The Mermaids Singing (22 page)

“Still?” I said. Belfast was where those starving prisoners were, in the article he wrote when I was a baby.

“They keep the journalists busy in the North,” the woman said. She squinted at me. “Are you all right, pet?”

“When's he coming back?” I said, standing up. I had to grab the corner of her desk, I was so dizzy.

“He's due back tomorrow,” she said. “Do you want to ring someone?”

I walked out of the lobby without answering her. There wasn't anyone for me to call.

Out on the street it had begun to rain. I stood for a moment, then leaned against the side of the building, sliding down until I was sitting, clutching my knees. I couldn't go anywhere else, or ask any more questions I will sit here, I thought, and wait. I tried to remember the poems I had once taped on my wall, but all that came to me were the words from the funeral. I could hear phones ringing hysterically inside the lobby. I put my forehead in the crook of my arm and closed my eyes on the sparks that were taking over my vision.

 

I must have fallen asleep, because when I felt the hand on my shoulder, I looked up and it was nighttime. Liam was leaning over me, raindrops smearing his worried face.

“Gráinne,” he said, helping me stand up, “are you all right? Why are you sitting here in the rain?”

“I'm waiting for my father,” I said. My voice sounded odd, though I had stopped using Clíona's accent.

“When's he due back?” Liam said.

“Tomorrow.” I tried to clear my vision by pressing my thumbs against my eyelids. “How did you get here?” I said.

“I hitched.” Liam smiled. He looked tired; I recognized the recent death inked below his eyes—I'd seen it on Stephen's face when I'd moved in to kiss him. I shrugged Liam's arm off my own.

“I don't need the whole stinking island following me,” I said. I believe I was slurring. Liam pushed my hair off my forehead, letting loose rivulets of water at my temples.

“Always have to be the tough one, don't you, Queen Grá?” he whispered. He was looking at my mouth and for a second I thought he was going to kiss me. I wasn't prepared for how my knees turned watery. But before I could adjust, he pulled me along, so we were walking in the direction of the rain.

“We'll have to find accommodation,” he said. “You'll be dosed if you don't get out of those wet things.”

He brought me to a damp-smelling bed-and-breakfast above a fish-and-chips shop. The lady who showed us the dingy room looked at me with disapproval. Once she'd left us alone, Liam made me change out of my clothes, turning his face away and handing me his flannel shirt. I could barely manage the buttons; my fingertips had no feeling left in them.

He tucked me under the blankets of one of the twin beds and turned out the light. My pillow smelled faintly of vinegar. I watched his shadowy form as he removed his shoes and jeans and slipped under the covers of the bed beside me. He lit a cigarette, briefly illuminating his ivory cheeks. I watched the burning coil move from his mouth to the ashtray and back again.

“Liam?” I whispered.

“Yeah?” he said. The darkness of the room was so heavy, I imagined he could hear my thoughts.

“Thanks for coming after me,” I said. It wasn't what I'd meant to say, but Liam, as though he didn't know this, answered me anyway.

“I needed to get off the island for a while,” he said. “I couldn't breathe there. It's been like the plague or something, the last few days.”

I knew what he meant. Since Owen drowned, the islanders hadn't only been sad, they'd been sick. Despite their laughter, they didn't just pay their respects and go home, but carried death around like a virus.

“I was just thinking how strange it is,” Liam said. “I grew up being told my father might drown every time he went off to sea. Islanders drown every year, sometimes a whole family of men at once. Da always said a prayer at dinner before he left, asking God to bring him home safely. So I should have expected it, you know? But I never really believed it could happen to him.” Liam wiped his nose with the edge of the sheet.

“You were lucky in a way,” he added. “Your mum was sick first, so you had time to say good-bye.”

When he said that, my ears filled again, and the sounds of the room slowed and rose in volume, so it was like I was listening to the world from under the sea. The pillow beneath my cheek was cold and soaked with salty water.

