The Mermaids Singing (13 page)

“I couldn't stop it,” she said. “It's not my fault.”

“Are you after miscarrying?” I said. “Were you pregnant?” She only cried, but it was obvious enough. “Hush, now, you'll be all right, Grace. Stop your crying.”

The blood had seeped into the lino cracks in the bathroom. I took the soiled towels from her, thinking it was a wonder she was still standing, after losing so much blood.

“Are you dizzy?” I said. She was ghost-white, and her eyes wouldn't focus on me. I wanted to shake her. Why hadn't she come to me? I was her mother, yet she'd never treated me as anything but a nuisance, a stranger. Like a maid.

I gave her a sanitary towel and made her drink some tea. She was still bleeding, and my mind kept going back to the day she was born, and all I'd lost with her: the blood, my womb, and the life I'd planned for myself.

I'd Marcus wake up Eamon, the ferry owner, so we could take
Grace to the hospital. I had her wear my wedding ring, told the doctor she was married. A mistake, I know now; I didn't mean her to think I was ashamed of her. After all, hadn't I gotten myself in the same trouble once? But I was worried they'd report her to child services, and take her away from me otherwise. As it was, the doctor just thought we were ignorant islanders, letting our daughter marry so young. He fixed her up though, told us there was no reason she couldn't try again in the future. A relief of sorts, but not as he thought it. Marcus didn't say much through the whole thing, though I suppose he had moments of doubt about my ability to raise children. I was having them myself. What sort of mother was I, with this secretive, promiscuous daughter who seemed on a path to destroying herself? Dear God, I prayed at the time, why must she repeat all I have done to shame myself? I wanted to talk to her, comfort her, but she wouldn't even look at me.

Tell me what to do for you, I would have said, had she any interest in listening. It was physical, this pain I felt for her, like it was myself who had miscarried. I should have done something, everything, differently. I hadn't loved her until too late, hadn't taken her home to Ireland until she didn't know it to look at it. Her pain was my doing and I could feel it sure as she did. Worst of all, she'd never believe me to tell it.

I brought her home and tried to start again. But she locked me out and I'd no clue how to break in. She failed her first term at school, got dropped back a year, and failed that as well. She was in such a bad way that Marcus and I talked of sending her to hospital. She quit school and rarely left the house, except for days when she wandered the island and we found her sleeping in a cove, her head pillowed in seaweed. She lost weight rapidly, two stone in less than a year. Like a corpse, she was, those wet green eyes in the white bone of her face. I didn't know what to do for her; she was talked up all over the island, and Marcus's children suffered for it. Mary Louise was always the one to fight the gossip. No one would talk
shite about her family, step or otherwise. She was so like Grace once was, it saddened me.

It was Seamus O'Flaherty saved Grace, saved us all, he did. He was twenty-five years of age then, just home with his Da after finishing his graduate studies at university in Dublin. He called to our house, being a friend to Marcus and remembering me from his wee days. He'd grown into a fine man, kind and smart and funny as his father. He was fishing in the days then and writing articles for the Galway newspapers in his spare time. I told him as much as was appropriate about Grace and asked him as a favor would he come see her occasionally.

Grace, thank God, took to him. He walked the island with her in the evenings, and she gained a stone, got the color back in her face. She was still a bit ghostlike in her manner, but one day I even heard her laugh as they came in the front door. That was a great day, the sweetest sound I'd heard in a year. Seamus started tutoring her in her subjects so she could return to school.

I don't mind what she said later, Grace fancied that man more than she ever had Michael. And if it wasn't for Seamus, I still believe, I would have lost her. Suicide, though it's not discussed, is not unheard of on our little island.

Though I lost Grace eventually, sure I did. She made herself dead to me. God help me, I'd no idea how to be that girl's mother. I look at Gráinne now and think Grace got it right. Sure, she lied to the girl, but Gráinne knew she was loved in spite of it. She'll always know. They were friends as well as relations, those two. More than I can say about my mother and myself. And Grace and I, though no one intended it, ended up the worst of enemies.

