——
At nine, the pace in the restaurant slows. Abbey goes over to the work station to polish cutlery. Every minute or so she checks the call-board lights in the dining room to see if either of her tables’ meals have come up in the kitchen. Holding two butter knives in her left hand she runs a clean rag over their smooth faces, then over the fat handles. The cutlery reminds her of her mother’s silverware, a place setting for eight that was given to her mother by her grandmother as a wedding present. Abbey remembers how heavy it was when she was a kid, how the handles, mediaeval looking oblong bulbs, got bigger until the bases seemed to fill her palm. For a joke her mother would tap her on the head with them when they set the table at holidays. Abbey would pretend to fall over, unconscious, onto the floor. The good set of silver was the only ornate thing Abbey could remember her parents having. After her mother left they never used it, even though none of their everyday cutlery matched.
The number six comes up flashing on the overhead call board. Abbey drops the knives into the tray and they make a loud clunking sound. She walks into the kitchen and Dan and Devin, both in their chefs hats, are pushing steaming plates across the metal shelves in her direction.
“Roast Pie, Lamb, Halibut and Risotto!” Dan shouts. He glares at Abbey.
“I’m right here, asshole.” Abbey makes as big a smile as she can muster.
Dan shows Abbey his teeth, runs the back of his hand over his forehead. “Go fuck yerself, Princess.”
“It’s not a roasted potato, it’s supposed to be baked.” Abbey puts the Halibut back down on the shelf in front of
Dan. He checks the order and then turns the plate around. Looks at the offending spud.
“This is supposed to be baked!” He turns to Devin, shouting, even though Devin is beside him. Abbey can tell the kid is almost shitting himself. Devin’s maybe eighteen, nineteen, and Dan is at least forty. Devin picks the roasted potato off the plate with his hand and sets it on the cutting board. Abbey gathers up the three plates that are ready and starts to go out.
“Wait!”
“I’ll come back for it.”
“You’ll fuckin’ wait!”
Abbey stops and stands there a second, the heat from the kitchen on the backs of her legs. Devin calls, “Almost!”
The plate on Abbey’s arm is steaming, hints of basil and pepper, the musty smell of the grains, fill the air. Abbey hears the whirr of the microwave and starts heading out; it’ll be two minutes for the potato and the plates are hot, her back is aching. Dan says wait again but Abbey is already nudging the double doors with her hip, heading out into the restaurant. When she comes back less then a minute later the halibut is up and the potato is open, a curl of butter, sprig of parsley inside.
“Thanks.” She grabs the plate and turns to go and suddenly Dan is behind her, his hand around her throat, forcing her chin up. The plate in Abbey’s hand tilts and the food, then the plate, hits the floor. Abbey’s hands go up to her neck but Dan’s palm is against her throat, pressing into her larynx. She can’t breathe. Things become confused. Her father is holding her back; her mother is across the street and Abbey wants to run over; and her father’s hands are on her. But not like this.
Devin is in front of her now, yelling, “For fuck’s sake, let her go!” Heading out the doors to get help. And then it’s just the two of them, Abbey in shock, trying to get a breath, digging her nails into his hand. Dan loosens his grip, just enough to let her breathe, his chest pressed against her back, mouth to her ear. “Now let’s see ya try that again.”
Veronica drives Abbey home from the hospital, tells her she did the right thing, pressing charges. Dan has never done anything like that before, but maybe, in retrospect, someone should have seen it coming. Corrects herself, “I should have seen it.” She puts her hand out to Abbey’s, tapping it maternally. The brake lights of the cars in front of them go on and off; traffic crawls down Harcourt Street, people queue outside the nightclubs. And all Abbey wants to do is get out of the car and run to Angela’s flat.
Later, Abbey sits in Ange’s kitchen drinking tea. Every light in the flat on. Angela is out with Brendan, her mobile phone going straight to messages. After a while Abbey goes into the living room and turns the television on, curls up on the couch. An episode of
Coronation Street
coming on TV3. She puts a warm cloth over her throat. The doctor had said her neck will be fairly bruised in the morning.
What bothers Abbey most are those two or three seconds when she closed her eyes in the middle of it and thought Frank was behind her—that it seemed possible he could do that to her. That even when she opened her eyes and saw Devin standing there, panicked, telling Dan to leave her alone, it still seemed conceivable that Frank was behind it all. Willing it to happen.
