The Glorious Heresies (6 page)

Her insistence on cultivating an independent social life and his disdain of the dawn-to-dusk jobs both their mothers claimed suitable for him were pretty stupid things to fight about, but Tony and Maria could draw a fight from nothing, if they were drunk enough. She had a bottle of red wine in her and blood stoked to madness, and all he could do was wait for the Gardaí to show up on his doorstep with their caps off. Didn't stop him hoping, though. That she'd swing awkwardly into the driveway—taking the gate with it if she liked, he didn't care—and hammer an aria up the stairs. Or that she'd phone him from a ditch, bruised but breathing. But she didn't. She drove from home right into the grave, with the shadow of his hands on the steering wheel.

The Gardaí sat with him at the kitchen table. His oldest son, eleven then and the soft curls well gone from his forehead, appeared at the door with wide-eyed gumption and Tony snapped “Get out” at him, and then, when the lad didn't move, “Get out!” again, having risen to his feet, and Jesus Christ but he regretted that afterwards. You can't blame yourself for your reactions when you're in a state; he knew that. But if he could have gone back to that moment for another shot at it he would have held his arms out and cradled the young fella and maybe stopped the whole thing going to shit from there on in.

“What's that?”

Tony stepped backwards, catching a toe off its opposite heel and snagging the end of the brown material as it came with him. The woman strode towards him. She held out her hand.

“What?”

“The yoke you're after ripping off that small table. Let me see.”

“It's nothing,” he said, and held it over her palm. “Just a thing. I don't know what kind of thing.”

“It's a scapular,” she said. “A churchy yoke. See? The Virgin Mary there, looking out at you…”

“What's she looking at me for?” he said, and put his hands in his pockets and the ould wan stared at him and said, “It was an accident, you know.”

“What?”

She said, “What happened here.”

“Oh.” She was no mind reader.

“I see you looking at me like I might crack you open too, but I'm telling you, 'twasn't the way I'd planned to spend my morning.”

“ 'Course not,” he muttered.

“Maureen is my name,” she said.

“Oh. Yeah. Tony.”

“Tony what?”

“Cusack.”

“And which Cusack are you?”

There wasn't exactly a rake of Cusacks in Cork. “Up Mayfield.”

“John,” she said. “And Noreen. And you're the only boy. Ah, I know you now.”

A knack for geographical pinpointing was, at least, an expected trait in an ould wan.

“It wasn't intentional,” she said. “I'm living alone, you know. What would you do, if you're half the size of the fridge and there's a fella in front of it as wide as he's tall?”

“A skinny yoke, wasn't he?” Tony said, weakly.

She sniffed again. “Sure perspective is the first to go when your arse is against the wall.”

She bunched the scapular into one of her pockets.

“Was it yours?” Tony asked.

“Indeed it was not.”

“Funny thing to find here,” he said. “What did you call it? A scalpula?”

“A scapular. Why is it a funny thing to find here?”

It occurred to him that it probably wasn't the ex-madam he was talking to.

“No reason,” he said.

She frowned.

“No,” she said, “why is it a funny thing to find here, Tony Cusack? Because it's a holy thing and there's something wrong in this building, is it? Because a man died, and artefacts of God no longer belong? Is that your line of thinking, is it?”

“No. Not at all,” he said, though the sound came out as
No, not that tat all.
“Just…y'know, workmen aren't known for taking prayer breaks.”

“That's not what you were getting at,” she said. “You think I've sullied the place.”

“I don't.”

“That's what it is.”

“It's not.”

“You think I've blood on my hands.”

He seized the dustpan and brush and made to walk out of the room, but she caught his left arm and hung on, weight in her now like a bag of coal and his head suddenly humming with the thirst.

She did have blood on her hands. And so did he. For the short moment both his breath and arm were held, he considered telling her that.

“The state of your hands is none of my business,” he said instead. “This place used to be a whorehouse. That's what I meant. Funny to have a Holy Mary chattyboo here then, see?”

