She was wrong. How could she recover from this? And the mother? How could she have shown her daughter such a thing? How could she act with, from, such rage and hate? Why didn"t she destroy the evidence?
I ask N.: "What would make a mother show her daughter such a thing?"
He says, "She had to show it because it was unbearable to her. Because it must have been that the father and the daughter"s love was always unbearable to her."
I wonder what my mother would have done.
No, I don"t: I know she would have shown me. She would have said, "I want to rub your nose in this. The stink."
Because, although we never spoke about it, she must have known that my father loved me more than he loved her. And how could this not have enraged her?
But my mother didn"t seem to be enraged by it: it was simply something that we, as a family, always understood. I think she was rather proud of it, that she had such an unusual husband, that she had married a man who would turn into such a praiseworthy father. It was not said that she loved me more than she loved him, but that was also understood. But of course, it must have been enraging for her. Something I have always accepted: the truth of my mother"s rage.
Having told me the story about his friend and her father, N. tells me a story about his own father.
"This incident that I am about to describe happened just before my father"s death. I was eight years old. My aunts had dressed me up for a costume party. They dressed me as a girl. They curled my hair and put ribbons in it. They put me in a dress and girl"s shoes. They put lipstick and rouge on me. They took me to see my father, who was on his deathbed. He was in pain and very weak. They thought seeing me dressed up like that would amuse him.
"At first, I knew he didn"t recognize me. Then a look of horror pa.s.sed over his face. He didn"t say anything. He turned his face to the wall. It was the last time I ever saw him. He died that night."
As N. speaks, I think of something that happened to my father and me. I was six years old. It was the night of my dance recital. I had a solo. Two solos. I danced to "Easter Parade." I wore a blue and yellow flower-printed dress, which I liked very much, and a straw hat with ribbons. "In your Easter bonnet with all the frills upon it, pas de bourrie, pas de bourne." I can hear my dance teacher"s voice singing these words. I had another number: tap. I was dressed in navy blue satin with silver stripes and a red border at the neck. I tapped to "You"re a Grand Old Flag." I was very proud of myself; I thought the whole thing very fine.
The night of the recital, my father came down with stomach flu. I was heartbroken that he wouldn"t be able to see me dance. But he said nothing would keep him from watching me dance. He said he couldn"t sit down because he might have to keep jumping up to go to the bathroom, but he would stand in the back.
When he sees me on the stage, my father runs up the length of the aisle and stands at the edge of the stage. I can see his smiling face. I can hear him saying, "That"s my little girl." I am dancing for him. I sometimes wonder if there is anything in my life I am not doing for him.
No one has ever looked at me again like that: as if everything I did was miraculous.
My father"s adoring gaze.
N."s father, turning his face away from him. A father: turning his face to the wall.
N. is dying. Of all the people I know, N. and my friend have loved each other the most purely.
My friend cannot bring himself to tell N. that he is dying. When N. asks the doctor what is happening to him the doctor says: You"re waiting. N. does not ask: For what.
My friend does not want to face his lover"s death. He does not want his lover to face it. He does not want it faced. He wants to turn his face away. And with loving fingers, to turn his lover"s face. From the thing that cannot be faced. The face of death.
When N. told me these stories, his death was in him. Of course, all our deaths are always in all of us, but this death, this particular death, was sickening in him, growing in him, consuming him. He was being consumed by something inside himself.
Now I need your help. Now, as I am about to tell you the third story. Because I don"t understand why, to the two stories that N. told me, both of us sitting at his table on a September afternoon, I connect the third.
I hope you understand that I know that the place where the third story happened is a strange place to be writing about. A place that I would not have imagined myself writing about when I was young and thought of myself as writing, thought of what I might be writing as a woman in her fifties. When I was young, I might have imagined myself a woman alone in a sunny room with a dog asleep on a blue rug at her feet. But I did not imagine that I would be writing about something that took place in a gym. I wouldn"t have been able to imagine myself using the phrase "I belong to a gym." Belong and gym?. I would not have put the two words together in connection to myself. Who knows what sentences I will be speaking as an eighty-year-old woman that I cannot imagine now? It is possible that I will never be an old woman, that I will die before I am old. Before I am eighty. When I was thirty, I did not believe I would be fifty-five. I may have pretended to believe, but I didn"t, not really. No.
