The Carnival at Bray (2 page)

“Last ride! Last ride!” a man called, the tip of his cigarette glowing in the cozy shelter of his ticket booth. Maggie felt in her
pocket and produced a few coins that flashed in her palm like silver fish. The man took her money and dumped it in a drawer.

“Sit wherever you like,” he said, jabbing a thumb at the empty Ferris wheel.

She sat in the nearest carriage and pulled down the safety bar. The ride jolted, and she was lifted into the dark, misty sky. Colm had told them, if you want to be a true Irishwoman, you've got to become an expert on water. Salty water and clear water, thick rain and misty rain, downpours and trickles, thundery rain and soft rain. He had explained the difference between a sea and an ocean, but now she could not remember and her head hurt too much to think very hard. She reached up and ran her fingers over the lump. It started just under her wet hairline and stood out from her scalp at least half an inch. Back home, she thought, the bell would just be ringing on the last period of her first day of her sophomore year.

The ride climbed and climbed, arcing away from the center of the wheel, until Maggie was higher than the steeple of Saint Paul's Church, and the group of teenagers walking down the shore, huddled together against the rain, were as small as board-game pieces. Across the asphalt strip from the carnival, at a pub called Quayside, she could see into a bright square of window. Even as far away as she was, she could tell that the two dark heads leaning together were Colm and her mother, sitting at a table with drinks between them, oblivious to the rest of the world, completely and totally and nauseatingly in love. One by one, she watched the lights of the carnival booths winking out, and still the ride climbed higher. She looked east, out to where there was nothing but waves and darkness. Breathing in the dampness, Maggie wondered what would happen if she tumbled out of her seat, splashing into the lapping nothingness, and how long it would take before someone noticed she was gone.

The weekend before they moved to Ireland, Ronnie, who had a green belt in tae kwon do, was chosen to perform at an exhibition with her dojo in Milwaukee. The whole family was set to go, until Maggie came down with the summer flu.

“Vicks VapoRub and a dehumidifier,” fussed Nanny Ei, “and you'll be right as rain in the morning.”

“Saltines and a can of Coke,” Laura advised.

“No, no. For a flu, what you need to do is boil an onion in milk, add honey, and drink it down in one go,” Colm said.

Maggie burrowed into the velvet nest of her grandma's couch, half-listening in her feverish state to the discussion about what to do with her. When the conversation had reached an impasse, her uncle Kevin, who was twenty-six and still lived at home with Nanny Ei, emerged from the cave of patchouli and Newport smoke that served as his bedroom. Sandwiched under his armpit was a copy of
Ranters & Crowd Pleasers: Punk in Pop Music, 1977–92,
a book that lately he'd been quoting from at family dinners.

Maybe it was because there was only ten years between them, or maybe it was simply because of the way he was, but Maggie had never viewed her uncle Kevin as an authority figure—more like an adored older brother. Uncle Kevin was the youngest of Nanny Ei's three children, and though it would be unfair to call him spoiled—Nanny Ei's household had been one of tough,
blue-collar love, the kind where Christmas stockings were stuffed with practical gifts like socks, toothbrushes, and hard, bitter navel oranges—he was certainly the most doted upon. This was partially due to the heart condition he'd been born with, the two open-heart surgeries before the age of two, the long white scars across his chest, the warning from his doctors that he was never to play contact sports of any kind. Which was just fine by Kevin: he never had any interest in sports. He'd begun playing the guitar at age six, formed his first band by age twelve, and lately had finally begun to find some local radio play with his band, Selfish Fetus, and to book shows at venues that people had actually heard of—the Empty Bottle, the Hideout—and which people actually began to attend. To those around him, he emanated the nervous energy of someone who is close enough to touch a dream they've been chasing all their life.

“Let the poor kid stay home if she's sick,” he said. “I got no plans this weekend. I can watch her.”

Colm and Laura glanced at one another and burst out laughing.

“Absolutely not,” Laura said. “I love you, Kev. But there is no friggin' way I'm letting you watch my kid all weekend.”

Kevin threw himself on the couch next to Maggie and lit a cigarette.

“So let me get this straight,” he said, exhaling. “You'd trust me with Maggie's spiritual upbringing—her very Catholic
soul,
but you won't trust me to give her some Nyquil and make sure she's in bed at a decent hour?”

“Christ on a
crutch,
Kevin,” Laura glared at him. “If I had known how much you were going to throw it in my face, I would never have made you her godfather.”

“Well, you did, sis. And what God has joined, no man shall put asunder.” He put an arm around Maggie and floated a halo of smoke in Laura's direction.

“Well, the only
reason
I did was because Dave was stationed
in the Philippines. You were ten years old—I figured, how much harm could it do? How was I supposed to know that you'd grow up to be a man with about as much sense of responsibility as your average poodle?”

“Aw, now, love. You're not being fair,” Colm said. “Even a poodle can be house trained.” He was referring to an incident earlier that summer when Kevin had come home drunk and peed in a corner of the living room.

“Well, why don't we ask my goddaughter what
she
wants?” Kevin said, ignoring Colm's bait. He turned to Maggie, who was emptying her nostrils into a tissue. “Mags, would
you
like me to watch you this weekend?”

Of course she did, and everyone in the family knew it. But all the reasons why Maggie loved Kevin—his long, unwashed hair, his incessant guitar playing, his curse-riddled rants about the corporate takeover of radio stations, his dog-eared copy of
Ranters & Crowd Pleasers
—were all the reasons her mother deemed him an unfit caretaker, godfather, and brother.

“May I interject?”

Nanny Ei, dressed in a pair of khaki shorts and an Andre Dawson jersey that was at least two sizes too large on her little-old-lady frame, came in from the kitchen carrying a plate of sliced pears.

