Stay (23 page)

Around three, Dermot pulls Abbey into the bedroom to make love. She rolls her eyes, says “not this again” and he isn’t sure if she’s joking or not. But time is ticking and Dermot can hear it. He remembers Bonaventure. The Franciscan insisting that every instant of time is a beginning of the future even as it is a terminus of the past. The act, Dermot thinks, of being stuck in the moment before the hand of the clock moves. And Siger of Brabant, a favourite of Lasalle’s: “Potentiality precedes act in duration.” Dermot mulling it over as he lifts Abbey’s shirt over her head.

Later, when he’s kissing her—one breast then the other, then the yellow bruise along her neck, the two of them laughing—he feels an elation, feels outside of himself in a way that is oddly tactile. As if he’s standing there watching his body with hers, anticipating the feeling that’s to come, thinking
this is what happiness is
. His happiness, hers, theirs together. As if she’s pulled him out of himself, the way she kneels at the foot of the bed, teases him with her mouth. But in the middle of it, just as enters her, he feels her body tense up. Pushes himself up on his hands, wondering if he’s hurt her.

“Are you all right?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Tell me. Did I hurt you?” His left arm quivering so that he has to roll off her.

“It’s Billy McKay.” Abbey puts the palm of her hand over her eyes.

“What?”

“My father walked in on me and Billy in grade eleven, and pulled him off me.”

“Abbey, what are you talking about?”

She sits up. Puts her hand on Dermot’s chest. “I just spaced out. For a second I thought we’d been caught. That Frank had walked in on us.”

“You and me, or you and Billy?” He swings his legs over the side of the bed.

“You and me.”

“I’m for a drink.” He looks over at her but she shakes her head no. Then, naked, he walks across the room, heads into the kitchen.

Later that afternoon when a water glass falls to the floor and no one is in the kitchen, when the radio loses its station for no reason, Dermot will look up at the ceiling and shake his head. Abbey picking up the glass shards in the blue plastic dust pan, tuning the radio back to RTE.

“C’mere.” Dermot pulls Abbey into his arms and she kisses his neck. He takes her right hand in his and they start dancing to the bluesy music that’s playing. Dermot waltzing Abbey around and into the kitchen, trying to get her to follow his lead, laughing when she trips over his feet, hits her elbow on the fridge. They start again and move from room to room, stepping over Flagon’s bowls on the kitchen floor, over the furled edge of the living-room rug.
Watch this
, Dermot thinks, turning Abbey in circles.
Watch this, Frank Gowan. The woman your little girl has become
.

The Bridge House

TUESDAY morning Abbey wakes up to the dull thud of hammers hitting wood at the bungalow next door. The framers are putting in the interior walls. She rolls over and grabs her travel alarm off the window sill, looks at the time. Just after ten. Dermot’s in the kitchen and the house smells like sausage. Abbey has to be at the hotel in two hours to see Aidan. They’ll talk about the kind of work he might want her to do, about her experience. The only cleaning she’s ever done has been after-hours at Gabby’s, end-of-shift stuff at Connor’s. And taking care of her father. Although how emptying a bedpan qualifies her for room cleaning might be beyond Aidan’s comprehension.

“You’re up, then?” Dermot is standing in the doorway. He’s trimmed his beard and combed his hair. He’s even wearing a shirt with a collar.

“What time did you get out of bed?” Abbey walks over, goes up on her toes, kisses him.

“A while ago. Breakfast is almost ready.”

——

After they eat, Abbey gets dressed. She chooses a short green skirt she bought two weeks ago in Dublin and the white blouse she usually wears to work at Connor’s. She slips on her black shoes and puts on some lipstick, checks herself in the bathroom mirror and then goes outside. Dermot is tossing the ball to Flagon, eying the bungalows. He said he’d drive Abbey in, wait by the bridge until she was done. Then he wanted to go into Galway and drop by the bank. Maybe stop at the Brasserie for a pint.

“Ready?” Dermot kicks the ball one last time towards the start of the field.

“Yep.”

“Do you have your work visa?”

“In my passport.” Abbey taps her shoulder bag.

Then the two of them get in the car, dressed up for the first time since last November, when Dermot met up with Abbey in Dublin and they went to the Gate to see a Stoppard play.

