Landing (8 page)

I remember this book about kids who make a girl out of snow; she dances round the garden in a sparkly dress of icicles. But the parents say "Bring your little barefoot friend in before she catches her death." The children try and explain, but the father says "What nonsense," chases her and drags her in, and while they're having tea she melts away on the hearthrug.

Re: snow girl

Síle, I'm due in the schoolhouse five minutes ago to help some volunteers take down the Fearful Epidemics exhibition, but I just have to tell you I know that story, it's by Hawthorne. And the worst thing is that when the kids burst out crying, the father goes into denial, and tells the maid to sweep up that pile of dirty snow the kids have tracked in...

The sole cause of man's unhappiness
is that he does not know how to stay
quietly in his room.

—PASCAL
Pensées

Sunday morning in Kathleen's flat. Síle lay six inches away, watching her tinted eyelashes against the pillow. Even in sleep, the woman's pale bob looked freshly brushed. Síle fiddled with the thin gold chain around her own waist, and waited for Kathleen to wake up.

Everybody thought it marvelous that the two of them never had fights. What nobody knew—at least, Síle had never mentioned it to anyone, and she didn't imagine Kathleen had—was that they hadn't had sex in three and a half years.

Put so baldly, this sounded like a disaster. But sex, it seemed, was one of these things that could slip away while your back was turned. For her and Kathleen it had never really been a case of fireworks in bed, and what there was had fizzled out over the first two years they were together. Síle always used to think of herself as someone with a lively libido, but perhaps these things could change, like hair going gray. (Not that hers was, not yet.)

Oddly enough, she rarely thought about it. Her life was crammed with work and play, friends and films, weekends in Brighton or Bilbao. And so much of a couple wasn't about the physical anyway. Or rather, there was an affection that was deeply physical; it just didn't lead to orgasms. Perhaps it was all the stronger because it didn't rely on the chanciness of sex, it occurred to'Síle now. Kathleen tall and warm-skinned at her back, as they waved guests off at the end of a dinner party; a hard hug after a week apart; Kathleen's long hands massaging her neck, feeding her guacamole, pulling off her tightest boots.

Perhaps all that was enough. It should really be enough, if the point of the mating drive was to select a good mate. Why shouldn't it be enough?

These were tormenting questions, and'Síle had no answers. (Their friends never probed; worn-down parents of small children were often assumed to have stopped having sex, but not a lively pair like Kathleen and'Síle.) She really shouldn't dwell on the thing, she reminded herself; fed with attention, it swelled and loomed.

Of course'Síle had minded, when she'd first realized what was happening, or rather, not happening anymore. She'd made some subtle overtures, but they'd come to nothing and she hadn't wanted to force it. You couldn't fake the spark: If you stroked a woman's back and nothing happened, what could you do but sit up and suggest a cup of tea? An article she'd come across had recommended sex toys, but the idea of suddenly brandishing handcuffs and strapons at Kathleen made'Síle cringe. Lust might have given her the courage to push harder, but that was the whole problem; by the time you noticed that lust had gone AWOL, all you had left was a vague unease. Like a forgotten phone number, a lost key.

How much did Kathleen mind? Hard to tell, because it wasn't something they ever talked about. The last time'Síle had tried to bring up the subject, they'd both kept their eyes on
The Simpsons
throughout, she remembered. Síle had wondered aloud whether there was anything they could do, and Kathleen had offered to ask around for a good counselor, but without much enthusiasm, and nothing had come of it. Since then, not a word, except that last year Kathleen had Silently forwarded her a link to some online journal article about the high incidence of "what is popularly known as bed death" in long-term lesbian relationships "as a side-effect of the merging process." The researcher—Síle couldn't get this sentence out of her head—reported that "many subjects stated a preference for, or at least acceptance of, nongenital intimacy within the dyad." On reading this in the crew lounge, she'd felt tempted to e-mail Kathleen right back—
Sod that!
—but she'd thought better of it.

The light blue eyes were open. "Whoops, caught me," said Síle.

Kathleen produced a benign yawn. "What time is it?"

"Ten past ten."

Kathleen stretched her tennis player's arms above her head and headed for the shower, pink-skinned and limber. It wasn't about looks, Síle noted; she'd always thought Kathleen was lovely on the eye. The planets still turned, so what had become of the gravitational pull?
Stop brooding,
she told herself.
I still want to be with this woman and vice versa.
It was a fact, but it didn't make her feel any better.

