The Visitors (25 page)

I woke up after that. The bulb had gone out in the shed and it was pitch dark. The gift was gone from me. Gone for good and the air in the shed was damp and dead and freezing cold like the air was when I was down in the copper mines. And this terrible shivering all over my skin like there was fingers touching it. And outside the dark shed the leaves on the birches ticked in the most mysterious way. A way Id never heard them ticking before.

If I wrote to her then I would write that the day I stood at the altar and married she was the one on my mind. The day my daughter was born she was on my mind. The day my son was born she was on my mind. The day the twins came screaming into the world she was on my mind. That’s all Id need to write.

I lay on the bed and listened to the stream. That evening years back on the cobblestone path, the two men in the shed looked like phantoms conjured up out of the Sweet Afton smoke. That smell of new wood was mixed with the cement dust. I stood there ever so obediently. Ever so innocuously. Staring through the smoke and trying to hear the men against the thumps of the ball. Nora’s shadow appearing then disappearing on the windowpane. He at the back of the shed. Me at the front. The Nissan lorry with the black stripes along the sides was parked in the driveway. A red wheelbarrow crusted with concrete lay upside down in the truck bed. Shovel handles sticking out. The moon rose above the silver birches. And the air turned chilly in the fading daylight.

I sat in the backseat of my father’s car. Golden ribs of straw were stuck to the stained and torn seats. The head of Hannah’s doll was on the floor. I kicked the head under my father’s seat and it kept rolling back and I kept on kicking it as the car rolled along. My aunt was sitting silently in the passenger seat. We had picked her up at the Junction. My father drove like time had stopped. He didn’t like driving the main road. But to me then that journey was like going to another country. Houses brightly painted in the passing villages. People I didn’t know glanced at through the car window. And Aunt Tess kept touching her radiant horse hair. She touched it the way I sometimes long to touch the glass of a painting in a museum. Her nails were this brilliant red. Before the month was over she would fling herself under a Dublin
bus. But that day she would have been thrilled. Being so close to seeing him again after the year’s wait. On Sunday he would wear the hat with the feather. Una or Nora would have brushed the hat for him.

Kevin was back with a while. He’d come to the door and knocked. He’d turned the knob and pushed. I was standing behind the door. I held my breath.

—Jimmy, are you in there? There’s someone out here who can’t wait to see you.

Then he was talking loudly in the big room. I went and lay on the bed.

—Jimmy must be out walking in the trees. He locked the door before he went, darling . . . Yes, we will eat out on the deck . . . Anton put the picnic table there especially for you. He put a nice tablecloth on it. I told him you liked the white and red squares . . . Did you put on the bug spray? Your mother warned me that you put it on, darling. She warned more than once . . . I will so start the grill if you help me. I’m grilling chicken because I know my darling likes it. Anton will bring the corn he grows himself . . . That’s the plan. We’ll stick to that . . . Yes, there’s soda in the fridge. Okay, you can have one. But you should have orange juice, darling. But have a soda if it’s what you want . . . Daddy has everything his darling wants.

I got up from the bed and went to the window. The grass was sparse because of the trees. The Lenape Indians made their paths through those trees before they were either butchered or banished to Ohio. A bird flew across. I thought it was a blackbird. And I left Tess out of the story I told him about the apple pie. Tess was the one who opened the red gate. Tess ran ahead. I walked beside my mother. I carried the plates and the forks.

Right up until the day before you left, you and Tess made up stories about the things your parents said in the kitchen. Their remarks about neighbors with more land and money.
Sure their money is killing them. Never brought them a day’s luck
. And their remarks regarding the moods of hens and ducks.
She only laid three times this week. I don’t
know what’s come over her at all
. And me and Tess acted out things about the National school teacher. We lay on the girls’ bed. Our heads were at the bottom and our bare feet were propped on the pillows. I had opened the window and the wind blew at Aunt Tess’s red curtains and the smell of cow manure spread through the room. Our faces were very close and Tess was telling you how to do it to yourself. Doing it to yourself was what Tess called it.
I can’t believe you don’t know that yet, Jimmy. You don’t need other people at all, Jimmy. Never once do you need them, Jimmy
—but my mother on the path with her covered pie was telling Tess to behave herself. My mother’s box of letters abandoned on the wardrobe floor of that flat on Botanic Avenue. That shoebox was what was in your head when the plane wheels touched a runway at Logan Airport. A feckless and cowardly act it was. Though maybe you did actually forget. And your mother demanding that Tess go inside this second and wipe that muck from her eyes.