When Abbey was ten, Frank took her to Nipissing Park saying they were going on a vacation. But after a quick swim in the lake, he locked Abbey in the truck for six hours while he went door to door, cottage to cottage, asking whoever answered if they remembered Karen Delaney and did she ever come around here anymore? Abbey was left in the parking-lot for what felt like days, the sun coming in through the windshield, a large wood cutout of a bear by the gate, the sign above warning hikers that there’d been two sightings in May. Frank promising Abbey ice cream before he left and then forgetting to bring some back for her. Admitting it all when she was twenty-two or twenty-three, in the phase of “just listen,” in the non-stop dirge of “these are my sins.” “I hit her you know. Once,” he said while drunk, as if he was proud of it. “Two weeks before she left.” Made a fist with his right hand as he said it. Eying Abbey to see if she’d do anything about it, to see if she’d move the couch cushion off her lap, stand up and walk out.
From the moment Abbey stood on her father’s grave, he’s been with her. Memories coming back to her, images of him she’d forgotten: sleeping on the couch in Woodslee, the stubble coming up on his chin, and six-year-old Abbey touching it lightly with her fingers but not wanting to wake him. The smell of diesel on his hands after a day of work, the tar sometimes staining his clothes; Frank telling Abbey he made holes for a living, trying once to get her to put her hands around his arm muscle the way Karen would, saying, “Look at that, sweetie, your daddy’s a damn strong man.” The buggy ride in the Zehrs parking lot—Abbey, maybe twelve, straddling the grocery bags
while he wheeled her around in the cart. And the year before she moved back in with him, when he was just starting to get sick, Frank begging her to take him for lunch, telling her he hadn’t been out of the apartment in days. Abbey said, “But Dad, it’s three o’clock,” and Frank looked up at her sheepishly, got out of bed just the same, opened his closet. “But I have a class,” Abbey had explained, lying. Adding “Wordsworth,” as if that made it real. Frank crawled back under the blankets, shrugging, “You bet, kiddo. Maybe another time.”
Abbey gets up and turns off the TV. Goes to the kitchen and runs the dishtowel under warm water, heads back to the couch, pulls the afghan over her, and drapes the cloth back over her throat. The warmth feels good. Once, when Abbey had a fever, Frank, not knowing what else to do, took her nightie off and put her into an ice bath. Stood there watching her turn blue. Panicking, he called the neighbour, Mrs. Pasic, after twenty minutes. The old lady pulled Abbey out, warmed her up with a fleece towel, even brought over an electric blanket from her apartment. Told Frank that he should have taken Abbey to the hospital. She stayed there all night until Abbey’s fever went down.
It wasn’t so much that Frank had failed her or that he’d lied. Abbey had done enough of that herself. Even at ten years old, she knew they were in Nipissing Park to track down her mother, had gone along with the vacation idea anyway—sitting in the cab of the truck with the window cracked open, running her Barbies back and forth across the dashboard for six hours because she wanted, in her own way, to please her father. It wasn’t the lies, how Frank insisted Jane was her real aunt even
though Abbey knew better, that he told her Karen would come back and that everything would be all right. In the end, it was his lack of trust in her—trust that Abbey could handle knowing the truth; trust that he could have let go of her hand that night on Ouelette Avenue, watched her run over to her mother and try to hug her; trust that even if Karen, seeing Abbey, chose to walk away, Abbey could’ve dealt with it. Because that, at least, would have been something real.
When the phone rings, Abbey is in the shower. By the time she hears it, turns off the taps and grabs a towel, the machine has picked up. Wiping the condensation from the mirror with her right hand, Abbey tries to get a good look at her neck, but the mirror fogs up again. She puts on Angela’s terrycloth robe, goes into the living room, hits the play button under the answering machine’s blinking red light. She’s expecting Angela to call, say she got Abbey’s messages. There are a few seconds of silence, then: “Abbey. It’s Dermot.” Followed by a long pause. The sound of him breathing. “Listen. I want you to come home.”
III
Finally Away
The Director from Annagassan
SIGNS indicate a detour. Traffic on the bay road is diverted inland and the drivers eye the actors’ trailers, the arc lights, the dolly, as they wheel past. A hundred people are milling about; the lawn at the new church is trampled. A make-up tent, set up by the statue of the Virgin, bucks in the wind. A woman in track pants runs across the road with a wedding dress in her arms, the crinoline lifting. All the trees in Connaght point east.
