Martin Sloane (17 page)

It seemed as if all the children were getting better at the same time. The last two nights had been fairly quiet, no crying, no rasping coughs. It was as if the weather were changing within the ward as well. It put him into such a good mood that he offered the girl in the bed beside him a candy from his tin. (She had appeared there after the boy who died.) Her name was Nuala. She was from Clontarf, but her father said this was the best hospital in the city and she was to come here to get cured. She said the girl with the black shoes had come from her school.

What was her name? Martin asked.

Elizabeth, said Nuala. She was going to be the first girl reporter for the
Irish Times.

It was sad she died.

Yes. It runs in her family. Her father coughed blood and died in a bed they set up in the front room. Her mother hasn’t been well ever since, and now Lizzie. Nuala clucked her tongue and Martin heard the candy tick against her back teeth. His stomach hurt, like he was going to have diarrhea. If he had died, would his mother die? Would his father?

She must have died from something different than her father, he said hopefully.

No. I think it was the same thing. Blood in the lungs.

That scares me, he said.

You’re better, though. You escaped this time.

Yes.

They sat silently in their beds. He could see her out of the corner of his eye watching him, her head tilted in concern. One day, she’ll be a good mom, Martin thought. She was older by a few years. There was a small rise under her shirt.

Would you like me to come give you a cuddle? she asked.

No, he said hurriedly. I’m going home today.

But she slipped the covers back from her bed and padded over to him, pulled his covers away from his body. She was much larger than him. I can see you need someone to take care of you, she said. And anyway, the nurses aren’t coming with lunch for another fifteen minutes.

She angled the pillow so she could lean back and pulled his head down onto her shoulder. Her nice-smelling gown was warm and fuzzy — her parents had brought it from home and insisted that she be able to wear it at night rather than the hospital-issue gowns. He slowly let his weight fall onto her shoulder and she shook her head so her hair covered his face. He knew some of the other children were watching them and his body was stiff against hers. Theresa was sometimes nice to him like this, but she hadn’t been lately. When he was getting sick, she’d stopped being kind to him. Nuala was younger than Theresa, but the older-girl warmth, the smell of a girl’s skin, comforted him. He began to doze off. Some time later, while he was sleeping, she slipped his head onto the pillow and left the bed.

After lunch, his mother and father appeared, and they had his spring coat with them. They drew the curtain around as he put his real clothes on: the brown slacks, the white undershirt, the yellow turtleneck.

We’ll stop in for a chocolate at Goldman’s, said his father. His face was bright with happiness and he was wearing an excellent hat with a rim made of fur. Theresa is waiting in the hallway, said his mother. She’s looking forward to your homecoming.

The three of them got up to leave the ward and Martin felt like a king carried out on his dais. He turned and waved goodbye to Nuala, and she waved back. He had the sudden thought that maybe she had lied about her parents in Clontarf. Maybe the dead father and the bed-bound mother were hers, not the dead girl’s with the black shoes, and she was alone here. But then he went through the swinging doors and Nuala was out of sight, and he knew he would never see her again. Theresa joined him and their parents in the hall, and took Martin’s hand like she’d been told, and the four of them left the hospital triumphantly.

Outside, two men in black overalls loaded some pigs onto a truck.

The walk home swelled Martin’s heart. Lord, the sky! The big grey stones of the Mater Misericordia Hospital catching the late April sun! And the sun! So much of it, and so rare for this time of year. The cars went past tooting and the horses lowered their heads. He loved the horses even more than he normally loved them.

Hold still! said his mother, walking backwards to take a picture of them.

They went in to Goldman’s and Martin picked a chocolate with crisps and raisins in it, and Theresa had a block of nougat. Mrs. Goldman rubbed Martin’s cheek with her hand.

What a lamb!

Martin’s father wanted to make a detour into St. Joseph’s Church, to thank the Virgin.

Colin, their mother said, you’re not taking any child of mine into a church. Even to thank the Virgin.

He’s half a child of Christ, love. We shouldn’t push our luck now.

