SATURDAY WEEK

The day was not the best for traveling, but Monday was the August bank holiday, so the whole of her weekend would not be spoiled by the overdue visit to her mam. Since her da’s passing, Mary’s visits home were more in demand and equally dreaded. Mary hadn’t minded sitting quietly with her father, stroking his papery hand, but now that he was gone, her mother was not content to sit quietly with a cup of tea and intermittent non sequitors. In the presence of her only daughter, last of seven, only to visit, Aine Clooney of Ballaghaderreen in the County Rosscommon, would rail against the injustices visited upon herself by her offspring. She would cluck at Mary sharply, calling her Cathleen, the name of Aine’s favorite sister, Mary’s aunt who had not seen her eighteenth year. Aunt Kitty was said to have died from a fall and was buried in the cemetery in the next parish because it was much more beautiful there. Mary’s mother had never gotten around to showing her daughter the grave. And in parts of Ballaghadereen the version told was that the black-haired sister, Cathleen Clooney had died in childbirth, or with child, in any case, unmarried. And she was the sister to whom Mary’s mother denounced her own living children, while looking through Mary and prodding her knee. It was no use Mary correcting her mother about her own identity, or the fact that her aunt was long dead, and her father was no longer snoring in the next room. Nor was there a point to collecting all the bottles her mother hid under the bed or in the press or the toilet tank.

Something fairly large and important broke in her mother when her father died. Mary didn’t remember a time when her mother wasn’t slightly addled, but in the past year Aine had chosen to wander deeper into corners of her memory than one would care to follow her. She was still at shouting distance and was still able to keep herself clean enough and fed, so there was nothing to do but humour her for now. Mary herself knew a bit of the fracture her mother sustained, for she still sometimes dreamt of her father and woke up frightened of the dark.

Being the only daughter, Mary was obliged to do certain things. She wasn’t sure which, but knew the weight of the expectation. There had been no hand-me-down clothes for her as there were for all the others, even Sean had them got from an older cousin on the father’s side. Being the youngest, so the lads believed, the least was expected of her, and the oldest brothers had never made an effort to hide their resentment. She could see their side of it. She was the only one to attend university and the expense of sending her off to Trinity left less for the others.

And this is how they fell from their mother’s womb:

Sean -- whose wife is Ooonaugh with a swan’s neck and shiny black eyes

Eamonn -- away in America and not coming back. In the infrequent letters he’d signed off as Ed

Michael -- away in America and back once but not again.

Thomas -- partnered with Bried with cloddish twins who may or may not be his.

Francis -- who might have been a priest, but might have disappointed.

And nine years later, eleven months apart

Liam

and

Mary

Aine was an old 22 when Sean arrived and was 40 before she had the daughter at last. “Holy Mother of God, it’s a girl this time,” her father was reported to have said, and so she was christened Mary Regina. There were uncles who joked that they disbelieved the paternity after all the boys and Aine would glare at them fiercely.

Now they were grown, Mary was more patient with her mother than the brothers who had remained behind, or their women. Especially so since her father had passed. Her brothers wanted none of the strangeness that had trebled in their mother in the past year. She, however, had studied related cases in her coursework, after all. She even suspected an underlying illness, perhaps ischemia or other vascular episodes, but she did not press her mother to get it checked. Despite promising herself she would carefully monitor her mother and keep her safe, the time between the visits was becoming greater and greater and she was loathe to admit the steepness of her mother’s decline.

Mary’d gotten into a pattern of taking Buseirann to the West to keep her visits short. When she drove it was harder to excuse herself from staying the night. She could catch the only bus out on the Saturday morning and take the only return that evening. It was a bone-ache to be sitting that long in one day, and today the stink from the damp on the grimy plush upholstery on top of the fragrance of the bus-riding fare would make it worse still, but she’d only have to stay a few hours, and would have the two days to mend before she was back to work.

The rain had lashed down in the night and Mary’d hoped it would have flushed the dog shite from the broken-down footpaths to the bus stop. But the clouds had retreated just enough at the crack of the dawn that the dogs and their owners had outed to deposit another layer of their wares. What wasn’t piled was puddled. What wasn’t laid out in hard ropes was streaked-through by pram or bike tyres. It was just cool enough at the minute that the stink hung in a cloud below waist height, but there were reams of it forcing Mary to mince her way down the path as the heavens prepared to reopen above her.

The wait at the shelter was not so long as Mary expected, what with the rain now lashing down again. She leapt back just in time to avoid getting a shin-drenching from the spray of the bus’ tyres and congratulated herself for her reflexes. Boarding the bus, she picked her way past the soggy umbrellas and bundles that already littered the aisle. Wishing she had bought a paper or brought a book for the ride, she settled gingerly into the first relatively clean looking seat. The rain was increasing steadily and Mary cheered herself with the thought that had she stayed home it would have probably been a wasted day as well.