“Liam?” I said, my own thick voice echoing in my ears. “Do you ever feel like you're drowning? You can't reach the surface and you're filling up so quickly with water that you know soon there won't be room for anything else? But you're not in the water.” I gasped, swallowing the smoky air. Was it possible to forget how to breathe? I wanted to ask him. Was that how my mother and his father finally died? “You're drowning,” I whispered, “but you're not in the water at all.”

I stopped talking when Liam pulled back my covers and crawled into bed beside me. He pressed his body full-length against mine, and I could feel him hard against my hipbone. I took his hand, moved it up to my breast, automatically surrendering myself to what might happen. But he pulled his hand away. He crawled over me and lay so my back was to him, holding my hands still against my stomach.

“Don't, Gráinne,” he whispered, but he did not move away. I stopped thrashing and let the warmth of his body pour into mine. “You're all right,” he said, over and over in the darkness, and I wanted more than anything to believe him. I did not sleep, but only lay there, wrapped and motionless within him, tracing the rhythm of his breath as it parted, then smoothed again, the delicate hairs above my ear.

 

In the morning, as we walked back to
The Irish Times
building, I watched the rush hour mob of professional people. As in Boston, the crowds were a complicated choreography of briefcases, clicking shoe heels, and blank, unwelcoming faces. I searched for my father in the lineup of suited men. Was that what he would look like—
like every father of every friend I'd ever had—polished, secretive, and distracted?

Then I caught Liam staring at me.

“When was the last time you ate something?” he said.

“Why?” I said. I was concentrating on walking in a straight line.

“You look funny,” he said. I wiped the sweat from my upper lip.

“I feel fine,” I said. Liam shook his head and, taking my hand, pulled me across the street and into a café.

“Sit down here,” he said. “You can watch out that window for Seamus. I'm getting you a sandwich.” The maroon-painted room was thick with smoke, and everything was swaying a bit besides, but I managed to focus my eyes on the doorway where my father would appear. I imagined him descending from a double-deck bus like it was a ship, his face sea-burned, his clothing smelling of wood-smoke and fish. Like Liam's father must have been—before he was carried in a coffin—coming home from a trip at sea.

Liam came back with two ham-and-cheese toasties and tea. “Eat that,” he said, and he wouldn't look away, so I took a bite and watched the door.

It seemed like I was chewing forever, and the hunk of sandwich wasn't breaking down at all. I swallowed, and the food pushed like clay down to my stomach. My face was burning, and my scalp was fiercely itchy.

“Excuse me,” I said, and I stumbled to the ladies' room. I threw up, the remains of the sandwich plopping into the toilet bowl, and then I heaved for a few minutes, terrified that the reflex wouldn't stop, that I would never be able to breathe again. When my stomach stopped lurching, I splashed my face at the dirty sink and dried my cheeks with rough paper towel. I walked out to Liam, weaving with difficulty through the maze of tables with their expectant place settings.

“I don't see him yet,” Liam said. “Jesus,” he added, standing up and peering at me. “You're really pale. Are you sick?” I told him I
was going out for air, trying to move my lips as little as possible. I opened the café door and immersed myself in cold wind. A calm came over me, in which I told myself I was perfectly fine. I turned to go back inside, and the sidewalk rushed at me like a wave, and then I was drowning in blackness.

 

“Wake up, Gráinne,” Liam was saying. I wanted to tell him to be quiet, because his shrill tone was hurting my head. “Wake up!” I opened my eyes, and saw not Liam, but another man leaning over me. It was my father, looking like a pirate, his black and silver curls tied at the nape of his neck, and a leather strap spread from one shoulder to under his other arm. I thought for an instant it held a sword, but saw it was attached to a zoom-lens camera. There were lines at the edges of his eyes when he smiled; I hadn't expected that.

He was lifting me up. He did it effortlessly, and for a moment I thought it was a dream, or a memory, of myself at three years old.

“Hello, little one,” my father said, his voice like a low, moany song, and the last thing I thought, before I fell back into darkness, was that his body was unnaturally warm.

Gráinne was three and a half by the time Grace found a man to take her off the island. Max was a rich American tourist, traveling around Europe on his yacht, who descended on Inis Murúch like a loud obnoxious king, waving fifty-pound notes and buying rounds for the whole pub. The islanders groaned with contempt for him when he wasn't listening, but accepted his pints with blank, friendly grins.

