The Greeks were right to keep the great events off stage. Send the information by messenger. Essential, if only because there is always the possibility that the messenger may be wrong.
EIGHT
… this young man is talking to me. This young man wants me to talk to him. Everybody wants me, Sissy O’Hara, to talk to them. It will be a triumph for them. “Sissy talked to me,” they’ll say. “Chatted away, just like old times.” If we talk in this country we’re all right. Silence is death to us. And that’s why my silence frightens them. Let them be frightened! I’m sorry. Let them be frightened. I don’t want to make the sound words make any more. Not me, say I. Not me.
“Mrs. O’Hara? Mrs. O’Hara! Talk to me, Mrs. O’Hara. We’ve been sitting here a while now Mrs. O’Hara.”
We have indeed. And why not sit in silence? Why not live in silence? The Cistercians do. They look radiant. Maybe they’ve got all the answers, since they never ask a question. So you, Brendan Begley, sitting opposite me here, do not ask me for the sound of words. Everyone is hungry for the sound of the word, for the fare of life. We feel we’ll starve without it. And we fear starvation. But I am not hungry. Not for human sound nor for those who make it. I am not hungry for people. Neither the sight nor the sound of them. I am hungry for nothing except what I cannot have. I will starve within and without, without him. What is it that they want from me when they say “Sissy, you have other children”? Should I feed on them? No. And so I eat less and less. They are all worried about me. They think I’m dying. Tom thinks I’m dying. Dying? I’m dead! In the week before Tom finally relented and let me come here he tried one last time to love me back to life. Love! He has such faith in love! He is love! He believes that he can make it course through me—a circulation of love pumping from his heart into my heart—pushing through the veins, pumping and pushing that old rhythm that brought life into the world. He thinks love, his love, can bring me back to life. A man in love never gives up. Never. Tom O’Hara is certain he will not fail in this. And he knows that if he fails in this he is lost. And I know that. I am what he has to show for life. I am all he has to show for life; that his love for me triumphed and the children who followed. Two of them gone …
And still I could not join him. He was holding his heart out to me. There you are, Sissy. Take it. Partake of it. This is my body. The way the Sacred Heart cries out to us in that picture in the kitchen. What a picture in a kitchen! You’ll see His Sacred Heart bleeding in bedrooms and kitchens all over Ireland. But never in sitting rooms, or in none that I’ve seen. No, sitting rooms are for mahogany sideboards and sherry and sherry glasses, Waterford glasses, cut as though by a dentist’s drill into so many peaks of sharpness it’s a wonder we’ve ever had the courage to touch them. And Irish linen napkins, huge with heavy folds you could almost hide an infant in. Polished wood and crystal clarity and white napkins, order, perfect order in sitting rooms and in convent parlours and bleeding hearts in kitchens.
And he brought his bleeding heart to me, and all the bulk of his man’s body towards me like a gift. It’s what women want, they say, heart and body, and I was still frozen, looking at him with nothing, no light or warmth glimmering in my face. Nothing. I gave him nothing. I left him lying there with his heart in his hand. He could be lying there for eternity. The place I’m in is the place I will stay. It is not a place for Tom. It has no place for him. I do not want him here. And never will again. And that’s the truth. I do not want Tom here. I’m waiting for someone else. Someone I have not seen in many months. Someone I will never see again. My son is dead. There can be no doubt about it. None at all. I have left Tom and Olivia and Daragh. They must be lonely, I suppose. But I can’t help them now.
So I have gone down somewhere, to a place without a name. Maybe some day an explorer will find it and will map it out. Is it an island I’m on? How did I get here? Was the crossing rough? And this hidden place on the island: how did I find it? Were there twists and turns? Did I stumble? Or was I thrown down here? Maybe I’ll be the one to map it, to write the directions and then, with all my late-come cruelty, I’ll put up a sign that says “keep out.” Stay out Tom! Stay out! Stay with those who live, Tom.
We separated from each other even before I came into this hospital. The first separation of our souls. That’s a deep separation. We two who lived so peacefully in one another’s souls and whose bodies slept so peacefully together night after night. No separation except to have my children, and then home after days to the shape of the night, which was his shape. Shaping the hours and shaping me into the morning when I would disentangle and wait for nightfall again. But that’s over now. I would not respond. And that is separation. It lies in the turning away, in the blank look that says, I do not recognise you any more. Are you, you? Are you? Were you my lovely husband? And who are you now? Tell me. Who are you now? Ah. That is separation. Leaving a man with all the history of the words that worked, and the stroking that worked, the union that worked, leaving him with all the things he learned in all that life of love amounting to nothing, nothing. Nothing working any more.