I can't walk this island at night, not once, without seeing my daughter looming up ahead, out of my reach. I couldn't give Grace a father or a home or even the assurance that I loved her. But Gráinne, please God, can get all of it. Everything I've been saving and hoarding like a miserly woman in my heart, all these long years.

I had to wait until my grandmother and Marcus were asleep, until I hadn't heard a sound for over an hour, so by the time I got down to the telephone it was almost midnight. I picked up the receiver before I realized I didn't know how to dial home from so far away. I tried zero but no operator came on. There was a phone book in the drawer of the end table, and I found out in the blue section that I needed to dial the country code first. The phone rang seven times before Stephen picked up. I imagined it ringing in the cottage even though I'd dialed our apartment.

“It's me,” I said to Stephen's tired hello. I made my voice as low as I could get it without whispering. “It's Gráinne.”

There was a click and a pause, and for a second I thought he'd hung up.

“Gráinne,” he said, then he sighed. “What's wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said. I'd thought he'd sound happy to hear from me. I'd imagined snuggling the phone as he whispered:
I miss you, Gráinne. So much more than I thought I would
.

“There's an echo,” he said next. “Can you hear that?”

“An echo?” I said, looking quickly around the dark room. “No.”

“I can hear everything you say twice,” Stephen said. “It's annoying. How are you?”

“I'm fine,” I said.

“Fine, fine.” He giggled. Giggling wasn't like him. “A boy called here for you tonight. He sounded really disappointed when I told him you'd moved to Ireland.”

“I didn't
move
,” I snapped. Another click, another pause.

“Is something the matter?” he said. “Did you meet your father?”

“Not exactly,” I said. I moved the receiver away from my mouth, so he wouldn't hear me trying not to cry.

“Oh, Gráinne,” he said softly, and that started the tears plopping down my nose. “What happened?”

“I want to come home,” I said.
Home-home
, was what he must have heard, the echo sounding twice as desperate as my voice.

“You've only been gone for two days,” he said.

“I don't care, I want to come home.”

“What do you want me to do?” he said.

Please don't sound so exasperated, I thought. “Let me,” I said. “Let me come stay at home until I figure out what to do.”

“Gráinne,” he sighed. “You can't stay here. I'm moving.”

“Moving?” I squeaked.

He explained something about a teaching job and how hard it was being in the apartment, but I was hardly listening. I was thinking of the heat that had come from his mouth, of how I'd pulled it in toward me, and almost, almost captured him.

“I think you're better off with your family,” he said.

“Why did you kiss me, then?” I said before I could stop myself.
“If you don't even want me there, why did you kiss me?” It felt dangerous, saying that out loud.

“Gráinne,” he said firmly, in the voice of an adult scolding a child. “I never kissed you.”

“Liar,” I whispered.

“It was an accident,” he said. “We were both upset. I can't say I know how you feel because I don't—you've just lost your mother. But I do know that I'm not what you need. Are you listening, Gráinne? I can't be what you need.”

Suddenly, I saw how he must see me. Heard my voice through his ears. A naive girl with a crush on him. A nuisance. An echo of my mother but nothing near her reality. I saw myself standing by that bonfire, saw how I must have looked like I'd been waiting for him. When he wasn't what I'd been waiting for at all.

“This is going to cost your grandmother a fortune,” Stephen said.

I nodded, pretending to be agreeable, as though he could see me.

“Gráinne?” he said. “I'll write to you when I get settled, okay?”

I drew a breath, and spoke loudly, clearly, so my voice would not be lost in the echo.

“No, you won't,” I said, and hung up. For a while I stared at the phone in the dark. It looked odd, foreign; I'd heard it ringing earlier that day in short, doubled sounds rather than long single rings. They were desperate, impatient sounds that reminded me, in their urgency, of the phone I hadn't wanted to answer.

 

“Gráinne,” Clíona said, “if you don't eat something, you'll be getting sick.”

I was at the breakfast table with her again. I couldn't stand the thought that I'd be stuck at this same table for years.

“I don't care,” I said. I wanted to get sick. So sick they'd all be sorry: Stephen, my father, all of them.

