Landing (17 page)

"I admit the timing's unfortunate," Marcus went on, "but hey, that's fate for you."

"Oh well, if it's
fate,
" said Jael, pretending to be impressed.

"The funny thing is, it might have stayed casual longer for me and Jude if she lived here." Síle was thinking aloud. "We could have gone to gigs, dinner parties—"

"Multimedia caca," offered Jael.

"—watched the news together." The idea of sharing these simple, proximate pleasures with Jude gave her a pang. But then, she didn't want some simulacrum of her life with Kathleen, did she? "Whereas on e-mail, or on the phone—"

"You're forced to say what you mean," said Marcus, nodding. "Toss it out into the void."

"Jaysus, if we've reached
the void,
it's time for the bill," said Jael, looking around for the waiter.

"Síle, could a suburban wife of our acquaintance be having a little visit from the green-eyed monster?"

"Oh please," Jael scoffed. "Been there, shagged that, up down and sideways, sniveled down the phone and flew Air Cesspit ... Remember that disastrous entanglement of mine with the Genevan dermatologist?"

"The one who turned out to have a wife and four children," Síle recalled.

"Five. Distance is romantic, I grant you, but so is leaping off the Golden Gate Bridge. At least Marcus is only a drive away from his boyfriend, but Síle, seriously!—I can't bear to see you signing up for the time zone tango."

"Where d'you get that phrase? It makes it sound quite sexy," said Marcus.

Jael was grim. "Oh, all very sexy till someone loses an eye."

Síle shut her front door, stepped around her suitcase, and went straight for the phone. Waiting to talk to Jude was like the prickling sensation before thunder. She didn't even take her trench coat off; she dropped onto the sofa and punched Memory 01.
Please be in.
Six in Dublin, that was one in the afternoon in Ontario.
Don't make me leave another message.

"Jude?"

"Hey. Hey there!"

"At last. There's a bit of an echo..."

"Is there? It's fine on my end," said Jude. "D'you want to try—"

"No, it's okay," Síle interrupted. Their voices were slightly out of synch; it was distracting. About a century and a half since the invention of the telephone; surely the bugs could have been ironed out by now? "You know, we could talk live over the Internet if you got a grant to upgrade your system—"

"What the museum needs is more basic funding, like to pay our heating bills," said Jude. "Besides, I'd never get any work done with you whispering in my ear; the thought of you is distracting enough."

Síle smiled, watching dust motes spiral in the window light. "Were you at your Quaker Meeting this morning?"

"Yeah, I just walked in the door actually."

"Why do you stick with it? If that's not a rude question," Síle asked belatedly.

"I guess it's partly the history: We've been stubborn cranks for nearly four centuries now. And the politics," Jude added. "We're about three-sixty degrees to the left of your Pope."

"He's no Pope of mine, I'm ninety-nine percent lapsed," Síle reminded her. "So is nobody allowed to say a word?"

"Oh sure, you stand up if you get a
leading,
but often in a small Meeting nobody does, and those can be the best times."

"I do like you being odd," murmured Síle.

"
I'm
odd? You're the Hiberno-Indian jet-setter with hair like Rapunzel."

"What I mean is, all my Irish girlfriends had shared reference points. Like Maria Goretti jokes."

"Who's Maria Goretti?"

"There you go! Every Irishwoman would know that she was
the
girl saint. Resisted her rapist to the end, and died of multiple stab wounds, but not before forgiving him."

"That's gross," Jude objected.

"I'm delighted you think so. You're a fresh eye on my entire life."

"Hey, did you get the baby pictures yet?"

"Yeah," said Síle, laughing, "that one of you at six months, having a bath in the sink! They're up on my fridge, attached by little Magritte magnets."

"Which Magritte?"

"The bowler-hat men."

"You know, last night I was just trying to imagine the first longdistance phone calls," said Jude. "Imagine if one night you were talking to your cousin in Melbourne, and she said, 'The sun's just come out,' and you had to look out the window at total darkness—"

"You'd realize that where you lived was just one tiny spot on the globe."

"Exactly! And that all knowledge is relative."

"So when are you paying a visit to my tiny spot on the globe?" asked Síle, in what she hoped was a seductive rather than a nagging voice.

A little release of breath. "I can't tell you how much I'd like that."

"Ah go on, just stick the fare on your credit card!"

"I don't have one."

"You don't have a credit card?" Síle asked, taken aback.

"I've never wanted to get into debt."

"None of us
want
it, exactly, it just happens. My god, you're the only person I know outside the credit economy. Is this some freaky Quaker thing?"

"No, just a freaky Jude thing."

"This is a nonsense! It's medieval. I financed my BMW with the equity from my house," Síle told her.

