Stir-Fry (13 page)

She felt her throat scald. “I just felt like a haircut. I was bored with sweet seventeen.”

Jael produced her vampire smile. “The problem is, my dear, you’re now so cute you put me off my dinner.” She gave the furry scalp a tentative stroke, as if it were a squirrel, and dropped her hand as Ruth walked over to the table with a wok full of steaming vegetables.

“I think it’ll grow on me,” said Ruth. “It’s just the shock of seeing your eyebrows, and—oh, what tiny ears. Lookit, Jael, did you ever see such defenceless earlobes? They’re going to get so cold!”

Maria squirmed out of their grasp and sat down to eat, claiming the chair with the armrests.

“Oh, by the way,” commented Jael, passing the soy sauce, “I hear you guessed our murky secret, and you’re not intending to call in the vice squad.”

She blinked and picked up her fork. “Not unless you make me do the washing up.”

Ruth, sliding onto her seat, had dark bags under her eyes. “We had assumed our last flatmate knew, you see—”

“A portly bitch in first law called Annabel,” Jael interrupted.

“But when she found out by accident, she made a ridiculous scene, threatened to tell the landlord, and stomped off bag and baggage without paying that month’s rent.”

“Not that heterosexuality ever did much for poor Annabel,” Jael murmured, stealing a mushroom from Ruth’s plate.

After dinner Maria left them bickering pleasantly over coffee and went for a walk in the cool deserted streets. She had brought her sketch pad, but it was too smoggy to make out more than the wooly forms of cars and brick walls. The clammy air stroked her cheeks. A black cat slunk by across the path. She crouched down and whispered to it; it cast her a curious glance before slipping into a tiny basement garden. She would like a cat someday, curled up in a sagbag in a flat of their own. Perhaps her mother was right, and she would never get around to getting married; she could just paint her flat sky-blue, lock the door, and walk round on her deep-pile carpet with nothing on.

As she passed the petrol station her eye was caught by some golden freesia, and she bought a pound’s worth. Ruth and Jael brightened up the flat with their Women’s Music Festival posters and pot plants and television; the least she could do was bring home a few flowers once in a while. They were lovely to her, really; Maria could hardly remember why she had considered leaving. They didn’t quarrel any more than ordinary couples. Most of the time she could just think of them as friends.

But as she headed up the second-last flight of stairs, she was overcome by a wave of exhaustion. Her back was twingeing after having had to scrub that filthy bathroom
floor last night, and her shorn head was cold. From the flat above she heard the theme music from “Glenroe” and then a brief scream. For a long moment there was no air to breathe in the dark stairwell. She sank onto a step and listened. On the count of six, she was relieved by a muffled roar: “Jael, get off me this instant, I mean it.”

Maria immersed her nose in the rich stain of the flowers. Taking a sweet breath, she started up the stairs.

She stood at a casual angle to the door, pretending to be absorbed in
The Dublin Event Guide
but glancing into The Pit every now and then. She had never been near such a place before; her mother always implied your bag would be snatched as you walked in the door. It was almost empty; a couple of punks leaned on the Space Invader games in the far corner, and the bottom table was occupied by three rather intimidating women in suede waistcoats. Two tables up, playing against himself, was Damien.

She hadn’t caught more than a glimpse of his plait for weeks. Today, after a lecture on the salient points of Romanesque versus Gothic cathedrals, she found herself pursuing him from the lecture theatre, past the men’s toilet (she had to loiter outside, reading a poster headed “What Has Jesus Got to Say to You???,” and then down to the university’s subterranean pool hall. Rollie butts sprinkled the floor of The Pit like leaves at the launch of autumn. On the longer wall, titans and demons clashed in a seventies-style mural, all purple and silver. Some graffitist had penned in a lacy garter on one giant’s muscled calf.

Beneath it Damien leaned purposefully over his cue and potted a ball. Maria reminded herself, as she watched his plait loll over one shoulder, that he was utterly unaware of her existence. Odd; here she stood half hidden behind a yellow metal door, watching him chalk his cue, and he didn’t
even know her name. She would never have the nerve to accost him in the corridors, and anyway, what had she to say that was any less banal than the usual fresher’s chitchat? Turning aside to watch the game more discreetly over the rim of her magazine, she caught sight of her blurred reflection in a panel of steel. A peaky little face still, even with the trendy haircut. A face to launch a paper boat.

