Halfway toward the water, he broke into a Charlie Chaplin walk — twirling an imaginary walking stick as he bent forward into the gale, feet pointed sideways. He made a whooping sound as he topped a rise and caught sight of the sea. She called for him to wait: it was habit, even if his back was turned. He remained at the edge of the cliff, walking in place. Almost a perfect imitation. Where had he seen Chaplin? Some video game maybe? Some television show? There were times she thought that, despite the doctors, he might still someday crack open the impossible longings she held for him.
At the precipice, above the granite seastack, they paused. The waves hurried to shore, long scribbles of white. She tapped him on the small of his back where the wetsuit bunched. The neoprene hood framed his face. His blond hair peeked out.
— Stay where it’s shallow now. Promise me.
She scooted behind him on her hunkers. The grass was cold on her fingertips. Her feet slid forward in the mud, dropped from the small ledge into the coarse scree below. The rocks were slick with seaweed. A small crab scuttled in a dark pool.
Tomas was already knee-deep in the cove.
— Don’t go any further now, she called.
She had been a swimmer when she was a child, had competed for Dublin and Leinster both. Rows of medals in her childhood bedroom. A championship trophy from Brussels. The rumor of a scholarship to an American university: a rotator-cuff injury had cut her short.
She had taught Tomas to swim during the warmth of the summer. He knew the rules. No diving. Stay in the cove. Never get close to the base of the seastack.
Twice he looked as if he were about to round the edge of the dark rock into the deeper water: once when he saw a windsurfer, yet again when a yellow kayak went swiftly by.
She waved her arms: Just no more, love, okay?
He returned to her, fanned the low water with his fingers, splashed it high around her, both arms in his Chaplin motion.
— Stop it, please, said Rebecca softly. You’re soaking me.
He splashed her again, turned away, dove under for ten seconds, fourteen, fifteen, eighteen, came up ten yards away, spluttering for air.
— Come on, now. Please. Come in.
Tomas swam toward the seastack, the dark of his feet disappearing into the water. She watched his wetsuit ripple under the surface. A long, sleek shadow.
A flock of seabirds serried over the low waves in a taunt. Her body stiffened. She edged forward again, waited.
I have, she thought, made a terrible mistake.
She threw off her coat and dove in. The cold stunned the length of her, slipped immediately along her skin.
—
THE SECOND SHE CLIMBED from the water, she realized she had left her phone in the pocket of her jeans. She unclipped the battery, shook the water out.
Tomas lay on the sand, looking up. His blue eyes. His red face. His swollen lips. It had been easy enough to pull him from the cove. He hadn’t struggled. She swam behind him, placed her hands gently behind his shoulders, pulled him ashore. He lay there, smiling.
She whipped her wet hair sideways, turned toward the cliff. A surge of relief moved along her spine when she glanced back: he was following her.
The cottage felt so suddenly isolated: the small blue windows, the bright half-door. He stood in a puddle in the middle of the floor, his lips trembling.
Rebecca put the phone in a bag of rice to soak up the moisture, shook the bag. No backup phone. No landline. Christmas Day. Alan. He hadn’t even called. He could have tried earlier. The thought of him in Dublin now, with his new family, their tidy house, their decorations, their dramas. A simple call, she thought, it would have been so easy.
— Your father never even phoned, she said as she crossed the room.
She wondered if the words were properly understood, and if they were, did they cut to the core: your father, d’athair, abba? What rattled inside? How much could he possibly catch? The experts in Galway said that his comprehension was minimal, but they could never be sure; no one could gauge that depth.
Rebecca tugged the wetsuit zip and gently peeled back the neoprene. His skin was taut and dimpled. He laid his head on her shoulder. A soft whimper came from him.
She felt herself loosening, drew him close, the cold of his cheek against her clavicle.
— You just frightened me, love, that’s all.
When darkness fell, they sat down to dinner — turkey, potatoes, a plum pudding bought from an organic food store in Galway. As a child in Dublin, she had grown up with the ancient Hanukkah rituals. She was the first in her family to marry outside the faith, but her parents understood: there were so few Jews left in Ireland anyway. At times she thought she should rebuild the holiday routines, but little remained except the faint memory of walking the Rathgar Road at sundown, counting the menorahs in the windows. Year by year, the numbers dwindled.
Halfway through the meal they put on the party hats, pulled apart the paper crackers, unfolded the jokes that came within. A glass of port for her. A fizzy orange drink for Tomas. A box of Quality Street. They lay on the couch together, his cheek on her shoulder, a silence around them.
She cracked the spine on an old blue hardcover. Nadia Mandelstam.
Tomas clicked the remote and picked up the game stick. His fingers flitted over the buttons: the mastery of a pianist. She wondered if the parents had been gifted beyond the drunkenness, if one day they had looked out of high conservatory windows, or painted daring new canvases, or plied themselves in some poetic realm, against all the odds — sentimental, she knew, but worth the risk, hope against hope, a faint glimmer in the knit of neurons.
Christmas evening slipped away, gradations of dark outside the window.
At bedtime she read to him in Gaelic from a cycle of ancient Irish mythology. The myths were musical. His eyes fluttered. She waited. His turmoil. His anger. Night rages, the doctors called them.
She smoothed his hair, but Tomas jerked and his arm shot out. His elbow caught the side of her chin. She felt for blood. A thin smear of it appeared along her fingers. She touched her teeth with her tongue. Intact. Nothing too bad. Perhaps a bruise tomorrow. Something else to explain in the village store. Timpiste beag. A small accident, don’t worry. Ná bac leis.
She leaned over him and fixed her arms in a triangle so that he couldn’t bash his head off the wall.
Her breath moved the fringe of his hair. His skin was splotchy with small, dark acne. The onset of early adolescence. What might happen in the years to come, when the will of his body surpassed the strength of her own? How would she ever be able to hold him down? What discipline would she need, what method of restraint?
She moved closer to him, and his head dipped and touched the soft of her breast. Within a moment he was thrashing in the sheets again. His eyes opened. He ground his teeth. The look on his face: sometimes she wondered if the fear edged toward hatred.
She reached underneath the bed for a red hatbox. Inside lay a spongy black leather helmet. She lifted it out. Kilmacud Crokes Are Magic! was scrawled in silver marker along the side. Alan had worn it during his hurling days. If Tomas woke and began bashing again, it would protect him.
She lifted the back of his head and slipped it on, tucked back his hair and fastened the latch beneath his chin. Gently, she pried open his mouth and set a piece of fitted foam between his teeth so they wouldn’t crack.
Once he had bitten her finger while asleep, and she had given herself two stitches — an old trick she had learned from her mother. There was still a scar on her left forefinger: a small red scythe.
She fell asleep beside him in the single bed, woke momentarily unsure of where she was: the red digits on the alarm shining.