"It's just not my way."

Strange how you could feel such a surge of rage, with an undertow of love. Síle kept her tone light. "Listen, Sinatra, if you're this absolute at twenty-six, I dread to think what you'll be like at fifty. Tell you what, let me find you a ticket."

"I thought the airline only let you transfer free travel to immediate family?"

Síle cursed her employers, and herself for having let this fact slip. "Yeah, but I can swing an enormous discount."

"That's really kind, but—"

"
Kind?
I'm not your maiden aunt," she barked. Then, softening her voice again, "Money's so randomly distributed. Why punish me for the fact that curators of tiny museums happen to be underpaid? C'mon, let me buy a few nights in bed with you."

"No." For such a stubborn Puritan, Jude had a very dirty laugh. "I'll ask the bank for an overdraft."

Síle bayed like a triumphant wolf.

Like a bird who wanders from her
nest, so is a man who wanders from
his place.

—Proverbs 27:8

Jude felt only the occasional jolt of panic this time. She'd taken a daytime flight, on Síle's advice, so as not to miss a night's sleep. After Greenland she saw icebergs: newly smashed, as if a god had dropped a plate on a floor.

In what the pilot called a "holding queue" over Dublin, Jude peered down at a brighter grass-green than she'd imagined a country could be: little irregular patches of light and dark fields, and then the gray and black and brown scatter of the city. No skyscrapers, she noticed appreciatively. And then they were down, the plane as smooth as a rollerblader along the tarmac, while the engines screamed.

Síle was waiting for her at the exit, her hair loose down her back. "I can't believe you're here," she cried. "'Jude Goes to Big Ireland!'"

The early evening sky was a tight-fitting gray cap. As Síle wheeled out of the airport in her little green car, Jude smoothed a hand over the silvery leather upholstery. Most of the vehicles on the road seemed brand new and minute: Instead of station wagons and pickups she noticed Mini Coopers and those little Smart cars that looked like they'd been rear-ended. Síle edged through the stop-and-start traffic, past large sculptures in red metal or stone. At one point she took a back road to avoid construction, and Jude spotted an incongruous clump of trailers on the verge. "Why would anyone spend their vacation on the side of the road?"

"What? Oh, they're Travelers, they move from place to place. Irish gypsies."

"Excellent," said Jude.

"Yeah, except they get treated like shite."

Jude was relieved to find that Síle was an excellent driver. "It's like a movie set," she murmured, as they turned down a cobbled street with a row of old corrugated iron roofs.

Síle pressed a button, and all the locks slid down with a thump. "For some forties prison drama, maybe! This is one of the worst slums left; they'd set fire to your car while it was still moving."

"I'm on such a high, everything looks good to me," said Jude, as they slid by a huge new office building, all gray granite and greenish glass. "There sure is a bunch of litter, though," she added, noticing the plastic bags that tangled around every tree, the chip bags hooding the pointed railings.

"Oh I know, we're a filthy nation."

Many pedestrians—and drivers, too—were talking into cell phones. And how similar people looked—except for the occasional black face, and a lone woman in a veil, waiting for a green light. Very pale faces, mostly; flat profiles, light brown or sometimes red hair.

It was starting to drizzle as Síle turned onto a narrow street of tiny red brick row houses, their doors painted scarlet, cream, or navy. She edged into what Jude considered an impossible space, bumper to bumper. Putting a key into a canary yellow door, she gave it a shove with her hip to get it open. Jude—skirting some dog shit—followed her in.

It was like a doll's house. Bright velvet modern furniture filled a room you could cross in three steps; fairy lights edged the window. Behind the front door, a big framed silkscreen print lay on its side. "Amelia Earhart?" Jude wondered.

"Good guess! I picked it up in Berlin last year, I can't imagine where I thought I'd put it..."

It was true, there was no wall with a space big enough. Jude saw an old cast-iron fireplace with relief carvings of exotic birds, and bent to trace them with her fingertips. A steep staircase in the corner, barely wider than a ladder. A tiny open-plan kitchen with wrinkly apples in a fruit bowl made of a swirling orbit of metal. "Is this a sculpture?" she asked, touching a tall spider shape in stainless steel.

Síle threw her an odd look. "Doesn't everyone have an Alessi lemon-squeezer by now?"

"Not on my planet." All at once Jude was reeling with fatigue.

"Petrushka?" Síle called. "Petrushka?" She thudded up the stairs, past a glittery gauzy hanging. "My cousins sent this from Mombai, it's technically a bridal veil; I did warn them it would end up nailed to the wall. Petrushka?" Her voice floated down the stairs. "Deirdre from next door feeds her when I'm away, but she tends to sulk and hide in my wardrobe. The cat, I mean, not Deirdre."