“This used to be a whorehouse?”

“Not so long ago too,” he conceded.

She paused.

“Dirty little bollocks,” she said, but she was looking down through the floor, so Tony knew it wasn't meant for him.

“I probably shouldn't have said that so?” he chanced.

“You probably shouldn't,” she replied. “Not that it matters to you, my lad, because even if it wasn't my transgression you were referencing…” She stepped forward and he stepped back. “…you're still warped in thinking that a whore has no right to be religious. Haven't you heard of Mary Magdalene?”

“I didn't say that.”

“You did, boy, loud and clear. Funny thing to find a scapular in a place like this, because the only people worthy of grace are the people who've done the least to need it, hmm?”

The evening sun broke through outside the window, and a shaft of light appeared across the floor and opened up the room. Off the sage green walls it cast a spotlight on Maureen's head, making her, for just a second, the image of the Wicked Witch of the West.

“I've no problem with anyone getting religious,” he said.

“You do, and it's buried so deep inside you…” She poked his belly. “…that you can't even see yourself for the bigot you are.”

“Jesus, I was—”

“Ah, and now you're taking the Lord's name in vain.”

“Look,” he said. “Clearly you're into all that, and I'm sorry if I offended you—”

“I'm not into any of it. I'm just pulling you up on assuming your right to religion if you're going to deny it to whores.”

“What? I'm not…I'm just…Jesus Christ.”

“And you're only saying
Sorry if I offended you
because you think the power of Christ might compel me to compel you to the next life, isn't that it?”

“Well listen, girl, whatever poor Robbie O'Donovan did to you, I want to avoid it.”

“Robbie O'Donovan,” she said.

Downstairs the door opened, and J.P. rolled his name out of his maw.

“Cusack? C'mere timme and get these tiles! Maureen? Maureen! Did that fella not get here yet at all?”

Tony turned and walked downstairs to J.P. like a boy moving towards a principal sworn to mete out reprimand.

“Nice one,” said J.P., spotting the dustpan and the bin bags, and Tony sank to his haunches and started sweeping up the broken tiles.

“I don't know how she did it,” J.P. said. “I swear to God, that woman wrecks all around her.”

“It's coz she doesn't want to stay here,” Tony said.

“And yet here she'll stay, because she doesn't have anything to bargain with,” J.P. replied.

Tony Cusack swept the tiles into the black bag, stood up and faced Jimmy Phelan, and from his thin dry lips he said, “C'mere, are you ever going to be ready for that piano, boy?”

The dew was heavy on the grass by the time he got home. He crossed the green towards his gate and the damp stretched from the blades to his jeans and up onto his calves.

She stood at her front door, hanging on to the jamb with a bare foot hooked round its opposite ankle.

“Evening, Tony!”

His estate was an ugly thing—near thirty houses bordering a scruffy green, a couple more rows behind each terrace.
You can't look a gift house in the mouth,
his sister once said under a wrinkled nose; he found that funny. It was home, at this stage. It wasn't perfect, nor had it been long before his family outgrew it, but it was cheap and they weren't going to be kicked out, barring his deciding to start dealing drugs out of the place or running a knocking shop in the box room.

The drawback was that there was no way of knowing what kind of degenerate would become your neighbour, seeing as the whims of the City Council were rickety as a city of sticks and the only trait required in its tenants was a wallet full of moths. For a couple of years Tony had lived between the McDaids, who were coolly pleasant, and the Healys, who couldn't wait to get out of there. The Healys made a break for it and in their place the Corporation installed Tara Duane, who he remembered vaguely from his own schooldays. She'd gotten knocked up by some Scottish fella and her lone sprog granted her placement in a house the same size as his own.

She was frail and bug-eyed, but he knew his mother hoped that one day they'd knock through the dividing wall; a single mother and a doleful widower, sure why not, sure no one wants to die alone in a double bed. For a while Tara seemed to have subscribed to this line of thinking, and her conversations would coast between flat jokes and forced intimacy.

