My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me (60 page)
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Authors: KATE BERNHEIMER
BOOK: My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me
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JOHN UPDIKE
Bluebeard in Ireland
“YES, THE PEOPLE ARE WONDERFUL,” GEORGE ALLENSON HAD TO agree, there in Kenmare. His wife, Vivian, was twenty years younger than he, but almost as tall, with dark hair and decided, sharp features, and it placed the least strain on their marriage if he agreed with her assertions. Yet he harbored an inner doubt. If the Irish were so wonderful, why was Ireland such a sad and empty country? Vivian, a full generation removed from him, was an instinctive feminist, but to him any history of unrelieved victimization seemed suspect. Not that it wasn’t astonishing to see the eighty-room palaces the British landlords had built for themselves, and touching to see the ruins—stone end walls still standing, thatched roofs collapsed—of the hovels where the Irish had lived, eaten their potatoes and drunk their whiskey, and died. Vivian loved the hovels, inexplicably; they all looked alike from the outside, and, when it was possible to enter a doorless doorway or peek through a sashless window-hole, the inside showed a muddy dirt floor, a clutter of rotting boards that might once have been furniture, and a few plastic or aluminum leavings of intruders like themselves.
Vivian could see he was unconvinced. “The way they use the language,” she insisted, “and leave little children to run their shops for them.”
“Wonderful,” he agreed again. He was sitting with his, he hoped, not ridiculously much younger wife in the lounge of their hotel, before a flickering blue fire that was either a gas imitation of a peat fire or the real thing, Allenson wasn’t sure. A glass of whiskey whose one ice cube had melted away added to his natural sleepiness. He had driven them around the Dingle Peninsula today in a foggy rain, and then south to Kenmare over a narrow mountain road from Killarney, Vivian screaming with anxiety all the way, and it had left him exhausted. After a vacation in Italy two years ago, he had vowed never to rent a foreign car with her again, but he had, in a place with narrower roads and left-handed drive. During the trickiest stretch today, over fabled Moll’s Gap, with a Mercedes full of gesturing Germans pushing him from behind, Vivian had twisted in her seat and pressed her face against the headrest rather than look, and sobbed and called him a sadistic fiend.
Afterwards, safely delivered to the hotel parking lot, she complained that she had twisted so violently her lower back hurt. What he resented most about her attacks of hysteria was how, when she recovered from them, she expected him to have recovered, too. For all her feminism she still claimed the feminine right to meaningless storms of emotion, followed by the automatic sunshine of male forgiveness.
As if sensing the sulky residue of a grudge within him, and determined to erase it, she flashed there by the sluggish fire an impeccable smile. Her lips were long and mobile but thin and sharp, as if—it seemed to him in his drowsy condition, by the gassy flickering fire—her eyebrows had been duplicated and sewn together at the ends to make a mouth. “Remember,” she said, offering to make a memory of what had occurred mere hours ago, “the lady shopkeeper out there beyond Dingle, where I begged you to stop?”
“You in
sis
ted I stop,” he corrected. She had said that if he didn’t admit he was lost she would jump out of the car and walk back. How could they be lost, he had argued, with the sea on their left and hills on their right? But the sea was obscured by fog and the stony hills vanished upward into rain clouds and she was not persuaded; at last he had slammed on the brakes. Both of them had flounced out of the car. The dim-lit store looked empty, and they had been about to turn away from the door when a shadow materialized within, beyond the lace curtains—the proprietress, emerging from a room where she lived, waiting, rocking perhaps, watching what meagre channels of television reached this remoteness. He had been surprised, in south-western Ireland, by how little television there was to watch, and by the sound of Gaelic being spoken all about him, in shops and pubs, by the young as well as the old. It was part of his own provincialism to be surprised by the provincialism of others; he expected America, its language and all its channels, to be everywhere by now.
sis
ted I stop,” he corrected. She had said that if he didn’t admit he was lost she would jump out of the car and walk back. How could they be lost, he had argued, with the sea on their left and hills on their right? But the sea was obscured by fog and the stony hills vanished upward into rain clouds and she was not persuaded; at last he had slammed on the brakes. Both of them had flounced out of the car. The dim-lit store looked empty, and they had been about to turn away from the door when a shadow materialized within, beyond the lace curtains—the proprietress, emerging from a room where she lived, waiting, rocking perhaps, watching what meagre channels of television reached this remoteness. He had been surprised, in south-western Ireland, by how little television there was to watch, and by the sound of Gaelic being spoken all about him, in shops and pubs, by the young as well as the old. It was part of his own provincialism to be surprised by the provincialism of others; he expected America, its language and all its channels, to be everywhere by now.