It was sad to listen to him. He was whispering because we always whispered in bed, even before the children came. Why? I don’t remember. The children took longer to come to me than I’d imagined, but they came. I always told Mrs. Garvey, “they are waiting for you May. When they’re ready they will come.” And one of them is clearly ready. Someone told me May Garvey is pregnant again. She kept it secret until she was past the danger time. Didn’t tell me. Kind, that was kind. And this time she is certain they say that he or she will make it to the gate of life and push it open and tumble into life, screaming. And his or her mother will be laughing. Wildly.
I remember the wild laughter after Olivia. Laughter that was even wilder after … after. They say it doesn’t matter whether it’s a boy or a girl. It does, though. You’re looking for yourself in a girl and with a boy it’s all a-wonder. It’s all a-wonder. Fathers and daughters, is that all a-wonder? Not with Tom. They’re great friends, Tom and Olivia. I was never “friends” with my boys. No. And Daragh? Mysterious child. I can’t think at all about my other daughter. Silent I remain. As did she. But all a-wonder? No. Tom is all a-wonder with me. Only with me. He lay whispering last night. Last night? No, sure wasn’t I in here last night and the night before and before? What day is it now? What night was it then? Anyway, whatever night it was, he tried again. After we’d been lying there, me frozen even underneath all those blankets and eiderdowns, he said, “Sissy, listen to me. Come over to me Sissy, like you used to.” I lay there and I whispered, less than a whisper—the sound was like a leaf falling, because I thought it would hurt him less if he could barely hear me. “I can’t, Tom. I can’t.” And then his slow-sighing, “All right darling,” and me, trying to save him with a little bit of energy still left for him, whispered again, “Give up on me, Tom. Let me drift away.” And his “No Sissy. We started out on a road and we’re going on together. Remember that little advertisement, the two children in their Start-rite shoes walking hand in hand that I framed for you years ago? Is it in the attic now?” I was so tired but I made a bit of an effort, for old times’ sake. “I don’t know where it is Tom.” I did. I’d hidden it. I didn’t want to remember what had been waiting down the road for us. I never knew how he managed to get a copy of the original advertisement, God knows where. But he had it framed and I kept it on my dressing table, and when I used to put my lipstick on each day I’d think, there you are, Sissy! Armed for the fray, and I’d pat the picture. The Start-rite kids. The children holding hands with the long road before them. Why did it mean so much to us? Is it all just the memory of childhood dreams?
I can’t think of those things any more, or of the weariness of carrying all this love from him. It’s heavy, his love. He just won’t take it away. It’s tiring me out. All his love. And his voice comes back, “Sissy, travelling down the road with you was all I have ever wanted in life. And I’ll tell you something else, that’s all there is in life. It is the greatest thing in life. The glory of it Sissy! The beauty of it. So no matter how long this takes, I’ll wait. I’ll wait for the slightest sign from you and then I’ll wait for the sign after and then I’ll make you laugh a few times and I’ll bring you a pair of shoes from Dublin or a pale blue silk scarf or a new twinset. Blue’s your colour. Miss Coyle will help me with the shade. I’ll wait, because I know you won’t wear it for a while because colour will hurt you. But one day you will wear it and I’ll be there waiting for you to look at me again, really look at me. And I’ll wait for the day you walk head-high up the road and I’ll notice that your feet lift a little and I’ll know that within maybe a year or so you’ll walk the way you once did. So gracefully, Sissy. I loved to walk beside you. You’ll go back to your lipstick and I’ll buy you a gold compact, old and beautiful. I’ll search in those little shops in Dublin where secret histories are wrapped up in little velvet envelopes and I’ll be drawn to the right one, the one owned by a woman who was loved day and night, night and day by a man who couldn’t believe that he had walking beside him the treasure of all the world. Oh I’ll wait, Sissy.”
Indeed you will, Tom. Poor Tom, you’ll always wait for me. But I’m gone Tom, I’m gone. Then I thought, try to help him Sissy. For old times’ sake. Haul yourself up through all these layers of silence, which press on me down here in this place that I stay in now. It’s a hidden, animal place. Try, Sissy. Try, for old times’ sake. I did. You can give me that. I found a few words: “I’m lying here, Tom, listening to the loveliness of all this but it’s as though the words are just wisps of poetry that I don’t understand. I’m so sorry but I can’t love any thing.” Oh, but he would not stop. Love-lines pouring out of him. Until I had to say again, a bit louder this time, “Stop loving me! I’m too tired for love.” “You’re full of love Sissy. It’s just frozen at the moment. I think it’s to protect you. Even to feel a little love now would hurt too much. You’re all bruised by love and by the absence of who you loved. That’s what it is, a constant absence. He’s missing.” I couldn’t stand it. I shouted at him: “But he’s missing in the house.