It isn"t difficult to imagine that I will be dead before I reach eighty. So many around me have died. N. will die in his sixties. He will die quite soon. He does not know it. Or does he? He does not speak of it, he does not speak of knowing that he knows.
Gym. Gymnasium. We only use the nickname. We never say, "I"m going to the gymnasium. What gymnasium do you belong to?" And when we say the word gymnasium, we do not think of the European, the German word gymnasium, p.r.o.nounced with a hard g. Kafka attended a gymnasium. It is difficult to connect Kafka with the kind of gym I am about to describe. Ridiculous to connect the two words: Kafka and fitness. Kafka is all that is not health.
But perhaps you find it ridiculous that I intend to describe my gym to you. My gym. Mine. In the sense that I belong to it. In the sense that I am a member. In the sense that I have paid what some people whom I respect would believe is a shocking amount for this membership.
For two reasons. Because it is a place that I can dance to Broadway show tunes and disco with other women. Fantasizing ourselves in the chorus. Chorines. A word that has disappeared from the language: chorine. Impossible to imagine what words we now commonly use that in the future will have disappeared.
I have also paid the money for this gym because of the terror of becoming fat. Perhaps this is why most of the women are here, except for the few athletes in training, or the semi-invalids here for therapy. In the locker room, women are naked in a pretty unself-conscious way, although, being women, we all know, we must know that we are looking at each other. I think that most of the women in my gym have better bodies than mine. I tell myself that many of them are younger, but some are not, and I know that, I acknowledge that, I take that in. There is, however, not unmixed with judgment and self-hate, some sort of sisterhood in this room. We are safe here, except from the eyes of each other, and even the sharpest eyes do not linger, do not dwell.
Always clothed, always completely clothed, are the women, Latina and quite young, who clean up after us.
One day when I"m getting dressed in the locker room, there is a terrible smell. I think it must be me: I must have stepped in dog s.h.i.t and not noticed it. Perhaps my dog vomited on my coat and I (how could this have happened) didn"t see. Furtively I examine the bottom of my shoes, all my clothes. Pretending I am searching for something in the locker, I sniff my armpits. I squat down so that my nose is nearer to my crotch and sniff. Nothing. It is not coming from me. The relief. But where is it coming from?
I haven"t told you that most of the time the locker room is exceptionally clean. Snowy towels, as many as you need, rest on counters in immaculate piles. In the air: the scents of different shampoos, conditioners, moisturizers, perfume, and over all the eucalyptus that is sprayed in the steam room.
So where is this smell coming from? From which of these clean-seeming naked women?
I am ashamed to suspect the Latina women, but I do. They are the only ones in clothes. Clothes: sign of the dirty outside world.
The Latina women begin shouting angrily. One of them comes by with a hose. The floor is sluiced with water. Others run in with buckets, mops, rags.
None of the naked women has said anything, but for a moment we all love each other in our innocence.
Then a very old woman walks from the lavatory into the locker room. She looks like an Indian: long white skirt, black shawl, another black shawl covering her head, her hair hanging down her back, incomprehensibly dark and glossy. She glides out, like a ship progressing through calm water.
A woman I know says: "Somebody had an accident on the bathroom floor."
An accident? At first I think she means a collision of automobiles. Crash! Metal upon metal, flashing lights.
But then I realize: what she means by accident is s.h.i.t.
We know, all of us, the naked women, the women with hoses, the women with mops and buckets, the women with rags, that it was the old Indian woman who sailed by us a moment before. She was the one that did it. We know that it was she and what she did but we do not know why. Could it have been some kind of colonial revenge, that she hated us as a group, for our cleanliness, our prosperity? Is she the mother, the grandmother of one of the cleaning girls, enraged that her beautiful daughter, her beautiful granddaughter has to clean up after these fat white b.i.t.c.hes? Is that why we are all ashamed?
We know that we are all ashamed. But we do not know why.
Breaking the silence, one of the naked women says, "I thought it was me." "Oh, G.o.d," says another. "I thought it was me." "Me too." "So did I."
What can it mean: that all of us, clean, naked, believe that we are carrying, only temporarily, only inadequately hidden, something that stinks. That being female, the corruption we are carrying is more than the seed of our own death, it is noxious, poisonous, to ourselves and to others, that the task of our life is to seal it up.