What if it’s the Christ half got sick?

All the more reason to thank the Virgin for prayers answered.

They argued like this for a few moments; Martin and Theresa had been through these attempted detours many times. Their father still clung to his stray hope that he’d get the four of them into a church one day. As usual, they saw his shoulders slump a little and their parents walked back toward them.

Why don’t you make one of us Catholic and one of us Jewish? Theresa asked. Then there won’t be any more of this half and half business.

And which would you be, Theresa? asked her father.

I’d be Catholic and Martin would be Jewish. Then there’d be one of each, a Jewish boy, a Catholic girl, a Jewish mum, a Catholic dad.

I think not, said Adele. We don’t need to be divided against each other. Lord knows there’s enough trouble already. You can still thank God, Theresa, without praying to the Virgin.

But I like the Virgin. She has a pretty face.

There would be no more discussing it. They turned up the street and walked straight home, but Martin’s father said in his mind, Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death. Amen, and they all knew he was doing it because his lips were moving. Adele nudged him with her elbow and shook her head at him, but she was also smiling. That was the way of their family.

He stood at the gate of 77 Iona Road and looked up into his window and his heart felt like it was going to burst. His mother held the gate for him like he was the Prince of Wales and All That He Surveys. He turned and saw that William was standing in his window, waiting for Martin to go up and stand in his. They went into the house. Upstairs, Martin stood in his window and waved to William, and William saluted him, as if everyone had been told to treat Martin like he was royalty.

It was a day for returning to the things of life. Standing at the windows and recalling the views; counting the rooftops, the stop signs, the church spires. Martin took in the riches of his things: his books, his cast-iron double-decker bus, his cigar box full of keepsakes (for which he had designed an ingenious false bottom). He touched his bedspread, his walls, smelled the empty hamper, and it all rushed into him like the world swooping down into his body, like the world returning to him. He was well; he was not going to die. He was going to live.

That night, one of the doctors from the hospital came. It had been arranged earlier. Colin Sloane sat with his back as straight as a rod and their mother kept one hand on his leg. The doctor took the chair across from them, his gloves folded in his lap. Martin was better, but he would not stay better in Dublin, he told them. The air was too polluted and Martin would need cleaner air if his lungs were going to heal permanently. They would have to leave Dublin and live somewhere else. It was put simply so none of them could misunderstand what he was saying.

Martin swivelled his head to take in the room. His parents were looking at the doctor. His sister’s eyes were as black as coal.

Galway was one hundred and twenty miles away. How were they ever going to get their things from Dublin to Galway?

Martin picked the string off the page and laid it down carefully again, making it hug the little blue road on the map book. Now it was one hundred and twenty-five miles away. Getting farther away with every passing minute. He was sitting on the front stoop, peevishly refusing to box even his own things, his adventure stories, his tin soldiers, his cigar box. His mother called from inside:

Martin Samuel Joseph Sloane!

And he twisted his body away from the door. She came to the window.

Are you deaf?

I’m not.

Then get inside and do what I asked you to!

She slammed the window down, and he felt part of the front stoop quiver as she walked past inside and went up the stairs.

They were moving to Galway, and it was all his fault. It was the fault of the Dublin air, but it was also his fault for the way he breathed it, or perhaps for the way it breathed him (for he remembered the way the dead girl had told him all things were within other things, even the air). He kept replaying the awful events in his mind, trying to isolate the one thing that, if he’d done it differently, he wouldn’t have gotten ill, he wouldn’t have gone to the hospital, and the tall doctor with the soft black gloves wouldn’t have come to the house.

He’ll be prey to all manner of respiratory predations, I’m afraid, the doctor had said.

The next day, Theresa had broken the silence over their porridge.

But we live
here
, not anywhere else.

It’s not where we live, their father said. It’s that we’re together and we’re healthy.

But you make hats in Dublin!

They have heads in Galway.

