The Brutal Language of Love (8 page)

Carl's driving lessons took him and mother away
from the house several afternoons a week. Shayna stayed behind as a favor to Carl, who confessed he was embarrassed that she already had her license. “I wouldn't laugh at you,” she assured him, and he said he knew that, but didn't want to take any unnecessary chances.

Across the road, Shayna continued the walks along the coast she and Carl had begun on their honeymoon, mindful of Mother's edict that Niall wrote during the day and should not be engaged in conversation, not even if he were to provide an opening remark. She walked to the port, where ferries from England docked and departed, noting the silence with which people left the country, the noise upon their return. She waved to strangers as they pulled away, and was even recognized on a couple of occasions as the Yank who had captured Carl Meara. “Will you take a photo?” people asked her, chuckling at how she held out her hand for their cameras instead of joining them for the pose.

Sometimes she ventured inland, buying treats along the way from sandwich shops with enticing window displays, corner markets selling candy bars from England. If her eyes happened to be bigger than her stomach on any given day, she would leave the untouched remainders outside the door of Niall's third-floor study: a sweet cheese bagel from a tiny Jewish bakery, a hunk of soda bread and a peeled tangerine on a tray.

He never mentioned her gifts at dinner. Instead, they all sat together at one end of a long, rectangular table in the dining room, Mother and Carl recounting the adventures of their travels: curvy back roads through County Wicklow, one-way bridges, sheep crossings requiring patience and a true ease with one's clutch. They told about an old farmer who leaned into the car to give them directions, flies swarming about his head and back; an American hitchhiker who spoke perfect Irish.

“When are you going to start showing this girl around?” Niall demanded one evening. He had just finished soaking up the last of his bloody roast beef with a heel of bread, and now punctuated his question by tossing a white serviette on the table.

“First of all,” Carl began slowly, preparing to swallow a mouthful of food, “she's not a girl. By no means is she a girl.”

“Semantics,” Mother said to Shayna, looking to gather consensus.

“Second of all,” Carl continued, “don't even think of suggesting I am neglecting my wife. I can assure you, my wife does not feel neglected.” He looked to Shayna for confirmation, but she was too embarrassed to answer, worried he was referring to the sexual component of their relationship.

“All right, all right,” Niall said. “Don't get your knickers in a twist.”

“And third of all, you should consider yourselves bloody lucky we're here at all.”

“Now, hold on just one second!” Mother said, throwing her napkin on the table as well. “What about our excursions? Don't you lump me in with that man.” She gestured loosely toward Niall.

“But we do consider ourselves lucky,” Niall said quickly, turning first to Carl, then Shayna. “We consider ourselves very lucky. You must know that.”

“Naturally,” Mother said to no one in particular.

Carl tore into a multigrain roll. “I'll show her around when I get my license,” he concluded. “So's I can leave the likes of you two at home.”

Niall laughed, followed by Carl, and a reluctant Mother.

“Would you look at that one,” Niall said, noting Shayna's own grin. “Silent as the grave, she is.”

He winked at her, and she fixed her gaze nervously on the wineglass beside her plate. If she felt neglected it was only by him. That he would not come out of his room.

Carl did not show Shayna around after getting his
license. Instead, he explained to her that touring the countryside with his mother had led him to conclude he could never return to a land so vile as England, and that somehow he would have to make his own way at home. He proceeded to rehang all the paintings of his father in their bedroom—done by various artist friends—then sit on the twin beds he had pushed together and study each of them intently, trying to pick a style he felt most capable of emulating. He had not previously taken art classes, but was certain some kind of creative gene must run through him, and that the fine arts were as good a place as any to try to locate it.

At first he attempted nude portraits of Shayna, but had difficulty with the human form and could not restrain himself from interacting with his subject. Landscapes were easier, but only when she was not lying lazily beside him in the grass, her summer clothing shifting this way and that. He feared he would have to do this alone, he told her, and suggested that since they had settled on staying, Shayna should start searching for her own talent. She had sewn buttons and tears in his clothing quite impressively, Carl offered, so why not apprentice herself with a seamstress, or even a costume designer at the Abbey? She agreed this was a good idea and dressed herself one morning to look professional, though she never made it out the door. As she was gathering her résumé in the bedroom, Niall summoned her from the third floor, gave her a typing test, and immediately hired her as his secretary.

He had begun a new book about a beautiful mute
who falls in love with a concert violinist. He wrote everything out in longhand on yellow legal pads, and it was Shayna's job as his secretary to type this into his computer, correcting any spelling or grammatical errors she found along the way. She found none.

They worked together in his office on the third floor, she at a table facing the paneled back wall, he at a desk overlooking the sea. Because they sat with their backs to each other she could not see him, and so often worried where his eyes fell in those moments when the scratch of his fountain pen subsided. She began sitting up straighter in her chair and, in the mornings, meticulously styling the hair at the back of her head.

Sometimes Niall laughed covetously over what he had written; other times he cursed his inactivity lyrically, poetically, as if to prove he had not lost all command of language. Occasionally he would write very, very quickly, and these passages were always the most difficult for Shayna to transcribe the following day. Even in her privileged position as his secretary, she continued to find his work dull.

They broke for lunch daily at one. At first she retreated to her bedroom, leaving Niall to eat with Mother in the kitchen. Shayna used this time to examine any new work Carl had left behind, with notes attached, such as “Credible resemblance to poplar?” or “Superfluous orange? Please advise.” He often left the house before dawn to take advantage of the morning light, which he described as “fundamental” and “shattering.” He felt similarly about sunset and so rarely returned home before eight or nine o'clock. Then, wanting to make up for lost time, he kept Shayna in bed with him for the rest of the evening, encouraging her not to stifle her noises, particularly when he had a sense of Niall in the living room below, reading one of his literary journals from America.

