Malarky (41 page)

He should have come back with a bigger shout, something deafening. I shoulda opened the door and stormed out, back the road and we never would have made it to the funeral and maybe the day would have been so different. Same outcome, different, somehow different. Perhaps a cup of tea could have been taken instead to calm things down. He did not shout back. He did not speak. I paid attention to how the water flew, leapt outwards from the windscreen. I thought of how much water falls on us and how we might as well be living beneath a waterfall and I wondered was I truly happy in this life I've chosen and decided I probably was not. I have to tell you that because of the circumstances that followed, those were the last significant words my husband spoke to me before what was about to happen. He said I was a half-crazy woman. I said he was a whole crazy man. What he meant was his son was imbued with the other half of my craziness, but he was polite enough not to say it. He was restrained you see, and I admire him for it now.

At the church, my husband jumped from the car, banged the door in and strode away – his good jacket flapping over to reveal the corner of his shirt had not been tucked in. I thought physically at that moment he was a fine man, who looked well that day in his suit and tie. I hadn't had a thought about him since I came to know Halim for I was always distracted by the darker, younger man's beauty and glow and there was no
getting around it, Halim had far better manners than my husband.

—Mind the seat belt, he called back. The seatbelt dropping on the ground and becoming wet bothered him immensely. It bothered him as much as someone being buried bothers me, hence I was dawdling into the church, hoping to hold the person above the ground as long as I could. I had to run to catch up with him because it would look funny us arriving separate and I had to smile twice as hard because he was not responding to anyone who hello'd him. I did not hear a word of that service. They could have been burying anyone. They coulda been burying me.

In the graveyard he was sneaky. He knew how unsettled I am around graves. I'm very unsettled around them. Walked with me and then lingered at the back, touched my arm, whispered he'd to go to Ballina. He'd be back to collect me at the Afters.

—No, I protested, I don't want you to go, I don't want to go to the Afters, I need to go home and make Jimmy his breakfast. See Jimmy was up.

—I need you to bring me home. I need the car to bring me home. But he'd turned on his heel and I didn't like to raise my voice beyond the four cries where I uttered his name and implored him to turn back to me a minute. The crowd now surrounded the grave, I was starting to stand out, shouting at the back of my husband who refused to hear me. Above that grave, as they began to move the coffin, I was crying inconsolably, crying in a way I had never cried, for a cousin I'd no knowledge of. I was crying my loudest howl over my husband's ability to prevent me making the decent breakfast my son deserved this day, that there would be no one in the kitchen when he came out from his bedroom. My third prolonged bout of howling came nearly out of the depths of my groin, I offered it the way we offer prayer, I offered this
howling to the misery my husband was going to Ballina this day to reach for the Red Twit. I was crying over that woman lying in the box and weeping gratitude to her for lying there. I could have nearly thanked her for dying and told her the truth that I knew there was only me left to care about my son, that his father had given up on him. I said a louder Amen than those beside me and a man and a woman either side of me, whom I could not name because my eyes were so blurred, linked my arm and handed me tissues. They held me up. Probably thought I was the dead woman's sister. Was it disrespectful to cry about unrelated things at a funeral? I did not doubt that it was. I was crying for my son and for the husband who made me wait 15 years to marry him and now had given up on us. I had to get myself home to Jimmy urgently that was all I knew.

My husband went to his grave in a hurry to get to Ballina to be with Red the Twit and it was the pressure of that hurry and his rebounding thoughts and guilt over Red and I, that caused his heart to over pump itself to a sudden, unexpected halt. At least he died with a purpose in his step and an active thought in his mind, rather than say dying lifting up a bucket or moving a gate.

Had he arrived in Ballina and reached her front door, he would have found Red born again to chastity, so better for him not to greet that rejection and then to have come home to me and Jimmy more dejected and angered. He might have attacked Jimmy that night for he was so viciously angry with him that morning, and he was angry with him for reasons the boy could do nothing about. He was angry with him for having the audacity to love a man or several of them. He was angry with me for having the determination to love my son in spite of that audacity. I wanted to tell him at times: do you
think this is easy for me? Do you not think a mother has romantic ideas of sending her son into the arms of a woman she can then disagree and fight over her grandchildren and know that her son has married beneath himself and that he'll pride his mother above any woman he ever takes into his bed? Do you not think I have cried while listening to innocuous country music on the radio of rodeo love and knowing that my Jimmy will only have men for company and that his life will be ruined because of it? I have come to terms with it fueled by the determination to save him from the financial ruin.

