Fishing the Sloe-Black River (3 page)

“Will you join us for a cup? She's sleeping now.” It's the old nun who answered the door.

“Thank you, Sister.”

“You look white, dear.”

“I've been traveling a long time.”

Over tea and scones they begin to melt, these women. They surprise me with their cackle and their smiles. They ask of the old place. Brigid, they say. What a character. Was she always like that? The holy spirit up to the ears?

Two nuns there had spent the last few years with her. They tell me that she had been living in El Salvador in a convent outside a coffee plantation. One day recently three other nuns in the convent were shot, one of them almost fatally, so Brigid slipped out to a mountain for a few hours to pray for their health. She was found three days later, sitting on a rock. They look at me curiously when I ask about her fingernails. No, they say, her fingernails were fine. It was the lack of food that did it to her. Five campesinos had carried her down from the mountain. She was a favorite among the locals. She had always taken food to the women in the adobe houses, and the men respected her for the way she had hidden it under her clothes, so they wouldn't be shamed by charity. She'd spent a couple of weeks in a hospital in San Salvador, on an intravenous drip, then they transported her to Long Island to recover. She had never talked of any brothers or sisters, though she had gotten letters from Ireland. She did some of the strangest things in Central America, however. She carried a pebble in her mouth. It came all the way from the Sargasso Sea. She learned how to dance. She reared four piglets behind the sacristy in the local church. She had shown people how to skin rabbits. The pebble made little chips in her teeth. She had taken to wearing some very strange colored socks.

I start to laugh.

“Everyone,” says one of the nuns with a Spanish accent, “is allowed a little bit of madness, even if you're a nun. I don't see what's wrong with that.”

“No, no, no, there's nothing wrong with it. I'm just thinking.”

“It does get cold down there, you know,” she replies.

Someone talks about the time she burned the pinto beans. The time the pigs got loose from the pen. The time the rabbit ran away from her. Another says she once dropped a piece of cake from her dress when she knelt at the altar, and one of the priests, from Wales, said that God gave his only begotten bun. But the priest was forgiven for the joke since he was not a blasphemer, just a bit of a clown. The gardener comes in, a man from Sligo, and says: “I've seen more fat on a butcher's knife than I have on your sister.” I leave the scone raisins on the side of the saucer. I am still laughing.

“Can I see her?” I say, turning to the nun who opened the door for me. “I really need to see her. I have a friend waiting for me outside and I must go soon.”

The nun shuffles off to the kitchen. I wait. I think of a piece of turf and the way it holds so much history. I should have brought my sister a sod of soil. Or a rock. Or something.

An old nun, with an African accent, singing a hymn, comes out of the kitchen, carrying a piece of toast and a glass of water. She has put a dollop of jam on the side of a white plate, “for a special occasion.” She winks at me and tells me to follow her. I feel eyes on my back, then a hum of voices as we leave the dining area. She leads me up the stairs, past a statue, eerie and white, down a long clean corridor, toward a room with a picture of Archbishop Romero on the door. We stop. I hold my breath. A piece of turf. A rock. Anything.

“Go in, child.” The nun squeezes my hand. “You're shaking.”

“Thank you,” I say. I stand at the door and open it slowly. “Brigid?” The bedclothes are crumpled as if they've just been tossed. “Brigid. It's me. Sheona.”

There's no sound, just a tiny hint of movement in the bedsheets. I walk over. Her eyes are open, but she's not there inside them. Her hair is netted and gray. The lines on her face cut inward. Age has assaulted her cheekbones. I feel angry. I take down the picture of the Sacred Heart that is spraying red light out into the room and place it face-down on the floor. She murmurs and a little spittle comes out the side of her mouth. So she is there, after all. I look in her eyes again. This is the first time I have seen her since we were still that age. A bitterness in there now, perhaps, borne deep. “I just want some neutral ground,” I say. Then I realize that I don't know who I'm talking to, and I put the picture back on the wall.

I sit on the bed and touch her ashtrayed hair. “Talk to me,” I say. She turns slightly. The toast is growing cold on a plate on the floor. I have no idea if she knows who I am as I feed her, but I have a feeling she does. I'm afraid to lay my hand on her for fear of snapping bones. She doesn't want to be fed. She hisses and spits the bread out of dehydrated lips. She closes her mouth on my fingers, but it takes no effort to pry it open. Her teeth are as brittle as chalk. I lay the toast on her tongue again. Each time it gets moister and eventually it dissolves. I wash it down with some water. I try to say something but I can't, so I sing a Hoagy Carmichael tune, but she doesn't acknowledge it. If I tried to lift her, I think I would find a heap of dust in my hand, my own hand, which is speaking to me again, carving out a moving shape.

