Learning to Swim (16 page)

In the living room she sat down. I could see there were tears in her eyes.

“Did something happen to Mrs. Carlton?” I asked lamely. I tried to stifle a hiccup.

“That insolent witch had one too many drinks is what happened,” she said severely. I saw her wipe her eyes.

“She called me a tramp,” I said quietly.

“She called you a lot worse than that,” Mom said. I turned red. I couldn’t tell if I was the victim here or the guilty party. “She has no right, no
right,
to come into
my
house and talk like that about
my
daughter. There’s a lot worse that can be said for her dumpy little donut of a girl.”

I couldn’t stifle the grin on my lips. So I was to be defended. “What exactly did she think I had done?” I asked carefully.

“Oh, nothing more than is true!” she flashed suddenly.
Uh-oh.
“You spending all your time over there in that—that
place
with all those locals and the
motel
! That’s what you’re doing! Shunning every kid, every respectable person we put in front of you. Acting so proud and above everyone here!”

“
Proud
? Shunning
who
?” I demanded. “Wasn’t I just down there letting Owen Carlton make ridiculous puppy eyes at me?”

“As if the whole world can’t see you running around with those people like a regular … well, a
tramp
!”

“What are you talking about?” I sputtered. “Why—Why in the world did you defend me? Why did you stick up for me if you agreed? Why let something as ridiculous and superfluous as your daughter come between you and your
precious
Linda Carlton!”

“Yes, yes, turn this around on
me.
I’m the bad guy here.” She stood and grabbed a handful of seashells that I had stowed on the end table by the couch. “I’ve spoiled you,” she said, holding up the shells, as if they were evidence. “That’s what it is. I’ve let you have the run of the world! It’s time to shape up, Cora.”

“That’s lofty, coming from someone who had to be taught laundry by a housekeeper at the age of fifty-two.”

“Yes, well, luckily you won’t come to that! From here on out, you’re doing your own laundry, emptying your own goddamn pockets—” She threw the seashells back on the table with a clatter. “And for Christ’s sake, in one month, you’re going to whatever college I pick out!”

I cried myself to sleep in my lacey dress that night and still felt like crying when I woke up. I couldn’t remember a time in my life when I’d cried this much. I hadn’t been to Mrs. O’Leary’s since my fight with Rory, but I didn’t know where else to go. Sure I could go and cry at the pier, but the truth was, I missed Mrs. O’Leary. Actually missed her, and nobody, not even Rory, could convince me otherwise. A purely selfish motive, I wanted to hear her soothing voice and feel better.

But what would I say after being away so long? I grabbed the tin whistles and stuffed them in the big oversize pockets on the front of my dress, a good cover motive. If Rory didn’t want me talking to her about the future, I would talk about the past. And Seamus definitely knew about these little instruments. I would talk about
anything
to get my mind away from the Pink Palace.

I scraped my tangled hair into a bun and pulled a sweatshirt on over my dress, then shuffled off to her house before my parents woke up.

But when I saw her on the porch, I quickly forgot about any of my planned conversation. I even fleetingly forgot why I was upset.

She sat on the porch, rocking slowly, in the same position as usual, but her face was stony and her eyes watery. She’d mentioned on numerous occasions that her eyesight was failing.

Her face opened in surprise when she saw me. “You haven’t been around in a while,” she chirped. It was feigned cheerfulness.

“I know, I’m sorry,” I said. I briefly considered telling her about Rory’s words, with some amendments of course, but I didn’t want her to tell me they weren’t true. I knew they were.

“Oh, no need for apologies,” she said. “I know I’m just an old woman; I just missed your burst of energy every day, that’s all.” I knew it was a sad state of affairs for someone to consider
me
a high point of their day. I filled with pity and remorse that she had been able to say what I had not—that I considered her a friend. This filled me with such a fond feeling, I wanted nothing more than to pour my aching heart out to her.

“Have you heard of kappas, dear?”

I shook my head slowly and sat down tentatively on my rocking chair. But I didn’t want to get caught up in another story. Today,
I
wanted to do the talking.

“They say there are these creatures in the water, they have green skin supposedly, and they pull children down. Drown them.”

The lump was back in my throat. I gulped it down quickly. “Mrs. O’Leary,” I said valiantly. “I need to talk to you. I had a fight with my mom, and then I realized you’re the only other person I can talk to about it.”

Mrs. O’Leary’s eyes were pulled from the horizon and landed on me. They were shifty and looked nervous, but her voice was even as she returned her gaze to the ocean. “Yes, of course, dear, what is it?”

“My mom …” I was editing the story in my head; I didn’t want her to know that my own mother was disapproving of the south end of the beach and most probably, Mrs. O’Leary herself. “My mom isn’t proud of me,” I finally said. “She complains all the time. But then last night she yelled at someone that criticized me.”

Mrs. O’Leary didn’t seem to understand.

“It’s just that I feel as though she hates who I am, but then she goes and does something to make me think she is the tiniest bit … well, proud.” I was definitely grasping at straws now. Words were coming out quicker than their corresponding thoughts could form in my head. “I can’t tell if she’s ashamed or proud, and I get the feeling that she doesn’t know either. I feel like I’m living this pre-arranged life where she’s running along a little in front of me, trying to set everything up as we go, but she keeps stumbling. And so then I keep stumbling.”

I took a deep breath.

“I had a sister,” I said. “Only it doesn’t feel right to call her my sister. She died before I was born. She drowned. So I never knew her. She’s just this vague idea that made a lot of people sad in the past, but nobody talks about anymore. That whole thing spawned this huge, irrational fear of the water that, like, runs in our family.”

