Dance Lessons Read online

  “An’ I suppose a wife does what her husband tells her. He wouldn’t contact, wouldn’t come home to visit his own mother, so neither would you. Right? Take his side.” She turns back to the table, meets Ellen’s eyes. Jo’s pupils are huge dark pools. The woman is someone’s mad cartoon, a caricature gone wild. “Everyone says the Yank women are only little peatas. Not much good for anything but fashion and cars and skite-ing around the place—that and all that oul’ yap. Sure, don’t I see it all there on the Oprah program?”

  Jo doesn’t know that her son lied, said his mother was dead. She thinks he was just stubborn, vindictive, silent. Bad blood. Across the table, Ellen watches the face, those mad eyes.

  Ellen feels relief. She’s glad that Jo doesn’t know. How would an old woman across the sea know a thing like that? And now, Ellen is not going to lambaste a sick woman with the truth, the story of her own erasure.

  Suddenly, Jo’s face turns red. She coughs and coughs, just like on the phone—that deep phlegmy cough. Hack-hack-hack, her eyes bulging, watering.

  Ellen rounds the table to stand behind Jo’s chair, watching the nubs of Jo’s spine through the cardigan. I don’t want to touch her, Ellen thinks. I can’t be so intimate with this decrepit, smelly flesh, this woman who hates me.

  Another cough, this one deeper, the air gurgling in Jo’s chest.

  Ellen grabs Jo under the arms, to help her to stand up, to catch her breath, but Jo jabs her elbow back, catches Ellen’s right breast. “The phone?” Ellen asks. “Where’s your phone?”

  Jo shakes her head. No. No bloody phone calls.

  Ellen runs to the back kitchen for a glass of water. Ned. Will he be there, magically, suddenly appear from the yard? When she returns, Jo has stopped coughing at last. She’s sitting there masticating, swallowing phlegm.

  “Here. Drink it.” Ellen sets the water on the table. She hears the village priest’s voice: I heard she wasn’t that well, a while back, there. The end of last summer. I don’t know what it was. Maybe nothing. But she was in the hospital anyways.

  Jo reaches back into the cluttered window and produces what looks like a wad of newspapers. It’s a paper spittoon, a hunk of newspapers crafted like a bird’s nest. Into it, Jo spits something deep and thick.

  The rain has grown heavier and loud against the kitchen window.

  Jo has lit another cigarette. The color is coming back in her cheeks. Her voice comes quavery. “You said he drowned . . . ?”

  “Yes. Out on a boat, a sailboat off Martha’s Vineyard. It’s an island.”

  “Isn’t that where Teddy Kennedy was?”

  “Yes. We were at a wedd—”

  “—Were ye still married? When he . . . ?”

  Ellen starts. What does the old woman know? “Yes. Yes, we were still married.”

  “Sure, what business had he in a boat? When that boy left here he couldn’t swim.”

  “No. And he never learned. Actually, I used to tease . . .” Ellen stops herself.

  Jo squishes out the second cigarette, sits upright in the kitchen chair, holding her breath, blinking, as if waiting for some pain to pass.

  “Mrs. Dowd, are . . . are you all right?”

  “It’s just a bit of arthritis. In my back. At my age, it’s hardly disco dancing I’d be.”

  Now Jo reaches for the teapot again, though the tea has to be cold. This time, the voice turns sly. “There’s nothing here for you, you know. I told you that.”

  “Mrs. Dowd, I—”

  “—Well, if you’re thinking you’re the widow of the only child and all that. Well, faith an’ I’ve news for you. There’s nothing to be got.” Jo waves a bony hand to take in the window, the dripping gardens outside. “I’ve it taken care of with my solicitor in the town. Where it’s all going. When I’m gone.” She leans toward Ellen. Taunting eyes. “When I’m dead.”

  You’re already supposed to be. Dead. “I . . . assure you, Mrs. Dowd. I haven’t come for anything like that. I have a perfectly good job.”

  Jo jabs toward the letter. “Yes. I see. Looks like you’re some class of a lecturer or something.”

  “A teacher.”

  “Then what brought you here?”

  “I guess I thought . . .” They lock gazes. “My husband spent his youth here. So I thought I’d just see the place where he left, once lived. He talked a lot about it, about Gowna. And he talked a lot about you.”