"Coffee?" Kathleen called.

"It's on," Síle replied from the kitchen, flicking open her gizmo and glancing at her messages. It was so easy. They knew how to do this; they were as practiced as figure skaters, linking and lifting, keeping their joint balance.

"We must pick up some daffs on the way to Monkstown."

"Da's garden is Wordsworth territory at the moment," Síle objected.

"So? It's about manners; family feeling."

Síle rolled her eyes, but didn't say another word. Five years was also long enough to have all your arguments over and over again, till the edges were French-polished.

An e-mail from Jude.

Today I'm going with Gwen and her parents to a sugar bush (here's the translation so you don't have to Google it: grove of tapped maples) for pancakes and sausages. The trees are all webbed together with little hoses, you ride round in a horse-drawn wagon, and there's pre-contact equipment like a huge boiling tub hollowed out of a trunk. (Sorry, more history jargon: pre-contact means before the palefaces turned up.) You've got to go in the early weeks of March because the first sap is the sweetest.

There, there was nothing in that for Kathleen to object to, if she happened to come in and look over Síle's shoulder. It was just everyday trivia. Síle read it again.
The first sap is the sweetest.

On a tall stool in Shay O'Shaughnessy's kitchen, Síle stared at a framed photo on the wall: Sunita Pillay on her farewell visits before the wedding in 1959, black-rimmed eyes, bindi on her forehead, the traditional three-piece of pindara, rouka, and half-sari. "God, didn't our Amma look like a film star!"

"Everyone does in black and white," muttered her sister Orla, giving the roast potatoes a shake and slamming the oven door.

Was Síle being scrupulous enough? That was the question. In conversation with Kathleen over the past weeks she'd twice referred to having heard from "that Canadian girl," but in what might be termed a misleadingly casual tone. She hadn't mentioned Jude to anyone else, which was a bad sign in itself, it struck her now.

Hands on hips, still wearing the dinosaur-shaped oven gloves, Orla remarked, "Kieran was called into the principal's office for kicking."

"I didn't think that was legal anymore," said Síle, deadpan.

Kathleen smiled, as she stood arranging the carnations in a square vase.

Orla, not getting the joke, said, "It was Kieran doing the kicking." She lowered her voice so it wouldn't carry into the living room, where their father was playing sudoku. "Apparently the other boy had called him a nigger."

"At least he could have got the insult right and called him a wog or a coolie," remarked Síle. Which earned her a raised eyebrow from Kathleen. (White people were so touchy about words!) What Síle had really thought was,
At least the boy didn't call him a mongol.
Considering the Down's syndrome, Kieran was doing well at school—with intensive tutoring from his parents—but kids could be so mean.

"I swear, the Irish get more racist every year," said her sister; "those letters in the paper about the need to
save our culture from being swamped
!" Since the flow of immigrants and asylum seekers had begun in the early nineties, Orla had been running a drop-in centre with the unfortunately soupy name, Síle thought, of Ireland of the Welcomes.

"Mm, it's disgusting," Síle agreed. "I don't remember very much of that when you and I were at Sacred Heart."

"That's because you were Little Miss Loveable with the hair down to your bum and played Mary in the Nativity play," said Orla sharply.

Síle decided not to take offense. "It was more outside of school that people said stupid things like 'Where are yiz from?'"

"Besides," said Orla, "boys' schools are rougher."

"So what'll you do about Kieran?" Kathleen asked.

"I took his teacher out to lunch—that new Vietnamese in Dundrum—and gave him a course pack on cultural diversity called
Hand In Hand,
but I doubt he'll use it. Anyway."

"Anyway."

Again Síle's mind slid away sideways. Were she and Jude Turner friends, was that the idea? Síle didn't urgently need any more friends. Once, after a bottle of white wine, Kathleen had let slip her view that Síle had a few too many already. And besides, three thousand miles lay between her and Jude, for starters.
Good if occasionally frustrating,
wasn't that how Jude had described a long-distance friendship?) Síle would never get the chance to ring up from a pub and shout over the clamour,
There's a great session on tonight, Jude, are you coming?

