Mermaid in a Bowl of Tears (Exit Unicorns Series) (6 page)

Pamela undid the top button of his shirt, smoothing the white cloth along his shoulders, more in an effort to calm him than rid him of imaginary wrinkles. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“Just what I said, this is no friendly visit on Dez’s part, he’ll be coming to see how we’re set up over here, if I’m providin’ well for ye, an’ how I’m farin’ on the wrong side of the pond. His words,” he added apologetically, “not mine.”

“It will all be fine,” she said, brushing an errant lock of hair behind his ear and kissing the tip of his nose. From either side of it he glared down at her.

“I don’t know how ye can be so certain of that.”

“Because,” she replied softly, “they love you, so whatever they think of our home, or this city, it will all be well so long as they see that you’re happy. That’s why they’re really coming, you know— to see if you’re happy.”

“Well, that I am,” he replied, voice still a tad gruff with nerves. He narrowed his eyes at her. “Though it’d be better had ye put a bit of weight on, leastways then Dez would know I’m feedin’ ye.”

She arched a sooty brow at him. “I’m starting to feel like the autumn sow here.”

He looked her over with a critical eye and sighed, as if he would be much happier if she were in as full flesh as an autumn sow.

“Ye just look a wee bit thin in yer clothes, Jewel. Now out of them,” he waggled an eyebrow at her, “it’s another matter altogether.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Are you saying I’m fat out of my clothes?”

“No, never,” he assured her, pulling her into his embrace, “only that ye’ve lines to ye that can only be fully appreciated when viewed in the altogether.”

“Mmnn,” she murmured, not fully convinced.

Casey grasped her hips and rather firmly made it clear that he was currently appreciating her lines, despite the fact that they were hidden from view beneath a sweater and jeans.

She undid another of his buttons, feeling that a return appreciation of his own lines was only polite under the circumstances.

“Lord, woman,” he gasped a moment later, “I’ve not the time for this.  I’ll be late for the plane.”

“Oh well, in that case,” she removed her tongue from the hollow at the base of his throat, only to have him pull her directly back.

“Not so hasty— I’ve a minute or two—besides it’ll help relieve my tension.”

She looked up, catching the glint in his dark eyes and knew that whatever he now had in mind, odds were it was going to take a lot longer than a minute or two.

“I might wrinkle you,” she said, taking a last stab at preserving the virtue of his unmolested clothes.

“D’ye know,” he grinned, and pulled his shirt off over his head, “I think I’ll risk it.”

IT HAD LONG BEEN A RIORDAN family tradition that the host toasted all those who sat at his Christmas table. Casey, standing at the head of his own table, a glass of red wine in hand, remembered the eloquence of his own father, and felt justifiably nervous.

But then he looked at the people gathered round him, and a warm glow set up within him that had little to do with the whiskey he’d shared with Desmond and Pat before dinner. These were people he loved, who knew him, who would forgive him a tongue less than silver, should his nerves get the better of him.

The table, scarlet-clothed, was near to groaning under the weight of turkey and potatoes, candied yams, those nasty wee cabbage thingies that Pamela called Brussels sprouts (as if that would fool him into putting one in his mouth) stuffing, cranberry sauce, carrots and the omnipresent coarse Irish soda bread. At least, he thought with some satisfaction, Desmond would see that he was capable of feeding his wife—and occasionally a few others as well. He turned his attention to the man in question, who sat to his left hand, and cleared his throat to begin his small Christmas speech.

Desmond and Siobhan, childless themselves, had long considered Casey and Patrick their surrogate sons. During his years in prison, Siobhan had written weekly, though Casey had rarely had the heart to respond. Truth was he’d been too ashamed, because they, more than anyone, knew how he had been raised, and how disappointed his own daddy would have been in him.

It was with a pang that he noted the gray in Siobhan’s hair, and wondered how her heart was doing. When he asked, she was wont to say ‘fine’ and leave it at that. But he saw the vague worry that hovered in the back of Desmond’s eyes every time he looked at her, and wondered what the doctor down in Dublin had to say at her last check-up.

Then there was Desmond himself, still with the look of a slightly tipsy owl about him, but formidable nonetheless, a man whose judgement and advice Casey had always respected and sought.

“To Desmond and Siobhan—thank ye for makin’ the trip over an’ for takin’ over the parentin’ of Patrick an’ myself when our daddy no longer could.”

Desmond nodded, as if to say no less could have been expected of them, but Siobhan surreptitiously wiped tears with a linen napkin.

His eye moved further along the table, alighting on Pat, his brother, a man now, long of line and pleasing to the eye. As dark in color as he himself was, though leaner and with a more sensitive look to him. A strong man, driven by the things he knew to be right. Casey felt a stir of pride, and wished his father could be here to see how fine a human being this younger son of his had become.

“To my brother who has been my best friend and who has become someone I am proud to know—
Tá grá agam duit
, Patrick.” I love you.

Pat nodded. “Likewise, brother. Always.”

Casey took a deep breath, wondering if it was the wine that had made him so sentimental. Whiskey didn’t bother him, but he’d never developed a head for wine.

At the foot of the table, emerald eyes smoky in the candlelight, sat his wife. Smiling at him as he stood, carving tools laid out near his right hand, the warm aromas of turkey and thyme, sage and brown sugar rising up in a comforting vapor around him.

