She smiles and keeps going. I ask her to tell me the story of St Brigid, and help her where she leaves gaps. But she knows the story very well. She is a smart girl.
When she has a few crosses made, I tell her to put on her coat, and wrap one of my scarves around her. Holding her hand, we walk down to Mrs Deer’s house. Every year I bring her in a cross, which she keeps in the rafters. Living all on her own, Mrs Deer’s house is dark and quiet, and I can sense that Peggy is half afraid to go in. I am so glad to have found a child to deliver crosses to the elderly with me, because every year, I fear that somebody will suddenly deem me elderly, and have a child drop a cross into my house.
We stand at Mrs Deer’s door while she praises the cross from the threshold. Her warped posture and sparse hair scares Peggy. It isn’t fair really; Mrs Deer is a lovely woman. Peggy holds my hand tighter until we leave her door.
‘She’s a very nice person, she’s just very old.’
‘How old is she?’
I laugh, and don’t scold her for being cheeky.
‘She’s as old as the hills.’
I say, when we are far enough from the house that we won’t be heard.
When Peggy was scared, she held onto my hand tight. She needed to be looked after, and she wanted me to do it. Thrilling heartbreak. She chose me, but she isn’t mine at all. She’s only the sister of somebody I barely know. I wonder if I will spend my whole life trying to mother things that don’t need me.
Still, I bring her down to Ciara’s door to give in a cross, and we spend an hour with the puppies. I keep the neatest cross for myself and show it off to Anna, and to Tom and Bill when they come in. Anna fidgets, and for a moment I wonder if I have crossed a line by spending the afternoon looking after Peggy. I hope she won’t feel like I’m trying to step on her territory. I’ve to keep Anna sweet if I want to spend time with Peggy.
But things seem alright when we all sit down together for cake and a pot of tea. I’m just dying to ask them about Lillian, but I let her go unmentioned for now. To hear Peggy’s laughing fill up the house is so sweet. And it’s good to have new friends. To eat warm fruitcake with them on the first evening of spring.
Jack
‘WELL, MAMMY, I DIDN’T KNOWwhat to think!’
Anna says, facing our only framed photograph of Mammy and Daddy. She is telling them about her day, the Brigid’s Cross that Peggy brought home and the fruitcake she had with Betty Nevan. Not in prayer, or even in a conscious way. It was like she just thought of something that Mammy would have found entertaining and started talking to the photograph. I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that, really. Sure don’t I spend every minute talking to you?
But there’s something about the way that she does it. Losing herself to these conversations. Pausing as though she can actually hear Mammy responding. I wonder sometimes if she sees Mammy before her, wiping down the side and sweeping the floor. It makes me uncomfortable. Once more, I feel consumed with the want to put a stop to Anna. It builds up from the pit of my stomach until I am close to trembling.
I sit up. Moving to stand. To strike her. With one blow, surely I could end her. One fine crack of my knuckles against her delicate little jaw. A tooth in the sink, marbled drool and blood. A mess I would happily clean up. But then as I close my eyes, I see you, sudden and gentle and good. This fleeting thought of you is all that stops me from catching and throttling her. The flashing promise of meeting you in heaven. The most rational feeling I have had in months – the strongest feeling I have had in months – stopped by something brutally irrational.
If heaven is there, I’m sure, it’s nothing but a disappointing party full of the plainest people I know. And yet I am doing all that I can to get there, back to you. So before I do something I will regret, I get up and leave the house, and take myself down to evening Mass.
Before all this, it wasn’t often I’d find myself pulled down to the church more than once a week. Now, I find it’s one of the few places I can go to escape from everything. There’s something about the routine of it, of being spoken at without the expectation to answer with an original remark. The anonymity of worship, melting my thoughts away. Converting them into a manageable cluster within me, that I can put aside for a little while.
What’s more, today the first day of the month came to me again. I pretended not to feel each second of it grinding against me, but it was there, undeniably. Cruel. Sure what else am I to do but go down to the church, saying prayers I know by heart but don’t understand. Talking to a god who may or may not even be there. Cruel alright.
’Tis all cruel like, but here is the true cruelty: whatever I feel about it, and however it has damaged me, I must carry on believing in God. That He is good, and that He loves us and is merciful. Because if there is no God, then you’re not safe in Heaven. You aren’t anywhere at all. You would really be gone, and I would be talking to myself. So I’ve to keep on praying, believing in Heaven and its many beasts.
It’s a dark evening. Aren’t they all dark evenings? I go down through the town on my own. A bit of quiet, thanks be to God. Already, I have my hands thrown into a lazy prayer at my crotch. And for now, I am nothing but a man walking down to Mass. It’s alright. It’s nice to just be a passerby, without thoughts or a history. Just somebody walking past somebody else. The black night reaching its arms out, every star a wild eye pointed down at me. The light of them swallowing my shadow, until I am entirely alone.
The steep stone steps up to the church. The burning just beginning to bloom at the bottom of my lungs as I reach the top. And as I enter the church I have to wonder, why don’t I have any original ways of processing my feelings? Why do I always turn to prayer? Perhaps it’s a custom ingrained too deep in me to ignore. Perhaps it’s something to do with being under the surveillance of Himself; old ‘holy God’, and feeling I have to share everything with him. Whatever the reason, I’m here now. Take a seat, Jacky.
’Tis a rare thing now that I get a moment to myself. Ah darling, tell me, are you sitting with me? Tell me why you never sit with me. For months now I have been waiting for some sort of sign that you are here. The cold of your ghost. A hallucination. A delusion. Anything just to keep me going. I search and search for a sight of you, for the smell of your hair, the smell of your sweat. For anything. Going mad with the vision of you before me would be far better than going mad without you here at all. My angel, torn from my side.
Often, like right now, I fake the feeling of your hands on my shoulders, the click-clacking of your shoes on the ground. I might as well fake that you are here with me, since you don’t seem to be calling down on your own. If I could only reach up to the awful, endless navy sky and tear through it. To put my wondering to rest. To reveal Heaven, or its absence.
I have to laugh at myself. Heading down to Mass, on a Monday, on my own. Imagine. If the boys could see me now. The church is quiet. A good handful here. Enough people to fit into the hand of God, I suppose, if your scale of Him is the same as mine.
Out comes Father O’Brien to kick us all off. I must say I’m dreading the vernacular Mass. ’Tis better in Latin, when none of us know what the priest would be saying. I fear that soon, I will be the only one who doesn’t understand.
When he starts to sing, I am lifted.
‘A Thiarna Dean Trocaire.’
Now that’s something new. I never once heard an Irish song in Mass. It seems Father O’Brien is trying to get ahead of the game. And we respond, exact mimics of every crack in his voice. I fall into it all. Sitting, standing, kneeling. Something about it is so wonderfully automatic. And while the people around me are no doubt receiving immense comfort and joy from the experience, I am almost moved to tears by the emptiness of it all. I don’t understand it, I don’t know if I ever will. And that is fine. A palatable way to feel nothing at all. Something I can cope with. Something that means so little to me and yet I know so well. Nothing, everything. How sweet it is. A Chriost Dean Trocaire. I have found my flow state.
Lillian, if you’re anywhere, you’re probably not here. Do you know what, I really hope you’re not here. I don’t want you ever coming to a place as dreary, as empty as this, watching as I find semblances of comfort in nothing. Communion commences, and I find I want to take the chalice and bite it. I want to put my teeth through the eucharist. I want to hurt god and his son the way that they have hurt me. A thiarna dean trocaire, you merciless fucker.