This was indeed a store; its shadowy shelves held goods in cans and polyethylene packets, and a cloudy case held candies and newspapers bearing today’s date. But it was hard for the Allensons to see it as anything but a stage cleverly set for their entrance and exit. The village around them seemed deserted. The proprietress—her hair knotted straight back, her straight figure clad in a dress of nunnish gray—felt younger than she looked, like an actress tricked out in bifocals and a gray rat, and she described the local turnings as if in all her years on a cliff above the sea she had never before been asked to direct a pair of tourists. There was a grave ceremoniousness to the occasion that chastened the fractious couple. To pay her for her trouble, they bought a copy of the local newspaper and some bags of candy. In Ireland, they had reverted to candy, which they ate in the car—Licorice Allsorts for him, for her chocolate-covered malt balls called Maltezers.
They had got back into the car enhanced by the encounter, the irritating currents between them momentarily quelled. Yet, even so, for all those theatrically precise directions, Allenson must have taken a wrong turning, for they never passed the Gallarus Oratory, which he had wanted to see. It was the Chartres of beehive chapels. In Ireland, the sights were mostly stones. Allenson found himself driving endlessly upward on the north side of the Dingle Peninsula, and needing to traverse the Slieve Mish Mountains to avoid Tralee, and being tail-gated by the Germans on Moll’s Gap, while Vivian had hysterics and he reflected upon the gaps between people, even those consecrated to intimacy.
He had had three wives. He had meant Vivian to see him into the grave, but unexpected resistances in her were stimulating, rather than lulling, his will to live. In his simple and innocent manhood he had taken on a swarming host of sexist resentments—men were incompetent (his driving in foreign lands), men were ridiculous (his desire to see,
faute de mieux
, old Ireland’s lichened gray beehive huts, dolmens, menhirs, and ruined abbeys), men were lethal. Two years ago, out of sheer political superstition, this youthful wife had become furious in Gabriele D’Annunzio’s estate above Lake Garda, all because the world-renowned poet and adventurer had enshrined himself and his thirteen loyal followers in matching sarcophagi, lifted up to the sun on pillars. Men were Fascists, this had led Vivian to realize. She proved to be violently allergic to history, and her silver-haired husband loomed to her as history’s bearer. So he had, for their next trip abroad, suggested Eire, a land whose history was muffled in legend and ignominy. Just its shape on the map next to Great Britain’s spiky upstanding silhouette, suggested the huddled roundness of a docile spouse.
faute de mieux
, old Ireland’s lichened gray beehive huts, dolmens, menhirs, and ruined abbeys), men were lethal. Two years ago, out of sheer political superstition, this youthful wife had become furious in Gabriele D’Annunzio’s estate above Lake Garda, all because the world-renowned poet and adventurer had enshrined himself and his thirteen loyal followers in matching sarcophagi, lifted up to the sun on pillars. Men were Fascists, this had led Vivian to realize. She proved to be violently allergic to history, and her silver-haired husband loomed to her as history’s bearer. So he had, for their next trip abroad, suggested Eire, a land whose history was muffled in legend and ignominy. Just its shape on the map next to Great Britain’s spiky upstanding silhouette, suggested the huddled roundness of a docile spouse.
“You insisted,” he repeated, “and then we got lost anyway, and saw none of the sights. I missed the Gallarus Oratory.”
Vivian brushed his resentful memory away, there by the hotel fire. “The whole countryside is the sight,” she said, “and the wonderful people. Everybody knows that. And all day, with you jerking that poor Japanese compact this way and that like a crazy teenaged hood, I couldn’t enjoy looking out. If I take my eyes off the map for an instant, you get lost. You’re not getting me back into that car tomorrow, I tell you that.”
Itching to give the fire a poke, he gave it to her instead. “Darling, I thought we were going to drive south, to Bantry and Skibbereen. Bantry House in the morning, and Creagh Gardens in the afternoon, with a quick lunch at Ballydehob.” Allenson smiled.
“You’re a monster,” Vivian said cheerfully. “You really would put me through a whole day of you at the wheel on these awful roads? We’re going to
walk
.”
walk
.”
“Walk?”
“George, I talked it over with the man in the office, the assistant manager, while you were putting on a shirt and tie. He couldn’t have been sweeter, and said what the tourists do in Kenmare is they take walks. He gave me a map.”
“A map?” Another whiskey would sink him to the bottom of the sea. But would that be so bad? This woman was a talking nightmare. She had produced a little map, printed by photocopy on green paper, showing a pattern of numbered lines surrounding the phallic thrust of the Kenmare estuary. “I’ve come all this way to take a walk?” But there was no arguing. Vivian was so irrational that, because her predecessor wife had been called Claire, she had refused, planning the trip, to include County Clare, where the good cliffs and primitive churches were, and off whose shore part of the Spanish Armada had wrecked.