Which was about all this fixation on a stranger amounted to—something to watch, to push, to fill in the spare minutes. Maria waited till Damien had potted two more balls, then walked away.

She blew her nose as she waited for the lift. Were they ever going to turn on the central heating in this damn state-subsidised university? Dawdling past the maths department notice board to see if the results of that painful midterm test were up yet, she came across Galway, leaning out precariously over the bannisters. So much more likeable he was, so manageable a friendship—even if that silly bimbo in the stats tutorial did keep referring to Maria’s “American boyfriend.”

“Yo, stranger, what are you up to?”

Galway straightened up. “Spying on a couple of lovebirds,” he explained in a low voice. He pointed down through the wooden slats to the bench just beside the foot of the stairs. “It’s a cyclical ritual. They exchange tongues for maybe twenty seconds, then spend three minutes scanning the crowd to see who’s noticed them.”

“Pathetic.” Maria peered over the bannisters.

“But fascinating. I never understood the angst of Yeats’s love poems before. Courtship is so tentative and giggly over here; don’t you guys ever just go fornicate with each other?”

“Sex in Ireland is a scary business,” she told him. “We can get pregnant if sperm so much as splashes on our knees. It swims its way up.”

“You trying to fool a gullible Yank?”

Her voice wavered between anger and amusement. “Look, in my school, we were given one hour’s class per year, called Preparation for Life. At fifteen it was on thrush, the next year the nurse talked about praying with your husband, and last year the nuns finally allowed her to mention the rhythm method of contraception. By which time most of my classmates were on the Pill anyway, having told the doctor they needed it as a period regulator.”

“I want to go home to Brooklyn,” he said. “Hot dogs, muggers, sanity.”

“Come for a bracing walk to the cafeteria.”

“So, life is good?” he asked as they tramped down the stairs. “I notice you’ve lost some hair.”

“Apart from cold ears, life is all right. Well,” she added, spurring herself on, “apart from the occasional blip. It turns out that my flatmates, they’re both gay.”

He turned, his eyes narrow. “So why does that cause blips?”

“It’s complicated,” Maria assured him, in what she hoped was a tolerant tone. “Basically they couldn’t agree about whether or not to tell me.”

Galway nodded thoughtfully. “It’s great they did decide to come out to you. They must trust you.”

“I hadn’t thought of it that way.” She hurried to keep up with him as they crossed the concourse.

“Two of the chambermaids I worked with in Boston were dykes; they were such a laugh,” he said nostalgically.

“Ah, yeah, the flat’s great crack.” It’s true, Maria thought, so why does saying it make it sound like a lie?

The next Sunday she woke late again. She was sleeping a ridiculous amount these days, as if hibernating for the winter. She fumbled with the loose handle of the top drawer, reaching in for her watch. Ten past eleven, too late to have to
decide whether to go to mass. Besides, she could hear the rain against the glass. Maria scratched the fuzz at the nape of her neck.

She padded down to the other room; when she knocked she heard nothing but the sound of a hair dryer. Putting her head cautiously round the door, she saw Jael cross-legged on the futon; she had to shout to make herself heard. Jael jumped in shock, then snapped off the hair dryer and swept the red curtain of curls off her face. Static strands clung to her cheeks, and she shoved them away.

“Sneaking up on me, were you?”

“I was just wondering if you were finished with the paper. Where’s your lady friend?”

“Ruth’s gone to Mumsie’s for lunch, so I’ll have to do. Here you go, though there’s nothing worth reading except a nice bitchy review of the Lorca play,” Jael said, handing over the paper. She began yanking a brush through her hair.

Absorbed in the headlines, Maria knelt on the edge of the futon. Something was nagging at her; she glanced up. “Why is it Ruth never mentions her dad? And he wasn’t in any of the photos either.”

“Didn’t you know?” Jael arched her eyebrows. “She’s a secretive little witch. The Johnsons got a legal separation when Ruth was six; the father hasn’t been seen since.”

Maria’s face twisted in sympathy. “That must have upset her.”

“Well, she still has vivid memories of the fights and the financial hassle, so I’d imagine she loathes the absentee.”

Maria sat, lost in thought, on the edge of the rumpled duvet. She was trying to remember whether she had ever heard her father raise his voice to a shout. “Do you think that’s maybe partly why?” she asked, then added hurriedly, “No, forget that.”

