The Mermaids Singing Read online

  My father was a fisherman like all the island men. My mother was with child almost constantly from the time she was sixteen until she was thirty. She bore nine children, with a miscarriage between each two. We were neither a large family for our island, nor a small one.

  When I was thirteen years my mother got the cancer. It killed her quickly. (It was probably the same cancer, once removed, that killed my daughter. I myself have always been healthy.) I did not mourn my mother deeply. I’d loved her, be sure, but she was a harsh woman, an unreachable woman, and I did not know her well. She was born in the North and met my father on a holiday in Galway. She was an outsider on our island and she had a habit of treating her children with the same suspicion the locals had for her. My brothers, sisters, and I obeyed our mother but adored our father.

  Da was the only one who seemed to suffer by her passing, and after that I always believed that he missed a younger version of my mother, that perhaps she’d once been lighthearted and lovable. He was a great man, my father, a funny, passionate man who always seemed mismatched with my mother’s sternness. He never remarried.

  After her death, the wee ones were farmed out to aunts on the mainland. My sister, Maeve, took over the care of my brother Colm and our father. It was lucky I was to be old enough to stay on the island and help Maeve. It was difficult for the wee ones who grew up like charity children in someone else’s family, though it was common enough at the time.

  When Maeve left for Boston two years later, I took over the keeping of the house. I remained until my sister, Róisín, was old enough to move back to the island. I was the thrilled one, following after Maeve on a boat to London then Boston. It was not difficult for Maeve to set me up with a job—caring for the Willoughbys’ first baby boy—and I did not suffer as an immigrant in America. The country was always good to me. I stepped off the boat and the next morning I had a job, a home, a future.

  My plan was to work for a while, save money, then apply to St. Elizabeth’s to study nursing. I’d long dreamed of becoming a nurse. (I may appear at times cold and undemonstrative in my affections, but I have a brilliant bedside manner. Marriage proposals I’ve had, helping the island men to health.) I hoped someday to return to my island and take over the position of the existing nurse, Mariah O’Malley, a cousin of mine. She was getting on in years and was eager to defer to me. You see, I never planned to stay so long in Boston, I never thought to live there permanently. It was an opportunity for employment and schooling, nothing more. I did not run back to Ireland with my tail between my legs as Grace once suggested. I’d wanted to go back all along; it was my decision.

  Mr. Willoughby was from London originally; he’d come to America for his schooling in law, and worked in a real estate firm in Boston. Mrs. Willoughby was an American. She worked as well, as a clothing designer, and she looked her job, sure. So fashionably dressed I was in dread of spilling something on her whenever I served them their dinner. They lived on Beacon Hill, in a flat that was as large as a mansion. They gave me a cozy little room in the attic, with my own toilet. Sound enough people, they were. Just not much time for their baby boy, so I was happy to help in that area. They were Protestants, but this was America, not Ireland, and they did not mind my being a Catholic, and I treated their religious persuasion with the same respect. On Sundays, they took little Michael to services and I went to Mass at St. Joseph’s alone. When I wrote to my father, I let him assume they were Catholic, because he was not as open-minded as I.

  I spoiled little Michael, and he adored me. It was easy enough to give him attention, there being just himself. At home, before my mother died, I’d been swamped with children and it was enough to get them bathed, dressed, fed, undressed, and bathed again, that I didn’t have the time or even the desire to have a favorite. But Michael and I had each other to ourselves. I sang to him, told him fairy stories when he was ready for bed; even on my day off I’d buy him sweets at the shop. By the end of my first year with them, when Michael was learning to speak, he sometimes called me Mama by accident. Mrs. Willoughby, you can imagine, was not thrilled. She spent a few moments before dinner every night, correcting him.

  “I’m Mama,” she’d say, pointing to her jeweled and powdered neck. “That’s Cleeoona,” she’d emphasize, pointing to me at the stove.

  “Mama!” Michael would call, reaching in my direction.

  “No, no,” she’d say, annoyed. “Ma-ma, Ma-ma,” stabbing her chest with his pudgy little hand. To my relief, Michael eventually relented, calling his mother by her proper title. But he wound up calling me “Ooma,” which was close enough to “Mama” to annoy your woman. Eventually, though, she forgot about it, and sometimes slipped up, calling me Ooma herself.

