Martin Sloane (20 page)

“What’s wrong?”

“Martin embellished. Or I did, I don’t know. You can’t see anything from here but the other side of the street.”

“What are you supposed to see?”

“The grey church stone. The steeples that rise up here and there. The ivory-coloured clocks in the towers.”

Molly looked out. “You can’t see any of that.”

“No, you can’t.” This was the child’s room. Dolls and books lay scattered on the floor. But there was no closet in the room at all. And from the window, the view through the door fell on the landing at the top of the stairs, rather than on the back railing. The viewer of Linwood Flats should have been looking at the child’s back, not his knees. “He made it even more lonely than it really was.”

She came over and stood in the window, leaning up against the frame and looking at me. “So, they lived in this house and then they went to Galway.”

“He got sick,” I said. “TB. There was a flare-up and a lot of children died. The hospital was just over there.” I pointed to the left behind the houses on the other side of the street. “He saw other children die.”

“He got better, though.”

“Yes. But then they had to move. He got taken away from everything that he knew. He thought he was being punished and his family was being punished.”

“You remember a lot more than I thought you would.”

I nodded. “I remember everything, Molly.”

“You’re keeping it for him.”

“No,” I said, turning from the window, “I’m just cursed with it.” I sat down on the bed.

“What happened when they got to Galway?”

“Things didn’t go so well.”

“You’ll tell me more later.” She came over and laid a hand on my shoulder. “I’m going to go back down and make sure our host hasn’t wised up.”

She went down the stairs, and I stayed on the bed, looking out of the window. Before, I’d been afraid I would turn a corner and that old Dublin, the one I knew, would shudder into place. But here it was a fact, with a few alterations. The view outside the window was the one he’d looked at, not the one he later remembered. I was closer now to him than he was to himself, and it scared me.

I went down to the kitchen, following voices, and found the house-owner and Molly drinking fresh cups of coffee and leaning against the counters looking like old friends. He offered me one. “Genevieve was just telling me you think a famous artist used to live here?”

“Oh. Well, Genevieve gets her facts mixed up sometimes. He might have lived here, but he might not have. It was a long time ago. It’s
very
kind of you to let two strangers into your home.”

“It’s always nice to know that you’re a part of something,” he said, and he raised his mug to us. The dog, now satisfied that we were all friends, lay on the floor between us, her leash in her mouth.

We walked the man back out — Jeremy, he said his name was — and we all shook hands. “Good luck,” said Jeremy.

“It was good luck you came out when you did,” said Molly, and she surprised us all by giving him a sudden hug. Then she smiled triumphantly at me and walked jauntily down to the cab.

The driver headed toward Rathmines. The sky had turned grey and a cold rain was beginning to fall. I watched the General Post Office swim past, and marvelled at the pride nations have in their bullet holes. “Palmerston Road,” confirmed the driver.

“Road,” said Molly. “I checked with my dispatch, y’know. There are no less than
seven
Palmerstons in Dublin, and who knows how many more inv the outlying?”

“Well, it’s
road
.”

“There’s Place, there’s Grove, there’s Gardens, there’s even a Villas. You couldn’t have picked a more popular street, my darling.”

“Well, aren’t we having a perfect day,” Molly said to me.

The day was ending properly. We’d spent it sharing brunch in town, then walking back to the dorm. Molly had gone to her parents — it was only the second time since we’d started seeing each other that we’d had the rooms to ourselves. He’d let me cut his hair, calling me Delilah the whole time. Then we’d rented a movie, and I’d switched it off halfway through and led him into the bedroom. He stopped outside my door. Oh … you misunderstand me, he said.

Don’t make fun of me, Martin.

Are you sure this is your room?

This was a perfect day so far.

He gave a Cheshire grin, showing his teeth. And how old are you again?

Why don’t you come in and count my rings? I stood in the doorway, my eyes on his, and blithely began removing my clothes. He stood there clothed. I can put them on again, Martin.

Don’t bother, he said, his voice a little tight.

Am I beautiful?

He nodded.

Do you want to stand here and make more dumb jokes about my inept handling of our first night together, or do you want to see how I’ve improved?

Improved, he said.

Good. He walked past me, his cotton shirt brushing up against my breasts. He started to unbutton the shirt. Leave that on for now, I said, and I closed the door.

