Malarky (32 page)

Even tho' Jimmy was nowhere near New Jersey she scans every scene of the film for a sighting of him, a boot, an elbow, an eyebrow – that rare remote chance. A television documentary about men waking up in New Jersey on the day they are due to ship out to Iraq surprises her in its timing and she compulsively views it knowing this to be a poor decision. There's women stood among them; women, and not just that shiny-eyed wife she's used to seeing hand over children, forever dressed in snowsuits, to their fathers. Women kiss their husbands good bye. The men aren't going no place. Women in uniforms with rucksacks about them. Women, she repeats to herself, there were women there for God's sake. Could Jimmy not have tumbled into the arms of some girl? The Lord Save Us to even think such a thought. It broke her out in a reluctant smile. It makes her sad for one reason and it's not goodbye to families. It's that her Jimmy could have found himself a wife. She briefly imagines Jimmy in some kind of a squadron or situation where it's him, only him and thirty-two women in uniforms: she tries to imagine him among them. But he looks lost and the image of a shirtless male is all she can draw up. She can see her Jimmy looking at the man's face and body and shame her as it might, the idea of it breaks her.

She's angry because her tears are interrupting the details of the documentary and all she's after these days since Jimmy
died is details. If she can pin down the details of his life, there's more chance she can imagine him alive again. The way the soldiers are strapped into the stand up style plane or helicopter, the green everything, the Tourettey eyes, the fact they don't seem too fussed, they're shipping out resigned to what they'll face. Mostly they don't know they say, they speculate but they don't know. They speak acronyms, she notices. She's surprised to see them stopping in Shannon, staring out the window, no idea where they are, some just continue to play hand held games or they do word search.

And she's back imagining her Jimmy on a similar plane at Shannon, with his green-trousered brigade leaning against that window pointing to things. It's fading now. She can see him pressing his head to the back of the seat, pretending to know nothing about it, maybe pretending not to be of it at all.

She phones Joanie during the ads of the documentary. How's she doing there and did she know there were women over there in the army too? Joanie didn't but sure it doesn't surprise her. What's she doing? Watching a program. Does she need a bit of company? Arra no. Well now. Quietly, it's about soldiers, yes, going to Iraq. She'll be over to her now, put the kettle on. If you insist on watching it, you shouldn't be alone for you'll never sleep after the like of it. When she replaces the phone, she notices how dirty the head of it is from the picking up and dropping and means to clean it. She wonders does Joanie think she's done something she shouldn't have in watching the program.

It's with her always nowadays such doubt. She's to tell herself flat that there's no one can tell her what she can or cannot do. Just because they may think she's going mad does not mean she's under contract to deliver it up to them.

As Joanie and Our Woman watch together they discuss a few things like the mother of the fella in New Jersey. The
muslin fella
Joanie calls him, mistaking cloth for religion. The
mother beside herself, the mother who came from some hot place near by to Iraq, who waves her finger at the camera and beseeches her long departed son to stop punishing her. She did not bring him to this country to give him opportunity to have him go back to her land and occupy it.

—I know how she feels, Our Woman says after Joanie remarks on the lovely oak table in the woman's kitchen and the fact she's wearing a very dark shade of nail varnish.

—Isn't it great the women keep themselves looking so well, no matter the stress they're under, Joanie remarks ignoring her.

—I know how she feels, Our Woman repeats. She's this new trick when they talk over her, or by her, they all do it the girls, they mean well but they all do it. Then she breaks down and tells Joanie the truth that it was all her fault for sending Jimmy the adverts. She tells her about college and the fella who visited and Himself whipping the college funds from Jimmy and Joanie's trying to clarify things with her and she's foggy again. Why's Joanie asking is he local? Of course he's not local. She shrieks at her, He's over there, he's over there. He wouldn't a gone near him if he was local. Where would you find the like of him local?

It's all don't upset yourself when she flies into these confusions and shortly the doctor's in the house again and she realizes she'll have to stop telling Joanie anything if it's all going to end in an injection. To think she considered telling her about Beirut.

Blood pressure, hup, hup, hup, hiss. Hiss. Hiss. It's low. Is she dizzy? Has she tested her blood sugar today? Something to help her sleep. He squeezes her hand two times in comfort and she feels like the old woman she is. Old, bereft with people to help her fall asleep.

