Hot Whispers of an Irishman (30 page)

“Pat and Danny will be driving you to Dingle for supper,” Vi said, scrambling to take hold of the conversation before Mam could trample her. “It’s a lovely town, and I’m sure you’ll enjoy having a look about.”

“I suppose,” her mam replied.

While she spoke, the phone began to ring.

“Shall I?” Liam asked, gesturing at the thing.

“As often as you choose,” Vi said.

Liam took the call, then reached for his papers, where they sat atop a display case. While he spoke in stern tones to whomever was on the other end, Vi summoned some chat for her mam and even succeeded in keeping control for a minute or two. Then Mam launched one of her infamous announcements.

“They’ve started whispering about me already, you know,” she said.

“Who?” Vi asked, unable to imagine Jenna or anyone at Muir House treating her mother poorly. But that was half the challenge of conversations with Mam, trying to make the leap from topic to topic. The only assured constant was a Mam-centric theme.

“The women in my tea group, of course.”

“Surely you’re imagining it,” Vi said, then afforded herself a glance in Liam’s direction, but he was deep in conversation. He looked nearly as ill-tempered as Vi was beginning to feel.

“Oh, I know that pitying look,” Mam said. “I saw it often enough when the twins went to visit you.”

Vi conquered the smile trying to fight its way out. Even after nearly a full year, Mam still referred to the boys’ decision to move to Ballymuir after finishing school as a “visit.”

“Next they’ll layer on the false sympathy, too,” Mam said. “I’ve seen them do it before. ‘Whatever will you do now that Michael’s moved out?’” she mimicked. “He’s on holiday, I’ll tell them, and it’s the truth, too. He’ll be back.”

“Have you talked to Da?” Vi asked.

“Whatever for? He’ll just give me more of the same, and I heard enough of that while he was packing his bags.”

“Then you know why he’s left?”

“He’s not left,” Mam repeated with enough vehemence that Liam sent a concerned glance their way. “It’s a grand male holiday, chasing his lost youth through Duncarraig. He wants to be at the pub to all hours with his mates and forget he has a wife waiting for him.”

Even Mam, who was well-versed in altering the truth, hadn’t voiced that last bit too well. And Vi was finding words hard to get past the nearly-ill feeling tightening her throat. This was not her trial, not her burden to bear. Except no one else would give Mam the truth.

“He’s looking to be needed. He’s worked his whole life and isn’t ready to stop.”

Mam’s sigh was thick with exasperation. “He’s needed. He’s needed at home.”

“To take out your dry cleaning, or is it more than that? Do you even admire him anymore? When he comes through the door, is your heart lighter?”

“And you’re some grand judge of love?”

Vi looked over at Liam, who had finished his call and was now feigning great interest in the canvases stacked about. Her heart sped.

“I’m no expert, but I’m beginning to learn. And I’m not the one worrying about whispering tea groups. Is it love making you wish Da back?”

“That’s between myself and your father,” her mam snapped, color riding high on her cheeks.

“Then you’d best share it with Da,” Vi said. “I’d wager he hasn’t a clue how you feel about him.”

“You always were one for overstepping. Rules, respect, it doesn’t matter to you, does it?”

“It does matter. Very much.” It was simply that her rules differed from her mother’s. “And though you’ve made it none too easy, I love you still.”

Mam could have looked no more shocked if Vi had struck her.

“I’m going back to Muir House for a rest,” she said, turning heel and walking to the peg holding her coat. “Tell Pat and Danny to be at the door no later than five.”

After she was gone, Vi picked up her sketchbook and gathered her thoughts. She was beginning to believe that, like Rafferty’s gold, her mother’s good graces could not be found.

After Vi’s mam finished her grand exit, Liam eyed Vi carefully, deciding if she was fit to approach. While on the phone, he’d had the displeasure of listening to Stuart, his attorney, account how quickly matters had gone south. Liam’s four remaining field engineers had faxed their resignations just this morning. Naturally, all would soon turn up working for Midmarine Salvage, the competitor offering to buy his hard assets.

Liam had a week to consider the offer’s terms. Though he didn’t need seven days, he planned to burn every last one. He owed his pride at least that much, especially since Stuart had been told by a friend on the inside that Liam’s subpoena was forthcoming.

In a matter of days he would have to return to the States and recite chapter and verse of his stupidity regarding Alex to a room of strangers. At least, though, he could finish the trip on an upswing with a visit to Meghan. He was sure Beth wouldn’t begrudge him that.

She did, however, begrudge him Vi. That much had been clear last night. He wondered if Beth would feel the same just now, or would figure he was getting the woes he deserved. Vi’s brows were knit and she was angrily drawing on a pad of paper, her motions better suited to slashing than sketching.

“So you and your mam are through torturing each other?” he asked.

“We don’t—”

She broke off with what she was saying and a reluctant smile came to her face. “We do, I guess, and always have. Smart man,” she said, then continued sketching.

He strolled closer, wanting a look at her drawing. “Not smart, just one who’s done a fair bit of torturing, too.”

“Don’t look,” she said, shielding the sketch pad with her left hand. “That’s not what this is meant for.”

Good enough. God knew he had plenty more to look at in this chaotic place. He could see, though, where order had once rested. It was as though papers and paintings and small piles of seashells and stones had drifted down like dust, settling over what this studio had once been.

“What are these?” Liam asked, placing a hand on the papers atop an old many-drawered piece of furniture.

Vi glanced over at the pile. “Letters and such. Now be quiet or I’ll send you home with Rog.”

Silence came, but it wasn’t the creative sort. It was the silence he’d felt last night in the library as he’d watched Vi sleep and asked himself how long until she, too, was gone from his life.