Jude read a small yellow note on the counter that said
Leave cash out for Neela Saturday!!! and ask rugs.
She concluded that Síle must have a weekly cleaner, and, which amused her more, that she sometimes relied on old-fashioned paper to remind her of things. Jude went back to the purple sofa, stroked the fine pile of the cloth. She flicked through a magazine called
Simplicity,
which seemed to offer very elaborate instructions for buying, sorting, and storing your possessions.

A long ring at the door made her leap. She could hear voices outside in the street, only two feet away. She figured out the latch and tugged the front door open. At first she thought there was no one there, then three small kids edged into view. They were wearing remarkably shiny track pants and two of them had Roller Blades. One of the boys said something in an impenetrable accent.

"Excuse me?" said Jude.

"Got yer cat!" squealed the girl.

"Oh, that's great. I'm not the, uh, homeowner, actually," Jude explained.

"Are you American?" asked the bigger boy, squinting.

"Canadian," said Jude distractedly, feeling jet lag settle around her like a cloud. "Canada's a big country just to the north of—"

But she was interrupted by the hard-faced girl, who'd rolled forward, to the sill of the door. "Will you tell the missis we've got her fuckin' cat."

Jude stared at her, then looked up and down the street for an adult.

Síle was in the doorway, shunting Jude to one side. "Bring her back this minute."

Another front door scraped open, inches away, and a woman with gray hair in curlers leaned out. "Are you home?"

"These little knackers are at it again, Deirdre."

"It's a kidnap," crowed the smaller boy as if he'd suddenly remembered the word.

"Yeah," said his brother, "and we want a ransom, we want 荤20."

"A good strapping's what you want," cried the neighbour.

"We'll stick a firework up its hole," said the small girl.

Síle seized her by the front of her sweater. "I'll stick a firework up your own hole quick as look at you."

Jude edged back, appalled.

The girl wrenched herself out of Síle's grasp and spat at her, dry-mouthed. She and the boy zoomed off on their Roller Blades, the smaller child thumping along behind them.

"Bring Petrushka back this minute," Síle roared, "or I'll have the Guards out. I know your names!"

"Do you?" asked Jude in a low voice.

"It's a figure of speech."

"You don't really think they'll hurt her?"

"Ah, they wouldn't have the nerve," said Deirdre.

"Extortionist bullshitters," said Síle through her teeth.

To fill the Silence, Jude introduced herself to the neighbour. She got a vertiginous flash of what she might look like to this middle-aged Irishwoman: a grubby bull-dyke backpacker who'd ousted
that lovely Kathleen.

"Give it five minutes," Deirdre advised Síle, "then ring the Guards."

Inside, Síle hunched over on the sofa. Jude bent to kiss her on the forehead. While she was making tea with the unfamiliar electric kettle, she heard a knock at the door. Síle had some words on the doorstep, and finally came in, cradling a small dove-gray cat on her chest.

"Well done!"

"I bargained the bloody gurriers down to a tenner," said Síle, stroking Petrushka's narrow head, "but it should have been less. I'm losing my touch."

"That'll be the sapping effects of love," said Jude, risking flippancy.

"Too true," said Síle, setting the cat down on the narrow counter and leaning over it to give Jude a long kiss.

Over tea, Síle relaxed visibly, and Jude set herself to finding out where Petrushka liked to be scratched. "Deirdre seems like a great neighbour."

"Oh, she's a star. She puts milk in my fridge, lets the plumber in ... And all I do for her in return is give her the odd lift into town. But that's Stoneybatter for you: The old-timers even pay each other daily visits."

"My kind of village," Jude joked.

"Apart from the kidnapping of small animals."

"Ah, we had some dogs poisoned last year; we all know it was Madge Tyrrell, but it can't be proved."

"Listen," Síle told her, "we're having dinner at Jael and Anton's, they insisted. Do you mind? You do."

"Well, I'd always rather take you straight to bed," Jude answered, "but I'm up for anything, as long as I can look at you."

Jael and Anton lived on the south side of the River Liffey—the expensive side—in a suburban neighbourhood where all the houses hid behind high hedges. The house had moss-deep rugs and intimidating, abstract oils on the walls.

The skinny girl, Yseult, talked nearly as fast as her mother. "Do you know what age I am? Guess," she instructed Jude.

"Uh, I don't know."

"Of course you don't know, eejit; that's why I said guess."

Jude decided she loathed Irish children. "Nine?"

A roll of the eyes. "I'm seven. Do you know how to spell my name? Bet you don't."

This time Jude was prepared for failure. "Let's see. I—s—"

"Wrong!" said the girl. "It's a Y. Y-s-e-u-l-t."