“Why what?” Jael kept up her sardonic stare till Maria’s
eyes fell. “Oh, I get it—why Ruth was so easily seduced into Sapphic lurve.”

“No, I mean—”

“You mean the trauma of her parents’ breakup turned her off men, so she waited, what, eighteen years, then ran into my arms for consolation.”

Maria rested her chin on her knees. Out of the entangled pattern of the wall hanging, a tiny monkey’s face smirked at her. “I’m sorry, it was a deeply stupid question.”

“That hoary old theory’s no stupider than all the others, tufty.” Dropping her brush, Jael put out one palm and lightly stroked Maria’s hair from the neck up, against the grain. “It tickles,” she observed. Maria wriggled out of reach.

“Listen, most of the queers I know love speculating about causes and influences. My own favourite is the Mummy-didn’t-love-me.”

“What’s Ruth’s mother like?”

Wrenching the brush through her fringe, Jael rolled her eyes. “Total martyr; I bet she wouldn’t get a divorce even if it was legal in Ireland. Her handbag is always leaking pearl rosaries, and she says things like ‘no cross, no crown.’ Ruth has this kind of masochistic devotion to her.”

“What’s masochistic about loving your mother?” It came out too sharp; Maria considered the floorboards.

“Hey, it’s not an insult. I’ve a weakness for handcuffs myself.”

Maria ignored that. She tugged on the duvet. “Go on about Ruth.”

“Well, she’s Mumsie’s hope and joy. It took me months to persuade her to move out and share this flat.”

“She was telling me her mother has no idea about you two.”

“Did she say that?” Jael’s brush paused at the end of a stroke. “The double-thinking old bitch must know something’s
up by now. She’s always dropping caustic comments about Ruth’s short hair and unsuitable friends. But she won’t admit it to herself, of course; she can just about cope with a spinster daughter so long as no one mentions the
L
word.”

Maria had found a pillow to wrap herself around. She stared into the shadows of the wall hanging, distinguishing leaves from faces and wings. Jael yawned, stretching her arms above her head, and with a jolt Maria was aware of her again. “What about your family, don’t you ever visit them?” Awkwardly, she added, “If you don’t mind being interrogated like this.”

“Not at all, I love telling stories, especially my own. My folks, yeah, I turn up at the stud farm on occasion.” Jael gave her hair a last brisk slap and tossed the brush onto the windowsill with a clatter. “My mother found me in bed with a girl when I was seventeen. She let me stay till I got my leaving cert, then I headed off to Spain.”

Maria realised she was gaping and shut her mouth. “What happened to the girl?” she asked lamely.

“It wasn’t a long-term thing,” Jael reassured her.

“I suppose it must be different if you’re both women.”

Jael let out a low snigger as she leaned back against the pillows. “Well, yes, in several significant ways—there’s anatomy, pace, frequency—”

Maria could feel her face burn, but she knew her blushes never showed. “All I meant was, if it’s another girl, I suppose you could go, like, all the way—I mean as far as you like—without it having to be a long-term thing, whereas if it was a guy, you might have to worry … Look, I really don’t know what I’m talking about, forget it.”

Jael took pity on her confusion. “You mean, if it’s a guy, you have to hope it’s a long-term thing in case the rubber bursts.”

Maria winced and nodded.

“Or, as Ruth would put it,” Jael went on satirically, “sexual behaviour between two adults of the female gender, being nonreproductive, need not be circumscribed by Western bourgeois morality’s condemnation of female ‘promiscuity.’”

“She would not put it like that,” Maria protested. “You make her sound like a lefty politician.”

“She’s that way inclined. But to get back to our original example, me and Sonya up to mischief at seventeen. I have to admit that I’d have done the same thing if it had been a guy. Occasionally did, in fact. Only my mother wouldn’t have let a guy spend the night in my room. The thing about being a dyke is, you get away with a lot!”

Maria said she supposed so, and if Jael wanted a cuppa, it would be in the pot.

She leaned her hips against the cool ceramic of the sink. While the tap water spluttered and gulped into the kettle, she tried to clear her whirring mind. She held one finger under the cold flow of water. Soon she could feel nothing as far as the knuckle. There used to be a stream halfway home from school, its water faintly brown from the turf. After the occasional bad day, Maria used to throw down her bike when she got there, crouch on the stones, and dip her hands in to the wrists; when she had held them to her face, she was herself again.