Then one afternoon, after returning to the office, Niall asked Shayna, “Is there some reason you won't join Mother and me for lunch?”

The answer was that Shayna felt Mother was on to her; understood that her daughter-in-law was capable of loving her son and coveting her husband, all in one breath.

“I'm asking you a direct question, Shayna,” Niall said, impatient. “Maybe Carl prefers the silent type, but I'm perfectly happy to have you exhibit symptoms of a personality.”

“I have an answer,” she said dimly, looking around the room at more glaring portraits of him, framed book jackets, the antique bric-a-brac Mother must have had a hand in. They were both standing by their respective chairs, she and Niall, and now he sat down in his, eyes still pinned on her. Finally she told him she was trying to give him and Mother some time alone.

He laughed. “Do Mother and I seem like we need time alone? I don't think so. Really, Shayna. All those days out there”—he gestured toward his window and the shore beyond—“pacing the country and looking positively enlightened, and this is the dreck you're storing upstairs?” He tapped the side of his head with his index finger.

She cried instantly, which seemed to make him happy. “Here,” he said, removing a kerchief from his corduroy pants pocket. “These are Mother's idea. I'm supposed to offer them to ladies in distress.”

Shayna came forward and took the pressed linen cloth from him.

“Are you in distress?” he asked her.

She blew her nose.

“Who taught you to be quiet?” he said.

“I did,” she said.

“That's a lie,” he said, and he picked up his yellow pad and began scribbling.

The next day she followed him downstairs for lunch. Mother said it was delightful to see Shayna, then spoke to Niall in Irish for the better part of an hour. Later, back in his office, he said he would be happy to translate every word if Shayna thought she had any interest in Mother's recollection of a phone call with her eye doctor.

“Will Mother's vision be all right?” Shayna asked Niall, and he laughed, declaring her manners “novel.”

More and more, Shayna spoke. She told Niall about the night she first met Carl, how he had refused to take off his jacket, saying it was the only thing protecting Shayna from his stomach. She remembered a small, green leaf in his hair. She even talked a little about college, and the anthropology teacher who had called Shayna her most promising student in years.

“Do you read my books?” Niall asked.

“No,” she said plainly, causing him infinite delight.

He asked her other questions that she could not answer: Why don't your parents ever call here? Does my son plan to take you out of this house? Where did you get that scar on your back? Who taught you to be quiet?

Unlikely sounds were beginning to emanate from his study, they both knew: a ballet of office chairs squeaking across planked floors, the unbecoming giggles of a grown man, loud conspicuous silences during which nothing—neither Niall's fountain pen, nor Shayna's manicured nails across the keyboard—moved. One day Mother took a broom handle to the ceiling below them, like a disgruntled neighbor too lazy—or afraid—to make the trip upstairs. “Make some noise, will you, so I know you're still alive!” she demanded. She was right to disturb them. Though nothing official had yet taken place, they had begun contemplating zippers, buttons, hooks and eyes. Unabashed stares passed between them. With increasing frequency, they spent their afternoons in the same chair.

Carl took Shayna to a pub in town one night to
show her off to his old college mates. She wore a black summer dress and he a fine linen shirt given to him by Mother, who had recently put herself in charge of his new style. For painting had somehow caused Carl to lose weight—had given him a marvelous tan—and friends and strangers alike told him what a handsome figure he cut.

Shayna had previously talked some politics with Niall, and took the opportunity that night to repeat much of what he believed to Carl's friends, who instantly pronounced her a genius. Later, having missed the last bus, Carl led her inside the stone walls of Trinity College and onto a green littered with several anonymous couples. There, with very little moon to expose them, they performed something so expert and efficient, it would appear not to have happened at all.

During the two-hour walk home, Shayna took the opportunity to reveal to Carl that she believed him to be talented, and he said it had to be true, didn't it, since he had never once heard her compliment anyone before. When they arrived at the house, he had no urge to go inside. “Sit with me on the beach,” he begged her, tugging lightly at the fabric of her dress. “I like the sound of your voice.”

They stayed out all night, discussing his paintings, his father's new book, their recent cessation of any contraception. They watched the sun come up and Carl described the different shades of orange and yellow passing over Shayna's face, telling her exactly how much yellow, red, and white it would take to re-create from a tube. “Do you like Dublin?” he asked her hopefully. She nodded and reminded him of something one of his friends had insisted upon earlier that night, that you couldn't walk through the city center without running into someone you knew. “I want to stay here until that happens to me,” she said.

At a little after six, Niall brought them mugs of tea and asked how his son planned to paint that day, having had no rest the night before. Carl assured him it could be done and left immediately to get cleaned up. Niall, still standing, claimed the vacant spot beside Shayna, and she cuffed an arm around his ankle. “And how about you?” he asked her, looking down. “How do you plan to be my secretary today?”

But she was not his secretary. He had never once paid her, and there had not been work for days.

An hour later mother had French toast sizzling
on the griddle, and the four of them ate together at the round, mosaic-topped kitchen table. Mother had recently hung many of Carl's paintings in the living room in anticipation of a party she had planned for that evening. It was an occasion both for Carl to reacquaint himself with his parents' artist friends and for Mother to ascertain whether or not his talent was too big for Dublin. On this point Niall, who was careful to agree that Carl's talent was indeed large, begged to differ, saying an Irishman with talent belonged strictly to Ireland. Of course, of course, Mother agreed, but how about some formal training in Florence or Paris first? Paris, after all, where Shayna could be closer to her father.