Before they are out of sight, one of the women turns to look at me again. Only a quick glance, but I feel a bolt of urgency strike me. I wanther to know I’ve caught her looking, to dethrone her, to humiliate her. I pull a face at her. It’s all I can think to do. How juvenile. But then, isn’t she juvenile too, walking around with her clique, staring me down? She turns away, probably unsure if I really did pull a face, or if she’s just imagining it. I bless myself and say sorry to the air.
The boys have told me that tunnelling this far into my thoughts doesn’t do me any good. I’m always being told what not to do, without being given alternatives.
Tom comes back after talking to Brendan. At long last, we make our way home, the road rising and dipping below us so frequently that I feel I am out on the sea. The big dead fish in my arms does not help.
‘I met Bill Nevan there with Brendan. Did you meet him the other night?’
He asks, fully knowing I won’t remember who Bill Nevan is.
‘He’s going to call up this evening with his wife. They’ll eat dinner with us, we can play cards maybe. A dinner party!’
A dinner party? ’Twas very far from dinner parties he was reared. Where does he come up with it? I don’t know how to respond. And then I realise that even if I did know, there wouldn’t be any point in responding. Tom has made his plan. There is no backing out now. These strangers will come to our home and judge us and inspect us, and I will have to make them feel welcome while they do it.
—
As I sit down and try to write out a plan for the evening, I feel Jack’s heavy eyes on me. Staring at me. Or perhaps, staring through me. Perhaps he was already deep in thought, focused on some point in the distance all day, and I sat in his eyeline. I write down what food I know we have, and try to think of a way to stretch it to dinner for six people. The house gets dim around us. We don’t have enough of anything, really, unless we all have slightly different meals. Outside,Peggy is shrieking, laughing, playing with the pony. If she would only shut up for a minute so that I can think. If I could only get a break from Jack’s staring.
‘That’ll be beautiful.’
Tom says, tapping the wrapped fish with his knuckle. And I realise that Tom intends to serve the fish for dinner. If I could only get a break from his relentless happiness and his big notions. If the three of them would just leave me alone.
And then, an unwelcome wave hits me, and I feel that the menstruation I have been dreading and unprepared for has arrived, late. I would have been worried if I wasn’t so laughably single.
Wordless, I take myself to the bedroom. I lean against the closed door, so that none of the others can follow me in. What good are two brothers and a child to me now? It can be so hard to be a woman without the company of other women. I’m not sure you ever knew what that was, with all your friends and sisters.
I remember wanting so terribly to know your cycle; to make my own less alienating, just to avoid any trouble, just to feel close to you. Just to have something shared between us.
But it was just another thing you wanted to keep from me. Wasn’t it? Just another way to put space between us. And how you loved your precious space.
Maybe it sounds stupid to you, but you don’t know what it would have meant to me to feel like somebody was on my side while I was aching and bleeding and alone. Remember, I never had a flood of sisters or friends. I didn’t have anybody. But you knew that, didn’t you?
How pathetic, I still don’t have anybody. Soon, I will need to explain all this to Peggy. Where to begin? You would have done it so gracefully, so easily.
I remember once spying a bloodstain on your bed, and you asking me not to look in your room anymore. Oh my god, I loved you so terribly. Even bleeding, I adored you. I remember the day Jack told me you were pregnant.
The shock of it all. The dread and the fear. The isolation of knowing that I really would have to bleed on my own. That horrible cycle, beginning again.
Jack
A STUPID IDEA. I’VE WARNEDthem all that this is a stupid idea. But Tom is nearly doubled over with the desperation of having people up to the cottage. To show off how well we’re doing and prove what a wonderful family we are. To confirm to himself that people like him. It doesn’t matter that I don’t want the Nevans calling up; it’s all about Tom. Isn’t everything? When people include him in a round in the pub, he thinks it’s because they are dying for him to drink with them. In Mass, he likes to think that people are shaking his hand because it’s an honour. When they say ‘peace be with you’, what they mean is ‘good man, Tom’. He would have invited anybody up this evening. The Moores, the Doyles, any eejit who was willing to be hauled up the hill and sat down at our table. And the Nevans are the fools who said yes. As if we don’t have enough to be tense about. It’s pure Tom to draw people on us like this, into our home. Right into the eye of the storm.
‘Nobody helps me in this house.’
Anna says under her breath, hoping to be heard. Since she came back out of the bedroom, she has been like a dog. Fighting with Tom over the dinner, screeching at Peggy to get out of the kitchen. Wanting to be pitied, I’m sure. But not actually wanting any help, because then we couldn’t pity her. She is scrubbing a fork, trying to take all the worn-in stains out of the handle.
‘I can help, Anna.’
Peggy says, crowding her. Any minute now, there will come the threat of the wooden spoon. But Anna takes a steadying breath.
‘Not now, Peggy. I haven’t the patience for you.’
Tom is milling around, setting and resetting the table. Hiding shoes in the bedroom and trying to make the house look both grand and ordinary at once.
‘Feck this.’
Anna mutters, dropping the fork into the sink. The house smells of heated fish. And I must admit that I feel sorry for her right now. Since I was born, we have had the same three or four meals on rotation. Boiled veg, tough meat. I’d be sucking the fibres of it out of my teeth for two days following. Mammy never passed any passion for cooking onto Anna. A shame. And now she is expected to prepare a fish, which she has never done before, and serve it as dinner to strangers. Sweat collects in the bow of her top lip. Her eyes, lightly twitching, focus on the stove. I wonder when would be the right time to suggest opening a window and letting the smell out.
‘Why do you do all the cooking, Anna, if you don’t like it?’
