Malarky (44 page)

I had a terrible time getting up the day I buried my husband. No desire to move from the bed. Granite-limbed, immobile. I felt like a flat battery. Jimmy sat there on the end of the bed and talked out into the damp bedroom air.

—We've to do something about the house, he said, we've to make it comfortable for you through the winter.

—Come on, he said, come on 'til we have the tea now.

The girls were not staying with me and I do not remember why. They were staying with Joanie because they were organizing. Wait now that's it. All the organizing I didn't agree with. But they took it over when I said that cremation could be better than burial, and after that the whole funeral was organized by my daughters.

I didn't move to get outta the bed when Jimmy said come on, but he didn't bother me.

—I'll leave the tea in so, he said.

I could hear rattling of the kettle beyond in the kitchen, it reassured me if he was to stay all would be well. I had the feeling he would stay, that he would tell the army he'd to stay. Everything in the bedroom was still, the curtains were closed creating a dullness that made all ugly but we'd peace in there, a sad, cold peace. We would not have it once we left. It is this light that sometimes replicates inside the Blue House. The light of sad, cold peace.

—Daddy, I said, he wasn't a bad man, I said, when Jimmy came in with the tea.

—I know, he said. Sure I know. Take your time when you get up, you might be dizzy havin' lain so long. I'm going to heat the pan.

Jimmy was full of useful sayings now and maybe it was the army taught him them, or maybe he always knew them.

Later that day at the funeral I'd no part of because it was relieved of me and wasn't I glad to have it relieved, I was, for I'd a been no use to them only thinking ludicrous things about urns and cremation, as if such a thing were possible, but I remember they didn't lay him out in the house, why was that? My daughters were organizing it all with Joanie and the girls and I think they decided it would be unsettling for me and so into the funeral home in Foxford we went instead.

People flocked to me. I sat on a chair. I didn't stand up. Mossie gave me the chair. There's no need to stand up, Mossie said. At one point the son of a local man who must have worked beyond in the fields with my husband came to me and put his arms around me and sobbed what are we going to do without him? I was squashed beneath him.

Stood about that coffin was a life my husband had been living outside my kitchen, in which he mattered to so many and I had known of it and what harm was it that he left it at the back door when he came in at night. Better he came in. Better he came into me, I told myself, than not at all. And yet more's the pity he couldn't have made a bit of room for his son, I caught myself thinking. I was disappointed I couldn't escape that last thought. The way it stalked me and staked itself into the ground. Wasn't I weak to let it come to me that way?

Later when all was said and done, I said to Jimmy: Wasn't that something, I said, Daddy, how he mattered to those young fellas you know. Isn't that something? I repeated. Did you see them crying?

—Oh he did, of course he did, Jimmy said. No bitterness, nothing, no more words than were necessary. But we have to get you into bed, Jimmy said, it's been a long day for you.

That someone knew I'd had a long day was something. You see I hadn't really been present that day, I was floating above and around the whole thing, confused. I remember there were a lot of questions, but I never remember answering even one of them.

—Age is a great leveller, I told Jimmy on another walk. Daddy for example he's not a bad man. He's a desperate man, yes. But I too have given him the odd sight at despair he mighta been spared.

Jimmy looked at me. He did not believe me. But he kept it to himself, exactly the way I had trained him.

Another time when we walked that way we did, Jimmy said to me that he had watched me and had learned different.

—What d'ya mean? I said, not wanting to know at all what he meant.

—I know what it is to love a man and not be loved back.

—Was it the fella you brought down to us that time?

—No, he was the opposite. That's why I brought him see. He was able to love me, I wanted you to see it, but you wouldn't.

—I saw it. I said. I did. But he was awful dull.

—And so you've to stop worrying, he said lightly.

—I'll never stop worrying, I told him. It's why I am here.

I meant it, you know, I meant it in the way I am sitting here now looking out my back window, where it's raining, waiting for the postman to come before I bring the flask of tea up to the Blue House to Jimmy and must be back before the girls descend in on me and start worrying if they don't find me here. The doctor has already phoned, I've to call down to him tomorrow for the new prescription. My floor is washed because I have washed it. It looks well so it does. The cows are already fed. Today I am ahead of meself.

 

It's beautiful when it all makes sense, so it is. Occasionally it makes sense, just for a moment.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The references to pink neon signs in Episode 5 refer to a 1997 visual art exhibit called “For Dublin” by Frances Hegarty and Andrew Stones, whose public art installation of neon script quotations from Molly Bloom's soliloquy I remember so fondly.

 

Malarky is the culmination of ten years work. During that time many people offered encouragement and afforded me their patient ears despite my undulating despair.

 

Thank you to my agent Marilyn Biderman, Tara, Dan at Biblioasis and John Metcalf for boldly embracing Malarky.

 

My mother Hannah has the best-looking bovines in Co Mayo and is never short on humour. I thank her for helping me check dialect and place names. I thank my sister for the teabags and plane tickets.

 

Go raibh mile maith agat go Edel Ni Chonchubhair for translating a few chapters of Malarky as Gaeilge.

 

Thank you also to Helen Potrebenko for writing the novel Taxi!, Caroline Adderson, Keith Ridgway for the homoerotic consult, indefatigable Retta, Jenny and Ian, Sara, Carol, Marina Roy, and Gertrude who told me to imagine an ideal reader.

 

Suzu Matsuda and Larry Cohen, my family here in Vancouver, have helped me in so many ways, including their exquisite love of my son.

 

Finally thanks and love to my partner Jeremy Isao Speier and my son Cúán Isamu who has rocked my world for the past twelve years. I love you pet. You are the best.

Anakana Schofield
is an Irish-Canadian writer of fiction, essays, and literary criticism. She has contributed to the London Review of Books, The Recorder:
The Journal of the American Irish Historical Society
, the
Globe and Mail
, and the Vancouver Sun. She has lived in London and Dublin, and now resides in Vancouver.
Malarky
is her first novel.

Copyright © Anakana Schofield, 2012

 

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

 

 

 

 

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

 

Schofield, Anakana, 1971-

Malarky / Anakana Schofield.

 

eISBN : 978-1-926-84539-5

 

I. Title.

PS8637.C563M34 2012

C813'.6

C2011-907870-8

Biblioasis acknowledges the ongoing financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Council for the Arts, Canadian Heritage, the Canada Book Fund; and the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Arts Council.

PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA