Dance Lessons Page 13

  The van driver slows for the girls walking along the road, just up ahead. One girl has shiny black hair swinging behind her. Another has a red sweater draped over her shoulders. They’re wearing matching white blouses and grey skirts. The middle blond girl glances behind, laughing at what one of her friends had just said. The girls walk single file then, trooping along beneath the van’s small windows.

  Out the van window, Cat studies them: blond hair, black hair, and then the third, farthest away, has short hair and Paki skin. They don’t look up or wave. Are these her new classmates?

  “There,” the driver points toward a one-story building with a line of metal windows. It reminds Cat of a clinic where Mum used to bring her once, a long time ago, a place where they gave kids injections and tested them for stuff.

  After the van drives away, Mum and Cat start to wheel their two suitcases behind them down the pebbly path. In the distance, just past those trees, someone is playing tennis, a ball going thock-thock.

  The building’s door opens onto a tiled, fluorescent-lit corridor with a double row of doors all the way down. There’s a smell of food, lovely food, something, like, tomato and spicy. Cat’s tummy rumbles again.

  Cat almost collides with Mum’s suitcase when Mum stops at one of the doors, Number 13, where someone has written the “3” in with black marker. “Right,” Mum says. “This is us. They said they’d just leave it open.”

  There’s something about Mum’s voice that softens Cat, makes her feel guilty for being such a bitch on the train. Stop, she tells herself. Maybe it’s not all Mum’s fault, really.

  The living room has the same tiles as the corridor outside. There’s a big brown couch, a coffee table, an empty corner shelf for a telly. There’s a fridge in the corner with its plug curled across the floor. Under the metal windows sits a small kitchen table and two fold-out chairs.

  Cat follows Mum into the second room where the two single beds have no blankets or sheets on them. On the bed nearest the door, the striped mattress has a round stain.

  Mum crosses to open the bedroom window, and Cat hears that tennis ball again: thock-thock. Then, Mum crosses to the built-in, where she pulls a string for the light.

  “See?” Mum says, turning to Cat. “See? Lots of room for both of us, both of our stuff.”

  “Yeah,” Cat says, plopping onto the bed without the stain.

  It’s the first time Cat’s actually spoken since this morning, since they said good-bye to Sasha and hugged her and said they’d text the minute they got here.

  “And the beds look comfy,” Carmel says, crossing to the other bed with the mattress stain. “’Course, you would hog the good one, the one that nobody’s pissed on.” She grins at Cat. Then Mum bounces on her mattress. “Here, Catherine!” Mum pats the mattress. “Come on over here.”

  So Cat goes and sits next to Mum, though she’s not sure why she should. Has Mum suddenly forgotten that they’re really supposed to be fighting?

  Again Mum bounces her bum on the bed and Cat bounces back. Mum laughs. Though there’s nothing really funny. But Cat laughs, too. Laughs ’cos it’s nice to hear Mum laugh again. It’s been weeks.

  Then, Mum reaches over and brushes Cat’s black fringe out of her eyes and goes, “It’s not so bad, is it, babes? Go on, say it’s not so bad. We can go down the market and get nice rugs and some wall hangings and once we’ve got my bedspreads unpacked, the place will actually look quite nice. Right? I mean, where else are we going to get a free flat? And all to ourselves, no bloody men?”

  So Cat manages a small smile. Just to make Mum happy she says, “You know, Mum. I quite like this place. Honest. I think we could make it cool. Dead cool.”

  Jo and Ellen

  24

  TAP, TAP, TAP. Ellen starts awake in Jo’s old, abandoned upstairs bedroom. The tapping sound is coming from under her bed.

  Then nothing.

  She snuggles further under the heavy blankets to go back to sleep.

  Tap-tap-tap. She checks the bedside clock. Shit. 8:37. She’s overslept again.

  Downstairs she listens outside Jo’s door for that raspy breathing. She wishes there were a window in this door, a spy-hole through which to check from the parlor.

  She pushes in the door to a wide-awake Jo, the raccoon eyes above the bed cover, and the walking cane—Jo’s tap-tap Morse code—set alongside her, right there in the bed. Amid all these sick-room accoutrements, the cane is the last vestige of the old spitfire Jo.