Jael clapped one glossy-nailed hand over her daughter's mouth. "Stop harassing our guest. She's just come all the way from Canada."

"You told Daddy Canadians are boring."

Jael's cheeks twitched. "I did not, I said that was a common misconception."

Jude met her hostess's eyes and nearly laughed.

"I'm desperate for a fag," Jael announced. "Jude?" She cocked her head.

"Sorry, I'm an ex-smoker."

"So I hear, but half the ex-smokers I know like to bum the odd one off me."

Jude shook her head, and the redhead grinned back at her flirtatiously.

When his wife was outside, Anton said, "She did give up while she was pregnant. It nearly killed us both. She kept growling 'Never again!'"

They didn't sit down to eat till ten: Moroccan stew with apricots in it. Jude was expecting the child to go to bed, but Yseult just got more exhibitionistic. Jude waited some time for a gap in the conversation, which was mostly about the awful two-tier health system (a friend of a friend of Anton's had spent three days in agony on a gurney), Iran's nuclear capabilities, whether the new tram line would make any difference to the Dublin traffic, genetically modified featherless chickens, and rip-off prices each of them had been charged for a cup of tea or a ham sandwich. They'd got onto whether music really made children better at algebra when Jude managed to come out with "This is amazing." They all looked at her. "The food, I mean. And the wine," she said in Anton's direction.

"What were you expecting, bacon and cabbage? Or just a trough of spuds?" said Jael with a bray of laughter.

"You'll have to excuse her, she's not used to culinary compliments," said Anton, rising to collect the plates.

"Yeah, I've come to cooking late in life," Jael admitted. "Last November, Fat Bastard here was away on some junket in Prague, leaving Yseult and me to subsist off frozen tikka masala, and I suddenly thought, I'm an intelligent woman, I run my own PR company, why don't I try cracking a cookbook for once in my damn life?"

Jude was about to say something about the first time she'd ever barbecued an arctic char, but she'd missed her moment; the conversation had swirled on, to cover digital TV, bilingualism (here Jude tried to say something about Canada's French immersion schools but fumbled her chance again), a particularly brutal recent murder-suicide, and whether very hairy men should wax their backs. She sank into a weary fugue and let it all flow over her head.

At one point their hosts were all out in the kitchen, and Jude turned to smile at Síle. But her lover's mouth was tight. "What is it?"

"You haven't opened your mouth in forty-five minutes," whispered Síle.

"I haven't had a chance to get a word in edgeways! You talk right over each other, all the time."

"The Irish are highly evolved," Síle snapped. "We can listen and talk at the same time."

"Well I can't."

Síle chewed her lip. "I just want them to like you."

"I'm not a performing seal," muttered Jude, and then the mango brulée came in, heralded by Yseult, blowing through a paper trumpet.

Jael went out for another cigarette after dessert, and Jude was sorely tempted to go with her. But on the couch, Síle reached for her hand, and their interlocked fingers made up the quarrel. The child reluctantly went to bed at 11:30. Half an hour later, Anton came down and murmured, "She's out for the count."

Jael, sprawled on the other couch, like Sarah Bernhardt, perked up at once. "Who's for a little coke?"

"Yum," said Síle.

"I'm fine with coffee," murmured Jude, thinking,
Who'd want to drink pop after a meal like that?
She only got it when Anton brought in an old striped can that claimed to be mouse poison.

"It's hell to get hold of these days," Jael was complaining. "Worse than reliable babysitting, and nearly as pricey."

Anton waited till Jael and Síle had inhaled their lines off the mirror. "Sure you won't join us?" he said graciously, holding the mirror out to Jude.

She was suddenly sick of being predictable, being Silent, saying no to things. She was a woman with a foreign lover and an overdraft she couldn't clear; she was a long way from home. Casually she took the rolled-up note. Síle was watching her a little warily. Jude snuffed it up, then sat back, feeling nothing except a bit numb in her nose. But a few minutes later she found herself participating confidently in an argument about voting systems, despite the fact that all she knew about proportional representation was based on a half-forgotten skim through of a New Democrats leaflet. She didn't feel drugged, she felt at her own healthy best, the dinner party guest she'd always been meant to be. "For some unknown reason this reminds me of one time I was hiking in the back country—Algonquin Park—and I turned a corner and nearly walked smack into this huge black bear. They say the thing to do is to stick your arms above your head so you'll seem taller, and sing as loud as you can..." She was playing the self-deprecating merry Canuck for all she was worth, and Jael was laughing so hard she claimed she was going to be sick, and Anton at some point, for a reason Jude could never remember afterward, demonstrated a Highland sword dance on the Persian rug, using poker and tongs.