Next morning, the devil in him, prompted by the guidebook, could not resist teasing her. “Today’s the day,” he announced, “to drive the Ring of Bera. We can see the Ogham Stone at Ballycrovane, and if there’s time take the cable car to Dursey Island, the only such wonder in this green and wondrous land. The blessed roadway meanders, it says here, through mountainous coastal areas providing panoramic views of both Bantry and Kenmare bays. A famous stone circle there is, and just two miles further, the ruins of Puxley’s mansion! A mere hundred and forty kilometers, the entire ring is claimed to be; that’s eighty-eight miles of purest pleasure, not counting the cable car.”
“You must be out of your gourd,” Vivian said, using one of those youthful slang expressions that she knew he detested. “I’m not getting back into any car with you at the wheel until we head to Shannon Airport. If then.”
Allenson shrugged to hide his hurt. “Well, we could walk downtown to the local circle again. I’m not sure I grasped all the nuances the first time.”
It had been charming, in a way. They had driven up a little cul-desac at the shabbier end of Kenmare and a small girl in a school jumper had been pushed from a house, while her mother and siblings watched from the window, and shyly asked for the fifty-pence admission. Then through a swinging gate and up a muddy lane the couple had walked, past stacks of roof tiles and a ditch brimming with plastic trash, arriving at a small mown plateau where fifteen mismatched stones in a rough circle held their mute pattern. He had paced among them, trying to unearth in his atavistic heart the meaning of these pre-Celtic stones. Sacrifice. This must have been, at certain moments of heavenly alignment, a place of sacrifice, he thought, turning to see Vivian standing at the ring’s center in too vividly blue a raincoat.
“We’re walking,” she agreed with him, “but not back to those awful rocks that got you so excited, I’ll never know why. It’s
stupid
to keep looking at rocks somebody could have arranged yesterday for all we know. There are more of these supposedly prehistoric beehive huts today than there were a hundred years ago, the nice young man in the office was telling me yesterday. He says what sensible people who come to Kenmare do is take long walks.”
stupid
to keep looking at rocks somebody could have arranged yesterday for all we know. There are more of these supposedly prehistoric beehive huts today than there were a hundred years ago, the nice young man in the office was telling me yesterday. He says what sensible people who come to Kenmare do is take long walks.”
“Who is this guy, that he’s become so fucking big in my life suddenly? Why doesn’t
he
take you for the walk, if that’s what’s on his mind?”
he
take you for the walk, if that’s what’s on his mind?”
Did she blush? “George,
really
—he’s young enough to be my son.” This was an awkward assertion, made in the sweep of the moment. She could be the mother of a twenty-one-year-old, if she had been pregnant at nineteen; but in truth she had never borne a child, and when they were first married, and she was in her mid-thirties, she had hoped to have a child by him. But he had ogerishly refused; he had had enough children—a daughter by Jeaneanne, two sons by Claire. Now the possibility had slipped away. He thought of his present wife as racily younger than himself but her fortieth birthday had come and gone, and since the days when they had surreptitiously courted, in the flattering shadows of Claire’s unknowing, Vivian’s face had grown angular and incised with lines of recurrent vexation.
really
—he’s young enough to be my son.” This was an awkward assertion, made in the sweep of the moment. She could be the mother of a twenty-one-year-old, if she had been pregnant at nineteen; but in truth she had never borne a child, and when they were first married, and she was in her mid-thirties, she had hoped to have a child by him. But he had ogerishly refused; he had had enough children—a daughter by Jeaneanne, two sons by Claire. Now the possibility had slipped away. He thought of his present wife as racily younger than himself but her fortieth birthday had come and gone, and since the days when they had surreptitiously courted, in the flattering shadows of Claire’s unknowing, Vivian’s face had grown angular and incised with lines of recurrent vexation.
The young man in the office—a kind of rabbit hole around the corner from the key rack, in which the Irish staff could be heard scuffling and guffawing—was at least twenty-five, and may have been thirty, with children of his own. He was slender, black-eyed, milky-skinned, and impeccably courteous. Yet his courtesy carried a charge, a lilt, of mischief. “Yes, and walking is the thing in these parts—we’re not much for the organized sports that are the custom in the States.”
“We passed some golf courses, driving here,” Allenson said, not really wanting to argue.
“Would you call golf organized?” the assistant manager said quickly. “Not the way I play it, I fear. As we say, it’s an ungrateful way to take a walk.”
“Speaking of walks—” Vivian produced her little green map. “Which of these would you recommend for my husband and me?”
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