You must believe me: it is only now I begin to understand why I connected the three stories. Only after I have told them all. Told them to you. It is only now that I see: that the woman whose father thought about her with unspeakable desire, that N."s father, who saw the female in his son, that all of us clean naked women believe that we have somewhere in us the dangerous, the foul thing that will make everyone turn away.
Is that what we believe?
If we do not it would not be surprising if we believed it.
But why do I believe it? What about my love for my father and his love for me?
That pure love. Fastidious.
And who was that woman? And why was she there?
You can see why I need you to hear me.
Why I would not want to be considering these things alone.
My friend"s lover is dying.
It is difficult not to be ashamed.
The Baby.
When people asked Kathleen if she was homesick in America, she said she wasn"t, and it was the truth. She"d come over with Kevin from Ennis, County Clare, a week after their wedding; they had a honeymoon at Niagara Falls. People teased her about it afterward, and she pretended to know why. She laughed along with them, and made a face to show she got it, but she never did.
At first it was like a big holiday. There was the wedding, and the airplane ride, the food on the little trays. There was her trip to Niagara Falls on the train, Kevin telling her she was great not to be feeling the jet lag. And her first night ever in a hotel. Her first night really alone with Kevin. The week after the wedding they"d spent in her parents" house; her brothers had cleared out of their room and were sleeping on the sitting room floor. It made her and Kevin self-conscious, trying to sleep together in her brother James"s bed, too narrow for them, only they couldn"t give up what seemed like the treat of sleeping in the same bed. The times they"d been together before in the back of someone"s car or in a field she"d felt a little bad about it, but she hadn"t wanted to say anything for fear of spoiling Kevin"s time. Maybe he"d felt bad about it too, it seemed to mean so much to him, sleeping in her brother"s cramped bed, with the pictures of footballers looking down on them. "It"s great not to have to sneak around, not to have to skulk home afterward, to look your mam in the eye, not feeling lonely for you in the bed, thinking of you while my brothers were snoring," he said.
Kevin had no sisters; he"d come from a family of seven, all boys. And in her family, she"d been the only girl. Everyone was thrilled when she and Kevin had the baby and it was a girl. They named it Margaret after Kevin"s aunt, who"d died young, but they called her Maggie and not Peg, as the aunt had been called, to break the bad luck. So that was another part of the holiday, having Maggie fifteen months after she"d set foot in the States, decorating the nursery and buying baby clothes. Kevin was doing well so they could afford to splurge, and she"d banked her whole salary while she"d been pregnant.
Her life had been wonderful the last five years, everything was better than it had been at home. She even looked better a bit older. She always knew she"d been good-looking, but there were little things that had tormented her that seemed to have gone away after the baby. Her face used to break out, and that had stopped. And there were secret deformities that possibly no one had noticed but were a torture to Kathleen. Before the baby her palms and fingertips had always been damp, so that she"d dreaded shaking hands with anyone for fear she might disgust them. And her fingernails had had little ridges cut into them, so that she felt she never could wear nail varnish, because it would draw attention. But now her hands were perfectly fine; she didn"t think of them at all now.
After the baby, after she got her figure back, she"d looked at herself naked in the full-length mirror. She"d never done that before in her life. She was surprised at how pleased she was at the sight of herself, surprised and a bit ashamed. She understood what Kevin meant now, that her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were round and lovely. She liked that she had a waist, some women didn"t even if they were thin, and if she wished her thighs were a bit smaller, she knew it wasn"t really serious. She"d always known she had nice eyes, green like the sea, Kevin said, and she began wearing a bit of makeup, blue eye shadow and black mascara, and she was pleased with the way it made her eyes look bigger and brought out the color.
She"d got used to feeling good about things; it had seemed strange at first, a different way from the people at home she"d known most of her life. When they walked into church on Sundays or when they went dancing sometimes on Sat.u.r.day nights, if they could get a sitter for Maggie, she knew that people looked at her and Kevin and admired them and she didn"t feel she had to pretend anymore that it wasn"t happening. She liked the way Lawrence at the Hair Emporium cut her hair. She knew he was queer, and she wondered what they"d think of that at home, but she liked him and he liked her too. He told her about his boyfriend and that they were saving up for a house. He was very complimentary about her hair. He said very few had the red highlights without being bra.s.sy. He said not to worry about it being a little oily. He recommended a special shampoo. The price shocked her, but she went for it, although she kept it from Kevin. That was the good thing about having her own job, she didn"t have to be asking her husband for every blessed penny.