Her hair was pulled up and away, exposing the long length of her neck. His rubies glowed like living things at her throat and in bright drops at her ears. He winked and blew her a kiss, and she flushed, a trait he found incredibly endearing considering the sorts of things that they got up to in bed, yet a simple kiss in front of others could make her color up like a schoolgirl.

This morning he’d given her his gift by the tree, while it was still dark and everyone else slept, the apartment quiet around them. She had opened the box with eager anticipation, and when she saw what lay within had clasped her hands together like a small child before drawing the gift forth from its careful wrapping. She had held it in her hands, wordless, eyeing it as though it were some sort of sacred artifact.

He had found it in the bowels of a dusty, dark hovel of a second-hand store two months before, and had then set about the painstaking job of finding someone to bring it back to its original state. It was a 35mm Leica, a camera around which myths had been built for the quality of its photos. It was a photographer’s camera, to be used with the passion and intensity of the artist, and Casey had known it belonged in his wife’s hands from the moment he’d seen it.

“D’ye like it, then?”

“It’s amazing,” she had breathed out, eyes bright with tears. “You’re amazing,” she whispered later, pulling him down for a kiss that left him in no doubt as to the depth of her gratitude. He’d been bemused at her emotion, thinking as he often did that women were a mystery, but this one was a puzzle he never tired of trying to solve. To him it was a wee box, but to her it was that intangible link between the vision in her head and the story—in a thousand shades of gray—that her pictures would tell.

Finally there was the one empty chair near his own, which he’d been puzzled by, for it was set complete with china and cutlery, and even a wine glass that Pamela had filled along with all the others.

“It’s for our fathers,” she’d said simply, and it had been his turn to feel that rush of gratitude for her understanding of the things within his heart.

He turned his head toward the empty chair, seeing in mind the two men who had had the shaping and forming of their lives. And the two women as well, who were still in the world and yet more absent somehow than the fathers who had died.

“For those who are no longer with us in body, but remain in spirit,” he said toasting the chair, where the candlelight glowed, lambent as gemstones, within the belly of the wine poured for those missing, but always remembered. Everyone raised their glass in silent homage.

Casey turned again to his wife. “Pamela,
mo mhúirnín bán
,” he said with great tenderness, “the jewel at the center of my heart, who is the gift God saw fit, for no reason I can fathom, to give me and for whom I am truly grateful. Without you, I would be lost.”

She raised her own wine in salute, the delicate glass casting trembling gold prisms over the fine skin of her face and neck. Tears pooled on the thick edge of her lashes.

“And I without you, you bloody Irishman.”

He grinned and put his wineglass down, picked up the carving knife and put it to the turkey.

“Let’s eat then, for my stomach, despite all evidence to the contrary, thinks me throat’s been cut.”

LATER, WHEN EVERYONE else had gone to bed, Casey made his way up to the roof, where he now sat watching as snowflakes, like delicate, miniature stars, fell upon the heavy swirls of tar, lending a transient beauty to that which was not beautiful. Funny how at a distance all things seemed lovely, even the light-ridden city laid out below him.

Somewhere in the distance he could hear, faintly, the sound of
Silent Night
being played on an organ. Father Kevin, perhaps, playing his arias to a distant God in the hollow heart of the Church of the Assumption.

“’Tis a pretty night,” Pat said.

“Aye, ‘tis,” Casey replied, having sensed his brother’s presence as soon as he’d lit upon the roof. “Thought ye were sleepin’, man.”

Pat shook his head, coming to sit down beside Casey in the chill, wet air, huddled against the cold in a lumpy old coat that had been left behind by the previous tenant. It smelled mildly of stale beer and smoke, but it was warm.

“What are ye thinkin’ about?” Pat asked, attempting to burrow his hands deeper into the misshapen pockets of the ugly coat.

Casey shook his head, looking out through the separate veils of snow, seeing the dull pink glow of Dorchester on the horizon. He decided to tell the truth.

“Mam. I was thinkin’ about mam.”

“Because it’s Christmas?”

Casey shrugged, flicking the remnants of his cigarette off the edge of the roof, watching its faint red light turn over twice and then disappear into the snow and the street below. “I suppose. I can put her out of my mind most other days, but Christmas tends to bring her back.”

“I don’t remember any Christmas with her,” Pat said quietly.

“Aye,” Casey looked down at his hands, clearing his throat, “I suppose ye were too young. She was good at Christmas, though, seemed like she came out of the darkness an’ all the space about her would be lit up for those few days. It was enough,” he paused, throat unaccountably thick, “to keep ye lovin’ her for the rest of the year.”

“She left on Christmas Eve, didn’t she?” Pat asked.

“She did.”

“Do ye remember it?”

Casey shook his head. “Only in bits an’ pieces, not the whole of it. I think Daddy tried to shield me from the knowledge until Christmas was over.”

Pat cleared his throat. “I got a letter from her ‘bout eight months back.”

“Did ye, then?” Casey asked, voice stiff.

“Aye, I did,” Pat replied, “she said she’d written ye years back, but ye’d not responded. She asked after ye.”

“Kind of her.” He wanted to ask where she was now, and what she’d had to say for herself, but couldn’t bring himself to do it around the pain that had formed in his chest. Pat however, being like to their daddy, didn’t need him to ask.

“She’s still in England, little village in Sussex. She’s married to a nice man, she says. They own a wee shop that sells the papers an’ candy.”

“What happened to the Indian man?”

Pat shrugged. “She never said.”