In the house, Tom!
Do you understand?
In the house!”
I could hear Tom crying beside me. What else could he do? What else could I do? Nothing.
After a long time he whispered, “We’ll walk around the house Sissy, in and out of bedrooms, and we’ll find him again one day, the easier memories.” “It’s his absence we’ll find. That’s all, Tom.” “Well Sissy, if that’s all, maybe absence has its own power. Maybe you can snuggle an absence down in you. Honour it. Love it. Come on, Sissy. Come for a walk with me around the house. Let me take your hand my lovely love, we’ll walk around this house in a dream … into every room and tell each other how it is that we remember him … look, the door of our bedroom … remember how he’d peer in, such a skinny, sunny lad, a bit too soft for his own good, and then he’d go scuttling back to his own room.”
And then I did an heroic thing. I took his hand and walked around our kingdom and he was my guide. It was all a dream. What did it matter? It was a dream walk, hand in hand, Tom and me, in the bed where we made them. “And look there, in the hall, where he slipped on the wet tiles and broke his arm. Come to the kitchen, do you remember him sitting there mushing up the jelly and the ice cream into a raspberry or orange-coloured mess, grinning all over his face? Ah well. Do I see some comics and a few
Reader’s Digests?
Do you remember the way he’d cut things from the
Reader’s Digest
to give to Mrs. Garvey to help her about the babies? He was a bit sweet on Mrs. Garvey; they had a bit of an understanding. Isn’t it strange, the people with whom that little bit of love happens? Nothing grand or great, just a little bit of love. Recognition. There was something hurt in him as well, like Mrs. Garvey. Maybe the asthma. That might have been it. Not able to run. No, able to run but not allowed, that’s different. But he did all right at the swimming. I wondered at that. I often wonder, Sissy, was he all that happy at school? Strange to ask that now. We thought we’d years ahead to talk to him. Years and years. It’s a mistake we all make, Sissy. We wouldn’t be able for life otherwise.” And I thought, I’m not able for it Tom. Nor will I ever be able again. The broken perfection of my boy, part of him missing, lies out there in the graveyard. And all of him is missing here in this house. Here in my life. And I whispered to Tom, “All of him is missing as I lie here, waiting, waiting.” “Let’s love just the memory, Sissy. Like they say, in loving memory.”
And he cradled me and at last I let him. Poor Tom. Then he took my hands to his lips and kissed each long bony finger. My hands don’t belong to me at all. I am a round woman. Then Tom opened the top buttons of my nightdress and found first one and then the other breast and stroked them too, and I suppose he began to hope. And his hands moved to stroke my legs and then my thighs and … And for a moment I felt the pity of it all, but I just couldn’t come out of this place I am in. I just couldn’t. “I can’t. I can’t. Oh Tom, I just can’t.” And oh Lord that man, that lovely man, just said, as though he were, like Christ, the very embodiment of love, “It’s all right Sissy. I will just keep on loving and stroking and waiting. Down however many years it takes, I’m going to bring you back to love, which is life, Sissy. I can do it. I can do it.”
So here I am in this mental hospital. I am not afraid to say these words. But only to myself.
“Mrs. O’Hara! Mrs. O’Hara!”
The young man is calling out to me again. I know this young man. Known him for years. He’s trying to talk to me by talking to me. Trying to break into me and pull out words. To show them, like a miracle, “Behold her! Listen to her! She speaks! Sissy speaks!” No. No miracles today, Brendan. I look around me. Why? I have no interest in where I am. But I am—still. And I suppose I must be placed somewhere. So they have placed me in this room. I did not protest. Why should I? I am in a little consulting room—looks like a sitting room really—in the hospital. There are no mahogany tables. No crystal either. Too dangerous. This is a bleeding-heart sitting room without the picture. Still it’s cheerful enough, with a view of a high cypress hedge that almost hides the stone wall. Mental hospitals need to be careful, I suppose. Walls are built for different reasons. Who’d break into a mental hospital, and I never heard of anyone breaking out of this one. Though I suppose it must happen. I won’t be the first. I want to be here. I came here. Olivia is angry with me. She is ashamed, I think.