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Authors: Martin Roper

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BOOK: Gone
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—It was a joke, Stevie. Remember irony.

—Sister of bitterness?

She smiles and tickles Coleman. He giggles into her neck. She picks up my jacket and takes out my cigarettes. She caresses the fabric of the jacket and nods approvingly. She taps the cigarette box on the child's head and takes one out. I try again.

—So. How have you been doing?

—I've been doing. Y'know, New York. You have to keep doing. How have
you
been doing? Sorry about your sunburn.

—One layer burns off and another appears. You know the way I am.

—No. I have no idea the way you are.

Coleman tugs at her.

—Can we go for a ride in your car Auntie?

—Coleman, why don't you go and see how long you can hold your breath in the pool?

She glares at me and clings to the child. Auntie. I wonder is he related, if her family are here. I didn't even know she had a nephew.

—Go away, handsome.

—You left Gansevoort Street?

—This is true.

She looks at me, waiting for me to go. I wait. Silence was always the best question with her.

—It was time. Listening to the hockspit of prostitutes lost its charm. It just seemed to get complicated—living there. I'm gettin' old kid.

I could have had a life with her. Anyone could see that. And a decent one. She wasn't tied to Gansevoort Street after all. She just needed to be pushed. I could have done that: opened my mouth and demanded it of her.

—I think we will go for that ride, Coleman. Hey, Stevie, hold our hammock?

She winks at me.

—Chill out. Once around the park is better than nothing. Always too serious. Your stuff is boxed in Claremont if you want to pick it up. I was tempted to dump it but I couldn't do that to the books, even your books. I told the doorman there might be some Irishman coming by one of these days.

—In Claremont Avenue? You're with that dealer guy?

—Nope. I'm not
with
anyone. Claremont is mine sweetie.

She smiles as she lifts him off her and swings herself out of the hammock, smiles like a chess player savouring checkmate but it makes no sense unless it is a game, as if life is some game to her.
I grew up with screaming.
New York is lost there and then with her walking towards the house with the child's hand in hers.

I sit in the car with the door open. Ruth and me sitting in the car on Dollymount strand. I have not thought of her in a long time. Maybe I have been playing a game without fully knowing it. There is a knock on the passenger window and I jump, expecting to see my dead sister. Holfy walks around to my side of the car. A reprieve. A confession that she was joking.

—I stole your cigarettes. By accident. Good luck, Stephen. We'll be long enough dead and gone. Live well.

I say nothing and don't look at her when she walks away, don't want that to be the last image of her. I pull out the pack of cigarettes. I'll have to stop smoking. In the cigarette box is a card with a scribbled note.

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time

I close the door and start the engine. There is time still to make the five o'clock ferry.

The apartment on Claremont Avenue is paintings and light. Nine rooms. I wander through it as if it's a deserted film set. The boxes are in one of the back guest rooms overlooking Grant's Tomb. I open one, then another. They are packed neatly, too neatly for her to have done it and my temper rises at the idea of some stranger filing my tastes away, fingering my life, evaluating it, drawing a picture of the personality that made these decisions. I am leaving New York, have left it already. The film is over, the theatre empty. Everyone has gone, getting on with their lives. Catholicism. No, not that, too easy to blame it all on that. There is no one watching. God's bitter joke. Acting a life as if there is someone who cares as much as you do yourself. I phone three thrift shops but none of them will come collect. I take the elevator down and ask the doorman if he has any use for some books and clothes. He eyes me, looking for the catch. Explain it's either that or the trash can, none of it's going to Ireland.

*   *   *

Getting off the train at Crewe I walk over to the timetable to see what time the connection to Cardiff is and laugh out loud when I realise Crewe is not in Wales. I had promised my father I'd never set foot on English soil. He'll forgive the accident. I have to speak to her, to lay eyes upon her. Too long have I run from it. I imagine what every abandoned child must imagine, I imagine the conversation. The confrontation, the reconciliation, the settling of the score, the rejection, the emptiness when nothing comes of it.

On the connecting train I stare out the window to see signs of England fading and at last glimpse a motorway sign in both English and Welsh, a reminder that like Ireland, England has conquered but lost, that tribes outlive their oppressors.

Cardiff is full of rugby fans, drunk and singing. I get a room in a small B&B only when the owner is certain I'm not a rugby fan. Mr. Parker tells me I'm far too late for supper but recommends a local pub. I walk down the street and find the bright depressing place and have a pint and a sandwich. I go home and sleep well with the tiredness of the journey in me. In the morning I get up and go and buy a map of Cardiff. I could ask Mr. Parker but his friendliness decides me against it. Too many questions. I have the address, it's only a matter of finding it. I decide against a taxi, wanting instead to walk, to feel the streets she has walked for over thirty years without us. I expect to meet her every time I turn a corner. The house in on a decent street and my heart lifts that she hasn't fallen back into the poverty that she climbed out of with my father; then disgust. She has done well, lives comfortably, happy all these years without us. It's a terraced house, small garden full of flowers. I hope she answers the door so I won't have to deal with him, hope he answers the door so I'll get to see what was so much more attractive than her family. I will ask for her by her first name if he answers, be as casual as possible.

