Stir-Fry (26 page)

A great weariness came over Maria. She longed to lie down on the coach and sleep for a hundred years. “I thought it might be that,” she said. Then, the silence stiffening between them, she added, “Since when?”

“Since now.” Jael’s eyes were glowing in the firelight.

Maria avoided them. Stirring herself to anger, she went on. “Twenty hours is your idea of a decent interval, is it?”

“I have been waiting quite a while,” she said in her most gentle tone.

“It wouldn’t be worth the wait,” Maria protested.

Instead of the expected denial, Jael said bluntly, “I don’t care what it’s like, I just want you.” To make matters worse,
she slid over beside Maria and put her arm around her. Maria was furious to find herself dissolving into tears like the worst of Hollywood heroines, but it was unstoppable. No one had ever put a hand on the back of her neck like that. Gulping, she leaned against Jael’s warm frame.

“Feeling better?” asked Jael gently when the sobs had lulled. She started running her fingers through Maria’s feathery hair, cutting little jungle paths of sensation.

It would be so easy, thought Maria, to let her take over from here. For several long seconds she considered that option and let the sharp fingers bring her scalp alive. “No,” she said at last, barely loud enough to hear. The fingers slowed. She cleared her throat and stared into the coals. “I wish I knew what you see in me to want. You’re the first person who’s ever looked at me like that, like I was worth looking at.”

The fingers burrowed deeper, taking a warm hold of her head. “I’m sure there’ve been others you never noticed, because they were less crude and obvious.”

Maria grinned sadly. “Well, I’m grateful. But the answer is still no. You should have realised that it couldn’t happen,” she hurried on, gaining conviction. “You know I’m not—”

Jael’s voice was shaking with vehemence. “You don’t know what you are.”

“Don’t patronise me.” She shook her head free of Jael’s hand.

“Maria, I’ve watched you for three months. You’ve changed under my eyes, you’ve come so far. You can’t be too afraid to jump off the mountain.”

“It’s not fear, you stupid woman. I couldn’t care less whether I turn out to be a lesbian or whatever.” Maria blinked up at her in exasperation. “I just don’t want to go to bed with you. This isn’t the right mountain for me to jump off.”

Jael’s mouth twisted up at one corner. “I don’t believe you feel nothing for me.”

“I care about you. I don’t trust you as far as I could throw you. Which wouldn’t be far.”

“So you don’t actually want me at all?”

Jael’s lips were so close, the sound reverberated in her ear, and the scorch of breath made her shiver. “Yes, a bit.”

“Which bit?” Her lips met on Maria’s cheekbone, then landed lightly an inch below and slid downward. Tiny hairs came alive as they passed. The lips paused, just to the side of her mouth.

“All right, quite a lot, to be honest.” Maria’s mouth was itching to turn into the kiss. All at once she angled her head away, so the lips brushed her ear and were gone. “But not enough,” she told the hearth rug.

Jael sat back and crossed her legs.

Maria took this opportunity to fumble for a tissue and blow her nose. She hoped it would have the side effect of making her unkissable.

“You did come back to the flat,” Jael remarked conversationally.

“Not for you.”

“You stayed after Ruth went.”

Maria tucked the folded tissue into her sleeve. “I was sort of sorry for you.”

She had not meant to hurt, but when she looked up Jael’s back was rigid.

“Sorry for me?”

“Because you’d lost her.”

The stony eyes dissolved into puzzlement. “But Ruth left so that we could be together.”

“She what?”

“She wanted to make room.”

“Make room?” Maria’s voice swelled to fill the space.
“You’ve lost the best of lovers, and you make her sound like a battery chicken?”

“It was obvious,” retorted Jael. “She told me last night that she’d asked you whether you wanted to stay, and you said yes. So she left.”

Maria swore more colourfully than Jael had ever heard her. After a moment, she gathered her wits. “Have you never a brain between the two of you? I didn’t mean I wanted to stay and replace her. It won’t hurt you to wash your own damn dishes for a while. How could she have thought that? I meant I wanted to stay in the flat with both of you, if I wouldn’t be in the way. I may be only seventeen, but I can make up my own damn mind. Why didn’t she ask me? Why didn’t she stay?”

She put her head down on her knees and cried herself out. By the time she sat up, her face sodden, Jael had moved back to the rocking chair and was studying her whisky glass.

“I’ve been a bit of a gobshite, haven’t I?” asked Jael.

Maria nodded.

“Don’t bother forgiving me now, I’m sure you’ll get around to it sometime. Listen, what do you want to do?”

Her mind was blank. She scrabbled for times, places, names. And then at once she knew exactly what to do. “I have to find Ruth.”

“To tell her all this? You should know, she won’t be coming back anyway.”

“No, not to tell her. Just to find her.”

Jael began speaking, then stopped herself, and realisation crept across her face. “I see. God, I hadn’t even thought of that.”

“Of what?” And then Maria stopped, because she knew.

“That makes sense of a lot of things.”

They looked at each other in bewilderment. “It does, doesn’t it,” said Maria, mostly to herself.

Jael cleared her throat. “How come I never saw?”

“I didn’t either, till now.”