  “Did he?” Jo’s expression is doubtful. But there’s a glimmer of hope. His mother wants to believe this.

  “So I had my summer vacation and thought I’d just take a jaunt over. I’m staying at Flanagan’s. Flanagan’s Hotel.”

  Jo sniffs. “So you’re like them all so, all the Yanks that come. Except you came to look up his roots, not your own?”

  16

  ELLEN. Jo recites the name in her head, rolls it around among her racing thoughts. Ellen. Funny how that name is changed now, all changed. Even though it’s the same signature on that letter Jo got late last November. But now, in just one day, it’s all changed.

  She can’t go walking the land today—not with this jittering in her back and legs. And she’s tired, dead tired.

  The telly warbles from its shelf. There’s a fella sitting on a high stool with a guitar, a studio audience full of women in frilly blouses and fixed smiles, all singing and clapping along to his song. It’s an afternoon program for old people. “Oh dear / what can the matter be? / Seven old maids they were locked in the lavatory.” The audience women laugh and pretend not to watch the panning camera.

  No walking today. Not with the rain dancing off the yard. Jo’s high fireside armchair and its stacked-up pillows can’t trap the pain, the pain that snakes and circles up her back. And it can’t contain this awful jitter, this rat-tat-tat through her bones.

  “. . . and nobody knew they were there,” sings the eegit on the telly. The audience laughs obligingly.

  Jo picks up the remote. Her hand trembles as she clicks onto another channel. This time it’s a children’s program, though there’s not much difference between the two. Now it’s more nursery rhymes and isn’t that right, boys and girls?

  Children. Jesus, she never thought to ask the girl, Ellen, the Yank if there are children, Jo’s own grandchildren, little American kids with high-pitched voices.

  It’s a shock to think of it, this hour of her life. A strange thought, to imagine some young lives that would keep going on, long after her own life is over.

  Is that why that girl came here? To claim some sort of Irish life or money for her kids? Jo glances toward the kitchen table, the two dirty teacups, the teapot, the grapes that nobody has touched. She stares at the empty chair where, just over an hour ago, her boy’s wife sat, the American accent, voice here, still here in this kitchen. She sees the small hands, the pretty little face, the sad, secretive eyes. Oh, yes, the Yank girl is telling lies about something. Jo Dowd would bet her life on it.

  Ellen. She’s a hundred miles from how Jo imagined her.

  Jo has never told anyone this, and certainly not that Fionnuala McCormack, that chattery little woman she used to meet in the supermarket in Ballinkeady—the one who had that daughter in America. What was her name, the daughter? Siobhán? Sarah? No. Sheila. Yes, Sheila McCormack. The mother thought the sun shone out of the daughter’s backside. She loved delivering news from Boston. My daughter knows your son over there. Isn’t it grand for them, neighbors’ children you might say, in a foreign country. Sure, there’s nobody like your own people . . .

  It was Fionnuala McCormack who told Jo where her son was, where he worked. And Fionnuala told Jo about the marriage to that Yank. The little woman is like one of those talking dolls. You just pull the string and she blathers on and you just have to nod your head and say, “right” and “oh, is that so?”

  There she is now, leaning over the supermarket trolley in a red winter coat, that little lipsticked face. Tell us, Mrs. Dowd, had you a great time at the wedding beyond? Was that your f
irst time in America, Mrs. Dowd? It was? Oh, well next month now’ll be our third. Sure you never feel it really, on the plane, the dinner and the film and a bit of a sleep and sure, before you know it, aren’t you landed beyond? So your Fintan met you at the airport I suppose? Oh, yeah, our Sheila’s always there waiting when we get off the plane. So, tell us, ye’d a great time so. Ah, it’s sad really when they get married, isn’t it? Like, you’re happy they met someone but still there’s an oul’ twinge of sadness, too . . .

  Jo remembers that day, the day that silly woman told her about the boy’s marriage. The two women were standing under the terrible white lights and with the supermarket smell of roasting chickens. She watched the little mouth still moving—yap, yap, yap—and she imagined her own big hands above that red coat collar, her own fingers squeezing around the little neck, throttling that woman like a chicken.