  Ellen presses the large button on the bed’s side until the toothless face, torso, and pillows elevate. Jo has the expression of someone strapped into a dentist’s chair.

  “There? Is that good?”

  “More.” The toothless voice is whispery, pitiful.

  The bed rises a few more inches, until Jo is sitting upright, eye to eye. Ellen clanks down the bed rails.

  Then she crosses to open the drapes to this summer morning, the last Thursday in June. She lingers at the window long enough to let Jo put in her teeth. Then she turns back to the bed where Jo, dressed in a clean white nightgown, sits blinking into the daylight.

  Everything in this room has been washed, scrubbed, sanitized. There’s no more sour body or hair smell—just the whiff of protein drinks and antiseptic.

  Her teeth in, Jo looks better and more like her old defiant self.

  “Ready for breakfast? Tea?”

  In a month, Ellen and Jo’s lives have shrunk to fit this room. There is no space for other, outside things. Neither is there any space for abstract notions: death, life, a life before, a life ever after. Their only reality is this daily routine of doctor and nurse visits, temperatures, blood pressure, protein drinks, dosages.

  Ellen has read this about nurses, psychotherapists, doctors. Even the largest or most life-saving job boils down to its component parts, a roster of daily tasks. Anything deeper would mean freefall to a place where you wreak havoc, not good.

  Jo makes a face. “I don’t want anything this morning. But that bloody nurse tells me I’m supposed to. They tell me everything—when to get up, lie down, when to breathe.” This amount of talk brings on a coughing bout. Ellen waits it out. She is no longer frightened by it. Wordlessly, she hands Jo the stainless steel, health-board-issue spittoon.

  When Jo has caught her breath, Ellen asks, “But will you eat some breakfast if I bring it?”

  “I’ll try something, sure. Just to keep you happy; off my back.”

  The tray sits lengthways along Jo’s legs. The tea, half-drunk, smells strong and tannic. Jo has drunk half a glass of NutraFruit, a chalky protein that the nurse leaves in the scullery fridge—different fruit flavors and loaded with vitamins, minerals, electrolytes. Though inside her new, department-store nightgown, Jo keeps getting thinner.

  Now, the last ice cubes clink against the white-smeared glass. Ellen gathers up the tray, pours the last of the NutraFruit into a yellow plastic sippy cup on the nightstand.

  “My fags are in the drawer there, the top drawer.”

  “You know Dr. Fitzgerald said—”

  “—There’s an ashtray there, too. And matches.”

  They lock gazes. Ellen is supposed to be on the doctor’s side. But truthfully, Ellen is pleased.

  For the past week, there were days when Jo was either too listless or too fast asleep to smoke. Or even to argue. This sparring, demanding mood is the sign of a good day, a good day ahead.

  “Lookit, if you’re going to live in my house you’ll do as I bloody tell you.”

  Oh, no. Not again. Ellen knows this speech. So let’s hear it. Jo has made it before: the day before yesterday, and two days before that. But Jo forgets. Jo forgets a lot.

  And each time, because she knows she’s expected to, Ellen parrots the same defense. “I—am—not—‘living in your house.’ I have a house, a place. In Boston. I’m staying here because—”

  “—Because the young Fitzgerald thinks I’m going to burn down the house at night.”

  “
Yes. He does. And with reason. You’ve—”

  “—And because nobody else wants to mind an old woman.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Foreigners. Refugees. In this country, that’s all that’ll do a job like that now.”

  “I’m a foreigner.”

  “Yes. You are. But . . .” Jo’s voice turns wheedling. “Aw, go on. Lookit, if you give me a fag, I’ll try and eat something later on. A bit of scrambled egg or a drop of soup. Or maybe you’re not into cooking today. I could never stand it, to tell you the truth, all those years of peeling and mashing and standing over a hot range. But in our day . . .” Jo shakes her head. Then she cocks her head at Ellen, a begging puppy. “Get us a fag. Go on.”

  “If I get you a cigarette you have to keep your promise to eat some lunch later.”

  “I’m a woman of my word.”

  Ellen brings Jo the pack of Benson and Hedges. Jo takes one, gleeful, triumphant. Ellen holds the Bic lighter for her. They have an hour and a half before the nurse comes.

  Ellen crosses to the window again, this time to pull it all the way open for the smoke.