The sleep is terrible. Hour after hour she wakes. Confused. Things, objects and colours dart in the darkness, whittle their
way into and out of shadows and strangely, boxes. The room, the air of it is covered and divided by boxes within which it's all movement, disconcerting movement. Lines, colours dance about. She can see small boxes, things tucking into them and the pulse in her neck twangs like a rubber band and the tightness of her chest frightens her. Up she gets to the light, shuffles into the cold bathroom for a glass of water, she doesn't trust the water, so in to the kitchen for the boiled kettle.

She sits shivering in a cold you would not contemplate stepping out to unless you risk wetting the bed. She considers swapping the night for day to see would it be easier on her. The red light of the electric blanket is hanging down there beneath the old pink under sheet when she's back at the bed. She's tempted to kneel, but what would be the good in kneeling, what did kneeling do 'til now only Jimmy gone and all this disturbance.

She tries to remember a time when there wasn't these interruptions and she can't. The pill, the herbal tea, the Valerian none of it helps. The first time she takes 45 drops of Valerian she falls down a well all night long. With no cars outside and so quiet, the night is an uncomfortable place to be.

She sticks pictures of soldiers on the inside of her kitchen press doors, believing some of them may have known her Jimmy, one may even have kissed him. There's one of a bunch sitting around drinking coffee and a man with a guitar. She chooses the door with the bad hinge, that dips a little lower than it should. Sticks them with bluetack. Every time she needs a cup, he'll look at her. Sometimes she leaves the door open and stares at him, while she's stirring a pot or pouring the kettle. His eyes pour out at her, they're the deep brown of conkers and the more she looks at him the more handsome he becomes. They're spoiled really, the lads in all that green camouflage and clippered hair. They've the look of shaved dogs not men. But if you can imagine it all rolled
away, all the clip and cap and green just gone, their features come back. He was the sort of fella who probably wore jeans and a burgundy top. She'll think of him in burgundy it's best. She names one of them Raphael and she believes he has known her Jimmy intimately. She can talk to him on the door. His image becomes bolder and bolder until she can visualize him moving about. Once she sees him sitting at her table clutching his knees up to his chest awkwardly. Is he saying anything at all? He's big, Raphael is tall. You're tall you know. I never thought Jimmy would go for one as tall as you, she confides in him. He's a snuffly laugh has Raphael, but they like each other. I can see why Jimmy would like looking at ya, you've lovely warm eyes. That was my problem she tells him, I chose a man who hadn't warm enough eyes. He laughs again and says he's going out the back for a smoke and it's the draft on her ankles that brings her back. The cold around her legs. Stood there with back door open, in the middle of the quiet night and no one to be seen, least alone the fella she's been exchanging laughter with.

But she'll continue with it. It's easier, she thinks. If she's to jump up and down and smother every imagined exchange the hours will be so long, alone here in the house. While she's chatting to Raphael for any reason you can choose she's happier and she's learning, albeit imaginary, about her son's life.

Beirut, Beirut, the only other thought in her mind, humming over and over like a psalm. Beirut may have seen Jimmy when he went to his daughter's wedding. She longs to talk again with Beirut. She wants to climb inside his coat. She wants to hear the stories of the dogs and the women wearing
gold sandals with their good strong legs and clear skin. She wants all of it described all over again. Then maybe she can sleep once more the way she used to. A strange thing is somedays she cannot remember whether or not they have buried Jimmy or if he's still on his way home.

In Dublin for a day's shopping, the solution her dead husband prescribed. She smiles to think she's begun listening to him now he's passed on. He prompts her to go. Then she hears it, uttered aloud on the bus from Heuston Station, an older woman behind her explaining her daughter, out in Bray, and the council house, they've given her, and the state of it, and her daughter up to the counter of the housing office, she told them, she did, she told them straight.

—It's like bleedin' Beirut. I can't live in it.

—Jaysus, back from the lips beside her. Jaysus it's a disgrace. Honest to God.

Our Woman smiles at the reference. Bayroot, Beirut. Which Beirut is it they're talking of? Is it the same Beirut the man in the hospital went to the wedding in? It's not, it's the bombed Beirut. Any Beirut will do. She's obsessed and besotted with a place she can't spell. A place another woman identifies as the crater of the earth. A place that a leaking, run down damaged Council house is compared with. A place she wants to go to without having to get off this bus.