Authors: Doreen Finn
CHAPTER 15
A
dam’s house in Sandymount sits among a row of similar dwellings on a quiet street just off the main drag. The vegetable-oil car sits, abandoned for the weekend. Salt has dried on its paintwork. Feathery grasses drift over the neighbour’s low wall, dry now in this wintry air. The garden is quieted by the season, dry and wreathed in shades of brown. Two enormous terracotta tubs overflow with potting compost and chickweed. Some brave late-autumn lilies fight the herbaceous clutter, their
deep-pink petals
haemorrhaging colour into the monochrome. A wrought-iron table and two chairs loiter in the corner, dead leaves piled on their surfaces. The sea air is heavy, thick with salt and the promise of rain. The saline breeze rattles the shrivelled leaves on the trees. Overhead, seagulls wheel like bits of discarded paper, screaming at each other.
Adam opens the door before I have time to knock. ‘Come in, come in,’ he says, kissing my cheek before hugging me. We were not a family of embracers, and even now the practice sometimes leaves me self-conscious, awkward in the uncertainty of how exactly I should react. Not so with Adam. The hug returned, I smile at him, handing over a bunch of lilies. Gorgeous flowers, they were my mother’s least favourite. Flowers of death, she called them.
Adam ushers me inside, closing the door behind me. ‘My God, it’s freezing.’ He is wearing a slightly more relaxed version of his weekday clothes. Still academic-looking, more of a handsome professor than a secondary school history teacher. ‘Too early to be so damn cold.’
Adam inhales the lilies. Wine wouldn’t have been a good choice of gift. Plenty of alcoholics don’t mind buying alcohol for other people, but I’ve never been one of them. If I’m buying, I’m drinking. And that’s no good.
The house is warm, and very different to what I’d expected from the exterior. It’s almost completely open-plan, all white walls, high ceilings, and huge windows letting in the grey afternoon light. The tidiness strikes me. Chairs are neatly stowed under the long rectangular table; dishes are stacked in piles according to size on the island. The only clutter discernible is a magazine rack, which overflows with newspapers and current affairs publications.
‘Cleaner comes on Fridays,’ he says, catching me looking around. ‘Best money I spend.’
‘It’s a lovely house,’ I say, following him into the kitchen.
Adam splashes water into a tall glass vase, then dunks the whole bunch of flowers into it. ‘Thanks. I’m happy with it.’ He peers into the oven. ‘Just as well, because I’ll never be able to move now, not with the way things are going.’ He uses a tea towel to remove the square ovenproof dish. ‘They couldn’t give me enough money when I did the renovations.’ He blows on his fingers. ‘Throwing it at me, at everyone. The fools.’ The square dish is placed on the table beside another similar one. ‘Now look at them. Bastards.’
My new coat is too warm for indoors. Soft, navy, and a blend of cashmere and wool, it will suit winter either here or in New York. I fold it over my arms and put my bag on the floor.
Adam pulls a chair out. ‘Sorry, Eva. Sit, sit.’ Then he whisks my coat out to the hall, hanging it on an industrial-looking piece of metal studded with coat hooks.
I am like a novice on a nervous first date. Adam asked me over for lunch with a couple of his friends. Instinctively, my first reaction was to refuse, but I’m rarely asked anywhere, and this past week has been particularly quiet. Maude is hosting her own party today, a bridge gathering for four. Cards were piled neatly on the felted bridge table when I called down to her this morning. She shuffled across the floor to me, her slippers making swooshing sounds in the quiet room. On the sideboard, the radio played a roundup of the week’s events.
‘Stay and join us, Eva,’ she’d said, as I dried the few dishes stacked in the kitchen and took out her bin. ‘You’d be very welcome.’
I demurred. I have no wish to talk about my mother with Maude’s bridge friends, don’t want to hear anything about her. Lately I’ve tried to keep her at bay, filter out her face with its perennial expression of dissatisfaction. Sometimes I wonder if my mother is all I can think about, as though focusing on her, analysing her, could work things out for me, get her out of my system. I picked up the phone and rang Adam, belatedly accepting his invitation to lunch.
There are photos on the white walls, Adam in various and recognisable places. Smiling on the Great Wall. Shading his eyes at Machu Picchu. Holding chopsticks and laughing in … Vietnam? Thailand? I can’t tell. His beautiful child appears with regularity in the pictures. Her smile catches me. I want to look away, but I’m drawn back to the photos of her.