“She’ll be at her mother’s,” said Jael automatically, breaking the silence.

“Oh. I’ll be off, so,” said Maria slowly.

“Do you have the address?”

Maria nodded abstractedly.

“Take the bus from the end of the road, and get off after the fancy bridge. Have you got enough change? They won’t take notes anymore. You’ll find change in the pocket of my jacket, on the back of the door.”

Maria moved like a sleepwalker. Three minutes later she was packed and gloved, her pockets full of coins. The velvet cap was tucked into her coat pocket. She hovered by the fire. Jael got to her feet, rather unsteadily, and planted the lightest of kisses on her forehead.

The bus came at once; Maria knew it was a sign. She sat on the empty top deck, at the very front. The bus bucked and rolled on its speedy journey into the suburbs; it was like clinging to a sea monster. As she rode, Maria played through all the possibilities.

She would be unable to find the Johnsons’ house; would wander and finally curl up on a park bench and be discovered dead of exposure by a gardener the next morning.

She would find the house, but Mrs. Johnson would refuse to admit any stranger with such a haircut and would whip her down the road with giant rosary beads.

She would find the house, but Ruth would not be there; would already have bussed to Kerry, shipped to Scotland, or flown to Lesbos.

She would find the house and wake Ruth with a pebble thrown against her bedroom window, and Ruth would appear in a white nightgown and say, get thee from me, foul fiend.

She would … The trill of the bell woke her from her possibilities. The bus swerved to a halt and let off three women with walking sticks. So far so quickly; Maria wondered whether she had been dozing. It was nearly her stop. She got to her feet and swayed down the top deck, touching the ceiling at times when she felt lightheaded. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw the bridge come into view and pulled at the frayed bellcord. The steps were deep, lurching as her feet reached for them. For the last few minutes of the journey she stood by the bus driver, balancing by bending at the knees, barely touching the pole with her palm.

He let her off on a patch of soft grass beyond the bus stop. “God bless,” Maria told him, her face serious. She pushed her gloves into her pockets and set off walking along the grass verge. The first crossing she came to was, as she knew it would be, the right road. She counted the gates off one by one, patting their rough stone posts with her numb fingertips.

When she came to the house, the porch light was on. And it was Ruth who opened the door.

I want to thank Siobhan Harding, Daniel Levine, Una Ní Dhubhghaill, Lene Rubenstein, Margaret Lonergan, Jenna Roberts, Cris Townley, Debra Westgate, my agent Caroline Davidson and my editors Terry Karten and Alexandra Pringle, for their most constructive criticism.

Emma Donoghue
, born in Dublin in 1969, is a writer of contemporary and historical fiction whose seven novels include the international bestseller Room–winner of both the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (Canada and Caribbean region) and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and a finalist for the Man Booker Prize–as well as
Slammerkin, Life Mask
and
The Sealed Letter
. She lives in London, Ontario, with her partner and their two children. For more information, go to
www.emmadonoghue.com
.

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More Praise for
STIR-FRY

“Maria … would make a fine friend for any young person trying to figure out, not only sexual orientation, but all the profound questions about life and how to live it. For the over-arching theme of Donoghue’s novel is not simply ‘coming out’ but coming into focus.”

—Charlotte Innes,
Lambda Book Report

“Emma Donoghue is one talented writer. There are some great one-liners here, and the characters are so perfectly drawn that you want to meet some of them.”

—
Sassy
magazine

“Delicious … this is a skillfully written and agreeable story; the plot moves, the characters breathe … most decidedly a novel of interest to grown-ups.”

—
Off Our Backs

“Donoghue deftly separates her novel from the usual coming-of-age fare with gentle language and a winningly intelligent protagonist.”

—
Kirkus Reviews

“Marvelously executed … I loved it …
Stir-Fry
dishes up an experience of sweet romance you’d maybe given up hope of finding in a lesbian novel.”

—
Mama Bear’s News & Notes

“Donoghue’s well-written coming-of-age novel shows that the youthful conundrum of sexual orientation is as prevalent in Ireland as in the U.S.”

—
Booklist

“Intimate, highly readable … Donoghue’s wry and tender debut tackles the interconnected themes of coming-out and coming-of-age … [and] ends on a hopeful, love-affirming note.”

—Publishers Weekly

“A memorable debut…. Some of the best writers in Ireland now are some of the youngest, and Emma Donoghue, one of the youngest of all, will soon be thought of as one of the most important.”

—
Irish Sunday Tribune

PRAISE FOR EMMA DONOGHUE

“Emma Donoghue is one of the great literary ventriloquists of our time. Her imagination is kaleidoscopic.”
–Colum McCann

“[
Room
] presents an utterly unique way to talk about love, all the while giving us a fresh, expansive eye on the world in which we live.”
–
The New York Times Book Review

“Emma Donoghue writes books that are unlike anything I have ever seen.”
–Ann Patchett

ALSO BY EMMA DONOGHUE

Astray

Room

Inseparable: Desire Between Women in Literature

The Sealed Letter

Landing

Touchy Subjects

Life Mask

The Woman Who Gave Birth to Rabbits

Slammerkin

Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins

Hood

Cover photo by Olivia Hemingway / Millennium Images