“Snap out of it,” said Molly, “we’re here.” Mrs. Bryce’s hoved into view. It looked like dusk now, under the still, darkened skies. The drizzle came in bursts and starts, as if it had time to kill. “Keep the motor running.”

We both got out and started up the steps, me a little behind Molly’s protective confidence. The front window was empty; Molly leaned on the doorbell. Then the door opened, and there she was, the younger sister, the one charged with duty. She wore the same mask of fear, looking back and forth between us, her eyes black holes in her head. “I’m going to call the police,” she said.

“Hold on,” said Molly, calmly. “We don’t want to come in. We just want to know how we can get in touch with Martin Sloane.”

The old lady’s face hardened into a look of hatred. “This is why you’ve come back? You put Francie in hospital talking like this!”

“What?”

Lenore waved a hand dismissively in the air. “What do you care if she’s alive or dead!
He
doesn’t care. Martin Sloane this, she says, Martin Sloane that. If he set foot in this house, I’d kill him straight off! Now you won’t be getting another word out of me, so get out of here!”

She started to close the door. And then, for the second time in as many hours, Molly did a shocking thing. She grabbed the old woman by the front of her apron and pushed her into her own house and started down the hall. I stood there stunned and only snapped to when Molly started to close the door on me. I shot a look out to the cab, but the driver was enjoying another smoke, so I jumped over the threshhold and closed the door. “Molly! Molly!”

“Help me would you!” she shouted from atop Lenore, who had tumbled to the floor beneath her in a dead faint, and whom she was now dragging down the hall in short bursts.

“Molly! You can’t just …”

“Just what?” She looked down at Lenore, awake now and feebly trying to detach Molly’s hands from the front of her shirt. “Politeness doesn’t work with you, does it? Do you have any idea how far we’ve come?”

“Somebody call the police!” the woman sobbed. Molly pulled her into the kitchen and propped her up in a chair. She wet a towel for her. The old woman watched us both like we were going to be her last sight on Earth.

“You had to get help, did you?” she said, her eyes narrowed to pinheads. “Someone to do your dirty work!”

“I honestly didn’t know she was going to do that.”

“Move,” said Molly, pushing me out of the way. She handed the old woman the cloth.

I went into the next room, hoping Lenore had lied about Mrs. Bryce. The chair was empty. “She’s gone to hospital, thanks to you,” she called.

“When?” I asked.

“The evening of the same day. ‘He’ll come for her,’ she kept saying. ‘Martin won’t want to miss this girl. He’ll come and then all this waiting will be over.’ By bedtime she was foaming at the mouth.”

“Where is she?”

“She has me, by the grace of God, to see to her needs! No one else will.”

“All we want to know is where we can find Martin Sloane,” Molly said. “Just give us an address.”

Lenore took the towel away from her mouth. Half a denture was displaced and pushed out from her upper lip. “If I give you an address, will you promise neither of you ever to come back here.”

“I promise,” I said. “She does too.”

Lenore lurched up from her chair. She was still dizzy, and began weaving. Molly steadied her, and Lenore took down a pencil from a ledge and tore the corner off an old newspaper. She scribbled an address and held it out to Molly. “I’ll take that,” I said, but Lenore snatched her hand away.

“You’re the one who started all this. You put my sister in the hospital.”

“Like you didn’t try to shove me down the steps!” I shouted.

“Oh that I
had
,” said Mrs. Bryce’s sister. “The self-defence, they would have said.” She passed the torn corner to Molly, who looked at it and put it in her pants pocket. “Now get out, the both of you.”

We were walking out, but I turned back, protected, it felt, by Molly’s seeming power over this woman. In the room where I’d encountered Mrs. Bryce, I picked up the box based on Pond, and tucked it under my arm. “We’ll be seeing him anyway,” I said. “I’ll give it back to him.”

“I wash my hands of it all, take whatever you want,” Lenore said, and then she lowered her face into her hands and began wailing like a banshee. We retreated down the hall and closed the door on her keening.

In the cab, Molly unfolded the paper and handed it to the driver.

“Prospect Hill,” he said.

“Jesus – we were just there.”

“No confusion this time,” said Molly. “Let’s go.”

But the driver frowned at the paper.

