The furniture old, dank from the days when she smoked indoors. The house, relatively new, but suffocated in the occupant’s predictable life of stale work, out to nights of hanging about polished end of the bar, up on her high heels, down on her elbows, the occasional drunk lunging her way. How would my husband have come upon her? She was a specimen, a specimen alright.
*
Our Woman can see Red standing outside pubs: her tights wet from the rain, her silly toes poking out in ill fitting footwear, the wind whipping up around her hips in a too-short skirt. Today though Red returns to her living room as though she doesn’t quite belong there. Like a displaced object being shoved on the wrong shelf. Nerves at her.
— So Philomena, Red says, can I get you a cup of tea? I am not long out of the bed.
Our Woman does not give explications, nor indications.
— I’d like to know how you came upon my husband? Where did you first meet him?
Red’s silent.
What has she to be so silent over?
*
Me thinking.
Her watching.
Her thinking.
Me watching.
Her speaking.
— Do we have to go over this? How will it help?
— Oh it will help me very much. I’d like to know.
— OK, she said and adds more emphasis by squeezing each hand on those smoked-slim hips. Let me think, was it Ballina? No that wasn’t it. I think I met him at the nursing home. Yes that was it. Didn’t he come to the nursing home?
Red addresses Our Woman as though she too was involved, as though Our Woman dispatched him on his way to her and blessed him as he exited the door.
She’s a Twit. Red’s a twit. Red the Twit.
— I think he did. Yes that was it.
— Nursing home? What nursing home?
A pub, a sandwich, a stare, an accident — all explanations Our Woman was ready for. The words Nursing Home dial the wrong number. It’s the wrong dialect.
— Yes, he called in, inquiring about a place for his elderly mother and I showed him around and gave him our information pack. It’s a very good pack like ya know. He asked a few questions and asked if it would be OK for him to come back another time and I said he’d be welcome to call in anytime.
Small dry cough, somewhere around the neck, emitted from Red.
— He began to call regularly. I looked forward to his visits.
Our Widow is astonished.
— A nursing home, Our Woman repeats. And what year was this?
— Let me think now a minute, maybe two years ago this May was when I first set eyes on him. I won’t tell you a lie, the first time I set eyes on him I thought him a handsome man and hoped ever so much his mam would move in and die quickly.
— You did?
— Yes you see we need the turnaround on the rooms, but also if they go quick it’s easier on the son.
— It is?
— Yes I think I told him this. Maybe that’s why he took such a shine to me.
Our Woman notices Red’s hymn has switched to him rather than “your husband.”
— There was a lovely shade to the colour of his hair. A bit of a peaty shade.
— Are you sure? My husband has very little hair.
— Oh maybe that’s right, perhaps he was wearing a hat. And he’d a very nice shirt on him. I remembered being struck by his shirt. So clean.
— And?
— And then I saw him the few times in Ballina. One time he asked would I care to have a drink with him and he talked at length of his mother, and her illness and how much it weighed on him and I was very struck by how dedicated he was to her and I gave him all the advice I had learnt working at the nursing home.
— And he listened?
— Oh he did. He was very attentive your husband. Very concentrated.
Perplexed, Our Woman cannot hide it. Who is this man Red describes?
— I thought him a bachelor. He talked of how he wished he’d found love and children. That the lack of children was the biggest pain of his life.
Our Woman must rise and leave now. She must rise and leave for the recently built front room with the aged furniture and stilted life is beginning to topple her. If she can move to the front door she’ll be released.
— Come again, Philomena, come anytime. Red sings. I thought you would have called up before now. Don’t leave it so long the next time!
I wish to Christ she’d stop calling me that name, Our Woman yanks the keys from her coat and scrapes her cuticle, slices her wrist in the tug process. Next time she would tell her that he’d died. Today wasn’t the day. There was to be more revelations she could tell. Red insists on giving her an awkward square hug that belongs at neither woman. Between them is the crouching shadow of her husband.
*
She must think. Our Woman must think and she must think hard. She must muster that man, her husband of so many years up and back and before her from the grave. She must see him sitting in the chair and at the table. The only place, the only time, the only action where she can see him is at the kitchen table and moving objects. Only in the moving of objects does he live again.
*
If there was Red there were bound to be more? For who would stop at Red. It’s in their home, every step he has taken, every hand he has placed is in her home and will be easy found. There will be brochures, there will be information packs, for he would have recorded these places he was shopping to put his mother into.
*
Our Woman reflects on his mother. She laughs. She laughs hard. She was the kind of woman that would never put a foot in a nursing home.
*
The places she can see her husband:
• at the table.
• shaving in the mirror.
• bending down to pull his wellies on.
• staring and nodding at the cattle market on Tuesday.
• sat in the chair, staring into the distance, the television on, but he’s not watching it.
Did I let him get away or was he already gone? Our Woman wonders.
*
— There were others.
I don’t start easy on Grief. Her face brave but pallid. She’s getting over a cold, she tells me and it knocked her sideways and how are you?
— There were others.
— There were.
— There were.
— Whatchyamean?
— There were other women.
— Really. She moves the clipboard. To her “I must record this” knee. She writes. She looks up. She looks tired. She looks obliged.
— Tell me about the others.
And In Conclusion Grief says sometimes when people die we can learn the worst about them, but in fact in learning the worst about them and up and blah and up and blah and time’s up. I haven’t heard much of what she’s said. I am still with my husband at the front door, ringing the bell, inquiring, my mother, like you know, is sick and fragile and I’m lookin’. He was gone, Our Woman concludes. Long gone. Gone longer than I could imagine the point at which he left maybe. For it musta been a good while before he rang that bell.
*
Grief is not unhappy as I tell her how ecstatic I am finally to have been accurately identified as a widow.
— It’s important to you isn’t it Kathleen.
— It is. It’s mighty important.
— Why? She wants to know.
I am just after giving her an answer and she’s back with another question.