  Afterward, all the way out home to Gowna in the hackney car, the words thudded through Jo’s head: He’s married. My boy married. And then, here came that stupid hope: Maybe this Yank will soften him, make him ring or write to his own mother.

  For years, Jo used to finish her jobs early on St. Patrick’s night. She came in from the yard to watch the St. Patrick’s Day parades on the telly. She sat right here watching all those bands and dancers and the American police marching between tall grey buildings. She watched the people leaning and waving from balconies. It was stupid, she knew that, and she used to mock herself as she sat scanning the faces for him. But she imagined that he had just appeared, on the screen. That he’d come walking around a corner, just there from beyond the police barriers.

  After that day in the supermarket, Jo used to picture the girl he married. Sitting here by the range, darning a sock or patching a trouser, one eye on those American television comedies with the gust of laughter after every line. That one with the wispy blond hair? No, that one, the short brunette? Or what about that one with the pointed bust and the glittering teeth? Was Jo’s American daughter-in-law just like her?

  Now they have a dog on the children’s program. It’s one of those pet dogs with a red collar and floppy ears. “No, no, no. Now, remember what we said, boys and girls? You have to guess his name,” says the presenter, a fella that looks more like a woman than a man—more like a woman than an actual woman.

  Now Jo’s daughter-in-law has come. To this house. And she’s not a bit like those television girls. Jesus, why hadn’t Jo asked? Surely a woman should know if there are children, young Dowds, her own flesh and blood, sitting in an American house in Boston?

  The racket from the telly makes the pain worse. Jo clicks the mute button, then watches the man with his studio smile. Now the television dog is sitting in a round-backed chair, its paws set on the desk, its head turned as if waiting for the interviewer’s next question.

  Jo used to have a dream, a repeating dream of a little blond girl with her hand clasped in a man’s hand, both of them walking down a footpath in a busy city, amid cars and buses and noise.

  Always in that dream, Jo would be looking straight at the child, face to face, the little girl staring at her, a chubby little hand pawing at her grandmother’s face. Jo would open her mouth to talk to her, to say “hello,” but her own voice would suddenly turn mute. The words, the endearments just there—Mo leana, mo leana bán—but Jo’s voice wouldn’t come. In her upstairs bedroom, Jo would wake up and lie there. Flitters of the dream stayed. She could still see the little girl’s face. That dream always left her sad.

  Maybe the girl in the dream was an American grandchild.

  The telly glows blue and bright in the dark kitchen. It’s the nine o’clock news already. What? Impossible. She must have fallen asleep here in her chair, her head lolling back against the kitchen wall. The house is freezing; the fire in the range gone out.

  Now the pain has leaked, crawled up and down her spine to the rest of her. And the shakes! Jesus, the shakes!

  Jo eases herself out of the armchair, gropes for the walking cane looped on the kitchen chair. Tap-tap-tap across the kitchen floor to the light switch, then across the front hall to the parlor. Fifteen more steps. Fourteen. Twelve.

  She can see it from here, the pain patch, one of the pain patches that Ned got her at the vet’s. She can taste it now, already, the tiny dab of white powder that she puts on her tongue. It’s worse than a broken tablet it’s so bitter, poison-bitter. But it always stops this pain and shaking.

  17

  ELLEN IS STANDING in the shadows, watching a crowd in a town square. The people stand in the sunshine whispering, watching, waiting. There, under a lamppost, stands Louise, Ellen’s sister. And there’s Viktor Ortiz, her colleague and next-door neighbor at Coventry Academy, standing there in his ponytail, holding his leather satchel. Viktor calls to her: “Ellenita! Ellenita!”

  Brrring! Brring! A girl on a bicycle comes weaving among the lawns and pathways. The crowds part for her, laughing. The voices and excitement grow. “Brrring, brrring!” The girl rings her bicycle bell again.

  From her shadowy place, Ellen knows she’s supposed to join them, join them all, supposed to be there in their midst, the welcome party for the bicycle girl.

  “Ellenita! Ellenita!” Viktor calls again, beckoning frantically. “You gotta come here.”

  The bicycle bell is louder, more insistent. Brrr-ring! Brrr-ring!

  Ellen starts awake, the dream-voices and faces still there in the bedroom. A stripe of streetlight shines between the flowered drapes. I’m in Ireland, in Gowna. It was just a dream.