  Her sister Louise used to do this. January nights and six feet of snow outside their bedroom window, but there was fifteen-year-old Louise Boisvert kneeling on her bed, her backside cocked backward as she puffed her Marlboro smoke into the subzero New Hampshire night.

  The air outside Jo’s room feels sweet and pollen-laden. The chaffinches cluck under the house eaves. Ned’s car is parked in its usual spot under the orchard wall. This week, he’s having some men in to cut the top meadows. The next two weeks, they’ll be baling hay. Turning back to the bed, Ellen says, “It’s going to be another beautiful day. A scorcher, the TV said last night.”

  Jo has relaxed with her cigarette. “Tell me, are you still all right up there? Did you sleep last night?”

  The question surprises Ellen. Then she recognizes it as a veiled apology for the taunt about being a foreigner. “I’m fine. The room’s fine. I . . . thought I might dust again, vacuum a little. Later. I promise not to disturb you.”

  When Ellen was driving up the avenue from the village yesterday afternoon, she met Nurse Ryan, the visiting nurse from the health board. The two women pulled over to chat, compare notes. Ellen asked about the coughing. Did Elaine Ryan think it was getting deeper, worse? The nurse said the doctor has Jo on antibiotics—trying to keep it to an oral dose until they think it needs something heavier. But everything considered, Jo Dowd is doing far better than expected. Just keep getting her to eat, drink lots of water, keep her breathing and fluids up.

  Nurse Ryan gave Ellen an impish grin. “I know she’s still smoking.”

  “Yeah, I figured there’s no harm now. And they’re a good bribe—something to make her eat or behave.”

  “Ach, no harm now. The cigarettes have done what they’ve done.”

  On the kitchen table sits the health-board-issue log book of times, doses, initials. 15/6/2002, 3:00 p.m. 300 mg. ER (Elaine Ryan). 14/6/02, 8:00 p.m. 300 mg (Ellen has learned the Irish way of date, month, year). 14/6/02 2:00 p.m. TF (Tom Fitzgerald).

  Now Jo cuts across Ellen’s thoughts. “Do whatever you want up there. I’ll never be up there again; we all know that.” A last puff and then Jo squishes out the cigarette in the tin ashtray, glances mischievously at the bedside clock. “Here, empty this in the range. And give it a good scrub or that one’ll find it. Listen, you haven’t told anyone below in the village about being . . . about us being related? About my son’s death?”

  “Who would I tell? Nobody except the doctor. And Nurse Ryan.”

  “You know, I think that young Fitzgerald has an eye on you. Oh, I know he’s married to yer one there, and he’s the two kids, spoiled maist-íns. You’d think nobody ever had a child but himself. But they never lose the eye, you know. Men. Oh, I see him looking, gawking at you. Probably thinks you’re going to get this place. Did I tell you he came in here beating around the bush the other day? Th’oul red head on him all cocked to the side like a priest hearing confession. ‘Now, have you settled your affairs, Mrs. Dowd?’ says he to me. ‘It’s important, better for your health and peace of mind that you settle your affairs, your assets, especially with a place, a big farm like this.’”

  Ellen says, “Hmm . . . Right. Jo, why don’t you just lie back now and I’ll let the bed d—”

  “—‘Settled my affairs?’ says I to him. ‘Well now, maybe I have and maybe I haven’t.’”

  “Will you drink some of this w—” Ellen has heard the “settle the affairs” speech before. Almost every day for almost a month.

  “—Well, that put the wind up him, didn’t it? Just like the rest of this parish, with their wondering and whispering. Where’ll it go? One hundred acres up on the hill. Where’ll she leave it? That young Fitzgerald probably thinks he’ll get a bit of it himself. I wouldn’t put it past—”

  “Right. Do you want to come to the toilet with me, or do you want to take a nap and then Nurse Ryan will take you?”

  Jo gives a vindictive tilt to the chin. “So like I say, there’s nothing here for anyone. For anyone. Let them all wonder, wonder all they want. But except for a little nest egg for Ned, this damn place, every perch and acre of it, is going back to the land commission. They can build a bloody skating rink or a massage parlor or whatever the dickens they want up here for all I care. I’ve it all settled with my solicitor in Ballinkeady. And that should set them all writing letters up to the government and them all fighting like tinkers to get—”

  “The toilet? The doctor said it’s good to get up, walk a bit. Every day. So will it be me or Nurse Ryan?”