To distract himself, he leafed through the stack he’d asked Vi about. It held e-mail print-outs and envelopes bearing postage not only from Ireland, but England and France, too. Before looking more, he glanced at Vi.

“Go ahead, nose about if it pleases you,” she said.

It did, so Liam began to read in more detail. Requests for information mixed with headier notes, suggesting gallery showings and even a licensing opportunity.

“Have you answered any of these?” he asked.

“Not quite yet. My business manager forwarded them when we parted ways. Career-planning issues,” she added at his “Why?”

Liam inventoried dates and postmarks. “Not quite yet” seemed to connote up to a six-month delay.

“And why have you not answered?”

“I’ve nothing to show.”

He loved the very breath of her, but there were times he did not understand her at all.

“Jesus, Vi, you’re stockpiled to the Second Coming.” He walked to a large piece of silk stretched tight and painted in abstract with a scene of storm over roiling sea. “This? What’s the matter with this?”

“The gray of the sky has too much green.”

“Too much green for whom?”

She ignored his question, frowning and pointing a finger at the lower left corner of the picture. “And look down there, the silk snagged a bit when I accidentally knocked it against another piece. Can’t you see the pull?”

“It’s visible only to you.”

“And to anyone else with eyes.” She picked up her pencil and began to tap it against the side of her work table, the rhythm hard and fast.

“Only if you point it out,” he said.

Liam took her hands in his, stilling the angry tapping. “What’s this about? I’ve seen the paintings lined up at the back door of your house, and now this hostage-taking in your studio. This can’t be the same woman with people begging for her work.”

“It’s not ready,” she said to him. Liam recognized her tone of voice, for it very much matched what Vi’s mam had used on her minutes earlier.

He knew this was a topic to be pushed no farther, yet he couldn’t help himself. “Did it occur to you that your art is the better for its flaws?”

“The better? And one of your salvage jobs, is it the better if you make a sod-all mess of it?”

He grabbed the storm painting. “We’re not talking about sod-all messes, Vi. We’re talking about human imperfection.”

“I can do better. I
have
to.”

“Or what will happen?”

“I don’t know.” She paced the room, then swung back to face him. “I don’t bloody know, but it will be bad.”

“Telling the future, are you? I’m thinking you might be a bigger witch than your nan.”

He’d meant it as a harmless joke, to lighten the moment, but if Vi could hurl lightning bolts, he would be dead.

She reached into the pocket of her trousers.

“My car keys,” she said, then flung them at him. “Go where you have to, and be gone by the time I’m back. Roger! Walk!”

The wee dog slunk from beneath Vi’s work table, looking at Liam as though seeking intercession. Liam gave him a “sorry, old friend” shrug of the shoulders. Vi flung on her cape, snapped Roger’s lead to his collar, then strode out the door.

Liam watched from the front window. On the downhill slope, Roger kept up admirably well with Vi’s long legs. The uphill, Liam feared, would be another matter, for she was walking like a woman driven.

After she and her dog were gone from sight, Liam walked outside and turned over the sign on the studio door from
Dúnta
to a welcoming
Oscaillte.
The act was symbolic, considering that art-shoppers looked to be rarer than placid redheads on this cold Ballymuir day, and likely temporary, too, since Vi would see the change on her return. But she would grasp his message and not his throat, for Liam planned to give her miles of space for the rest of the day. After all, he was a gambler, but never foolhardy. Except perhaps in love…

Men. Bloody awful, annoying, know-everything men. He was no artist. He had no idea the troubles in the process or the deathly lack of certainty.

Vi couldn’t walk quickly enough to escape her anger at Liam or the uncomfortable sense of foreboding that had set in just prior to Mam’s arrival.

And Mam. Bloody awful, annoying, know-everything Mam, for that matter. What was to come next?

More walking, at least that was for certain.

Vi crisscrossed her village’s small net of streets, returning greetings, but stopping for no talk. As she passed in front of O’Connor’s pub, she recalled that tonight would be
sessiun
night, and for the first time in nearly forever, she had no desire to attend.

She walked to the edge of town and looked longingly to the hills. High above Ballymuir sat beehive huts—small stacked stone structures that had been there likely before the New Faith replaced the Old. Some said that holy people would use them as places of meditation and rest on their solitary pilgrimages. Vi needed both contemplation and quiet, but rather doubted that she or Rog were suited to lives of asceticism.

Realizing that in the end, she had nothing to do but go back the way she came, Vi turned toward town center…such as it was. Hungry, she paused to take a peek in the windows of Spillane’s market. Seamus ran an account for her, so having been careless enough to bolt her studio without pocket money would not make her go hungry. She tethered Rog to the lamppost out front, assuring him that the indignity would be short-lived.

Vi stepped into the warmth of Spillane’s, greeted Seamus, and then headed to the sweets section. She was not a chocolate-eater by nature, but today she felt deserving. There, in front of the sweets stood her sister-in-law Kylie, hands on hips, large belly jutting out of the dark blue coat that would clearly no longer button over her smock. Vi dragged her gaze back to Kylie’s face, which seemed to bear marks of tension, much as Vi imagined hers did.

Kylie greeted Vi in Irish and they continued the conversation in that language solely, as they always did when it was just the two of them. Much as they tried to teach the others, they were the only fluent members of the family.

“I’m glad to have run into you,” Kylie said. “I’ve had a bit of a surprise.”

“It seems to be going around,” Vi answered rather dryly. “You’ve seen Mam, right?”

“Seen but not spoken to. I saw Pat leading her out to the workshop this morning, but they made no stop at the house. I did call Michael and gave him the news. I expect he’s taking the slow road home from Kenmare, just now.”

“All the better,” Vi said. “Mam’s in a mood.”

Kylie dropped an Aero bar into her basket, then said, “Which is sure to change one way or another. Your da’s on his way here, too.”