As she scooched herself closer to the window she felt a sharp jab by the heel of her hand. Poking out from the crease in the grimey plush between the seat and the back was a bit of metal. Mary tugged on it and out came a bit of what looked like a necklace. In fact, it was a fragment of a rosary, One decade and the bit of the medal that holds the circle of five decades to the strand with the crucifix. She thought better of poking her fingers into the gap to see if the rest was left behind. Who knows what might gore her next? She checked the heel of her hand to see that there was neither blood nor broken skin. The Virgin Mary was in high relief on the medal, and her face had left a faint impression, but broke no skin. Mary laid the strand of beads out beside her for want of knowing what to do with it. With a sigh, she tucked herself into her coat and shut her eyes against the prospects of the day. The ssshhhhhuuuussshhh of the water under the thick bus tyres mingled with the wind and rain pummeling the coach as it lumbered onto the motorway and picked up speed.

Sleep was not a simple state for Mary. It was as much a friend as a foe. She could say the same for the dark. For, growing up, there were long stretches where Mary would slip happily into slumber with covers over her head and extra quilts weighing her down to block out the damp and air and stray light. But, there were also the times Mary would dare not close her eyes unless she could see the light through cracked lids, and on those occasions, she’d keep one foot on the floor, ready to scoot from under the covers and down between her bed and the wall.She’d heard, somewhere once, she thought, that someone called sleep a little death, or was that right at all? Was it sleep, or something else entirely? When she was small, and her heart would pound and thrash in her chest in the dark, especially those times she was sinking unwilling into sleep, she hoped to die. She wondered sometimes, was that odd of her. Her therapist had said, earnestly, yes, it was. But Mary rarely thought of death any longer, and her affair with sleep was constant in its inconstancy.

For often, sleep was so kind, so safe, so still. “Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep.” And once she’d made her first communion, when the panic welled up with the descent, she took comfort in the offering of her soul to Holy God for safekeeping.

Her first winter away from home, there were days the sixteen year old would stay snug-a-bed until tea instead of plodding through the grey and the rain, past the Davenport Hotel and Pearse Street Station to the back side of Trinity College. Then, the sleep was so sweet and soft and kind.

The bus lurched to a stop outside Portlaiose, Mary awoke with a start, finding the decade tucked into her fist. She had the unsettling impression someone had just closed her hand around the beads. No one was beside her, but the shade of a warm body lingered.

Looking up, Mary glimpsed a figure slip off the bus before several young Spaniards climbed aboard shaking their sheepdog locks as they bounced down the aisle. Mary fingered the decade and stuffed it in her pocket to join her return ticket and tissues. She pulled out her mobile to let her brother Liam know she’d be in Roscommon by 11. He’d have to sort which of the brothers or sisters-in-law would be taking her the last bit to mam’s and who would be collecting her at 3.

The time in the car was always sufficient for the siblings or their partners to fill Mary in on their lives and Mary to fill them in on hers. Once in a while Sean’s wife Oonagh would insist she and Mary stop for tea. Oonagh had a sweet disposition and was obviously good for Sean, who was always the highest strung of the brothers. She once sat with Mary and Aine, but couldn’t hold back the tears listening to the way Aine spoke of her children to the two of them. Aine turned her grey eyes at Oonagh and stared her down until she stopped watering. Turning back to Mary, “as I was saying,” Aine continued caustically, and Oonagh covered her mouth to stifle a sob. From then on Oonaugh would drop Mary at the door and have someone else collect Mary at 3. Oonagh did not understand why Mary was so patient with her mother. Unlike most of Mary’s brothers and Bried, she did not believe Mary was trying to show up her brothers or that she was judging them all for neglecting the mam. She did ask once whether Aine might be less trouble in a home, but Mary shook her head and Oonagh did not ask again.

Mary hoped that Liam would call Thomas this time, because she wasn’t in the mood to see Oonagh’s gentle face, she’d somehow prefer blousy Bried and the foul mouthed twins on this rainy August day.

When she turned on her mobile, there were four unread messages. All from the Yank. Mary deleted them without reading one. She got Liam’s service and left a message. She didn’t try to reach anyone else, but refolded her arms around herself and shut her eyes to the rest of the journey.

There was something important she needed to do. It meant untangling herself from the ropes and cords that bound her about her thighs and chest. Her face was covered in a scarf, but she could see and breathe through it, so she left it be. The tunnel was shallow and narrow, so Mary kept her head tucked as she pulled her way deeper into the dark dampness. And the world shook suddenly and she fell.

