The Mermaids Singing (19 page)

They wheeled her through cold hallways toward the operating room. Seamus jogged alongside and tried to keep hold of her hand.
Grace was thinking of her mother. Hadn't this happened to her? “Blood and scalpels” was how Clíona had always described it, as if Grace's birth had been more like a tragic accident than a blessed event.

“Am I dying?” she whispered to Seamus, and he shook his head roughly, though he was paler than she'd ever seen him.

“Don't speak of it,” he said. “I will not let you die, you can be sure of that.”

Then he was gone and she was spread out under spotlights, a masked woman covering her mouth and nose with a pear-shaped instrument. Grace felt her tongue soak up a sharp, poisonous air and she sunk, as if in thick water, feeling at the last moment as though she did not know how to swim.

 

When she woke up after the surgery, for an instant she thought it had all been a nightmare, and that she was back in Scituate, fifteen years old and waking up next to Michael. But Seamus was there.

“You're all right, Grace,” he said. “We have a baby girl.”

Together they studied the bandage on her stomach, peeling it away to look at the row of black stitches, like insect legs growing from her skin.

“Is that all?” she said, and Seamus kissed her. There was a dull pain in the muscles of her stomach, which fired up when she tried to move.

The nurse came in with Gráinne wrapped in a fuzzy pink blanket. Grace was terrified. What would she possibly do with this thing? But she softened when she saw the pink face, and she put her lips against the girl's tiny, perfect nose.

“I'm sorry I ever thought of giving you up,” she whispered, so Seamus couldn't hear her.

Later, Clíona came in, smiling and carrying a vase of roses.

“How's she coming with the feeding?” Clíona said.

“She's perfect,” Grace said. “Took to it right away. I think she
likes me.” Seamus sat down on the side of the bed, putting his arm around Grace.

“Of course she does,” he said, kissing her.

“She'll be a good baby, I suspect,” Clíona said, squinting at the three of them. “You were a handful yourself.”

Grace frowned, snuggling Gráinne closer. “So you've told me,” she snapped.

“Ah, you were a joy nonetheless,” Clíona added, blushing. Seamus squeezed Grace's arm. He leaned down to the baby and whispered something in Irish.

“What's that?” Grace said.

“Just a lullaby my father used to sing me,” Seamus said.

“Can't you sing it in English?” Grace snapped, and Seamus laughed.

“I've never tried,” he said.

Clíona went off to pester the nurses. Grace gave the baby her breast, and felt dizzy and aroused as Gráinne suckled. The baby was as warm as Seamus.

“Isn't she beautiful?” Grace whispered, and Seamus moved in closer.

“She is,” he said. He put his hot mouth to Grace's ear. “I'm proud of you,” he whispered.

Grace had a fierce urge to kiss him, but she wriggled away.

“You're holding me too tight,” she said.

September came with rain and cold wind and no word from my father. Clíona told me I'd be going to the island school with Liam. I didn't want to fall into the familiar routine of school clothes (here they wore uniforms), homework, and gym classes. If I went to school it would be like living here.

“You're fifteen years of age—you belong in school and that's final,” Clíona said to me. She didn't look angry, but cold, like she was trying to remain strong and emotionless.

“What's the use in going to that dinky school when I'm leaving soon anyway?” I yelled back. I must have sounded really mean, because Clíona flinched and looked suddenly miserable.

“All right, Gráinne,” she said and she turned away from me. It was too easy. I hesitated in the kitchen, but she seemed to have forgotten me; she looked out the window at the rain on the harbor
and for an instant, from her expression, I thought someone must be drowning out there.

“I'm not going,” I said again, mainly to see if she was listening to me.

“I heard you,” Clíona said, running water over the dishes. “Do as you like.” I left the kitchen, thumping up the stairs to my room.

For all her talk of wanting to be my family, she certainly wasn't acting like one. Even my mother, who had let me get away with almost anything, would have made me go to school. I was beginning to think that Clíona didn't want me here at all.

Liam had no time for me once school started. He was in class most of the day and at night he was swamped with homework. He was preparing for some big test—the Junior Cert, he called it—and he had more subjects than I'd ever had in school.

“You islanders certainly take education seriously,” I said to him one afternoon. “For a bunch of fishermen.”

Liam got mad. “We're not ignorant hicks, you know,” he said. “We've one of the best public school systems in Europe.”

“It was just a joke, Liam,” I said. “You don't have to snap at me.”

“Americans think the Irish are stupid and backward,” Liam said.

“No, they don't,” I said, but he just raised his eyebrows. “Well I don't,” I added. “I'm sorry.”

“Never mind,” Liam muttered, trying to smile at me. “I'll see you at Sunday dinner, all right? I have to study now.”