She wasn"t even afraid anymore that Kevin had quit his job as an air conditioner repair man, the one he"d got his green card on, and was selling mobile phones and home systems. Rockland County was a boom location, he said, and the brogue never hurt. She even liked the name of the town they lived in: New City. She didn"t tell anyone that she liked the name because it sounded new. She knew they"d think she was simple for having an idea like that.
She was very proud of their house, she didn"t worry that one day they wouldn"t be able to make the mortgage; she planted petunias and zinnias and she thought it was great that because the house was sided with aluminum they"d never have to paint it. At first she wasn"t sure she liked that shade of yellow, but she"d come to see that it was fine, it always cheered you up, no matter what the weather.
Maggie was three now, and she"d gone back to work two afternoons a week in the cafeteria of the elementary school while Maggie went to preschool. She didn"t like the net she had to wear around her hair, and she hated the feel of the plastic gloves, but it was worth it because the hours were perfect. Maggie went to school from eleven to three and she worked from eleven thirty to two thirty. With Kevin making his own hours, he could pick Maggie up sometimes and she had an hour or so on her own.
But the best thing about her job was the girls she worked with. She couldn"t believe her luck. The four of them that worked together were like sisters. They called her the baby. They all had some Irish blood, but Joanne was half Italian, and Marty"s father was Polish and Italian. Lois had the least Irish in her, only a great-grandmother, but she was the one Kathleen was closest to. She had a bit of a weight problem and Kathleen was sympathetic. She never got impatient with Lois like the others did, she never teased her about it, even when she went on the popcorn and grapefruit diet. She knew Lois needed encouragement.
Joanne was married to a man who sold TVs and other appliances; he didn"t do too well. She liked suggesting that he was good in bed. She"d gone into debt to have what she called "a b.o.o.b job" but Kathleen didn"t like to think about that, having plastic bags put in you so you"d look bigger. Marty"s husband drank, but she was loyal. She was very thin, maybe a bit too thin, and this was hard for Lois, the way she always made a point of having to eat more to keep her weight up. But Marty was right, when she lost a pound or two it really showed on her face, it aged her. Marty"s and Joanne"s children were all grown up, so they loved making a pet of Maggie. On Kevin and Kathleen"s fifth anniversary they chipped in to send them to the Marriott in Bear Mountain for a special weekend, and they all stayed at the house to watch Maggie. They put a gift-wrapped package in the back of the car. It was a s.e.xy nightgown. Kevin was thrilled with it, but Kathleen thought it made her look too pale. When they got home, she saw that Maggie didn"t seem to miss them at all. She was very attached to Lois. Lois was the one who spoiled her most. It made Kathleen sad, knowing how much she would have loved a baby. She kept asking Kevin wouldn"t he try to fix Lois up with one of his friends. Kevin said Lois was great but his friends weren"t her type.
Every Friday after work the four of them went to Harrigan"s Pub for happy hour. The whole thing was pretending to be an Irish pub, but Kevin and Kathleen laughed because they hadn"t a clue. The brothers who ran it, Joe and Jeff Harrigan, loved it when Kathleen came in; they loved to hear Kathleen order for everyone. "That brogue just knocks me out, just knocks me out," Jeff would say. They never let her pay for her drinks. When he put in the karaoke, the four girls began singing together, and they were up there every happy hour. They taught Kathleen to sing songs that were around when they were young, songs she hadn"t sung before. They liked one by the Carpenters called "Close to You." Apparently the girl who sang it originally died because she"d taken too many laxatives. "Could you credit that," Kathleen said, and they laughed at her for the expression. She didn"t think a thing like that could happen in Ireland, people weren"t so appearance-conscious there. But she didn"t tell them that because she didn"t want them to think she was criticizing America. She thought America was great, she didn"t even know if she"d move back home if she had the chance. Kevin said they would when they"d saved enough, but they didn"t seem to put very much away.