“It
is
only one night, Laura.” She put the plate on the coffee table next to a pile of Maggie's balled-up tissues. “And everybody deserves a second chance. Sometimes even a third and a fourth. Now eat those, young lady. They got Vitamin C.”

That settled it. The rest of the family left for Milwaukee while Maggie and Kevin stayed back and watched a marathon of
This Old House.
Halfway through the fourth episode, Kevin reached across the couch and poked Maggie's socked toe.

“You're not really sick, right?”

“Of course I am!” Maggie sat up in her cocoon of blankets. “I've had a fever for, like, three days!”

“Bullshit. You just didn't want to go to your sister's karate thing. And I respect that.”

“Uncle Kev, I swear to God, I really am sick. If I wasn't, I would tell you.” She bit into a droopy piece of pear while Kevin reached over with the back of his hand and felt her forehead.

“Feels just fine to me.”

Maggie batted his hand away.

“Nanny checked me like an
hour
ago. I was almost 102 degrees!” Maggie lifted her own palm to her forehead. But Kevin was right. It was as if he had channeled some strange godfatherly powers: she could feel the fever draining out of her.

Kevin stood up and stretched.

“Well, okay, Mags. If you say you're sick, you're sick. It's just too bad though, because if you
were
faking it, I was going to bring you out to see a show with me tonight—a
big, huge, epic, life-altering show.
But it looks like you need your rest.” He deposited his empty beer can in the kitchen trash. “I'm going to hit the shower. If you make a miraculous recovery by the time I get out, let me know.”

An hour later, Maggie, her face slick with Nanny Ei's rose-scented makeup, was strapped into the passenger seat of Uncle Kevin's silver Chevy Nova. He'd bought it a few months earlier at a stolen car auction in Galewood for $800, and had just enough money left over to order a vanity plate. He dubbed the car AG BULLT—“AG being the periodic element for silver,” he explained to her as the engine roared to life. “Remember that next year in chemistry class.” As they peeled out onto Milwaukee Avenue, he shoved Soundgarden's
Badmotorfinger
into the tape deck and began to lecture her, mainly about music, but also about religion, economic trends, and the situation in Kosovo. Maggie tried to absorb it all as her skinny butt floated off the seat every time he turned, pressing her chest against a duct-taped seatbelt that she prayed would hold.

They stopped in front of a decrepit apartment building and
Kevin trumpeted AG BULLT's horn until three of his friends emerged, all dressed in slight variations of a faded black uniform. Maggie recognized Rockhead, Taco, and Jeremy from their late-night forages through Nanny Ei's refrigerator. Taco, the fat one, threw open the passenger side door.

“Get in the back, kid,” he said. “I need the leg room.”

Maggie looked at Kevin, who was switching out
Badmotorfinger
for Jimi Hendrix's
Are You Experienced?

“Go on, Mags,” he said, turning the music to its loudest possible volume. “I can't have Taco's fat knees jabbing into the back of my seat. It interferes with my concentration.”

She climbed into the back, sandwiched between Jeremy and Rockhead, who passed a joint back and forth over her head as they drove east through the summer night. All the windows were rolled down and the speakers hissed and crackled, threatening at any second to blow out completely. A cyclone of ash gusted around the car, settling in Maggie's hair and in the lap of her black jeans. The music and the wind made it too loud for talking, so she just sat and looked out the window at the city rushing by while Jeremy and Rockhead smoked their weed, until they reached Clark Street and the traffic came to an abrupt standstill.

“What a shitshow,” Rockhead said, leaning out the window and flicking away the cashed end of the joint. A line of concertgoers in T-shirts and torn jeans and see-through tops snaked from the entrance of the Metro all the way down Clark for nearly half a mile.

“Where the fuck are we gonna park?” Taco asked. “I
told
you we should've taken the bus. I can't walk that far!” He turned in his seat to look at Maggie. “Football injury.”

“Don't believe him, Maggie,” Jeremy confided. “He's always making excuses to cover for his morbid obesity.”

“Excuse me, asshole, but most of this is muscle mass.” Taco reached into the backseat and presented them with a flexed, beefy
forearm. “Touch my arm, Maggie! Pure solid muscle.”

“Do
not
touch his arm,” Kevin instructed from the front seat as he scanned the street for a parking spot.

“The problem with you, Jeremy,” Taco continued, withdrawing his arm, “is that you don't know shit about physiology. It's not weight that matters, but
body fat percentage.”

Before Jeremy could respond, Kevin slammed on the brakes, yanked AG BULLT into reverse, and swung the car into an open spot directly in front of a fire hydrant.

“Dude, you can't park there,” said Jeremy. “They'll tow your ass.”

Kevin thrust the parking brake into place.

“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws,” he declared, turning off the ignition.

“What?”

“That's Martin Luther King, ignoramuses. ‘Letter From Birmingham Jail.' ”

“Can someone please explain to me what's
unjust
about
not
parking in front of a fucking fire hydrant?” Taco sighed. “If this shit gets towed, I am
not
paying for you to get it untowed.”

Kevin got out of the car and winked at Maggie.

“Let's go,” he said.

The huge, epic, life-altering show was none other than the Smashing Pumpkins, playing at their favorite hometown venue, just weeks after the release of
Siamese Dream.
After being patted down by security, Maggie reminded herself not to freak out at these facts, at least not visibly, as she followed Kevin and his friends up the curving linoleum staircase that was crammed from rail to rail with sweaty fans.

“So, do we have good seats?” she asked, scrutinizing the ticket stub that she already knew would be a keepsake for the rest of her life.

“Seats?”
Taco laughed. “What do you think this is—the goddamn opera?”