“Will you have juice, at least?” she said. I took a sip of the orange
juice to shut her up. I pushed back my chair and tried to leave the kitchen.

“Where do you think you're going?” she said.

“For a walk,” I snapped. “Is that allowed?”

“A walk?” Clíona laughed. “It's pissing rain out there.” I hadn't noticed until she said it.

“Mary Louise could use some help at the hotel,” Clíona said. “If you've a lack of things to do.”

I shrugged. Anything was better than staying in that house. Clíona watched me like I was a prisoner, like at any moment I might bolt and she would have to wrestle me down. She guarded me, and my father wouldn't even come to glimpse at me.

“What happened,” I said to her. “What happened between my parents that my Dad doesn't even want to meet me?”

She handed me a rain slicker. “Don't think so much,” she said. “Your father will come around. If it's meant to be, it's meant to be and there's no use in agonizing over the why of it all.”

“That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard,” I said.

She clenched her jaw and tried to smile at me.

“Get going now,” she said. “I told Mary Louise you'd call over to her.”

For an hour I helped Mary Louise change the beds in the upstairs rooms. It was more like someone's house than a hotel: the furniture was creaky and the sheets weren't germless white hotel sheets, but floral-patterned and slightly worn. In every bedroom there was a picture of Jesus, holding his hands up to his immense, exposed heart, which was glowing and strangled with thorns. The heart looked like a lumpy jellyfish caught up in seaweed.

Mary Louise didn't say much at first, but she was watching me. Not with the prison-warden expression of my grandmother; Mary Louise just looked at me like she was curious.

“Why are you staring at me?” I said, finally. “I bet you think I look like my father.”

She smiled. “Heard a lot of that, have you?” she said. “Actually,
you put me in mind of your mother. You've Seamus's coloring, but your Mum's there in the way you carry yourself.”

No one had ever told me that. Stephen almost told me once, but he'd stopped himself.

“Were you friends with my mother?” I said. Mary Louise didn't seem like her type, at least on the outside. She looked like a housewife plumping those pillows. My mother had never plumped a pillow in her life.

“Well, sisters more than friends,” Mary Louise said. “I was fond of your Mum, but she was never really happy here and not open to friendship, you know that sort of way. I think it was hard for her, being dumped into our family so suddenly.” She snapped the clean sheet open and motioned for me to hold the other end. “She must have felt somewhat the way you feel now.”

I didn't answer that. I didn't want this woman's sympathy.

“What about my father?” I said. “Was she happy with my father?” Mary Louise smiled and shook her head, like she'd just had a vivid flash of my parents together. I was jealous that she could do that.

“I've never seen any two people so in love as your Mum and Da,” she said. “It looked almost desperate. It was plain as day to everyone but themselves how much they fancied each other.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” I said. That didn't sound like my mother. She'd always known when a man liked her and exactly how much.

“Well I myself have never been so in love that it scared me,” Mary Louise said. “Not that I don't love my husband—I do. But I'm not the sort who feels desperate love—you know? That's what your mother and Seamus had. I think they were both so scared of how much they loved each other that they couldn't see clearly enough to know it was reciprocated. I used to watch them watching each other. It was plain on their faces—love and not a little bit of fear. It's not the sort of love that makes you comfortable.”

Mary Louise stuffed a comforter into a clean flannel cover. She
reminded me of my mother—not what she talked about, but the way she said it. No hedging.

“You know,” I said, “everyone keeps telling me what a great guy my father is. But my mother left him and I'll bet she had a reason. Besides, he doesn't even want to see me.”

Mary Louise buttoned the comforter in swiftly and smoothed it across the bed. “The reasons people have for leaving other people are more complicated than whether or not they love them,” she said. “I don't think there's anyone but your Mum who understands it completely, and we can't ask her now. And your Da wants to see you, he does. I've known him my whole life, and believe me, he wants to see you more than anything in this world.”

“What's he waiting for then?” I said. “If he wanted to see me, he'd be here.” I heard an echo in my head:
If she wanted to see me she'd have left the door open
.