Jeff Harrigan got Irish songs for the karaoke. He made Kathleen sing them. She told herself she didn"t have to, it was her choice, but she didn"t like the way they looked at her when she was up there. He asked her to learn "H-A-double-R-I, G-A-N spells Harrigan," and they split their sides laughing because she p.r.o.nounced it "Haitch," beginning with a breath, instead of "Aitch." When somebody got drunk, they always asked her to sing "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling." She didn"t know how to tell them she"d only just learned it; they never sang it at home.
She and the girls started practicing routines and their big hit was "My Boyfriend"s Back." They"d all wag their fingers at the guys in the audience, and everyone cracked up. Their finale was "Lean on Me." She thought the words were really great. "Lean on me, when you"re not strong, I"ll be your strength, I"ll help you carry on." When they sang that, they all leaned into each other, and everyone always clapped. She liked singing with the girls, it was just when they made her sing the Irish songs by herself it made her feel self-conscious. But singing in the group was a great gas. When she said "great gas," they fell over themselves laughing.
It must have been at Harrigan"s that they came up with the plan of the four of them going to Ireland. She"d gone back every year. If you didn"t go in high season (she went during the spring vacation), the fare was dirt cheap really and once she got home there were no expenses. Her father picked her and Maggie up at Shannon and they were right home in her own bedroom in forty-five minutes. It was great living that near the airport. When people asked her where she came from she"d said, "Ennis, County Clare," and that didn"t mean anything to them until she said, "Forty-five minutes from Shannon." They all relaxed; they could place it in their minds. But all the time she was growing up she never thought a thing of being near the airport.
Her mother spoiled her and Maggie when they were there. Her sisters-in-law noticed it. All her brothers had married and settled near the town, and she knew how the wives felt, never getting a holiday for themselves, never being waited on like Kathleen was by her mother. One of her brothers" wives was particularly spiteful about it. Kathleen had known Brid Callahan all her life; they"d been in the same cla.s.s and Brid had always disliked her. Brid was clever, but the nuns didn"t take to her, not like they did Kathleen and some of the other girls who didn"t do so well at academics. Kathleen never understood why of all the ones he could have had- and he could have had any girl in town, he was that kind of boy- her brother Jimmy chose Brid. Jimmy was the sweetest boy in the world, the next youngest of them, just before Kathleen. He had Kathleen"s eyes, only bigger, and beautiful teeth as white as milk. And his skin was so white the freckles made it look like you could see through it. His skin and his teeth made him seem very light, and he moved lightly, but the lightness also came from something about him that made it seem he never cared if he got his way or not.
Jimmy was the brother Kathleen was closest to and it was a blow for her when he married Brid. She was the brains of the outfit, everyone said, and that was good for Jimmy, he didn"t seem too cut out for the rough and tumble of making a living. He was good at carpentry, and what with the building boom they"d done well with Brid managing the accounts. She"d taken the money and invested it in a gas station and convenience store. The year before she"d had Jimmy build on to it and was starting a bed and breakfast. She certainly had go, Kathleen had to say that, accomplishing all this with two-year-old twins. But she"d never like Brid. She made it hard for Kathleen to have a minute to herself with Jimmy and she was always pa.s.sing remarks about people being waited on hand and foot.
Kathleen always kept hoping that in time things would get easier with her and Brid, and the day at Harrigan"s when the idea came up about all of the girls going with her to Ireland she thought it was perfect because they could all stay at Brid"s new B & B. Not her, of course, but the other three. She didn"t know whether Brid would give them a cut rate, but she thought there was at least a chance of it.
They were all over the moon about the trip and Kevin loved teasing her about them. "The witches" coven come to Ennis. I"ll be ringing my mates to tell them to look out for their lives." The girls were pretending to hit at him, and teasing back. "They"ll be grateful to their dying day. We"ll show them what the real thing is." Kathleen understood that they prized Kevin because, among the four of them, she had the only husband who could be recognized as a real man.
"Would you want to leave Maggie and me for a week?" he asked Kathleen. "Just go off by yourself with your girlfriends. Really let your hair down. Then I could join you."
At first the thought made her sick. She"d never been separated from Maggie for more than a night. And then she knew her mother would be terribly disappointed.