The days without Liam were so lonely, I almost regretted my decision about school. I walked the island until my legs felt bloodless and weak. I wrote ten different letters to Stephen, but they all sounded childish and whiny, so I tore them up. I wanted to sound like a woman, wanted Stephen to imagine my body the way it was at the beginning of the summer and long for me to come back. I knew I wasn't attractive now, I was a corpse with a screaming scar over my eye. When I saw myself in the mirror I looked like I was dying—trapped and starving, waiting for my father to come by sea
and save me. I still stood on the quay in the evenings, as my father had once watched for me, though it was beginning to look like he would never come.

Sometimes, I woke up in the middle of the night terrified. In the dark, I would try to conjure up my mother's face, but it never came out right. Her features would be mixed up with Clíona's, or Mary Louise's. I'd started having dreams and memories of being a little girl, the first ones of my life that my mother wasn't in. When Clíona was bandaging my forehead, she'd been so close I could smell her yeasty skin, and I'd remembered sitting in her lap when I was little. We were on the beach, and she was showing me how to blow on a gold pinwheel, making it spin and shimmer in the sunlight. I couldn't get my mouth quite right, and I kept checking her pursed lips and trying to imitate them. In the memory, she was not the same stern, secretive woman. I called her Nana.

I had flashbacks of a man, his face white like the moon in his dark hair, singing to me. The song wasn't in English, but I could remember that I'd understood it, though I couldn't translate it now. And I could see myself with Liam, playing under the table in the pub, grownup legs and feet like a fence holding us in, the smell of cigarettes and my mother's musical laughter filtering down. The memories kept me from sleeping, and came with a sick fear that boiled in my hungry stomach.

One day while I was walking, the rain started in fat, hard drops, so I ducked into the church to wait for it to end. The weather here could change so quickly; not a cloud in the sky and then downpour. Sometimes there were even sun-showers—when the rain fell from midair and the sun shone simultaneously. The sun-showers depressed me; it was like the sky was lying.

The church was empty and I walked up the right-hand aisle softly, to keep my steps from echoing. The benches all had plaques on them, dedicated to dead people. The last names were familiar: MacNamara, O'Malley, O'Flaherty. It was strange to think I was related in some way to almost all of them. I'd been to Mass every
Sunday with Clíona but had never looked at this side of the church. We always sat on the left side, under the stained glass window that showed a mother and baby. Our bench had Clíona's mother's and father's names on it.

I liked going to Mass. I didn't understand it and didn't think of God like I was probably supposed to, but after a few times it was all familiar. I knew every word now, every gesture, and it was comforting, like reciting memorized poems in my head. When the priest laid out the bread and wine he always did it in the same order: he removed the draped cloths from front to back, folded them precisely, uncovered the goblets, and set everything in front of him like there was a map on the table to guide him. It made me think of helping my mother set the dinner table. Of the careful deception I now performed at every meal, moving my food around and slipping it into my napkin.

“Hello, Gráinne,” a voice said, startling me from behind. It was Father Cullen, not in his Mass gown or even in black, but wearing fisherman's rubber overalls and boots. I felt silly, like I'd been caught trespassing.

“It was raining—” I started to explain, but he waved me off.

“You're always welcome here,” he said. “I do not mean to disturb you.”

“Oh, I wasn't doing anything,” I said. I didn't want him to think I'd been praying or something; he might ask me questions about prayers I wouldn't be able to answer.

“It's a nice place to come when you've thinking to do,” Father Cullen said.

“I guess so,” I murmured.

“Your father comes here,” he said, looking up at the stained glass windows. “These two were his favorite panels when he was a boy.”

I followed the priest's eyes to the giant, dimly lit patterns. Each of the windows was divided into separate squares with people pieced together like miniature quilts.

“The one to the left is the Seven Deadly Sins,” Father Cullen said. “And next to it, the Seven Virtues. Do you know them yourself?”

“No,” I said, though I vaguely remember my mother referring sarcastically to such a thing.

“That first figure on top—the man with the puffed-out chest—that's Pride. Then the fat man drinking—Gluttony. It's Anger that the arguing couple there represent. The lazy-looking fellow in the center is Sloth; the man looking over the fence, Envy. That skinny fellow with the large purse is the miser; he represents Avarice. Then you see the sinful lovers—Lust. The bottom panel is the devil raking all the sinners into Hell.” Father Cullen smiled and winked at me. “I wouldn't dwell on that part.”

I couldn't tell if he was teasing me or not. My mother, when I was hard to get out of bed in the morning, used to bang on her teacup with a spoon and yell: “Sloth is one of the Deadly Sins!” I thought she'd made it up. After her first dates we had a ritual. “Love or Lust, Mom?” I'd say, and she'd smile, the edges of her mouth raw from too much kissing. “Lust,” she'd say. The first time she'd gone out with Stephen she'd said, “Lust, with potential.” We certainly didn't consider Lust a sin. My mother didn't even believe in sins, or religion at all.

Yet my mother once knew how all this church stuff worked, the stories and prayers, everything I didn't understand myself.