—Don’t you dare go down the paddock in front of the men looking that way! Is it Queen Maeve you think you are!

But Tess ran on and pretended not to hear our mother’s words. Tess skipped into the paddock. She was wearing her pink dress and her red hair was down and her arms were spinning like the spokes of a windmill. The two dogs ran alongside her. Their tongues were out and very long in their shadows. They used to wait on the hall doorsteps for her and when she appeared they barked and wagged their tails. Crows circled the poplars. In one of Tess’s paintings the crows were bright red splashes of blood on a white wrinkled sheet pegged upon a sagging country clothesline. Kevin stepped down from his father’s ladder the moment Tess opened the gate. He and his father dropped their tools. Dropped them like they would rocks. With sighs of relief. Michael messed with his John Garfield fringe. He was smiling at the three of us. Love for my dead aunt might not have been killing him in that moment. He put it away in the daylight then let it roam free at night in his shed. Tess pranced around Kevin, who was lighting a cigarette and smiling. Michael wiped dust from an upturned cement block. He sat
down on it and was chatting with my mother, who knelt before him and cut the cake with the knife with the bandaged handle. I handed Michael a plate and fork first and then I handed the others plates and forks. The dogs stuck their noses into everything.

The questions Tess will ask: Did you get on all right with him, Jimmy? Tell me, what does he look like now? Did he put on weight? How is he handling Seamus? What did he say and what did you say? Where does he live and what’s it like?

He put on a small bit of weight, Tess. And the hair has a few light streaks of gray and is shorter than back then. He’s very upset about Seamus. What’s to be expected. But he’s doing all right. He has a wooden house in the woods not too far north of New York City. Another place not so far from there. I visited the house in the woods. A loud stream at the end of a grassy yard surrounded by very tall trees. A stone wall going up at the end of the yard. A wide deck on one side of the house and a porch at the front. The windows are huge and bare and the house and the trees are one. He has children by more than one woman. And I told him he was a bastard and that he always was. And he told me I was the naïve one. And that I lived in my fucking head. But what do I care anymore what he thinks. The brave teenager who pushed you into the river and ran away. He called you a filthy useless cunt that evening. Stephen and Hannah never heard it. They were too busy fishing. Too busy minding their own business. And sorry to have to tell you this one, Tess, but your father was an illegal bookie. He kept his receipts in the biscuits tins our mother’s friend posted every Christmas from London. He burned the receipts on the range. Burned them when his best friend and his wife were dead. He felt guilt then. Yes. Useless guilt. Hannah saw him. She walked into the kitchen and there your father the bookie was standing over the range with his biscuit tins lined up. But if I asked Hannah now she’d say she never saw that. That never happened. But I wonder, Tess, if he admitted it in Confession. And it would have troubled him on all those nights he spent on his knees. I tried so many times to listen to him in the confession box. I’d
slide my arse down to the end of the pew and cock my head. But not once did I hear a word. All I heard were mumbles and grunts—but I wonder did he admit it, Tess. Bless me, Father, for I am a secret bookie for the parish. And on top of that I never paid the man who dug my well and built my pump house. The man who piped hot water into my kitchen sink and cold water up the fields for my fourteen cows. That man was my best friend, Father. But Father, he owed me money on a few horse races. And, Father, we all must pay our debts. Don’t we, Father. But you won’t tell Tess any of that. Won’t tell her he told about their day trip to England. Nor the notebooks. Or the unpaid pump house. No. Won’t tell Tess.

That goat was in the window frame, watching me, standing in a patch of sunlight that had made its way through the thick branches. Blades of grass hung from its mouth. My eyes followed the sunlight up and when I looked down the goat had vanished.

I quietly unlocked the door, opened it an inch or so. Out on the deck Kevin and Anton were talking with the girl. And like a thief in a cartoon I sneaked across the hall and into the bathroom. Before I quietly shut the door Kevin’s loud laughter rang through the big room. I locked the door. A long piss. I brushed my teeth. A quick shower. I dried myself and put on antiperspirant. That smell that Zoë liked. Back in the room I changed my underpants and took a shirt from the bag. An ironing board was hanging on the back of the wardrobe door. I ironed the shirt and put the ironing board and the iron back. And I went back into the bathroom again and checked my face one more time in the mirror.