‘And this is Annalie. The photos don’t do her justice.’ Adam stands behind me. He smells of cotton and fabric softener, layered with something more male, woodsy. Or maybe it’s citrus. He leans his hands on my shoulders, then reaches to point to a picture of Annalie standing with him at the top of a mountain, both of them wearing red T-shirts. He laughs, with that pure and simple joy I’ve witnessed before in parents of children who amaze them. ‘She’s incredible.’
Annalie’s mother is Swedish, Adam tells me. Adam had some sort of relationship with her that ended amicably. The child spends two months with her father each summer, as well as Easter and midterms. He describes a situation so perfect in its simplicity that I wonder if he’s being truthful. I’ve heard the raging, intractable bitterness of divorced parents separated from their children, seen how threadbare the line between love and hate is. There is nothing of their anger in Adam’s cool poise, his relaxed confidence in his shared parenting.
As he divulges an anecdote involving Annalie and the day he brought her into the school last year, I tug at the cuffs of my shirt. Would my child have been blonde like that? Would it have grown into a person of strong convictions? Would it have had my eyes? My hair?
There are questions I try to avoid asking myself. Questions about my child are among them. There’s no answer to any of them, only the pain of blankness, a dark carpet rolled out before me. It stretches to infinity, and I am incapable of taking the first step towards examining it.
The doorbell drills into the quiet. I slip into the kitchen as Adam greets his other lunch guests. An opened bottle of white wine stands by a large bowl of salad. I pour and swallow an overfull glass in less than the time it takes for the new arrivals to shed their coats. I wipe the glass dry on the abandoned tea towel, place it back in its original position and move to look out the window. The tricks of the alcoholic never fade.
There are only four of us at lunch, and my apprehension is eased by the buzz of the wine and the affability of Adam’s two friends. David, the journalist seated next to me, fills my glass twice without asking. The wine glugs under his generous pour. Adam places a restraining hand on David’s arm, shakes his head, but I wave Adam’s concern away. Obviously, I shouldn’t drink anything at all, particularly not after the first large helping I dispensed with in an instant, but it’s been weeks, and it slips me into the conversation, disperses the cloud of anxiety I am often shadowed by. David is working on a piece about zombie banks, an addition to our lexicon that has eased itself seamlessly into dialogue. Zombie banks. Ghost estates. Austerity. What a chasm in our society.
‘The thing is,’ David says, ‘it’s not the reckless public spending that’s to blame for this mess. That’s all we’re being told, but it’s these banks who loaned money to speculators.’ He says that fifteen customers each owe five hundred million to one bank. He is excited by his research, by the incomprehensible figures that he’s throwing into the conversation. David has a contact in the government, a dissatisfied man who wants the whistle blown. Despite repeated requests, he refuses to divulge his source.
‘Come on, you can’t not tell us,’ says Sally, Adam’s friend from their undergraduate years in Trinity. She is a research fellow there now, working on something to do with literature and the curriculum. I wonder if we know some of the same people. Sally is Adam’s age, a few years older than I am, but academia in Dublin is a small world.
David ignores the coffee Adam has placed on the table and empties the last wine bottle into his own glass. ‘Not a chance. But I’ll tell you what.’ He leans into the table, making stabbing motions with his index finger. ‘This government is on its last legs. No question. And I’m helping to bring it down, column by column.’
Adam grins at me. ‘You’d never guess he’s won national journalist of the year twice, would you?’
‘Get lost,’ David says. ‘It’ll be three times by the time I finish with this. With a bit of luck it’ll be the end for the soldiers of destiny too.’ He finishes the wine and bangs the glass down for emphasis. ‘Any more of this? It’s actually not bad for a change.’
‘Sorry, we’re out. Tesco is around the corner if you want more.’
‘Still supporting the multinationals, then?’
‘Fuck off.’
Sally raises her eyebrows at me, smiles, shakes her head. ‘They’re always like this, Eva. You’ll get used to it. All part of the homoerotic bonding they so desperately need.’
The men laugh. ‘You’d love that, wouldn’t you?’ Adam says.
Sally sips her coffee.
It’s like watching a game of table tennis, observing them, the conversation springing from topic to topic, punctuated by insults and shouts of loud laughter.
‘Well, if you’ve no more wine, and only an evil corporation in which to obtain more, you’re going to have to break out the weed.’ David darts a glance at me. ‘You’re cool with that, Eva, right?’