“What’s wrong?” I said.

“Hold on.” He picked up his headset. “Eddie? Prospect Hill.”

The crackling voice of the dispatch came over the radio. “G'wan?”

“Prospect Hill, Eddie. Is there one in Phibsborough?”

“We just saw it,” I said.

“That’s Avenue. I think there’s a Hill in Sandymount.”

“Not this shit again.”

“Looking …” said the dispatcher. The driver held eye contact with Molly over his shoulder as he waited over the static. “Petey? I’ve got Drive, Place, Ave, Lane, Square, and Terrace. No Hill.”

The driver hung up his set. Molly was opening the door. “Let's see if I can't jog the lady's memory a bit more,” she said.

“Hold on,” said the driver. “It is Prospect Hill. There’s no mistake.”

“Then how come your dispatcher can’t find it?”

“Because he’s looking in Dublin,” he said.

Molly closed the door. “Where should he have been looking?”

“Galway,” he said.

Molly turned her bright eyes to me.

“Alright,” I said. “You win.”

The driver got in gear. “You’ll need a car of your own,” he said. “I know a place.”

VIII.

POND, 1977. 18" X 14" X 6" BOX CONSTRUCTION. WOOD AND GLASS WITH PORCELAIN, FEATHERS, FOUND OBJECTS, PAPER. CARNEGIE MUSEUM OF ART. A POND IS VISIBLE BEHIND TREES WITH SEVEN FEATHERS FLOATING IN IT, EACH WEIGHTED DOWN WITH A GEM. IN THE BACKGROUND, AN EARLY PHOTOGRAPH OF A CITY PARK IN WINTER.

THE WEDNESDAY THREE DAYS BEFORE THEY WERE TO
leave, Martin went to meet his father at the shop on Grafton Street. He walked from the green through the busy late-day throng of shoppers, pausing to look in at Sibley and Co. on the corner, whose window was full of bone and enamel pens and a semicircle of gold nibs. Mr. Sibley was at the back of the shop, tearing the cover off a hardback book. Farther down was the Canada Life Assurance company, whose window said in silver letters
STRENGTH SECURITY STABILITY
against a black silhouette of Canada. His father had shown him where Montreal was: there, in the thinnest part between the ocean and the Great Lakes. That was where his Buby and Zaida lived.

Then, right beside Mitchell’s (the confectioner, whose window was more outrageous than any dream of sweets a child could have), was his father’s shop, and there his father was, standing behind the counter of Sloane and Son (he, Colin Sloane, was Son) as a man looked at himself in the mirror, a grey fedora on his head. The white price tag spun in the air above the man’s shoulder.

Should it come down over the eyes like this?

Just tilt it back a ways. That’s it, rakish.

The man turned in profile, keeping his eyes on the mirror. Then he turned the other way. His father glanced at Martin and smiled, but Martin knew not to speak.

The man said, It feels cold inside.

The lining’s silk, said Martin’s father. It’ll become warmer after you’ve worn it for a while. It looks excellent.

And is it guaranteed?

Unless you fall into a river or get hit by a train, it’s guaranteed for life.

Mine? the man laughed. He paid by unfolding a sheaf of bills and snapping them off one by one.

Martin’s father put the money in his pocket, and then went and pulled the blind down over the door. It was exactly five o’clock. He called into the back, You’ll finish up, then?

No worries, Mr. Sloane, said an old man, and they could hear the sound of a machine punching out felt disks. Martin’s father turned and pretended he was seeing Martin for the first time.

Need a hat?

I shop at Tyson’s, said Martin.

His father frowned. You know what happened to Jack Dempsey.

Usually on their walks back to the house, Colin Sloane would recount the events of the day to his son, but now he was quiet. In fact, as soon as he’d locked the door and turned onto Grafton, he seemed to have nothing to say. Martin took his hand, a little frightened, in the way that fear comes, slithering down a change in routine. They did not go down to Nassau Street and walk along the gateway of Trinity, as they usually did. Instead, his father turned left on Suffolk and again onto St. Andrews, where there stood a grey church called St. Alban’s. O’Neill’s, with its giant square clock, was filling up with men in black and brown suits. Colin asked his son if he could keep a secret. Martin looked around him. A little Citroën went bleating past. I don’t know.