  They paid me well, and I scrimped, so after eighteen months I had enough money saved to put me through my first semester at the nursing college. When I told the Willoughbys that I would be leaving in the fall, they were desperate.

  “You can’t leave us, Cleeoona,” Mrs. Willoughby said. “How would we get along without you?”

  It’s a bit shocked, I was. I had told them my plans when I’d taken the employment, but somewhere along the way they had forgotten—they’d gotten used to me being there, I suppose.

  “What about Michael?” Mrs. Willoughby said. “Children his age are very impressionable. You can’t just up and rip yourself away from him, can you?”

  I reminded her that the child would still have his parents. “I want to be a nurse,” I said.

  “A nurse!” Mr. Willoughby bellowed. “What the devil for? So you can earn an unfair wage and be treated with disrespect by the entire medical community? Nonsense, Clíona, you’re much more appreciated here. We need you. I’ll double your wages. You can have half Wednesday off as well.”

  In the end I agreed to stay on another year. With the extra wages I’d be able to save enough for the entire nursing course, plus living expenses. Then I’d be fit to get through school without having to take a job that would interfere with my studies. It wasn’t that hard a decision. I liked my job, and I would have missed that boy dreadfully. It didn’t occur to me, until after I was trapped, that the Willoughbys were never concerned with what was best for me. That was their way, sure, and I lived with it.

  I still wonder, at times, what my life would be like now if I had made it to the nursing college. I would have returned to the island just the same, but I believe other things would be different. It’s not Marcus I’d have married, though as good a husband you cannot find on God’s green earth. I might have had a more romantic, younger marriage, a house full of my own children, a career that kept my mind busy as well as my body. I am not the one to mourn over lost opportunity—your life is what you make of it, with God’s grace, the good and the bad. But still, I sometimes indulge myself and think, What if? What if I had never met that Patrick Concannon, had not gone dancing on that particular Saturday with Maeve and the girls, had not let myself feel what I felt or do what I did. What sort of woman would I be now?

  He was a gorgeous fellow. Dark brown hair with shimmers of copper, forest-green eyes, tall, so tall I could rest my head below his neck. He was Irish, as well, which was an attraction for me. I liked my job, but I’ll not fail to admit that I was a bit lonely. Maeve was newly married and hadn’t much time for me—only occasionally it was that I had a night out like the one where I met Patrick. He was from Connemara, like us, except from the mainland; he was studying medicine at MIT. His accent was cultured, but still familiar to me. Especially when he slipped into the expressions of our county.

  “Let’s get pissed,” he whispered to me that first night at the disco. “Show these Americans what proper drenkin is.” And he won me, so easily it’s a wonder I wasn’t ashamed of it sooner.

  He called for me every Saturday for two months. We had picnics on Boston Common, carriage rides around the city. He took me to concerts at Symphony Hall, to dinner in expensive Italian restaurants. He seemed to have loads of money for a boy from Connemara. When
I protested at his extravagance, he told me he had a rich American uncle. I let him spoil me, let him hold my hand in the carriage, kiss me with his hips crushed into my stomach when he dropped me at my door. No boy had ever paid such attention to me. It made me feel beautiful, womanly, dangerous. I loved every minute of it.

  I was so taken that once, in the middle of a roasting August afternoon, I agreed to follow him to his dorm room in Cambridge. On a narrow bed covered with dirty linens, I let him lie on top of me, kiss my breasts, which he let loose from my blouse and bra. I still remember the look of my own breasts, large, white, and foreign, without feeling, like something he had borrowed from me, removed from my body for his amusement. Like the carved mermaids I’d seen as a child, their stone bosoms exposed and deformed looking. I let him keep going, thinking all along that he would stop, knowing in my mind that I was sinning but feeling as though it were happening to someone else. Like what I saw was being described to me in gossip of some loose girl on the island, and I was saying: She did what? You’re only joking!