—We thought you were lost in the trees, Kevin said.

—I was out walking earlier. I came back and fell asleep, I said.

I shut the sliding door behind me. He was standing over the grill with a long two-prong fork. Mesquite-scented flames licked the blackened grill bars and the chicken pieces. His t-shirt and the shorts were new. His feet were bare.

—There’s a girl here who’s been waiting to talk to you.

She was sitting on the other side of the picnic table. Anton sat opposite her. She had the large dark eyes and the dark hair, which was parted in the middle and behind her ears. Her long-sleeved dress was the shade of sunflower petals, and around her neck was a seashell necklace. I said hello to Anton. He smiled and raised a beer can. He wore a white t-shirt, shorts, flip-flops.

—Jimmy, say hello to Deirdre, Kevin said.

Deirdre stood. She was touching the necklace. I stepped forward, bowed a little, and shook her hand. She was almost as tall as I was.

—Nice to meet you, Deirdre.

—Hi, Jimmy.

—I’ll get you a beer, Jimmy.

—Thank you, Kevin.

He leaned over and opened a cooler next to the grill. The icy can touched my bare arm.

—Grilled chicken, Anton’s corn, and Anton’s going to make a salad, Kevin said.

—Daddy’s favorite, Deirdre said.

She tucked her dress underneath her and sat down.

—Mine, too, sweetie, Anton said.

He moved up the bench. I sat myself across from Deirdre. Anton put a bowl of chips before me. I took a handful and looked over Deirdre’s head at the wall of trees and the blue and empty sky. Kevin and Anton were talking. Anton said that the wall might be done by the end of the week if there was no more rain.

—How old are you, Deirdre? I asked.

I put the bowl of chips before her.

—I’ll be eleven in November, Jimmy.

She broke a chip into small pieces. The ridges on the chips were like the ones on the shells.

—Deirdre wants us to have a big party up here for her birthday, Kevin said. —Her two sisters and her brother will come. Jimmy, you’re welcome to come, too.

—I’m sure your birthday will be great fun, I said.

—It wouldn’t be the same without Jimmy, Kevin said.

—You must, Jimmy, Deirdre said. —You will meet my half brother and sisters. Anton will be here.

—With bells on, sweetie. Snow everywhere then, Anton said.

—I love snow, Deirdre said.

—Me, too, sweetie, Anton said.

—You’re enjoying the summer, Deirdre, I said.

—I go to the pool and the library every day.

And with both hands she lifted the necklace around her head and laid it in a heap in the middle of the picnic table.

—That’s a lovely necklace, I said.

—Daddy gave it to me this morning, Deirdre said.

—No pool up here, but we have that smashing stream, darling, Kevin said.

The phone kept ringing in the big room. The answering machine was off.

—I can’t swim in the stream, Daddy.

—But the stream is pretty, darling. You said so yourself.

—I saw something today, I said.

—Well, Jimmy, so what’s the story? Kevin said.

—Who knows what you might see. West Point’s not so far, Anton said, and laughed.

—I only saw a goat, I said.

The phone stopped ringing.

—Daddy, you never told me about the goat, Deirdre said.

—A goat, Anton said.

—Am I hearing Jimmy rightly?

—You heard Jimmy, Daddy.

—I saw the goat twice, I said.

—Jimmy’s joking, darling. There’s no goat up here.

—There is one, I said.

—Jimmy always acted the clown on the school bus, darling.

The grill hissed. The phone was ringing again.

—Never can escape that bloody phone, Kevin said.

—I could turn it off, I said.

—Best to leave it, Jimmy.

—I’ve never seen a goat up here, Anton said.

—I love goats, Deirdre said.

The phone stopped ringing.

—Me, too, I said.

—I knew a woman once who raised them, Anton said. —She lived in a cabin not far from here. A New York City girl. Went to Vassar. She sold the goats’ milk. It tasted bad but it’s healthy. I still have a coffee mug she made me. My favorite mug.

—My father kept goats once, I said.

—I never remember goats over at your place, Jimmy.

—I don’t know what happened to them. I was very young, I said.

—I must watch out for the goat, Anton said.

—I’d like to milk a goat, Deirdre said.