It was bad enough suffering this breathy plámásing, but then she took an interest in his kids.

Kelly first, because her young wan was Kelly's age and so naturally they became buddies. It wasn't such a problem with Kelly. She was like her mother: a pretty face and a vicious bitch. Ryan then, and that bothered him a lot more, because boys will be boys and this boy was easily led and, occasionally, startlingly sentimental. There were indications that she'd been playing the mammy with him. There was a flaunted familiarity with his quirks; a slight, sickening competitiveness; a proper little devil in the details.

“Nights are getting shorter,” she beamed.

He grunted. The kids hadn't closed the curtains. Every light in the house on again, and the place wide open to inspection. The idea of every biddy in the estate rubbernecking dismayed him, but there was no talking to his six; the darkening glass on the four walls didn't prompt in them self-serving instinct, not yet anyway.

Through the sitting-room window he watched a lurid parade of TV cartoons and school jumpers and various projectiles.

“And sure Ryan won't feel it till the Junior Cert,” Tara went on.

Tony's shoulders drooped. He closed his eyes.

“Sure he'll fly through it,” said Tara.

Even with the best will in the world Tony couldn't play friends with Tara Duane, but her trilling was part of this landscape, and this landscape was his, boring and all as it was, sodden and all as he made it.

C'mon, boy. What would Jimmy Phelan want with this?

She's grand for half an hour and the next thing she is totally off her game. I'm waiting for it, so it's not a surprise.

We're out at a Junior Cert results party in town which in fairness I'd otherwise have avoided like the plague but she was mad to go; there's two floors and two DJs and kids here from every side of the city. I've been sitting by the bar all night and there's been a few people coolly wandering over because they've heard I've got ecstasy. “Any yokes, boy?” they say into my ear, then they sit down beside me with their hand awkwardly curled on the seat cushion by my arse and I exchange tablets for tenners.

Karine's wearing hotpants and a tight top and a scalding pink bra and her heels are so tall they bring her right up to my height, and so she's all legs and shoulders and skin. She's sitting on my lap shouting over the music at her buddy Louise. I've got my arms around her and my mouth pressed to the back of her neck, waiting out a boner that just won't go away. Not that she minds. She's figuring that if she stays sitting on my lap she'll shield me from customers' funny looks. It's her sitting on my lap in fucking hotpants that's doing the damage but no way am I telling her that.

I've popped a yoke and I've given her a half. She's never done one before.

So one minute she's talking to Louise and the next she's turning around to me saying, “I think it's happening,” and I hold on tight as the wave hits her. I put my hand under her top, flat on her tummy, and every breath she takes is deeper than the one before.

I turn her so she's leaning against my shoulder and I put my hand between her thighs and into her ear I say, “Y'alright?”

She nods and smiles and her eyes are flying saucers.

There's a laser show on the dance floor. Green beams chase over the ceiling and dip onto hands held high, everyone's hollering. I hold on to my girlfriend and press my cheek against her shoulder; she hooks her arm around my neck and strokes my ear and says, “Oh God, Ryan. Oh God.”

“Is it good?”

“Oh my God, this is amaaaazing.”

She's floating. She leans her head back and though my buzz is climbing as fast as my dick is waning I catch her and push her back onto my shoulder, and she says
Mmm
and I laugh and tell her to be careful, because there's stewards all over the place looking out for wasted kids.

She kisses me then, long and slow, and doesn't open her eyes again afterwards, just smiles and sighs as if she's coming. And I just hold her and keep holding her and the lasers make a web in the air over our heads, pull it apart and build it again, make stars to fall down on us.

She's all over me.

The thing is, every girl in this place is all over some fella, so we don't look special, but we are. We're plugged into the lights and plugged into each other and I had no fucking idea it was possible to love someone as much as I love her right now.