He locked his eyes on Grace the first time he saw her. She was careful not to flirt with him too openly in the pub, but pretended to meet him by chance on his walks in the uninhabited portions of the island. He reminded her of Mr. Willoughby with an American accent: a man used to getting what he wanted if he paid enough. She suspected he'd inherited his money, because he never spoke of work. She had no feelings for him besides the self-satisfaction his attention aroused in her. She wanted him for his boat and his money,
which she figured would be easy enough to get. It felt wonderful to have a goal again, so simple and unobstructed.

For the last year, with a gradual laying of bricks—the silent, stubborn bricks of Seamus and the sharp weapon-bricks of Grace—a wall had grown between the two of them, a wall that sometimes shocked them, as each was convinced that the other had built it alone. Grace fought Seamus, screaming vicious insults and throwing pottery, but he refused to fight back. He watched her calmly until she exhausted herself and left the house when she started to cry. He spent many long nights in the pub, but when he came home he was never drunk. She would have preferred him drunk; she could have been condescending then, could have beaten him down. But he slipped into their bed with bright and focused eyes, and she gave in once his heat reached her. They bruised each other making love, woke without speaking of their sore hips and swollen, bitter mouths. They glided by one another like blind ghosts during the day, focusing their attention on Gráinne, taking turns with her as though they were already separate, single parents. When Seamus was out of her sight, Grace wondered why she'd ever agreed to marry him. She hated herself for the way she lost her grip in that bed and laid her love open for him to see like a gaping wound. She knew she needed to get away, far enough so the gravity of his body wouldn't pull her back.

One afternoon while Seamus was fishing with Owen, Grace swam through the harbor to Max's boat, where he was waiting. She fucked him on a hard bed in his private cabin. It was like lying underneath a dead man compared to Seamus; Max's body was sticky-cold and his stomach had the texture of a jellyfish. They smoked, naked above the bedclothes, and Grace painted him a portrait of an abusive, ignorant Seamus, to get Max to shake his head and grumble that she deserved more. He actually thought it was his own idea when they decided that Grace would go on to Spain with him. They could bring the baby as well, Max said, there was room enough. Grace left the boat after dark, and floated through the water to the
hotel. She was excited as she pulled on her clothes and walked in to pick up Gráinne, like a prisoner who had finally sawed through the first bar of her cell.

In the hotel pub, there was a party going for her stepbrothers Conor and Marc Jr., who were turning seventeen and were headed for England in a week. Clíona was laughing loudly between the twins, who were now a head taller than she. She reached up to straighten their fair hair, gazing with pride—as though, Grace thought with disgust, they were her own sons. “Sure, she can send them out of Ireland with her blessing,” Grace mumbled under her breath, “because they're men, and island men are spoon-fed everything they want.”

Gráinne was playing under the bar stools with Liam. Someone had given them chocolate cookies, and Gráinne was smeared with brown frosting.

“Will you have a pint, Grace?” Marcus said cheerfully, pulling the Guinness tap with its squeal and hiss of air. He looked delighted, his blue eyes drinking in the family he believed was sound.

“I won't, Marcus,” Grace said. “Come on, sweetie,” she said to Gráinne. She tried to wipe the chocolate from the girl's face, but the napkin shredded into lint that stuck to her little chin like feathers to tar.

“Ah, come on now,” Marcus said. “One drink won't kill you.” He put the half-poured stout on the grate to settle, the tan cloud showering like fog in the glass.

“I said I don't want it,” Grace snapped, and Marcus's face fell. He shrugged, shaking his head, and moved down the bar to Clíona and the twins. He's never liked me, Grace thought. I just came in the package with his mail-order bride. She was meanly satisfied that after tomorrow his face, and all the faces that looked like his, would never peer at her again.

That night, Grace crawled under her daughter's covers and whispered that they were going on an adventure.

“What's adventure?” Gráinne said. Her little voice was like an islander's, rising and falling in a watery tune.