At the far end of the church parking lot, the film crew queues for cappuccinos. The catering truck is lit up like a carnival, fairy lights hanging from the awning. The filming stopped after the twenty-third take. In an hour they’ll do the scene at the chip shop again: The actress will come out the door and meet her neighbour, they’ll talk for a minute about the weather and then he’ll absentmindedly let slip that he saw Maeve O’Brien at the O’Malley wedding yesterday. The camera will move in close, the boom over the actors’ heads will pick up a sharp intake of breath. A look of
understanding will cross the actress’ face. Then she’ll rush off down the road.
A few of the locals have gathered on the corner to watch the action. Niall and Conneely have come out of the pub, Jimmy’s at the Spar window a few doors down. Helen Brennan and Marianne Lynch stand by the gate to Éinde’s, craning their necks to see over the film crews’ heads. Dermot, coming up the bay road, stops to talk to the director. He’s wearing a padded jacket, has the weathered face of a coastal man, is holding the script in his hand.
“Are you from around here?” Dermot asks.
“Annagassan.”
“Near the peninsula is it?”
“That’s right.”
“And the Cooley mountains.”
“You’ve been over?”
“I know it.”
“Fierce weather,” the director nods towards the bay.
“What’s it called?” Dermot asks. “The show.”
“Ros na Run.” He pauses for a second, moves closer, “It’s huge in Dublin, the Gaeilge.”
“Well, good luck.” Dermot offers the director his hand. Turns towards Hughes. Looks back once as he crosses the road. The wind against them both.
The smell of fried food wafts across the set; twenty orders of take-away curry have arrived at last. A girl in a baseball cap calls out the meals. The arc lights by the chip shop are turned on and that whole area, and Feeny’s beside it, is suddenly brighter than day. Over by the prop tent, the grip, a Galway
boy, looks up, then goes back to crushing pop cans with his boot. The trash cans are overflowing and a plastic cup tumbles across the road. In the centre of the crowd, a Dublin man in a stiff Arran sweater holds a bullhorn. People study him warily as if waiting for him to use it. Dermot meets up with Niall and Conneely. “So the circus is in town.”
O’Nia, an Irish teacher from the local College, sits in a chair outside Feeny’s with a sullen-looking brunette, his white hair standing up in the wind. There’s a script in his hand, the pages flipping up at the corners. The woman, both arrogant and plain, looks down her nose at him. A few feet away, Roxy, Hughes’ dog, lifts his leg on a light stand. Dermot sees him do it and laughs.
“Again,” O’Nia says. He reads the actress’ lines in Irish. “Beidh mé romhat ag an stáisiún.”
“Beidh mé romhat ag an stáisiún,” she repeats, tossing her hair over her shoulder.
“Again.”
“Beidh mé romhat ag an stáisiún.”
O’Nia looks at her, and with two knuckles taps the script. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Ms. Lowell, but your character’s not from Portmagee.”
The election posters that lined the road in Spiddal have been taken down from the poles and “Ros na Run” signs and arrows for parking have been put up in their place. A large Tele Gael sign has been staked into the corner, pointing to the studio they’re finishing up the road. The series is in its second year, and they were shooting in Galway until the cost of permits
went up. The producer, in her wisdom, killed off the main character to create a subplot in Spiddal. A whole new village storyline is coming along. Conneely watches it every week to laugh at the Dublin actors’ Irish.
“Anyone for a drink?” Dermot asks.
Niall checks his watch, sees it’s just past two. “I’ll go in with ya.”
“I’ll be a minute yet,” Conneely says, watching the actors make their way to the chip shop door. “That one is about to leave town and your man just gave away last week’s secret.”
“Which is?” Dermot asks.
“The wedding guest.” Conneely lifts his chin.
The director from Annagassan takes his seat, and the assistant to the producer holds up the clapper. Dermot and Niall turn to go in but Conneely grabs Dermot’s arm. “Watch this,” he whispers, “it’ll all be out in a minute.”
“What’s that?”
“They’re about to bring Maeve O’Brien back from the dead.”
The Breakwall
“ANOTHER, Michael?” Dermot tilts his head towards the bar.
“I’m grand.”
In the corner by the fire a woman with dull eyes and high cheekbones launches into song. Her voice is rough and the noise of conversation hushes for a minute. Soon the rabble starts up again. Michael studies the callouses that have come up on his hands.