After that, Theresa had taken to slamming doors. He would walk to the bathroom in the morning and hear Theresa jump out of bed, run to her door, and open it in time to slam it as he went past. Sometimes he’d be in his own bedroom, and the door would suddenly open and then slam shut.

Risa!

He bothers me!

For Christ’s sake! (And then their father’s voice: Adele, I’ve told you about that! ) And Martin shouting back:

I’m not doing anything, though! He opened the door to his bedroom.

You! she hissed. You are going to wreck my whole life! She was red-faced in her thin nightie, and he could see the knuckles on her toes whiten as she clasped the top stair. Why didn’t you die like the others, and let us get on with things?

He knew she didn’t mean it, but it stung him just the same. They were moving to Galway, and it was his fault. His father had told him that people desperately needed hats in Galway, and it was a good opportunity for them, not bad luck. Martin tried to picture what Galway would look like, and hoped that when their car turned off the road and came into the city, that they would see a bare-headed populace, and he would begin to feel better about himself.

His mother put on a record, and the voices of two women floated out of the window and into the street —

sous le dôme épais,

sous le blanc jasmine,

ah! descendons ensemble!

Sometimes his mother’s voice would join theirs, breaking in to the parts she knew by heart. It was a sound of home, and it made him sad. He bounced a ball on the bottom step and watched it rise again and again into his hand. He waved at a man who rode past on a red bike.

His father came home with his brown satchel, and put his hand on Martin’s head, then leaned down to his ear and whispered, It’s just a patch of bad luck. It hurt Colin Sloane to see his son sitting outside the house. He went inside and the front stoop quivered a little. His father hung his coat in the closet, then walked over to the banister and hung his hat, as he always did, on the newel post. As if to say to anyone who visited here that this was the domain of a man who made hats. Martin always thought it funny that when he would walk home with him from the shop on Grafton Street, his father would tip his hat to people in such an exaggerated way that the label would show. Always be ready to sell; everyone is a potential customer, he’d say.

Martin heard his parents talking. His father was telling his mother that he’d found someone who would make them a new table for the new house. They would leave this one behind. That gave Martin a pang of grief, since it was the table he had eaten at for his entire life. He did the math quickly in his head. Since he had been able to hold a fork, he had eaten at that table over six thousand times. It was simply wrong to say they would leave it behind!

He leaned in toward the slightly open door. It’s in the basket, his mother said. He saw his father shaking his head unhappily. She put her hand on his. Now stop saying that, she said. Give me a pencil, she said.

Then it was quiet, and Martin knew they were discussing the future. They were to leave in three more days, and it was all because of him. He could hardly believe that in three days, this part of his life would be over, and all because he was cursed with a bad chest! He was overcome with the urge to beat his own ribcage with his fists, shatter his ribs and tear out his lungs. He realized he pictured them as lungs, not the fuzzy blurred sacs he’d seen in the bottled baby but as purply-blue shimmering lungs. Pictured them inside his body, hanging in his ribcage like a cluster of berries. The tightness in his chest and the liquid he would cough up seemed to come from the same place. He believed in the body now, but the belief gave him no solace.

Theresa came up the walk dangling her schoolbooks. It was five o’clock, and the sun was beginning to go down behind the Church of St. Columba’s.

Move, she said. I’m going into
my
house.

Don’t slam the door.

I think we should stay in Dublin and you should move to Galway and get bitten by a snake.

St. Patrick got rid of all the snakes, he said.

She leaned down to him; he could feel her breath on his ear. He put them in
Galway,
she said, and she went inside, slamming the door, stomp stomp stomp up the stairs and then she hurled her books at her bedroom wall. Martin felt all of it through the wooden door. It vibrated with every heavy footfall and his spine absorbed the movement and sent it up his neck and into his skull. He tried to block out the life of the house behind him, and he looked at the houses across the road. Over the roof of his best friend’s house, the rim of the sun was vanishing. He imagined that from William’s bedroom window, it would still be visible, hanging like a huge lamp over the city. Martin watched the last sliver of sun until he couldn’t see it any more. It turned his friend’s house into a dark blot.