That is what I have done about it.

Then to go and die on me. In so public a manner. It was the battering I deserved. I see it now. I walked into the wall that day.

Whatever of Bina's promise, her pretend son delivers Our Woman to a different fate. Drops her at the hospital gate, and just before he flees, could she give him a few Euro for petrol? Our Woman would clank him about the head, except she's minus an arm. A concerned citizen of Letterfrack lifted her up, bringing her in to disaster, for –
I found
this woman at the gate
confused
– when they find you at the gate they pay too much attention to you. Precisely what she does not want. Breeze in, get a bandage on it, breeze out, and have the lad wait for you in the car park.

Bina had instructed:

—Give him 1 Euro.

—the paper.

—tell him don't move!

Our Woman told him, stay here, don't move, but watched him disappear, grinding his clutch unhealthy as he departed. The hospital claim she is incoherent. Her story doesn't make sense. They seem convinced her husband or son had beaten her. She insists they are both deceased. No one had beaten her. Top
of her thigh odd
place to get a
bruise –
the nurse. You're awful cold, what has you so cold, how long were you
outside?
– the doctor.
Do you
know where you
are?
– unidentified blur of a person.

It is an awful messy show with none of them saying what the other wanted to hear and it worked out the way these predicaments do, Our Woman again interned on the ward protesting there was a young man waiting outside for her and as soon as he had the packet of cigarettes finished, off into the
dark he would drive. I only need a bandage, Our Woman proclaims. At least leave me on a trolley like they show on the news.

Bina sits unhappy. She ponders aloud how it all went wrong, while her biro did a word search. The cover of the puzzle book showed a woman in a low cut top, who looked like she'd catch her death wandering in these parts thus adorned. Our Woman looked at the woman on the puzzle book and wondered where did she live?

—Lookit, that little fecker I've taken him off his retainer . . . Bina rattling. I've told him if I ever see him I'll take a stick to him. What right had he dumping you at the gate like silage. He's a fucker.

Bina's filthy tongue is up! Our Woman loves it when Bina's filthy tongue is up. All will be well.

—Honestly they've no respect for nothing anymore. It's the mobiles and the tee shirts and the satellites is doing it. You can't trust any, only your own kind, and even them you can't trust. You can trust no one do you hear me now?

Bina's talking about Joanie who's over there in deep conversation with the nurse.

—She's plotting to have you locked up as we speak. Well I'm not moving, says Bina. If they try to move ya I'll fight them to the ground. I'd nearly get a gun if it might save ya.

—You'll end up in the bed beside me.

—That's right. I will. We've to be sly about this. You've to tell that nurse on the QT I'm yer sister, any form needing signing is only to be signed by me. I'll take everything they give me within to Ballina and have my solicitor go over it and see what it is they've planned for you. Don't let them put anything into your mouth unless it's written down.

Bina pauses. Our Woman turns her head over on the pillow.

—And whatever you do let them put nothing up the other end either. That's sometimes how they sneak it into you.

Our Woman has understood she is surrounded by people who long to shove things into her and this will be her fight. Only Bina is aware of the scale of it. Thank Christ for Bina.

—Eat up the Quality Street, Our Woman tells Bina. I hate the sight of them.

Bina blames Joanie. She blames Joanie for Our Woman ending up back on the ward. She tells Our Woman Joanie is having too many chats with the nurses and this will encourage them to lock her up. Joanie blames Bina for sitting too long in the chair. Would she not get up and let another sit down? Joanie thinks Bina's greedy eating all Our Woman's Quality Street. As Bina is blaming Joanie, and Joanie is blaming Bina, Our Woman inquires where does Bina think the woman on the front of the puzzle book lives.

—For the love of God, Bina hushes her, don't ask me such a thing, or they'll have the sheets off ya and will put ya in the can. Be quiet, she said. Be quiet so I can hear what your one is gibbering on with over there.