, you wanted Jimmy gone, isn't that right? Why was that?

—You're asking me too many questions I said. You're giving me a headache. I'd like to talk about what was on the telly last night instead.

There was a long silence which I gave into.

—You've to understand I was telling them long before he was gone, that Jimmy was dead. I'd long buried him by the time he died. It was my husband's death that took me by surprise.

—Lookit if I knew why I kept it quiet then I probably would not have kept it quiet at all.

—Right.

—Jimmy and I had an understanding. And in that understanding he wanted me to tell people only when I was ready.

—And how did you know this?

—We've talked about it, I said. Defeated.

—Do you talk to him regularly?

—As a matter of fact I do.

—As a matter of fact that was how my husband put me inside the hospital.

—As a matter of fact it was.

—Did you know that?

Grief shook her head.

—I only know what it is you want to tell me. She replies.

As a matter of fact I had had enough of this grief counselling.

As a matter of fact I'd had enough of Grief herself.

As a matter of fact there are a hundred people I would rather talk to.

As a matter of fact.