Humiliation mingled with fury as Mary collected herself from the floor of the bus and found her way back to her seat. The others clucked and looked away once they saw she was uninjured. Had there been a way off the bus and a way to turn back, she would have, but it was now too late. Liam would be expecting her and the only return was the one she had already planned to take after her visit with her mother. Mary searched her mobile for the after hours number of her counselor, she had deleted it a few months ago, willing there would be no need for it any longer. Calculating the length of time left among these strangers, she decided to pace herself through the relaxation exercises she had been taught to both calm herself and to chunk away at the many minutes of humiliation that she had yet to endure.

Mary imagined a glowing ball, the size of a fist, warm, and spinning in the center of her body. As she had been taught, she spun the ball slowly, clockwise, and imagined it expanding slowly with each measured silent breath she exhaled. Inhale, exhale. She had been taught to think the words as she produced the actions inhale, exhale. “Hail,” she heard herself whisper as she exhaled, “hail.” She stopped. She concentrated. “Inhale, Exhale,” silently, but it kept transforming in her head to ‘hail.’ Nothing was right. She tasted panic, metallic, electric and bitter. Pushed it down. Pulling out her phone, she rang her brother again. This time he answered and said he would collect her himself. They needed to talk about their mother and what should be done. It was off-putting that he was so eager, suddenly, to discuss their mother. Had something happened? Yes, in fact something had, but they would talk when she got there.

Liam was the ebullient one, the easiest of the brothers and closest in age to Mary. He was her only sibling, really. The others had left the two of them to their own devices, their brothers and their old and tired parents alike. Had there been older sisters instead, their lives would have been quite different, Mary expected. Neither Mary nor Liam had been subjected to the punishment of ‘practice mothering’ older sisters were known to visit upon younger siblings with the complicity of the elders.

Today Liam sounded lost and panicky. He didn’t wait for her to step off the bus, but grabbed at her arm and pulled her toward the car without meeting her eye. His head wagged back and forth like it was fastened on with a coiled wire. He pushed the flyers for the new development off her seat before she got into the car. The Hyundai was new, but he’d spilt something sticky on the console already. He had interviewed with an American real estate company and was shocked when he’d gotten the job. Once he’d gotten over the shock, he had done quite well for himself, better than all the rest of them, thank you very much. But he was still the baby brother, even to her, the youngest of the lot.

Today, in his state, he reminded her of someone, but she couldn’t place who. His stammer had returned, she noticed, but not so most would notice. “I ca-an’t be innn charge, you know,” he muttered. “It’s nnnot my remit.”

“Did something happen?”

“Wwait ‘til I show you.”

They drove in silence the rest of the way to the house. Her brother, she noticed had the exact same jaw as herself. Almost bare of whiskers, smooth as marble. And she realized then who it was that he reminded her of. It was the man whose wife had a stroke during labour at Hollis Street. How he looked as it dawned that she could well be the addled shell he was looking at from here and forever.

Liam stood with his hands cupping his crotch and sighing as he watched Mary talk to her mother and poke through the house. To Mary, it wasn’t as bad as all that. She’d seen worse. But, yes something had to be done, and of course the weight of it would fall on her. Aine had been storing raw meat in the hot press and her fresh veg in the hamper with the wash and it was all a bit smelly and mouldy, but they could hire someone in to give the place a scrub and the smell would go with a good airing. Today Aine seemed lucid enough, so it may have just been an episode, and yes, Mary would make some calls and see if she could short-list her mother for a CT or an MRI in Limerick, but Liam or Sean would have to get her there and collect her.

While Mary was on the phone calling in a favour from the radiologist she had dated in Trinity before he discovered men, her mother started on her.

“CathLEEn, CathLEEN you hoor you, you HOOR. I see it. I see it. On your smug face and in your ….., you dirty HOOR.” And her mother pulled off her slipper and struck Mary on her belly with all her might. As the slipper landed, the phone fell from Mary’s hand and clattered on the floor. Stooping to pick it up, Mary snatched up the slipper and flung it back at her mother. “Feck ye, ye worthless bitch,” Mary shouted, “I’m trying to feckin’ help ye.” And she redialed the number, and butter wouldn’t melt as she apologized for being cut off just then.

Liam stood useless and glum.

Mary managed to get her old beau to promise to ring him back on Tuesday with an appointment date. She sent her brother off to the shop with a list of foods that wouldn’t spoil and she set about binning the spoilt meat and veg.

Since she’d shouted at her mother the old woman hadn’t said a word, but glowered at the daughter, watching her every move. “Y’re a nasty old magpie,” Mary thought as she felt her mother’s gaze burn her back. “And I’m not a bit sorry for your troubles.” And it somehow made the chore of setting things to right easier, not harder, for her.