“Like I said, Gráinne. Love and fear are not comfortable bed-fellows.” She tossed me the bundle of dirty sheets and winked.

This was how I used to feel with my mother, I thought. Like I could ask any question and get an honest answer. Now it was my mother I needed answers about.

Mary Louise was looking out the window toward the road that led up behind the hotel.

“That's your Da's house there,” she said, pointing to a white cottage with red window ledges. “That's where the three of you lived. We don't lock our doors on this island.”

She didn't say any more, just led me along to the next bedroom.

 

I walked up around the back of the hill, so Clíona wouldn't see me on the road.

My father's house was a small cottage, one-story like the rest on the island, fenced in with tree limbs connected by barbed wire. In the yard there were a few chickens and a rooster who eyed me suspiciously. I turned the door knob with both hands so it opened with a quiet snap.

Once inside, I couldn't see beyond the white echoes of sun in my eyeballs. There was an odor like my grandmother's house: turf, coal, and yeast, and underneath that the man-smell, socks, shaving lotion, and salty thick skin, which I recognized from home.

The white spots in my eyes dissolved and I looked around the room. It was a living room and kitchen combined, with a fireplace at one end underneath a picture of Jesus and his jellyfish heart. There were books everywhere, stacked in ladder piles next to the couch and on the coffee table. On the left wall two open doors revealed a bathroom and a small room which was dominated by a bed heavy with quilts and wool blankets. My father's room. Once my mother and father's room. They must have made love in that bed, with abandon at first, then quietly when I was a baby sleeping nearby.

Looking at that bed, I remembered my mother's muffled, musical moans, which I had listened for, through many men and years, late at night. By the time it was Stephen who pulled those sounds from her, I was imagining myself pressed beneath him, and those magic, uncontrollable noises in my own throat.

On the wall with the fireplace there was another door, which I opened slowly, half-expecting to see someone—my father, my mother, myself—on the other side.

It clearly had been my room. Under the window was a toddler-sized bed with detachable safety rails and a quilt with bright patchwork fish swimming along the edges. The center patch was a mermaid pieced together in various shades of blue and green. She had no facial features, just a pearly-white satin disk beneath her sea-green hair. There was an old changing table painted in a chipping white and a bin of toys: Legos, wool-stitched dolls, storybooks, and a collection of shells and sea glass.

I didn't remember any of these things and, for an instant, doubted my assumption that it was my room. Maybe my father had a new child that no one had told me about. But the toys were arranged too neatly, there were no diapers on the changing table
shelves, and when I pulled back the quilt the sheets underneath smelled stale.

The other half of the room was an office. There was a desk wedged against the wall, with a computer and more books, plus typed pages fanned across so the desktop was barely visible. Newspaper clippings and photographs were pasted on the wall all the way up to the ceiling, and I walked closer so I could read them. The articles were all by my father and some were very old, the paper jaundiced and wrinkled. Interviews with celebrities I didn't recognize and politicians I'd never heard of. A story about a missing teenage girl, in a place called Wicklow, who had last been seen hitching her way home from work. A series of interviews with hunger strikers in a prison in Northern Ireland. I paused on this one. I couldn't understand all the references, but they were IRA members—I'd heard about those—who wanted to be treated differently because they were political prisoners instead of just plain criminals. The article was from 1981, a year after I was born. Some of the men died after starving themselves for months, waiting for a recognition that never came. I wondered if they had enjoyed their hunger, if they had felt like they were accomplishing something, if they had imagined their stomachs consuming their bodies and their memories from the inside out. I wondered if they had really wanted to die.

Along the right edge of the group of articles was a vertical line of photos—some of me as a baby and some of my mother looking like she was trying not to smile but couldn't help herself. In the lowermost corner there was an oversized black-and-white of a young girl in a sandbox. She was playing with a tea set, pouring pretend tea into a miniature cup and laughing, half her face hidden by dark curls. It took me a minute to realize it was me. But it couldn't be; this girl was at least four or five. How could my father have a picture of me two years after we'd left him? Unless my mother had sent it.