She nibbled the side of one nail where the purple polish was coming off; she'd have to fix that tonight. She told herself she was making too big a deal of this. They each had their hobbies; Kathleen's tennis matches took precedence over any other weekend activities, for instance. But Síle and Jude were now e-mailing several times a day; you could call that a hobby or—the word struck her with a wave of mortification—you could call it a big fat crush.

She stole a leaf from the salad. "This needs a drop more vinegar."

"Does it?" asked Orla.

Kathleen tasted a leaf. "It does not."

Síle was all in favour of honesty, but not of causing unnecessary pain. Relationships would never last a week without a bit of tact. Besides, why risk some dramatic confession to Kathleen, when this connection with Jude, whatever it meant, would inevitably peter out? (Like with that handsome woman Síle had met at a Security Training workshop last June, for instance: a flurry of pert texts and then nothing.)

Síle hadn't had a pen pal since she was nine; the very word was juvenile. Probably only nine-year-olds were generous or hopeful enough to spend long hours writing to someone they knew they'd never meet in the flesh. Her pen pal's name had been Martine, she dug that up out of her memory now: Martine van der Haven, who lived in a suburb outside Antwerp. Síle had sent off her very favorite picture of herself—big-eyed, in Orla's discarded Victorian nightie—and written in ink on the back, PLEASE RETURN AFTER VIEWING, but the photo wasn't returned, and she never heard from Martine again. Only now, staring at her mother's photograph, did it strike Síle that instead of merely getting tired of constructing letters in English to some little Irish girl, Martine might have been disconcerted by the little Irish girl's brown face.

Kathleen was going in and out to the dining room, setting the table. "Oh, and William finished his night course," remarked Orla, picking a bit of encrusted food off a fork, "so he's now a lay minister of the Eucharist."

"Wow," said Síle, trying to adjust her face.

There was a pause, while her sister turned down the oven. "I know you don't really get it."

Kathleen gave Síle a glare:
Be nice.

"No no, I'm happy for him." She hoped they could leave it at that.

"It's not that he thinks the Church is right about everything—"

"Well, no. You'd have to be a complete moron to think that," said Síle, unable to curb her tongue.

"Who's a moron?" asked Shay O'Shaughnessy, wandering in with an empty glass.

Síle leapt up to get his sherry bottle. "We should never talk religion on Sundays."

He sniffed the air. "Orla, that smells like very heaven. Bring back heated discussions of politics, that's what I say. D'you remember that splendid fight over Parnell in
Portrait of the Artist?
"

Since her father had left Guinness's—where he'd been something high up to do with production standards—he'd read more than ever, wading through vast biographies of Gandhi and Shaw.

"We were just saying how beautiful Sunita was," Kathleen mentioned tactfully, nodding at the photo on the wall.

"She and I met on a plane, you know."

"Did you really?" Of course Kathleen knew the story; she was just humouring him like a good daughter-in-law.

"The Flying Ranee service, on a Super Constellation, London-Cairo-Bombay, all first class!"

"Her first words to you were 'More champagne, Mr. O'Shaughnessy?,' weren't they?" said Orla.

Síle always found it exasperating the way her sister—only five when their Amma died—acted as keeper of the flame.

"Whenever Sunita had a break, that night," Shay told Kathleen, "she perched on the arm of my seat for a chat. In those days the stews called us
guests,
not
passengers;
they were hostesses in the true sense. There was no film or personal stereos of course—so the in-flight entertainment was to watch the stews walk up and down the aisles. Luckily they were all young and pretty, back then," he said, deadpan.

Síle put on a stern face and swatted at him.

"She wouldn't give me her address till just before landing..."

She caught herself wondering whether, if her mother had lived, Sunita and Shay would still be happily married. What combination of passion and stamina—not to mention luck—did it take to last a lifetime? Especially now that lifetimes were so much longer than they used to be.

She looked at Kathleen's smooth blond head, bent over the cutlery drawer, and thought of five years, and of fifty.

The front door crashed open; the boys' voices went up like dogs'. Orla opened the oven and lifted out the sizzling, black-edged salmon.

Síle picked up the pot of honeyed carrots and said, "I'll bring this in, will I? Kieran," she called out, walking into the dining room, "Dermot, Paul, John, c'mon lads, dinner!"