“Here's the Seven Virtues in this window,” Father Cullen went on. “Helping the needy, then clothing the naked, tending the sick—your grandmother is a lovely example of that virtue. Then visiting prisoners—can you see the tiny face peering out the cell bars? Along the bottom: feeding the hungry, comforting the fatherless, and the laying out of the dead. All of which leads you to Saint Peter at the gates of Heaven.”

The hungry stained glass figure looked like my mother had in her purple robe—her neck so thin it made her head look heavy and fragile. The fatherless figure was a glass child. I supposed that would
be me. Why was fatherless so much worse than motherless? I didn't see anything so virtuous about laying out a dead person; that was easy enough. It was tending the sick that was the hard one. I'd watched Stephen do it, from the other side of a sliding glass door.

“What are the fishes for?” I asked. There was one carved under each window, all of them bent like they were swimming.

“The fish represents Christ,” Father Cullen said.

“What about mermaids?” I asked, and he looked like he was trying not to laugh.

“I'm afraid it is not my jurisdiction, the mermaid,” he said. “You're better off asking your father that.”

“Um, Father?” I said, knowing that was what I was supposed to call him, but feeling ridiculous.

“Yes?”

“You know that part of Mass where you hold up the cups and say: ‘This is my body, it will be given up for you'?”

“I'm familiar with the phrase, yes.” He smiled.

“What does that mean, exactly?”

“Ah,” the priest said, linking his hands behind his back like he did sometimes during Mass. “Jesus knew he was going to die. That is why he gathered the Last Supper before his crucifixion. He gave himself up in his death—he suffered so we would not have to.”

“Well it didn't work,” I said. “Because people suffer anyway.”

“I'm not speaking of day-to-day suffering,” Father Cullen said, “but the suffering of death without redemption.”

“Oh,” I said. “So if you're Catholic, that's what you believe? That Jesus gets you into Heaven?”

“That's the bare bones of it anyway,” he said. “Also that Jesus gives us a model of how to live a virtuous life.”

“That's what Clíona believes, and my father?” I said.

“Aye. They're good Catholics, all your family.”

“My mother wasn't,” I said.

“Well I did not know what your mother believed, Gráinne. I'm sorry to say that I did not know her well.”

“I don't know if I believe it either,” I said. I glared at him, daring him to be angry with me. But he smiled.

“I don't think you're supposed to know what you believe in at fifteen,” he said. “I imagine that's why it's so difficult.”

I believe in my mother, I wanted to say, but I kept quiet. I believed in who I was when I was with her. But now I'm not sure of anything.

The stained glass windows brightened suddenly, casting a pattern of blue and red on the priest's shiny scalp.

“It stopped raining,” I said. “I have to go now.”

“Come see me if you're needing to talk, Gráinne,” he said. “I run off at the mouth a bit, but I'm a good listener as well.”

“Okay,” I said, but I didn't really think I'd be back. He could answer questions about windows and prayers but he couldn't tell me what I needed to know. Like who I was and why I was here. Or why my father, the only one who could answer my questions, would not come to see me.

I left the church and headed for the beach, the warm sun only emphasizing how damp and cold my clothes were.

Mom
, I said to myself before I thought about it,
can't I come home now?
As if I were only away at camp, proving to her that I could be brave and independent, and that once it was over she would reward me by taking back her place at my side.

 

My body was changing again. One morning, while I was putting on my new, smaller bra, the underwired cups slid up over my chest and dangled beneath my collarbone. I had no breasts left. Only shrunken plum-sized protrusions beneath my nipples. Like most of the flesh had been lopped off and my nipples stitched back on. It was not only my flesh that was giving way; my blood seemed to be going, too. When I walked, my fingers and toes turned purple with death-white splotches. “Bad circulation,” Clíona said to me, looking worried. I wore so many layers I was sure she couldn't tell that I had practically no body beneath them. I imagined that eventually my
clothes would cave in on themselves, drop to the ground like a witch's cloak, and I would vanish completely.

By the time Liam's sixteenth birthday came in late October, I was having dizzy spells, and Clíona was talking of sending me to the doctor. I put her off, faking a cold. She no longer really believed I was eating, but kept putting plates of food in front of me anyway. The neighbor's dog learned to wait outside our door at dinnertime, and I would sneak her whatever I'd managed to mash into my napkin.

Clíona planned a joint birthday party for me and Liam, even though my birthday wasn't until Christmas Eve, because she said we'd always celebrated together as babies. Mary Louise thought Liam's father, Owen, might make it home for the party; he had radioed they were on their way home. For some reason, this made me as nervous as Liam was excited. He came to the quay with me in the evenings, to watch for the trawler.

The morning of the party, I woke to what sounded like waves crashing over the roof of the house. When I looked outside, I saw it was the wind, whipping rain and swaying the power lines on the island. Our electricity was out, which meant no hot showers, but Clíona made the dinner and cake on the gas range in the hotel.