I nod. ‘Fine.’ The three large glasses of wine have loosened my brain. My shell is slipping away, the thin membrane of confidence has reared its temporary head. I smile at Adam as I raise my glass to my lips, straighten myself in the chair. He raises an eyebrow at me. I’m drunk, buoyed by the booze. Adam knows. I’ve told him bits about my drinking, prided myself on not consuming anything more than water when with him. He knows I’m trying, and can now see that I’ve fallen again. I haven’t drunk anything in weeks, and my tolerance has slipped. If I were at home now I’d finish another bottle. But weed sounds nice. It’s been a while. Suddenly, I’m desperate to be high, to be even more mellow and benevolent than I am now. It feels so liberating to be rid of my angsty self-consciousness, even though I know the freedom is temporary. I wonder what Adam’s friends think of me. They have included me easily into the conversation, haven’t prodded me to speak, haven’t delved too deeply.
Adam rolls a joint with one hand and passes it to Sally. She waves it away. ‘No thanks. I’ll end up inside on your couch listening to Pink Floyd, and I’ve a thing on tonight that I need a clear head for.’
Adam hesitates, but I grab the proffered joint, light it and inhale. I keep my eyes on Adam’s as I suck at it. The tip glows and the paper crackles. The smoke, thick and yellow, travels my airways. I keep it in until my lungs feel like they’re about to explode. I repeat it, then pass to David. I feel the edges of the day finally smoothe themselves out, caress me. I drain my glass. The weed is bitter on my tongue. Adam gets up and changes the CD. John Coltrane’s twisting tenor sax floats out of the speakers in the ceiling, round black discs that look like eyes to my stoned mind.
Adam and David continue their talk of banks and politicians. I tune out. It’s too much for my overloaded brain to follow. Their weed-thickened voices rise and fall. I allow the music to drown them out.
‘I have one of your books,’ Sally says.
I blink. I’d forgotten about her. ‘What book?’ I haven’t met her before, couldn’t have lent her anything.
‘The second one.’ She pinches the bridge of her nose. ‘I can’t remember the title. It’s been a long time.’
My skin prickles with shock. I glance at Adam, but he hasn’t heard. My poems. I haven’t had anyone reference them in years. No one in New York is familiar with my poetry, another reason I found it so easy to work there. I tell Sally the title, quietly. The words feel strange on my lips.
The Circus at Night.
My God. It’s been a lifetime.
‘That’s it. Sorry, I shouldn’t have forgotten. Great title.’ Sally puts her elbows on the table, leans over. ‘I actually tried to trace you last year.’
Trace me?
‘I rang your old publisher.’
I raise my hand. ‘Why?’
‘We were debating putting a few of your poems on the course.’
Course? What course? She sees my confusion, smiles. ‘The Leaving Cert course. It’s up for a change, and I suggested adding you to the syllabus.’ She gets up and fills the water jug. The tap gushes. Ice rattles as she empties a tray of cubes from the freezer.
I’m not sure if it’s the weed or the shock, but for a second I think I’m going to be sick. I don’t want to have to think about my poetry.
Sally refills my glass as she sits back down. ‘I don’t know what’ll happen, so don’t worry too much about it. It’ll be ages before anything is decided.’ She checks her watch, then slips her arms into the cardigan she left draped on the back of her chair. ‘Adam, I have to go.’ He stands up, but she shoos him back into his chair. ‘I’ll let myself out. I’ll be in touch.’ Sally riffles through her bag, producing a notebook. She tears off a corner and writes her numbers down. ‘That’s my mobile, that’s work. Give me a ring if you can. I’d really like to shoot the breeze about your work. I’ll be pushing for you to be included.’ She wraps a scarf around her neck. ‘If I don’t hear from you, I’ll get your number from Adam.’ She smiles. ‘I’m not letting this go.’
I put the scrap of paper in my pocket. I’m not going to ring her. How could I?
‘Oh, and Eva, listen.’ She leans towards me. ‘Not a word, okay? I need to keep it all under wraps for now.’
Keeping this a secret won’t be a problem. It’s not as though I have anyone to tell. Except Maude, of course, and I’m not telling her because she’d be in favour of it. John Coltrane tumbles from the ceiling, pulling me towards the sound. It’s so easy to lose yourself in his music, all those double helix cadences unravelling in the darkening room. I’m definitely high.