  Jo gives Ellen a pouty look. “You, I suppose.”

  Jo’s nightgown floats in a tent behind her, her long, grey hair down her back. In the parlor, she searches, grabs at the edges of couches, armchairs. Now and again the hand leans on Ellen’s shoulder. They stop, wait for Jo to steady herself and catch her breath. Then they’re off again.

  In the downstairs toilet off the front hall, Ellen stands in front, the two women chest to chest. Ellen lowers Jo onto the raised, orthopedic toilet seat. Once, the day she first came here, Ellen cringed at the thought of touching this flesh, at such intimacy with this old woman. Ellen shuts the door and stands guard outside until Jo calls or knocks.

  The trip to the toilet always exhausts Jo. When she eases her back into bed, Ellen goes to draw the curtain again. As she tiptoes away, Jo is already asleep, the old woman’s lips moving, the room loud with her whispering.

  25

  THE SOUND BRINGS JO RUNNING to the back door. There’s the boy, aged five now, standing there in the yard, pitching pebbles against the gable wall. Thwap, thwap, thwap.

  The curtains are drawn in Mother’s room, the room in the gable of the house. It’s been a week since Father’s funeral. After their Sunday lunch, Mother went to bed to sleep, to keen her rosaries into the shadowy, silent room. Kitty is upstairs packing her suitcase, packing up her black funeral dress and her black patent shoes.

  “Stop that,” Jo calls to the boy in a loud whisper. “You’ll waken your grandmother.”

  Here’s a car coming up the avenue. It’s the car that came, that dropped Kitty off when she was summoned for Father’s last hours, his death at three o’clock in the morning. “Stop that,” Jo whispers to the boy again, just as the black car parks outside the yard gate.

  Kitty comes downstairs and out to the back door. She smells of perfume. She’s wearing a grey swing-back coat and wet-look high boots to her knees. Kitty works in Dublin now. She’s shop floor manager in a large department store on Talbot Street.

  Tears are trapped in Jo’s throat. She could not swear that the tears are all for Father—or not specifically for his death. No, this awful sadness is for all of this, for her sister leaving, for the impending silence of the house.

  The boy abandons his little pile of pebbles to walk to the gate, where he stands there, tall for his age, staring through the sl
ats of the gate at the motor car. The man, who is Kitty’s latest Dublin boyfriend, waves through the windscreen at the ragged little boy, then he mimics turning the steering wheel round and round. He beckons to the little boy to open the farmyard gate and come and try it out, to play a game of car. But the boy stands there, frozen and unsmiling. He’s perplexed by the man’s smiling, waving presence.

  At last, Kitty kisses Jo’s cheeks and walks with her brown leather suitcase to the gate and the waiting car. Jo follows a few steps and then stops. It’s not her place to go out there. If Kitty had wanted to, she would have invited Jo out there to make introductions. So Jo stands there, a lone, foolish figure in the middle of the yard.

  She watches Kitty hoist the suitcase into the back seat. The man comes around to hold the passenger’s door open for her. Kitty kisses the man—right there, in full view of the house and Jo. Then, with a last wave they drive away, the red brake lights going down the avenue.

  Inside the house there are a million things to get done before Mother gets up again. There’s bread to be made. The boy’s school clothes have to be ironed and set out for tomorrow, Monday morning. The calves’ buckets need scalding before John comes in from the fields.

  These days, since Father’s death, Mother winces, considers any movement or noise or work in the house as a blasphemy, as disrespect for the dead. So Jo should hurry, tiptoe back into the silent house and finish her jobs.

  But still she stands there in the yard, transfixed by her own sadness, by this stodgy, leaden grief.

  Thwap. Thwap. Thwap. The boy is back pelting his stones against the gable of the house. He pelts and then walks to the gable wall to collect them from the ground, then returns to his spot to start again.

  “Stop that,” Jo calls to him. “I told you to stop it.”

  He stares at her, his eyes wide beneath the curly hair. He should be out helping his father, she thinks. Up in the cow byre and not here just wasting time.

  His five-year-old’s stare turns sly. Then, he walks toward the gable again, slow and measured, the occasional glance back at his mother. He bends to collect the pebbles again. Then he walks slowly back to his pitching place.