The Mermaids Singing Page 21

  When I reached the ferry, it was Eamon’s son who helped me on. I was relieved; he’d just moved home from the mainland and didn’t really know me, so wouldn’t ask questions. I sat on a crate with my back against the damp wood of the cabin. Just before we were scheduled to leave, an American family got on. I recognized them from the hotel: a husband and wife about my mother’s age, and an awkward, moody-looking girl of ten.

  When we pulled away from the quay, Eamon came out of the cabin and sat down beside me. I half expected him to scold me, but he was calmly cutting an apple with his pocketknife, eating each sliver before he cut another.

  “Is it going to see your father, you are?” he said, when the apple was half gone.

  “No,” I said, too quickly. “I’m just doing errands for Clíona.”

  Eamon nodded, licking spatters of apple juice from his mustache. “You’ll want to take the train from Galway,” he said. “If you put a pleasant face on you. those Americans there’ll give you a lift to the station.”

  He stood up then, went over to the couple and said something I couldn’t hear, and the mother smiled at me, nodding in agreement. Eamon walked past my side toward the cabin.

  “Thank you,” I said, suddenly on the verge of tears. Why was this man, whom I’d never said one nice word to, helping me? He winked and handed me the last slice of fruit before disappearing inside. I tossed the apple, which had browned quickly in the air, into the rushing gray water below.

  The American mother came over to me, swaying on the rocky floorboards.

  “I understand you’re an islander,” she said. “We’re visiting from Boston, in the United States.”

  I almost snapped at her, almost told her where I was really from. But, for some reason, I changed my voice, and the music of Clíona came out of my mouth.

  “I am,” I said. “Did you enjoy your holiday?” I was even convincing to myself.

  The mother was awfully interested in me. She asked me stupid questions: Did I go to school? Did I speak Gaelic? Had I ever seen a mermaid? She spoke very loudly, emphasizing her words, and I thought it was because of the sound of the engine and the wind. But when we docked in town, she kept yelling, as though I were deaf, or didn’t speak English. We walked up the main street to their rental car, her husband dragging the suitcase on wheels.

  “Here, I’ll put your bag in the trunk,” he said to me. I had forgotten it was called a trunk—on the island, they called it “the boot.” He stuffed my backpack in with a pile of green plastic tourist bags.

  “I want my Irish girl,” his daughter demanded, and he dug for a minute, then pulled out a boxed doll.

  “I feel like we’ve spent the entire week shopping,” he said to me, and winked. I rolled my eyes, in conspiracy with him, a reaction that came to me automatically. My mother’s boyfriends, Stephen included, used to do that all the time—whisper to me about what they thought were strange feminine habits: excessive shopping, canisters of cotton balls in the bathroom, rolled napkins in silver rings at the dinner table. As if they thought, because I was only a girl and not a woman, that I would find it as foreign as they did. I’d always played along, because it was one thing I could share with them that even my mother couldn’t.

  We climbed in the car; I had to sit in the back with the daughter and another pile of purchases. The girl hadn’t said one word to me yet.

  “Show her your doll, honey,” the mother said, shifting to face us from the passenger seat. The daughter reluctantly turned the plastic-filmed box, displaying a doll with bright red hair, green eyes, and a green velvet dress with a claddagh stitched into the chest. It was strangely familiar, like someone had made a doll version of my mother, or Mary Louise.

  “Her name’s Meghan,” the daughter said. She moved the box down and the doll’s eyes closed, so she looked like she was laid out in a tiny, plastic-covered coffin.

  “Do you leave her in the box so she won’t get ruined?” I said. The daughter smiled, and nodded at me. “I used to do that, as well,” I said in my new accent.

  “What’s your name?” she asked, warming to me.

  “Gráinne,” I said, hearing my mother’s voice.

  “Like the lady in the castle?” the girl said. “The queen pirate?”

  “Aye,” I said. “It’s her I was named for.”

  “What a lovely name,” the mother said. “Are you actually a descendant of that queen?”

  “They say so, yes,” I said, though no one had ever mentioned such a thing to me.

  “How nice to know so much about your family,” the mother said. “I was adopted, and I’ve been told my birth parents came from Ireland. I was hoping I could look up their history, but I haven’t had time this trip. I picked up this pamphlet, though.” She was searching through her purse. “It’s an application for a heritage tracing. You’re lucky, you have all your history around you.”

  Lucky? I felt suddenly guilty, pretending to have an accent, posing as a child from a nuclear, grounded family. These three people were more of a family than I’d ever been a part of.

  “Do they work?” the mother asked me.

  “What?” I said. I was starting to feel carsick, and her voice was fading, like she was backing slowly away.

  “These heritage tracing places. Do they work, or is it a tourist scam?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said. I rolled down my window, exposing my fevered face to the damp, cool air. “My mother’s dead,” I added, in my own voice. No one heard me but the daughter; she clung to her boxed girl and looked at me wide-eyed, waiting to see what evil thing I might do.

  I met a boy on the train. He sat down across from me in my booth, sprawling his skinny arms across the breadth of the table between us.

  “Do you fancy a bit of company?” he said, once he’d settled himself. He had greasy hair pulled into a painful-looking ponytail; his teeth and the delicate inner skin of his lips were brownish—yellow. His eyes, though, like saucers of black ink, could have been mine.

  “Why not,” I said, doing my best to stare level at him.

  He took out a blue pouch and rolled two cigarettes out of twiggy tobacco, offering me one. I inhaled, and the woodsy smoke seemed to seep over my brain at the same time as it filled my lungs.

  He talked, for what seemed like a long while. The smoke was muddling my head, so that I could hear only rhythmic snatches of sound like the break of a wave, and then I went under again. The few words I heard him pronounce seemed to have no reference to each other. I must have talked back. Must have invited him over to my side of the booth, must have allowed the bonfire taste of his tongue to invade my mouth. It could have been me that eased open his fly, though I was only conscious of sliding my fingers into the gap.

  “Jesus!” he yelped, and pulled back. He was pressing my blue-tinged fingers in his palms. “I thought you’d slapped a fish in there,” he said. “You’ve the coldest hands on earth.”

  “That’s because I’m dead,” I heard a voice say. His smile faltered.

  “What?” he said, dropping my hands. He slid out of the booth, zipping up his fly. There was an older couple at the other end of the car, looking at me. Slut, their silent voices said.

  “You’re one fucked-up girl,” the boy said to me. I wondered, but didn’t ask, what his problem was. He strutted away down the aisle and forced open the door that led to the dining car, letting it slam shut behind him.

  He’d left his pouch of tobacco and papers. For the rest of the journey I rolled loose, misshapen cigarettes, inhaled red embers, and pressed my cold fingers against my fiery forehead.

  In Dublin, I walked down streets crowded with people who moved like Bostonians, swiftly and expertly weaving their way. At the Irish Times office, a woman called four different extensions to find out who the hell Seamus O’Flaherty was.

  “Sorry, dear, it’s me first day,” she whispered, her hand over the mouthpiece.

  I sat down on a padded stool, a ringing in my ears.

  “Nope, he
’s not in today,” the woman finally said. “He’s on assignment, in Belfast.”

  “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.

  CHAPTER 26

  Grace

  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.