Aidan is nice enough. Very Dublin, very congenial. A man in his early forties with two prominent lines across his forehead. Lines, Abbey thinks, you could sink a ship in. He says “I see,” in response to everything she puts forward. Folds his hands. Index fingers tapping each other in contemplation. They sit out in the back garden, and every now and again when she’s in the middle of saying why she wants to work at the Bridge House, Abbey can see his attention drift. His gaze goes from her face to the potted flowers beside her chair and then off to the stone wall at the back of the garden. He tries to deter her with “it’s just part-time” and “the wages won’t be what you’re used to in
Dublin, and the tips are minimal if you get anything at all.” But Abbey insists she wants the work. At the end, he looks back over at her and asks, “How long will you stay in Ireland?” And maybe it’s the fact that he seems so sad, that there’s a weight hanging off him, but Abbey tells him the truth. “I can’t really say.” Just then, a woman in gardening gloves comes out the glass patio doors. A tired-looking labourer with a big gut, carrying two large sacks of fertilizer, follows her. He looks once at Abbey then drops his eyes back to the ground. The woman’s gardening clogs slapping up and down against her heels.

“Aidan, will you mind the desk?” A bee zigzags past her. She fans the air, raises her eyebrows at Abbey.

“This is Abbey Gowan.” He drops a hand in her direction.

Abbey steps forward and the woman smiles thinly at her, pulls at the fingertips of her gloves.

“Aidan—the desk.” The woman turning to examine the geraniums.

The west-facing bedroom on the second floor is filled with Queen Anne lace and gold tassels. It’s not the kind of room Abbey would have put together but it’s delicate and clean—the type of suite old women love to sleep in. Aidan takes the keys and heads down to the desk, tells Abbey to take a minute and look around. When she comes down they’ll go over the cleaning responsibilities she’ll have. Abbey goes into the bathroom, flicks the light switch on. Small heart-shaped soaps by the sink. Mini shampoo and conditioners. A shower cap. Ice bucket. Four glasses in paper wrap. A bag for sanitary napkins. Ten
towels of varying sizes on the rack by the wall. It occurs to Abbey that she’ll hate this job, that slinging food around for tourists is bad enough, but this will be less pay, harder work, maybe even a little lonely. Looking at the toilet she realizes that she’ll be the one responsible for cleaning it, the way she had to clean up after Frank before Doctor Kaplan changed his meds and things righted themselves again. A month of diarrhea and Frank saying “see,” as if that was proof positive that he was dying. He’d taken some pleasure in it, in the look on Abbey’s face as she carried the bedpan from the table where he left it into the bathroom. She’d wash her hands for ten minutes afterwards, telling herself there was nothing she could do. But wanting, the whole time, some kind of a declaration. “There’s been some internal bleeding, but it’s stopped and we can’t say what caused it. The CAT and PET scans don’t show anything out of the ordinary. The lethargy is a concern, but until the tests show something abnormal …” Dr. Kaplan, in his office at the hospital, had been almost sorry, looked at Abbey as if he knew what she was going through, patting her hand as he dropped the folder containing Frank’s medical history into a file cabinet. Abbey walked back to admitting to find Frank on the bed in a hospital gown, grinning. The green curtain had made him look more sallow than usual. Abbey went over to him, watched him swing his legs over the side of the bed, stand up, take his IV with him. Frank saying, “Let’s get lunch at the cafeteria.” The back of his gown open as he started down the hall.

Dermot is at the bridge. Flagon down in the river pawing stones in the shallows.

“How was it?”

“Okay. I start next week.”

“Is that what you want?”

Abbey looks at the trees, skylarks rustling in the upper branches. A dragonfly dipping up and down over the stream. “How long do you think this’ll go on?” she asks.

“How long will what go on?”

“I hate him. I really do.”

“Hate is a strong word, Abbey.”

“But that’s it, isn’t it? I hate my father but there isn’t anything I can say that he did to deserve it. He never really hit me, not really, he didn’t dump me by the side of—”

“Ssshhh.” Dermot reaches out and puts his hand on her shoulder. After a minute he says, “Do you remember when we first met?”

Abbey nods.

“We were at the Bailey and Angela had introduced us and I was talking about the past and you were hanging on every word that I said.”

“Well, not every word.”

“You were.”

Abbey laughs.

“And then you dropped your hand on my knee.”