"It"s just a week, Kath," he said. "Then I"ll be there and we"ll make it up to her. We"ll go home for Christmas too this year."
"Oh, she"ll take it out on me anyway," Kathleen said.
"You"re your own person, Kath. You"ve lived in America, you"re different. It would do them a bit of good over there to see a woman with some freedom. Your mother has to understand you"re not the same girl she put on the plane five years ago."
Kathleen didn"t like to hear that. She hoped it wasn"t true. But Kevin was right: they"d come to America for freedom and opportunity. And they"d found it.
The girls booked their flight for August 15, the Feast of the a.s.sumption, Marty said and laughed, they all knew they"d been thinking it, all of them had gone to Catholic school.
"What"ll the weather be like?" Lois asked.
"Well, I can"t promise. It can be unpredictable."
"It won"t be like the New York steambath," Lois said. They all understood that she felt the heat because of her weight.
The drinks were free on the flight, and they each had several. Except for Kathleen. She"d read an article that said that alcohol could be dehydrating, and made the jet lag worse. She"d found she did better just drinking lots of water. The girls seemed loud on the plane, and she wondered why she hadn"t noticed it before, if she was just being oversensitive, worrying that the Irish on the plane would think badly of them. It was one of the things the Irish said about Americans: that they were loud.
They"d been hoping to get some sleep on the plane, but none of them could get comfortable. Joanne said she was sure that when she"d flown to California the seats had been wider. "That was American Airlines though," she said, and Kathleen felt chastised.
They were exhausted after the flight, and Kathleen was worried they might be a bit hungover. They weren"t looking their best, and she regretted that. Marty and Joanne were sharp dressers; their hair was dyed- Marty was red-haired and Joanne streaky blonde, they all went to Lawrence the same as her and she"d always admired the way they used makeup. But now they looked different. She thought for the first time that they were older than her. That she was young, but perhaps they weren"t young. She wished they looked better for her family"s first sight of them. She didn"t know who"d pick her up, but she hoped it was her father because the look of people wasn"t something he noticed.
It was Jimmy who picked them up. That was fine, she was proud of him, she was convinced that just seeing him would perk her friends right up. But they were only just polite to him, they said h.e.l.lo but barely; they seemed to expect him to carry their luggage and she thought they talked to him as they would to a porter. She was afraid she was being oversensitive. She was always afraid people would take advantage of Jimmy. His good nature. Even though he was older, she"d always felt she had to look out for him.
The weather didn"t help. "Jesus, it"s p.i.s.sing down with rain," Kathleen said.
"I never heard you use that kind of language in America," Marty said, and Kathleen couldn"t tell if she was kidding.
"You should have been here yesterday," Jimmy said, "the sun would have blinded you."
"It"s always my luck. I always have bad weather on vacation," Lois said. Kathleen thought she should be careful; people didn"t like to hear overweight people complain.
"It might break," Jimmy said, but Kathleen could tell he wasn"t hopeful.
The rain had never bothered her. Especially when she came home from America, it seemed comforting and right, she felt cleansed, but gently, rinsed, as if she were undergoing some treatment particularly good for the complexion. The kind of thing very rich women might arrange for when they got what were called facials. The girls had talked about it to her: facials were steam cleaning and all sorts of lotions. But when the rain fell on Kathleen"s face at home she felt as if she hadn"t realized how all the makeup and grime of America had clogged her pores, dried the skin around her lips. She felt she got her baby skin back after walking in the rain. She thought now of the girls calling her "the baby," and that she was the baby of her family. She knew there was something in her that made people want to protect her. She didn"t know what that was.
Her mother had laid out an enormous breakfast for them. Eggs and bacon and sausage, fried tomatoes, mushrooms, fried bread.
"This is going right to my arteries," Joanne said. "Fried bread. Grease and carbohydrates. I"ve died and gone to heaven."
Kathleen could tell her mother wasn"t sure whether or not she was being praised.
Lois asked for fresh fruit. She was on Weight Watchers. Kathleen"s mother blushed; she said she"d look around for some. Kathleen said she"d do some shopping after they"d had a rest. Lois said she"d need to go with her; there were things she needed "for her program," or the whole thing would go up in smoke.
"Brid will have the rooms ready for you now," Jimmy said.