“An adventure means you and I leaving this island and traveling to exciting places.”

“Like my uncles?” Gráinne said.

“They're only going to England,” Grace said. “Wouldn't you like to see the world?”

“Ah, sure,” Gráinne said. Lately, she'd been imitating Clíona's expressions with frightening accuracy. “Will Dada come, as well?”

“Not right away,” Grace said. “But who's your best friend in the universe?”

“Mummy,” Gráinne said, yawning.

“And you're Mommy's. Why do we need anyone else?” Gráinne fell asleep before she could answer, her warm wet breath staining Grace's neck.

 

In her half sleep at dawn, Grace felt Seamus get out of their bed, heard him showering and knocking around the kitchen. She lay like a child on Christmas morning, longing to spring out of bed but frightened it wasn't time yet. She pulled the covers up over her nose; once Seamus left, the duvet and pillows always turned chilly. She waited for him to come kiss her good-bye, but heard the crinkling of his jacket and the slip of a metal key off the hook.

“Seamus?” she called out in a weak, worried voice. He came into the curtained bedroom with his hat on, his camera bag pinching his shoulder. It was too dark to see the expression on his face.

“Weren't you going to say good-bye?” she said. He was going to Belfast again; when he came back, he would find her gone.

Seamus didn't say anything, and her excitement went cold; she suddenly felt trapped again, like a paralyzed invalid in the bed. He stepped up to her quickly, his shadow rushing down, and kissed her so deeply she felt her insides crack like silvery slivers of coal cleaved by heat. Then he was gone, and though he hadn't spoken, the room fell into silence. Why, when she was the one who was leaving, did
she feel abandoned? She kicked off the blankets and slapped her feet on the damp carpet, trying to concentrate her tricky mind on what she needed to take with her.

 

Grace's plan was to leave late that night, when no one would be around to stop her. At dinnertime, when she had everything packed and repacked, Mary Louise stopped by with Liam. Grace was annoyed.

“Can't you come back tomorrow?” Grace said. “Gráinne's not feeling well and I want to put her to bed early.”

“She looks well enough,” Mary Louise said, watching Gráinne grab Liam's hand and run off to her bedroom. Grace swallowed her fury.

“I just wanted to bring the boy over to say good-bye,” Mary Louise said. Grace slammed the door, but Mary Louise had already slithered in.

“How did you know?” Grace said. “Is your life so pathetically boring that you need to spy on me?”

“Ah, Grace, don't be angry,” Mary Louise said. “I saw the signs. I'm not so dim as you think.”

“Did you tell anyone?” Grace said.

“No, and why would I? No one can stop you when you fix your mind on a thing.”

“I guess you think I'm a bitch for abandoning my husband,” Grace said, mimicking what she thought of as Mary Louise's whiny tone.

“Not so,” Mary Louise said. She was looking at the pictures on the sitting room wall: Seamus's parents' wedding next to his own. “That's just your way,” she said. “You're not one to settle; you fancy yourself in prison if you're obliged to anyone else.” Mary Louise turned to look at her. “It's your mother you take after.”

Grace laughed meanly. “I'm nothing like my mother,” she said. “She's even more settled than you are.”

“You didn't know her years ago,” Mary Louise said.

“Yeah? Neither did you.”

“Aye, but I heard stories.” Mary Louise smiled. “And I can see it in her still. There's the same restlessness there; she's made different decisions is all.”

Grace shook her head and told Mary Louise to leave. Who did she think she was, saying she understood Grace or her mother? Mary Louise called to Liam that it was time to go, and Liam and Gráinne came to the door, holding hands and whining that they wanted to play for a few more minutes.

“Sure, I'll miss you Grace,” Mary Louise whispered. “Though I know you won't say the same about me.” Grace wanted to ask her: Why have you always been so stupidly nice to me, when it's obvious I hate you? But she knew what the woman's naive answer would be: You're my sister. Grace watched them walk down the path and closed the door with a satisfied bang.

 

When Grace arrived at the quay at midnight, Clíona was waiting grimly by the yacht.