  I was so convinced of my detachment that I was terrified when I realized we were both completely naked. Even when he entered me, and the pain seared through that inner flesh where I had never before felt anything—which I had hardly known was there—even then I thought: This can’t be happening. He was in and out of me, as though he was plagued with indecision; he was huge, he was hurting me, frightening me. At one point, near the end, he looked as if he might be having a stroke: his face welled up red and purple, his eyes bulged, he moaned as if in pain, as if something within me was ripping him apart as well. Then he collapsed on me. I lay there, trying to grasp the shards of my soul which had been thrown off from me, soiled now I knew, during the splaying and thrashing of limbs.

  Patrick rolled off me and I gasped for air. He smiled, nuzzled my neck, kissed me with an exaggerated smack.

  “’Twill get better,” he said. “A lady’s first time is always the worst.” I tried to pull a sticky sheet up to cover my breasts.

  “If you think I’m going to do that again with you, Patrick Concannon—” I started, but he burst out laughing. Apparently he thought that I was only slagging him.

  I have told my family, just as I told Gráinne, that I was a young widow. Only Maeve and the Willoughbys knew the truth, and Grace, who figured it out eventually. I was never married to Patrick Concannon, but he did die. A stupid, clumsy death. He toppled off the roof of his dorm while drunk, crashed through the top of a passing taxicab. When Maeve rang to tell me the news, I had already been vomiting for three mornings. I like to believe that he would have married me, if only out of a sense of obligation. So I don’t feel like I’m lying when I say I’ve been widowed, not much so.

  Mr. and Mrs. Willoughby were not as appalled as I feared they would be. Shocked, yes, surprised a bit, but after all, this was 1961 in America and I was not the first girl to get herself in such a fix. Sure, on the island I would have caused the scandal. When I told them, they calmly excused me, discussed it between themselves, then called me back into the room.

  They would help me, they said. I would stay with them for as long as I needed to. I would continue to work for them, I would raise my child in their house, we would tell all visitors that I was a widow. I was family now, they said. Of course, my wages would go down a bit to compensate for the cost of my child’s board and lodging. But I had their support. My child would grow up with Michael and whatever siblings of his happened to come along.

  I could only nod and cry, trying to breathe over the fear that had shrunken my insides. Why was I not relieved, I wondered, or even grateful?

  Mr. Willoughby handed me his handkerchief. Mrs. Willoughby patted my hand.

  “We’re delighted you’ll be staying on with us,” she said.

  When Grace was born, she nearly tore me in half. I was in labor for thirty-four hours at the Lying-in Hospital for Women. There were some complications, some hemorrhaging, I was told, and in the end they had to remove my womb. Coming from a family of nine, I found it inconceivable that I would have no more children. No legitimate children. When they brought the baby to me for the first time, I looked at her red, flattened face and thought: This is all. This is all I will ever have.

  Until I got back on my feet, the Willoughbys hired a housekeeper to look after them and Michael. For most of that time I was alone in my attic room with Grace. A dreadful few weeks it was, a prison from which I thought I’d never escape.

  I was bottle-feeding because, at that time, the breast was not fashionable. Grace was a terrible eater. She couldn’t seem to get the rhythm of the business down, always pulling away from the bottle, spitting up, not burping, then screaming for days on end with colic. I’d never had such difficulty with a baby. They say when it’s your own you love them no matter what, but this was not the case. I despised my child in the beginning, with an intensity that horrified me. Every time I looked at her there was something wrong, she was wailing or rashy, even when she slept she had this permanent scowl contorting her tiny features. I looked at her and I thought of everything she’d taken away from me: a nursing career, other children, marriage—for in truth, who would marry me now? All given up for this unattractive, contrary child. I longed to get back to work, to Michael who smiled at me and brought me drawings while I was cooped up in the attic. I thought at times that he was more my child than Grace was.

  Of course, nowadays they would say this was postpartum depression. It ended when I woke up one morning and Grace, for the first time, was sleeping peacefully in her crib. I suppose I just stopped feeling sorry for myself; I ceased to blame my daughter and began to love her. She grew to be a fierce, dramatic child whom I couldn’t help but admire. A fighter, she was. You were the lucky one if you had Grace on your side.

  I worried, when she got older and began to hate me, that maybe I had damaged her somehow during those first few months of her life. That she had known, even when it was over, that her mother had resented her, and she was getting me back for it.