  The ringing persists. It’s the phone on the wall above her bed.

  “Hello?” Ellen says. The bedside clock radio says 4:40. Someone is heavy-breathing down the phone. “Hello? Hello? Who is this?”

  It’s Thursday night. Friday morning.

  The telephone breaths come heavier. Some weirdo. Just hang up. Then Jo Dowd’s voice: “Are there children?” Jo’s voice is slurred, a vinyl record set at the wrong speed. “I never asked you. But then, here I was dreaming of a girl, a lovely girlín, and I never asked you. When you were up here. Have I grandchildren?”

  The quilt has slithered from Ellen’s shoulders. A cold, damp breeze comes through the hotel bedroom window. “Mrs. Dowd? Where are you?”

  “I have to know, you see. A person should know if there are grandchildren. If I’m leaving anyone after me.”

  “Mrs. D—”

  “A woman wrote to me. Wrote to me that he’d died. She sent a letter. Then another woman came, up here to the house . . .” The voice stalls.

  Ellen grips the receiver tighter. She listens to the deep, syrupy breaths. “Mrs. Dowd?”

  There’s a loud thump. The telephone line buzzes. “Mrs. Dowd? Where are you?”

  Ellen hangs up. She sits and waits for the phone to ring again. Then she crosses to her dressing table for her purse, the Dowds’ phone number. When she dials Jo’s house, there’s a busy tone. Shit. Jo hasn’t hung up.

  The heavy dawn mist shrouds the house, its grey contours. This time, Ellen drives all the way up the avenue and parks outside the farmyard gate. At last, there’s the light in the gable window.

  Ellen pushes in the back door to a man’s voice booming through the downstairs of the house. Relief. Someone is here. She follows the voice into the kitchen, where it’s dark except for the blue glow of the television. The voice is a newscaster’s homogenized accent delivering an early-morning news program.

  Through a shadowy sitting room, the lumpy silhouettes of couches, armchairs, Ellen sees the strip of light under a second door, the gable room. “Hello?” she calls.

  Jo’s bedroom stinks of old cigarettes. Someone has bumped into the bedside lamp; the shade is cockeyed. Jo is slumped and snoring in a chair between the dressing table and window, still in the same cardigan and trousers, sitting there facing her own empty bed. Her head is lolled forward on her chest.

  The buzz from the dangling black telephone receiver rivals Jo’s snores. Ellen creaks across the linol
eum floor to hang it up. Then she touches her mother-in-law’s shoulder. “Mrs. Dowd?”

  Nothing. Ellen taps, cartoon-like, on the shoulder. “Jo. Jo. You’ve got to wake up!”

  “Oh!” Jo starts awake. The eyes are wild. There’s no recognition. The pupils are tiny.

  “I’m Ellen, Fintan’s wife. Your son. You called me. At my hotel.”

  Jo stares blankly. A lock of greasy grey hair droops forward, escaped from its hair clip.

  The bed has a long dent under the blankets, like an animal’s burrow. On the nightstand, there’s an ashtray, a glass of curdled milk, empty pill bottles, and what looks like a small, miniature diaper. “Mrs. Dowd, you should get into bed now.”

  Jo blinks back at Ellen. Then she looks to the bedroom window where it’s still dark out. The mist has delayed the summer dawn.

  At last, the words come slow and slurred. “Father hasn’t been feeling that well, you know. The chest. His bad chest. Did you know that? And Kitty’s gone. Kitty’s gone off and away to Dublin again. I’d only just come in from the fields. So I woke up. He drowned, the doctor said. Father, my poor father, drowned.” Then the chin lolls forward again.

  “Look, Mrs. Dowd, I’m going to help you back to bed, then I’m calling 9-1-1.”

  Jo stares at her. “Ach, it’s time to get up now anyway. They’ll all be up here, from the church, the funeral. Father. Father’s dead. Nobody knows. Ned can do the herding. Though they printed it in the paper, The Independent.”

  Jo starts to get up, her right hand rising, scrabbling at the air. She leans on the edge of the dressing table, sets it rocking on its legs. Jo levers herself up further. Then she stands there, frozen, her eyes popping with pain.