I had been holding my breath and it was coming out fast, in my words. “And, so, I guess sometimes I feel like maybe my mom is so focused on doing everything right this time, and just, gets it wrong.” I finished up shakily, leaving my own self rather confused.

“Dear, I do not know the circumstances, but I assure you that every mother feels the tiniest bit of pride in her child, no matter how much time goes by. But what you have to remember is that losing a child, for a mother, is a pain like no other.”

My body filled with regret. Rory was right yet again. There I was thinking only of myself. How could I have been so callous as to bring up something as sensitive as children to Mrs. O’Leary? Everything Mr. Hall had said about her depression after her children’s deaths, her troubled marriage, it all came flooding back to me. I was making her relive all that pain.

I was about to change the subject when she knocked me out of all reservations.

“Ronan is a good example.”

“What?” I said.

“I think of Ronan and I am more proud of him than anyone else in the world. I don’t think it would matter if he killed someone; it wouldn’t lessen my pride.”

I wasn’t sure if we were talking about Ronan O’Leary or Rory.

“Maybe your mother is disappointed that you are not like her or like her first child,” she said philosophically. “But I assure you that doesn’t change how much she loves you, takes pride in you, despite herself.”

I had forgotten my own mother now. Every word she said I saw as a comment on her own children, or on the local boy she
thought
was one of her children.

“I sometimes wonder about kappas, and what must it be like for the human mother that never sees her child return from the ocean. Your poor, poor mother. She must know.”

Wonder?
But her own children had drowned. Or … or
something
. She couldn’t possibly believe her children were still alive? Was she still waiting for Seamus
and
her children?

Rory had said not to speak to her of the future. I realized then that this was because she was still so firmly entrenched in the past. “It must be similar to the wife who doesn’t see her husband come home,” I said softly.

But she shook her head. “A grown man is something different. You trust a grown man. But a child.” She paused. “I don’t know what I’ll do when Ronan leaves.”

I was silent.

“I will miss that boy so much,” she said again.

I was completely lost. I didn’t want to confuse her, upset her. But at the same time, the mere mention of the boy brought weird twisting feelings to my stomach. And it wasn’t just because it made me question Mrs. O’Leary’s state of mind.

Despite what I tried to tell myself, I had the distinct impression that what I felt when she referenced Rory were the pangs of
missing
someone. Despite his mood swings and his inability to decide whether he hated me or found me slightly amusing, he made me laugh, he made Mrs. O’Leary laugh. I just couldn’t figure out who he was. The problem was that Mrs. O’Leary had a way of painting a portrait of this complicated person that was quite impossible not to fall for. Was he the cynical, aloof boy who thought I was a snob—or was he the kind, caring Rory that Mrs. O’Leary loved and that I’d gotten a few glimpses of myself?

Mrs. O’Leary shifted her feet on the floor. “Cora, I’m ready to go now,” she said quite softly. For the first time, the full shock of her dark hair hit me with full force. How utterly out of place it was. I had no idea of her age, but the wrinkles on her face belied the fact that her hair should have gone gray decades ago. Her face was crinkly as sandpaper. But her hair, it was every bit as dark as mine. It was quite unnatural. Surely she wasn’t one to dye her hair. “Yes, I’m ready to go,” she repeated.

“Inside?” I tried to clarify.

“No!” she said severely. “When that boy leaves, I’ll have no hope left! I’m ready to go
now
.” It was the sternest I’d ever heard her speak. She sounded frightened. And that frightened me.

“Mrs. O’Leary, I can help you,” I said. “What if I stayed when the summer is over and helped you?”

The old woman took a deep, withering breath from the depths of her tiny body and let it out slowly through her thin lips. “Just children,” she murmured. “They were just children.” Her eyelids fluttered and settled at half mast. “Why do they get to go when I want to so badly?”

To Ireland?
Or was she talking about Seamus? Or her babies? Or were they just the mad ramblings of a woman slowing, meticulously losing her grasp on reality?

I didn’t want to leave her, but I also didn’t want to continue this conversation. It seemed to be draining the life right out of her. Suddenly, I remembered the tin whistles in my pocket.

“Mrs. O’Leary, do you know what these are?”

Her eyelids fluttered up for a fraction of a second to gaze at my palm. “Those are tin whistles,” she said simply. I pretended not to have known this and feigned happiness at the answer. “My Seamus could play.” Of course, I had surmised as much from the photo, but I again pretended to be surprised. “You know, Ronan can play, too.”

I hadn’t known that. I also no longer had any idea who she meant when she used that name.

“My Seamus gave him lessons right here on this porch. Ronan loved to set people to dancing in the middle of the day just by picking up a tin whistle.”

Assuming her child would have been too young at the time of his death, I realized with a strange twist of my stomach that she must have meant her Seamus had taught young Rory O’Brien to play the tin whistle.

“I’m so ready to go, Cora,” Mrs. O’Leary said again. “He’s not coming back.” Her eyes roved the ocean.

Not knowing what to say to calm her nerves, I merely put my hand on top of hers, which lay limp on the arm of the rocking chair. It was dry and papery, a bumpy map of veins and knots. She didn’t react to the touch, her eyes continued to rove the horizon and her feet continued to rock the chair ever so gently.

We stayed like that until the sun began to set, and she was ready to go inside.

Mop agus Urlár Salach

A Mop and a Dirty Floor

As the life in the big houses became more and more repulsive to me, my mother’s sulkiness festered, and my concern for Mrs. O’Leary heightened, I began to spend all day with the little old woman again. She seemed to be growing more and more restless as the summer waned, so I steered conversation carefully away from sensitive material. And I grew more certain that she wasn’t well.