I push in the iron gate, close it behind me, stand on their welcome mat, stare at the door, breathe deeply, look around to see if anyone is watching but the street is empty. They're all either at the rugby or watching it on television. Maybe he is at it, a big-bellied Welshman cheering his team. I lift the door knocker and rap gently and then see the doorbell. I stand back, waiting. Footsteps on a hard floor. The door opens and a man looks at me smiling. He is plain but gentle looking. Unimpressive. About sixty. Full head of grey hair.

—Is Lily in?

I expect a question, a rebuff, but he smiles and turns calling her name in a strong Welsh accent. She comes out and suddenly it's happening too quickly. I expect her to be wiping her hands on her apron, the smell of cooking behind her. She's wearing jeans and a jumper, hair still red, and she is smoking and this startles me more than anything. I never remember her smoking and the cigarette, more than the years on her face and in her movements, alienates me. She smiles, frowns, smiles again, then recognises me. She looks back at him walking down the hall into what must be the kitchen. She walks towards me, puts her hand on the edge of the hall door and tells me to come in, the accent tinted with Welsh. She closes the door and we are standing close to each other, close enough for me to breathe her in. She walks ahead of me into the sitting room. Thickened with age.

—I'll be back in a minute. I'll just get him to put the kettle on.

She leaves, closes the door behind her. I look around the room, glad I dislike their taste in gold-lined wallpaper, heavy oak furniture, and floral carpeting. Cream embroidered doilies on the arms of the sofa. They deserve ugly taste. I imagine her telling him who I am and his worry. She comes back and sits on the sofa, facing me.

—How are you?

It's as if the minute outside has given her enough time to recall exactly how she planned to handle this if it ever happened.

—Grand. Daddy died last year. Ruth two years before that.

I didn't mean it to come out as badly as that and suddenly the obvious hits me, that we are the last two and I want to rush on and tell her that I am no orphan returned but I bite my lip. I suspect she must have heard. She looks away to the door and back at me.

—I just wanted you to know. I don't know why. Just so that you'd know. She had cancer. I just wanted to tell you so you'd know. I've no bad intentions. And I wanted to see you and ask you why you left. That's all.

—You've got an American accent.

—You've got a Welsh one.

—I left because he bored me. He was a good man. It's not a very nice reason but it's the truth. There's more than that but if you want the short answer that's it. I couldn't have handled raising the two of you on my own. I knew he'd do a better job, that he'd meet someone else.

I nod, deciding not to tell her, prefer my knowledge of him over her ignorance, prefer that to flattening her with the guilt of the truth. She didn't deserve him.

—So what about you? Did you marry? Have you children?

I shake my head, want to tell her nothing; in my desire to lie to her I realise I haven't the strength to make the effort. I feel too much disgust. A phone rings softly and is picked up. His voice is quiet as if he is talking in a morgue. I abhor this other lived life. She has had two simultaneous existences, the absent presence that lived in our home, and this one here across the water with this Welshman talking quietly on the phone. It's all so pedestrian, so banal. Tedious details that add up to nothing. I stand up as he walks in with a tray, she looks at him, says nothing and he, in return, is silent. He steps further into the room, enough for me to pass him. I walk out into the hall, walk across their tiled hall floor, open the door and turn to them both.

—All the best, Lily.

—Goodbye son.

—Goodbye
mother.

Walking up the street I resist the urge to turn around, and as soon as I reach the corner I turn sharply and walk quickly. I walk for about twenty minutes until I find the city centre.

*   *   *

The ferry back to Dublin is quiet. Standing at the back on the viewing deck I stare at the ferocious wake churning in the sea. Son. Son she said. Bit late in the day for that. I search for a cigarette, jostle the keys in my pocket. Evenings when she lit a cigarette and perhaps wondered about us. I look at the keys, remembering each one: Bath Avenue, An Tigh Bocht, Gansevoort Street, Lone Tree, my father's house. Homes everywhere and nowhere. Already hot in my palm I finger the silver fish on the key ring. Lobbing the keys grenade-high into the air I wait to see them splash on the surface, but they disappear in the widening sea furrow, too quick for the eye to catch. I imagine the metal cooling on impact and sinking slowly through defiant waves, sinking, settling on the seabed.

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to the late Brother McNally for his encouragement during my secondary school education, Brendan Ward for his advice in Monaghan and his support in New York, Kathleen O'Malley and Alan Bergeron for their kindness and friendship, Will Irwin for his wise counsel and unstinting generosity, Dr. Susan Lohafer, the most gifted teacher I know, whose commanding intellect is matched only by her gentle nature, and Jennifer Barth at Henry Holt for her careful editing and gracious manner. Finally to my agent, Beth Vesel for the
maybe
—Mazel Tov.

A
BOUT THE
A
UTHOR

Born and raised in Dublin, Martin Roper received an MFA from the University of Iowa. He teaches writing at the University of Iowa's “Irish Writing Program” at Trinity College, Dublin, and at University College Dublin.
Gone
is his first novel.

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Copyright © 2002 by Martin Roper

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First Edition 2002

eISBN 9781466870857

First eBook edition: April 2014

BOOK: Gone
12.5Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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