“I did,” she agrees.

“A small thing, Abbey. But here we are. Never underestimate how even the simple gestures can change us.”

Later that afternoon when Dermot comes out of the bank, he sees Abbey waiting for him by the car. Happy to see him, lifting her hand. This pixie girl, this woman who is
making a life with him. Abbey, who has grown as strange to him as he has to himself. Her sudden compliance. Her wanting to settle down. The Bridge House job, the afternoons spent lazing around in the cottage with no desire to do anything, go anywhere. Yesterday, she whiled away three hours reading the church-sanctioned version of Kilian’s life and then asked Dermot to tell her the Saint’s verifiable biography. She is still interested in mining Dermot’s head for all the things he knows. Although now, Dermot’s starting to wonder if she’ll grow tired of it. If he tells her everything, what will happen then? When his knowledge has run its course? If she stays, he thinks suddenly, nearing the car, I’ll be the ruin of her. His lethargy catching. The drink, his aimlessness, wearing them both out. Unless he makes something more of himself, then it might work. Still, either way, he might hurt her. But then, there is a comfort in that too. As if causing another’s sorrow is one way to define being a man.

The Heritage Service

MICHAEL and Dermot stand at the edge of the pit, contemplating the tarp. After a while Michael walks over to the far side of the excavation, moves back two feet from the edge, says, “We’ll take about fifty centimetres off the top here, then cut a wedge down behind the body and at the same time go in underneath. Pull out the whole shelf.”

“When’s the license due in?”

“This afternoon. If it’s in by four, we’ll dig tomorrow.”

“Has Hopkins come over from Dublin?”

“He and the paleobotanist are coming in the morning. Jack’s bringing the license. She’s driving up from Clare.”

“Who is it?”

“Moira someone. Recommended by O’Flynn.”

Two hours pass. Michael sits at the edge of the pit with his legs hanging over the side and Dermot walks over to the rabbit warren, watches Tomás mill the field adjacent. Abbey’d wanted to stay home today and Dermot was restless. He knows the excavation will be starting soon.
Yesterday, in Galway, there was even talk of it at the Brasserie. The barman had recognized Dermot and asked if he was from Spiddal, and did he know they’d found a body up the way at Maam. It’s a different kind of gossip now, as if finally, after twelve years in the cottage, Dermot belongs. There was a time even four or five years ago when he’d walk to Hughes and not one person driving down the road would raise a hand in greeting. But now he was one of them. Their story was his story. Not like before—he was no longer “Dermot Fay from Dublin.” Now the barman at the Brasserie, seeing him, had asked, “Aren’t you a Spiddal man?” And Dermot, thinking about it, said, “Yes, I am.”

When Dermot gets back to the pit, Michael is down below exactly where he left him. His notebooks in his canvas bag beside him, the camera on his lap.

Squinting up at Dermot, Michael asks, “Will you bring Abbey along?”

“I will.”

“I was thinking of asking Janey.”

Dermot looks up at the sky, then down at the top of Michael’s head. “All that business is the past.”

“You’re right,” Michael agrees. Picking up a handful of dry turf, sifting it through his fingers.

There had been a time, about ten years ago, when Dermot had managed to live in the present, to let go of the business that had come before. He was seeing Nora Leary then. Forty-two and shy, well-heeled for a seamstress. They’d met at the Festival parade on High Street. It was the second weekend in September and he was just back from Clarinbridge. She’d backed into him,
turned, and said sorry. There was music on the bandstand. They spoke about the weather. The next week he took her to the films.

In the end, Nora Leary made a number of demands. That Dermot arrive in good time and in good order, that he give up the drink. And he did, but not to please her. It was a study, a course in the observation of the self.
Here I am with Nora in her living room; here I am not drinking. Is this what it feels like to be sober? Is this what it looks like when a man takes a woman’s hand?

There was talk that if all went well for them, he might be welcome in her home after the marriage. He could sell his property in Spiddal and live in the city. He could find work, maybe at the University—he was just forty-five and he had his degree. Nora completely oblivious to the obstacles he was facing. She made a list of things she expected him to do, her life a ranked system of duty and obligation:
If you can stay sober, we can get married. If you can find work, we can get a bigger house. If we get a bigger house, it won’t be too late to consider children. I have to save you so you can save me
.