I want to find out who is under the bedsheets. “Talk to me.” She rolls away and turns her back to me. I stand and look around the room. It all comes down to a lump in the bed. An empty chamber pot. Some full-bloom chrysanthemums by the window. A white plate with a smear of jam. A dead archbishop on the outside, looking in.

“Just a single word,” I say. “Just give me a single word.”

Some voices float in from the white corridor. Frantic, I move to a set of drawers and a cupboard to look at the bits and pieces that go to make up Brigid now. I pull the drawers out and dump the contents on the floor. I cannot understand the mosaic. A bible. Some neatly folded blouses. Long underwear. A bundle of letters in an elastic band. Lots of hairpins. Stamps gleaned from the Book of Kells. Letters. I do not want to read them. A painting of a man sowing seeds, by a child's hand. A photograph of our mother and father, from a long time ago, standing together by Nelson's Pillar, him with a cigar, her with netting hanging down from her hat. A copy of a newspaper from a recent election. A Mayan doll. Lotus-legged on the floor, I am disappointed with the clutter of somebody else's life. I haven't found what I'm looking for.

I shuffle to the end of the bed and lift the sheets. Her feet are blue and very cold to the touch. I rub them slowly at first. I remember when we were children, very young, before all that, and we had held buttercups to each other's chins on the edges of brown fields. I want her feet to tell me that she remembers. As I massage I think I see her lean her head sideways and smile, though I'm not sure. I don't know why, but I want to take her feet in my mouth. I want to, but it seems obscene, so I don't. “Up a lazy river with a robin song, it's a lazy, lazy river, we can float along, blue skies up above, everyone's in love, up a lazy river with me.” She mumbles when I lean over her face and kiss her. There is spittle on her chin and she is horribly ruined.

I walk to the window. Far off, in the parking lot, I can see Michael, head slumped forward on the steering wheel, sleeping. Two nuns look at him through the passenger window, curious, a cup of tea and some scones in their hands. I watch him too, wondering about the last few days. There's an old feeling within me that's new now. Those teeth around his neck. I want a bicycle again. Sequoia seedlings in the basket. I want to ride through a flurry of puddles to a place where a waterfall is frozen. I will stay here for now. I know that. But when she recovers, I will go to Quebec and climb.

But there is something I need first. I smile, go away from the window, lean towards Brigid, and whisper: “Where, Sister, did you put those yellow socks of mine anyway?”

BREAKFAST FOR ENRIQUE

The only older men I know are the ones who rise early to work. They fish the ocean for sea trout and haddock, flaring out their boats from the wharf before the sun, coming back by mid-morning with huge white plastic barrels full of fish, ready for us to gut. They draw hard on unfiltered cigarettes and have big hands that run through mottled beards. Even the younger ones look old, the hair thinning, the eyes seaward. You can see them move, slow and gull-like, back to their boats when their catch has been weighed, stomping around in a mess of nets and ropes. They don't talk to the fishgutters. They hand us a sort of disdain, a quiet disregard, I believe, for the thinness of our forearms.

I think of them always in the mornings, when the light comes in through my curtains. The light is like an old fisherman in a yellow rain-slicked coat, come to look at Enrique and me, wrapped in our bedsheets.

It's a strange light that comes this morning, older, thickerwristed, pushing its way through the gap and lying, with its smotes of dust, on the headboard.
Goddamn it, aren't you two just the salt of the earth?
Enrique is curled into himself, the curve of his back full against the spindle of his legs. His hair is all about his face. Stubbled hairs in a riot on his chin. His eyes have collected black bags, and his white T-shirt still has smatterings of spaghetti sauce from yesterday's lunch. I move to brush my lips against his cheek. Enrique stirs a little, and I notice a little necklace of blood spots on the pillow where he has been coughing.
Get up out of bed, you lazy shits.
I smooth Enrique's brow where the sweat has gathered, even in sleep.

