*
By Sunday her mind is made up. She will not ask his age. She’s more to do with him and she must get on with it, that’s a fact.
*
As a matter of fact I must carry on.
*
Sunday and Halim’s low. He’s awful down.
— I can’t stay in this country, it’s too hard, they treat me very bad in my work. They think I am stupid but I am from a good family, I study hard and yet these people treat me stupid.
— Don’t mind them, she tries to cheer him up, but he won’t be cheered.
— My life is awful. I have disappointed my family. They had big hopes for me you know. I am from a very good family, he repeats.
— I’m sure you haven’t disappointed them. And you’re young, young and studying. I wish my son was still here studying.
He is briefly interested in her son, but wails further on his disappointment.
He repeats that he has disappointed them and he cannot tell her why.
— Nonsense, she says brightly. Go way outta that.
— You don’t know anything. Nothing at all. You think I’m stupid. All these Irish are the same. They seem like they like you but actually they hate you. They think I’m not capable.
He’s morose in this state, so she whisks herself away with the kettle’s boiling.
On her return from the kitchen she brings a tray of tea.
— Sometime I will tell you about my wedding, he says.
Please God save me from it, Our Woman thinks. Offering him a Kimberly biscuit as consolation.
*
After that visit she settled on a pony, a Connemara pony. A lovely one with an overgrown fringe she could attend to and be shut of these morose, immodest men in her ears.
*
But first she’d another thing to do with him
Episode 11
— Are you still having the visions?
— I am.
— And how are you managing them?
— I am doing what you suggested. My kitchen floor is ever so clean.
We laughed. It is important to reassure Grief, to let her know that I am behaving in my widowhood.
Everything else we discussed faded into the nice room, the nice floral lamp, and the cosy beige chairs we sat on. We could have been exchanging bingo numbers. All I knew was I was sat here for my reputation and for the Blue House. The Blue House with the gaping big hole in it.
— Kathleen, she told me warmly at the end of that session, you are doing very well. Much better than before.
I was not talking about the naked men. I was behaving. Progress had been made. For some reason I was Kathleen instead of Phil. I think she had confused me with someone who was doing better than I am. When I phoned to book my next appointment I called myself Kathleen. Whoever she was, she was doing better than me.
*
People assume a mother to be protective over who marries her daughter, not me, any man who wanted them could have either of mine, if he’d a clean face and a warm hand. I never worried about my girls. Especially the eldest, I knew she’d be grand. I raised them that way. I raised them strong and indifferent and they knew they’d only have my attention when they practiced it and neither of them let me down.
*
When the girls were sick they’d push me away and take to the pillow, not Jimmy, he’d cling to me like a clawing rabbit, he’d sit on me, hang off me, drop around my ankles if I stopped still. I could see him physically hurt if I had to go out to the kitchen to turn on the kettle. I never slept a night that boy had any illness. I sat in the bed, hand on his piping hot head, I talked him through the chicken pox, the measles, there wasn’t a thought or fear that child didn’t share with me.
*
Jimmy’s the only person in my life who ever gave me a fright. No one could give me a fright the way Jimmy could. I had a terrible pain worrying about Jimmy serving himself up to the wrong man, yawning his way to the beyond.
*
— I have days where I can’t remember whether I have buried my son or not.
Am I forgetting things? Grief asks, perky today because I talked first.
— Yes. I am.
Can I remember that I buried my husband? Grief asks.
— My husband is always dead, I never forget the day I buried him but I am very confused about Jimmy.
Grief wants the full extent of the confusion.
I’m too exhausted to explain it.
Take your time. She sits back, waits. Would that she were just a little more impatient.
*
Everything about widowhood is exhausting because you’re trying to recall, unable to recall and then expected to explain why you cannot recall. It is not as simple as living. It is not as simple as being irritated. Being alive and married is like sanding a windowsill. Maybe it is dusty, it may get in your eyes or knick your fingers but you can look at it and see there’s a windowsill. You can look at your husband and feel no need to say anything to him.
The curse of the widow is the non-stop chatter outside and around your head. Like a television talk show where you loathe the questions, but cannot turn it off. Miriam, Miriam, Miriam go away with your nice gentle questions.
*
I walked to find some peace.
They thought I was walking for madness.
I was walking from madness.
*
It was true I gave them a shock. I concede this much to Grief.
— You gave them a shock, Grief informs me at my weekly appointment. If you are going to give them a shock then they’re going to be afraid for you.
Was there any need to be afraid for me, she wants to know. Was I a danger to myself?
To be on the safe side she is going to have someone from the Health Board look in on me.
Episode 12
Bina worries they’ll send me to Ballinasloe. She tells me so. If they ship you to Ballinasloe you won’t come back.
If they take you, she says, you need a witness here to record it. I won’t leave your side.
She’s good that way Bina.
*
His father took a few days to notice.
— Is that fella gone? He asked indignant.
— He is.
— Well glory be to God, I thought he’d never go.
I lay down in our bed and cried quietly for as I already told you I do not like to invite questions when I cry.
His father had not asked where his son was gone.
*
— Is he coming back? Himself requested when eventually I rejoined him in the kitchen.
— He has gone to America to join the military. He only came home because he was waiting on his papers.
— And how is it I wasn’t told?
— You weren’t in the night he told me, and you were up and gone the morning he left.
— He never should have come home at all.
Words. Rolling pin to pastry.
— He only came home because you forced him outta college.
— I did nothing of the sort.
Stubborn. A considered pause.
— Isn’t it as well for him. He’s too soft. And soft as he is, it was you made him that way.
A pause. I choose not to fill.
— Now come again, where is it he’s gone and what has he joined? It could be the making of him!
I could not tell whether I was sad because what Himself said was the truth, or whether I was sad because for all his ferocity Himself genuinely seemed taken with the idea of Jimmy in uniform. I could not say it was no good thing, for I would risk usurping that brief moment of approval.