  She was ashamed of my job, looked at my position in the household as that of a slave. It drove her mad that we ate in the kitchen while the Willoughbys ate in the dining room. That was my doing, though she never believed it. I had told the Willoughbys early on that I would prefer to eat separately. They invited me to join them all the time, in the beginning. I never did it, and not because I “knew my place” or anything degrading, but because it was a job after all, we weren’t family, and later because I didn’t want Grace to grow up confusing herself as the Willoughbys’ child. It would have been more difficult to leave; I still believe that.

  Grace tolerated Mr. Willoughby, and Michael was like a brother to her, but Mrs. Willoughby—well, let’s say I had a time keeping her from torturing the woman. I myself had always taken to Mrs. Willoughby—not with any great affection, mind you, but she was kind to me in the beginning, and I felt sorry for her, sure. She’d married above herself in Mr. Willoughby, and I believe she was always trying to hide this fact. She never had her own mother over the house, but visited her in Dorchester once a month with Michael. Even with all her nitpicking, I know she appreciated me. But by the time Grace was seven years old, Mrs. Willoughby was already growing ill, and she had changed drastically. Grace could never understand that your woman was sick—she thought Mrs. Willoughby’s episodes were part of her personality—but I knew better and didn’t take them to heart.

  When Michael was nine and Grace was seven, Mrs. Willoughby gave birth to twin girls, Sarah and Lindsey. It was a difficult pregnancy for her; she was confirmed to bed for the last three months of it, and it was this time that gave Grace her bad impressions. The woman was uncomfortable, and bored—she had never been the one for just lying around. She was very demanding of me, nothing I did seemed good enough—the food was inedible, my cleaning sloppy, I did not come quickly enough when she rang the bell at her bedside. Michael avoided her during this time, and she began to resent me for the time I spent with him. She was goi
ng a little off her head already, I believe. Once, when I was sweeping her bedroom carpet, and Grace was in there with me, holding the dustpan, Mrs. Willoughby started glaring at me murderously. Not a word, mind you, but she didn’t take her eyes off me. It made me uncomfortable and I tried to sweep up quickly. When I heard the front door slam, I told Grace to see if it was Michael.

  “He’ll be wanting his lunch. Tell him I’ll be down in a minute so.” Before Grace could move, Mrs. Willoughby let out this noise, a growl from what it sounded like.

  “He’s my son,” she spat. She looked possessed, her eyes red, hair on end.

  “Pardon?” I said.

  “If you try and take him from me I’ll rip your ugly Irish head off,” she yelled. I ushered Grace out of the room, but we could hear her still screaming, all the way down the hall. “You hear me? I’ll rip your ugly Irish head off and feed it to the dog!” She’d no dog. I couldn’t imagine what had gotten into her.

  Grace became hysterical. She was crying, smearing snot all over her cheek with the back of her hand.

  “Hesh,” I said, stopping at the bottom of the stairs. “No tears now, it’s only joking, she was.”

  “Was not,” Grace said. She was angry now, red-faced, on the verge of one of her tempers. “She tries and I’ll rip her head off first,” she sneered.

  “God help us,” I said. “Don’t be ridiculous.” I went into the kitchen to Michael. He was looking at me like he’d heard it all and was terrified, but I pretended nothing had happened. What stayed with me all that day was an image of this crazed woman and my mean little girl, ripping at each other like lions. I could see it, sure as it was happening before my eyes.

  When the twins were born, Mrs. Willoughby almost died. When she’d recovered, the smaller girl, Lindsey, was not expected to live long. She had to stay in hospital for months. Mrs. Willoughby was never the same again, even after Lindsey came home, frail but healthy. Something had loosed in the woman’s mind, probably when she was still pregnant. She was not as easy to live with after that. She no longer worked, but shuffled around the house in a robe like a zombie. I was the one looked after the twins, hoping that she would snap out of her mood, but it went on for years. When the twins were eight, Mr. Willoughby had a promotion that made him richer than I think he’d ever dreamed, and he moved us all to a seaside house in Scituate, where they had a private beach, a tog room with a fireplace for changing out of swimming gear, and acres of green lawn and gardens.