—That woman showed me how, Anton said.

—But Jimmy’s having us on, Kevin said. —I’ve walked for miles into the trees and climbed the rocks and I have never once seen a goat. Maybe it was a small deer. I’ve seen many of those.

—I know the difference, Kevin.

—You do, sorry, Jimmy.

He opened the cooler and passed me two cans of beer. I handed one to Anton.

—But you couldn’t beat Jimmy for the jokes back then.

—Daddy and you took the bus to school together.

—A red double-decker, Deirdre, I said.

—And Daddy and you did your homework together after school.

—Never did we miss an evening of homework, Deirdre.

—Jimmy played tricks, darling. Jimmy was the joker.

—I danced and sang up and down the bus aisle, I said.

Kevin began to whistle loudly. So did I. Deirdre laughed.

—Singing and dancing in the bus, I said.

—What songs, Jimmy?

—You name it, darling. Jimmy sang it.

—I had my repertoire, Deirdre.

—Buses like the English buses, Anton said.

—Exactly, I said.

—I studied abroad for a semester in London, Anton said.

—None of your wild stories in front of my daughter and my oldest best friend, Kevin said.

—Whatever you say, boss.

Anton laughed and dropped his hand into the chip bowl.

—Daddy said I did meet my uncle who died in London, Deirdre said. —My uncle visited once when I was a baby.

Kevin put the fork down. He turned to his daughter.

—Your mother and I have talked to you about this, darling, he said. —And we agreed in the car not to talk about it up here.

He turned back to the grill. Deirdre looked glum. Anton gulped at the can. Flames flared up.

—Now she’s cooking, he said.

The flames whooshed. He stepped back. We all laughed. The slanting light along the deck was golden. Someone had swept up the bodies of the dead bugs and the moths. Probably Anton.

—Jimmy, did that bloody bird wake you last night?

He was wiping his furrowed brow with a paper napkin.

—I didn’t hear a thing, I said.

—How could any human being sleep through it?

—Well, I did.

—Jimmy sleeps soundly, he said.

—Another can, boss, Anton said.

I passed the can to Anton. Insects circled the chip bowl. Anton stood to light the candles. Deirdre asked if she might light one. Anton placed the candle before her and handed her the lighter. Her father turned to watch. He was smiling. He turned back to the grill when she was done.

—Did they call you Deirdre after Deirdre of the Sorrows? I asked.

—Her mother’s grandmother, Kevin said.

—Daddy, I can answer for myself.

—You sure can, sweetie, Anton said.

—My darling has been telling me that a lot lately, Kevin said.

—Daddy, can Jimmy and I go to the stream!

—I don’t know if Jimmy’s in the mood for it.

I said I was fine with it.

—Well, let’s wait a few minutes, darling. I like us all together.

—Maybe the goat is at the stream, Jimmy, Deirdre said.

—Hiding in the trees, I said.

—There’s no goat. Jimmy’s joking, Kevin said.

—There might be one, Anton said.

—I know there’s one, Deirdre said.

—Jimmy’s pulling our leg. That’s Jimmy for you.

He took a swig from his can and picked up the napkin.

—Some things never change, darling.

—I knew Jimmy and I would be friends, Deirdre said.

—I thought so too, darling.

—Jimmy, will you write me when you go back?

—I will, Deirdre, if you write me first, I said.

—This chicken’s looking good, Kevin said.

—Daddy, when can Jimmy and I go to the stream?

—In a few minutes, darling.

I asked Anton if his family was from around here.

—They are, he said. —Settled here when it was native land. I left here once. I lived on a beach in California. One March I was out there. We went to the beach every day, but I’d look out and feel bluer than the ocean.

—Anton gets morose when he’s had more than one beer, Kevin said. —He might think about boiling the corn and making the salad.

—I like Anton, Deirdre said.

—I do, too, darling, but not when he’s morose.

—I knew I had to live back here, Anton said.

—Jimmy, tell my favorite daughter more about your clowning ways on the bus.

—I’ll tell you everything, Deirdre, I said.

—I got some stories, Anton said, and laughed.

—Anton took to the road when he was a teenager, Kevin said.

—College wasn’t for me, Anton said.

—Another beer, Jimmy, Kevin said.

—I’ll have one, thanks, I said.

—Daddy, come and sit with me.

—I have to keep an eye on the chicken, child.

