It’s with her always nowadays such doubt. She’s to tell herself flat that there’s no one can tell her what she can or cannot do. Just because they may think she’s going mad does not mean she’s under contract to deliver it up to them.
As Joanie and Our Woman watch together they discuss a few things like the mother of the fella in New Jersey. The muslin fella Joanie calls him, mistaking cloth for religion. The mother beside herself, the mother who came from some hot place nearby to Iraq, who waves her finger at the camera and beseeches her long-departed son to stop punishing her. She did not bring him to this country to give him opportunity to have him go back to her land and occupy it.
— I know how she feels, Our Woman says after Joanie remarks on the lovely oak table in the woman’s kitchen and the fact she’s wearing a very dark shade of nail varnish.
— Isn’t it great the women keep themselves looking so well, no matter the stress they’re under, Joanie remarks ignoring her.
— I know how she feels, Our Woman repeats. She’s this new trick when they talk over her, or by her, they all do it the girls, they mean well but they all do it. Then she breaks down and tells Joanie the truth that it was all her fault for sending Jimmy the adverts. She tells her about college and the fella who visited and Himself whipping the college funds from Jimmy and Joanie’s trying to clarify things with her and she’s foggy again. Why’s Joanie asking is he local? Of course he’s not local. She shrieks at her. He’s over there, he’s over there. He wouldn’t a gone near him if he was local. Where would you find the like of him local?
It’s all don’t upset yourself when she flies into these confusions and shortly the doctor’s in the house again and she realizes she’ll have to stop telling Joanie anything if it’s all going to end in an injection. To think she considered telling her about Beirut.
Blood pressure, hup, hup, hup, hiss. Hiss. Hiss. It’s low. Is she dizzy? Has she tested her blood sugar today? Something to help her sleep. He squeezes her hand two times in comfort and she feels like the old woman she is. Old, bereft with people to help her fall asleep.
The sleep is terrible. Hour after hour she wakes. Confused. Things, objects and colours dart in the darkness, whittle their way into and out of shadows and strangely, boxes. The room, the air of it is covered and divided by boxes within which it’s all movement, disconcerting movement. Lines, colours dance about. She can see small boxes, things tucking into them and the pulse in her neck twangs like a rubber band and the tightness of her chest frightens her. Up she gets to the light, shuffles into the cold bathroom for a glass of water, she doesn’t trust the water, so in to the kitchen for the boiled kettle.
She sits shivering in a cold you would not contemplate stepping out into lest you risk wetting the bed. She considers swapping the night for day to see would it be easier on her. The red light of the electric blanket is hanging down there beneath the old pink undersheet when she’s back at the bed. She’s tempted to kneel, but what would be the good in kneeling, what did kneeling do ’til now only Jimmy gone and all this disturbance.
She tries to remember a time when there wasn’t these interruptions and she can’t. The pill, the herbal tea, the Valerian none of it helps. The first time she takes forty-five drops of Valerian she falls down a well all night long. With no cars outside and so quiet, the night is an uncomfortable place to be.
She sticks pictures of soldiers on the inside of her kitchen press doors, believing some of them may have known her Jimmy, one may even have kissed him. There’s one of a bunch sitting around drinking coffee and a man with a guitar. She chooses the door with the bad hinge, that dips a little lower than it should. Sticks them with blutack. Every time she needs a cup, he’ll look at her. Sometimes she leaves the door open and stares at him while she’s stirring a pot or tipping the kettle. His eyes pour out at her, they’re the deep brown of conkers and the more she looks at him the more handsome he becomes. They’re spoiled really, the lads in all that green camouflage and clippered hair. They’ve the look of shaved dogs not men. But if you can imagine it all rolled away, all the clip and cap and green just gone, their features come back. He was the sort of fella who probably wore jeans and a burgundy top. She’ll think of him in burgundy it’s best. She names one of them Raphael and she believes he has known her Jimmy intimately. She can talk to him on the door. His image becomes bolder and bolder until she can visualize him moving about. Once she sees him sitting at her table clutching his knees up to his chest awkwardly. Is he saying anything at all? He’s big, Raphael is tall. You’re tall you know. I never thought Jimmy would go for one as tall as you, she confides in him. He’s a snuffly laugh has Raphael, but they like each other. I can see why Jimmy would like looking at ya, you’ve lovely warm eyes. That was my problem she tells him, I chose a man who hadn’t warm enough eyes. He laughs again and says he’s going out the back for a smoke and it’s the draft on her ankles that brings her back. The cold around her legs. Stood there with back door open, in the middle of the quiet night and no one to be seen, least alone the fella she’s been exchanging laughter with.
*
But she’ll continue with it. It’s easier, she thinks. If she’s to jump up and down and smother every imagined exchange the hours will be so long, alone here in the house. While she’s chatting to Raphael for any reason you can choose she’s happier and she’s learning, albeit imaginary, about her son’s life.
*
Beirut, Beirut, the only other thought in her mind, humming over and over like a psalm. Beirut may have seen Jimmy when he went to his daughter’s wedding. She longs to talk again with Beirut. She wants to climb inside his coat. She wants to hear the stories of the dogs and the women wearing gold sandals with their good strong legs and clear skin. She wants all of it described all over again. Then maybe she can sleep once more the way she used to. A strange thing is some days she cannot remember whether or not they have buried Jimmy or if he’s still on his way home.
*
In Dublin for a day’s shopping, the solution her dead husband prescribed. She smiles to think she’s begun listening to him now he’s passed on. He prompts her to go. Then she hears it, uttered aloud on the bus from Heuston Station, an older woman behind her explaining her daughter, out in Bray, and the council house they’ve given her, and the state of it, and her daughter up to the counter of the housing office, she told them, she did, she told them straight.
— It’s like bleedin’ Beirut. I can’t live in it.
— Jaysus, back from the lips beside her. Jaysus it’s a disgrace. Honest to God.
Our Woman smiles at the reference. Bayroot, Beirut. Which Beirut is it they’re talking of? Is it the same Beirut the man in the hospital went to the wedding in? It’s not, it’s the bombed Beirut. Any Beirut will do. She’s obsessed and besotted with a place she can’t spell. A place another woman identifies as the crater of the earth. A place that a leaking, run-down damaged council house is compared with. A place she wants to go to without having to get off this bus.