“Jesus Christ,” Grace said. “What do
you
want?” All her plans for a secretive escape were being twisted into good-byes. Clíona picked Gráinne up out of the stroller, and they went through their silly little routine: a hug, a kiss, and a squeeze, and at the squeeze part they both squealed and crushed each other. Grace looked on with disgust. If she traced back over her whole life, she could not remember her mother ever touching her, except to smack her in anger.

“What did you do now?” Grace said. “Bribe Max? Murder the captain? Are you going to lock me up in the church until I promise to be a good girl?”

“No, Grace,” Clíona sighed, putting Gráinne down, “I'm through fighting you.” Max came up the steps, looking furtive and guilty, and loaded Grace's bags and the stroller onto the deck.

“So why are you here, Mother?” Grace said. Clíona looked at her with the same hard, expressionless gaze.

“Don't be thinking Seamus will come after you,” she said. “He's too much pride.”

“I'm not doing this so Seamus, or any of you, will come after me,” Grace said, though the same jolt of fear she'd felt with Seamus that morning hit her with Clíona's words. He
will
come after me, she thought. And everything will be different.

“Spare me the lecture,” Grace said. “I already got one from Mary Louise. What, does the whole island know I'm going? I'm surprised they're not all here, picketing.”

“Sure, they all knew you'd leave someday,” Clíona said. “It's plain to anyone you hate it here. Haven't you been wandering around with that same sulky face these five years?”

“I don't sulk,” Grace said.

“You do, sure, always have. No one could ever make you happy, except that wee one.” Gráinne was looking at them with a worried expression that made her babyish face look old. “I hope you can make yourself happy,” Clíona said. “That's all I came to say.”

“No, it isn't,” Grace said. “As usual, Mother, you came here to try to ruin things for me.”

Her mother backed away, leaving the entrance clear to the boat.

“I don't suppose you'll write and tell us where you are,” Clíona said.

“No.”

“Ah, no,” Clíona echoed softly. For a moment she looked thin-shouldered and old, but she straightened her posture and did up the top snap of her rain jacket.

“Good-bye so,” she said lightly. “I wouldn't stay with your man there too long,” she said, gesturing toward Max, who was waiting with a melodramatic expression. “He looks a bit feckless, that one.” She turned around before Grace could answer, and walked gracefully up the pier, her jacket flaps fluttering in the wind.

“Are we going or what?” Max said, and Grace, closing her eyes against her mother's iron figure, handed Gráinne over the wooden rails.

As the yacht rounded the harbor entrance by Granuaile's castle, the turrets glinting silver under the full moon, Max poured Grace a glass of wine and toasted her escape.

“I thought I'd have to wrestle with that bitch on the dock,” Max joked. Grace didn't answer. She was looking at the castle walls, imagining a stone-finned woman, and Seamus's light hand. She saw herself as a little girl, laying a hopeful place at the kitchen table.

“You sure you want to do this?” Max said.

Grace snapped to attention, smiling sexily. “Of course,” she said, kissing him.

He gave a satisfied grunt and put his hand on her ass. “Jesus!” he yelled, and Grace almost giggled until she saw he was looking behind her.

She turned and saw Gráinne, balanced on the back rails, leaning precariously over the rushing water.

“Move back, baby,” Grace yelled, running toward her, but Gráinne let out a musical laugh and toppled overboard.

“Oh shit!” Max yelled. “Stop the fucking boat, the kid's fallen off.” He climbed the slippery ladder to the navigation deck.

Before they could even turn on the searchlights, Grace was in the water, gliding below the surface, her arms strained and blindly groping in the cold sea. She grabbed hold of a little body and pulled it up, keeping Gráinne's head up as she paddled back to the boat. The captain lifted Gráinne, and Max dragged Grace on deck with a wet plop.

“Is she breathing?” Grace cried, pushing Max away. Gráinne started coughing, and Grace wrapped her with shaking hands in the deck blanket.

“Should we go back?” the captain said.

Max looked unsure. “No,” he said. “She's all right, isn't she Grace?”