—Daddy, I have told you not to call me child anymore.

—I keep forgetting, darling.

—Jimmy, you are really going to tell me about you and Daddy, Deirdre said.

—Every single thing, Deirdre.

She clapped her hands. I smiled then sipped the beer.

—Anton, you put that clock on the mantelpiece?

He turned from the grill. I dropped my hand into the chip bowl.

—Not me, boss, Anton said.

—The goat did it, Deirdre said, and laughed.

—My favorite daughter needs to pipe down.

I raised my hand and looked up at him.

—You recognize it, I said.

—It’s a few years old.

—It was my father’s. Yours had one exactly like it.

—I don’t remember that, he said.

—Daddy, can I have the clock? Deirdre said.

—No, your mother or Bob will not like that—

—Daddy. Why can’t I!

—Stop it, darling! Right now.

He turned and picked up the fork and stabbed the chicken.

—I got my granddad’s grandfather clock, Anton said.

—Anton, you’re working hard on the corn and the salad, Kevin said.

—Yes, boss.

Anton laughed loudly going through the sliding door.

—But Daddy, I want the clock!

He turned to his daughter. He wasn’t smiling.

—No, darling. And that’s the end of it.

—I don’t really want it, Deirdre said.

She shrugged. Then she laughed. The phone started to ring.

—Let’s not say any more about the bloody clock, Kevin said.

—Goats and clocks are not kosher, I said.

—Daddy, Mommy says you’re not to curse in front of me, but I won’t tell.

She slapped her hands on the picnic table.

—It’s the whippoorwill’s fault, Deirdre, I said.

She clapped her hands.

—I’ll put you to bed early, darling. That’s what I’ll do. Or I might make you sleep out in the trees.

—I’m sleeping in Daddy’s room, in my new bed, Deirdre said.

—Your new bed is going under the trees where the whippoorwill will get you, Kevin said.

The phone stopped ringing.

—Darling, run down in the yard. Jimmy and you can go to the stream in a while.

Deirdre was already standing. Smiling and pushing her hair behind her ears.

—Put on your shoes, child. The gravel will cut your feet. Spray on bug spray.

She rolled her eyes.

—Darling, you’re going to wear the necklace I got for you.

—I don’t really like it, Daddy.

She skipped across the deck. She gazed down the steps then giggled and hopped down. I was standing.

—She’s the very best, he said.

—She is, I said.

She was singing on the lawn. He picked up the fork and turned to the grill. The phone started to ring.

—That might be Walter, he said. —He is supposed to call around now. Trouble with tenants not paying. He’s not handling it at all. So the foreman tells me. I should have asked someone else to do it.

—I’ll take Deirdre to the stream, I said.

—Stay with me, Jimmy. He’ll ring me back. He always does. He needs the money.

He shut the lid of the grill, wiped his forehead with the crushed napkin, and took two cans from the cooler. He handed me one. We left the deck and stood at the porch railing. Deirdre was lying in the middle of the yard. She was lying in the shadows of the treetops. A butterfly passed above her. She reached her open hand up but the butterfly
went higher. The sunlight was thickened with flower dust. He had propped his elbows on the railing and was watching his daughter. The phone had stopped ringing.

—I didn’t tell the truth, Jimmy. He did ring me.

—Who, Walter? I asked.

He straightened up and took a long slug.

—No. Not him.

He placed the can back on the railing. We lit cigarettes. Deirdre had dozed off. Our smoke flowed into the sunlight and the flower dust. Things looked and felt and sounded fine.

—Seamus rang me, but I wish he never did.

Seamus left four messages in one hour. “I need to talk to you. You’re the eldest. Here’s my number. Ring me back.”

At lunchtime Kevin rang the number. A woman with a Donegal accent told him it was a homeless shelter in Camden Town. She did know Seamus Lyons. He came and went. And she saw him a quarter of an hour ago. She was organizing clothes for him. Not looking the best, to say the least. And she gave Kevin the number of a public phone in the hall and told him to ring it in twenty minutes. She’d find Seamus. Kevin ate his lunch and made two quick business calls. He checked his watch. On the fifth ring, Seamus picked up. Kevin asked his brother how he was. Seamus said he didn’t want to talk about that. That’s not why he’d rung.

—I did him in. I did our uncle Rodger in, Seamus told his brother.