I climb naked out of bed, swinging my feet down into my slippers. The floor is cold and I step carefully. Last night I smashed the blackberry jamjar that used to hold our money. The glass splayed in bright splinters all around the room. I move over to the window, and Enrique murmurs into the pillow. The curtains make the sound of crackling ice. The ghosts of old fishermen can tumble in here in droves now if they want, spit their epithets all around the room.
What the hell sort of mess is this? You're late for work, Paddy-boy. No foghorns going off this morning. Gut the fish along the side, asshole.

Our window looks out to a steep hill of parked cars. This morning they are bumper to bumper. Drivers have turned their steering wheels sideways so their vehicles won't roll down the hill and fling themselves toward the sea. Two weeks ago Enrique and I sold our car for $2,700 to a man with lemon-colored hair, and all the money is gone already. Bags of medicine and a little bit of cocaine. I put our last line on his belly last night, but he was sweating so hard that it was almost impossible to snort it.

I look up the road toward the deli. The white light in the street is slouching on the buildings, spilling over the ironwork railings. What I like most about the street is that people put flower pots in their windows, a colorful daub of Mediterranean greens and reds. Doors are painted in a medley of shades. Curtains get thrown open early in the mornings. There's a cat on the third floor across the street, jet black with a dappled blue bandanna. It is forever cocking its head sideways and yawning in the window. Sometimes I bring home some sea trout and leave it on the doorstep of the house for the owner.

I cover myself with my hand and step out through the French doors. A chill wind is coming up from the waterfront, carrying the smell of salt water and fresh sourdough. Already some of the fishermen will have unloaded their catch and Paulie's fingers will be frantic in his hair.
Where's O'Meara this morning?
they'll say to him.
Has he found himself a gerbil?
The other fishgutters will be cursing over slabs of fillets. Their plastic gloves will be covered in blood. Strings of fishgut will have fallen on their boots.
That bastard's always late anyway.

I should pull on my old jeans and whistle for a taxi, or hop on the trolley, or ride the bicycle through the hills, down to the warehouse, but the light this morning is curiously heavy, indolent, slow, and I feel like staying.

Enrique is coughing in the bedroom behind me, spitting into the pillow. It sounds like the rasp of the seals along the coastline cliffs farther up the California shore. His skin is sallow and tight around his jaw. The way he thrashes around in the bed reminds me of a baby corncrake I once took home after an oil slick in my hometown near Bantry Bay, continually battering its blackened wings against the cage to get out.

He should wake soon, and perhaps today he'll feel well enough to sit up, read a novel or a magazine. I bend down and pick up the large pieces of shattered glass from the floor. There's a long scar on the wall where I threw the jamjar.
That was smart, O'Meara, wasn't it?
I find two quarters and a few dimes scattered among the glass. There's an Irish five-penny piece on the floor too, an anachronism, a memory.

I flick a tiny shard of glass off my finger, and Enrique tosses again in bed. He is continually thinning, like the eggshell of a falcon, and soon the sheets will hardly ripple. I move to the bathroom and take a quick piss in the sink. Enrique has always said that it's a much better height and there's no risk of splashing the seat. Not too hygienic, but curiously pleasurable. My eyes are bloodshot in the mirror, and I notice the jowly look in my face. When I wash I can still smell yesterday's fish on my hands. We are down to the last bar of soap, and the water that comes through the tap has a red iron color to it. Back in the bedroom I pull on my jeans, a heavy-checked lumber shirt, and my black-peaked hat. I search in the pockets of my jeans and find three more dollars, then check my watch. Another hour late won't really matter. My coat hangs on the bedpost. I lean over him again and tell him that I will be back in a few moments. He doesn't stir.
Ah, isn't that just lovely, O'Meara? Out ya go and get breakfast for Enrique.

*   *   *

The wind at my back hurries me along, down the street, past a row of saplings, over a child's hopscotch chalkmarks, to the deli, where Betty is working the counter. It's an old neighborhood store, the black-and-white floor tiles curled up around the edges. Betty is a large, dark-haired woman—capable, Enrique jokes, of owning her own zip code. She often wears tank tops, and the large flaps of flab that hang down from her underarms would be obscene on anybody else, but they seem to suit her. There's a barker on the other side of town, near City Lights Bookstore, who shouts about “Sweaty Betty” 's shows, but I've never had the guts to go in and see if it's her up there, jiggling onstage in the neon lights. Betty negotiates the aisles of the deli crabways, her rear end sometimes knocking over the display stands of potato chips. When she slices the ham the slabs are as thick as her fingers. There is a bell on the inside of the door, and when I come in she looks up from the cash register, closing the newspaper at the same time.