The Scattering (28 page)

‘OK,' I said. I saw in her eyes then that her life in the States had not been easy, and I felt pity for her. I could see, too, that maybe this Roswell bar thing was, as far as she was concerned anyway, her last shot at a vaguely interesting life.

‘Once I asked you to choose,' she said, ‘between me and Connie. It was probably too much to ask, after Eugene, I see that now. So I won't ask you to do that again. But this day, Michael, after all that has happened: your beautiful foxes, herself ruining the party, give
me
this day and not her, will you? Before I go back, huh?' For a split-second I did actually think of getting back to the shop. Then my eye drew up on something lying in the grass. I kicked at it, picked it up: a two-inch, cinnamon-red, gold-rimmed cartridge shell. I brought the shell to my nose. The former liveliness of the foxes I had come to know and love haunted the cold, indicting smell of sulphur. I put the shell in my pocket and walked towards Martha who was lying back on the rock like some kind of terrific ancient sacrifice. I went to her, my face wet with tears, cupped my hands around her hair and she came towards me.

*

We were to leave the following week. Martha made all the arrangements. She changed her booking, made a new one for me. I spent three days sorting myself out with appropriate clothes, suncreams, US dollars; filled several rubbish bags with junk and in so doing revealed a bedroom that looked to have been the room of a child or teenager. (Posters of Bruce Lee, skateboard-themed wallpaper.) It felt enormously gratifying to take all that old stuff from walls and drawers and plunge it into rubbish bags. Also into the bags went my comics, my stash of Men Only magazines and all the touristic tat Ma and I had bought on our trips to Donegal, Cork and Kerry. (Including the framed photo of us outside Blarney Castle, where Ma had refused to trust the man responsible for holding visitors as they bent backwards to kiss the Blarney stone, saying she could smell alcohol off his breath and that he was bound to drop us all to our deaths down the unguarded opening, and a ruckus had broken out so they'd asked us to leave. As well as the watercolour from Letterfrack where, in a corner of that lonesome wilderness, we had bumped into the British MP, Robin Cook, the year before he died.) So by the end of my dumping session all that was left were my more modern clothes, a few books, CDs, select mementoes. My old life was over and my new life was about to begin. So why did I feel so confused? Was it because I had secretly (really secretly) loved these days in this house with my mother? The years of our sometimes-humorous bickering; watching rented films and bringing the two of us cocoa; blackberry-picking in September so she could make jam; meals on the first Sunday of the month in the Shercock Hotel and everyone knowing me and Ma, knowing she was once Meryl Streep and had a great talent and that I wasn't so bad either. Hadn't it secretly made me feel all sort of safe and warm inside? And what was this I was about to do anyway? Take a one-way flight to L fucking A. Not Boston or New York or Chicago, but LAX, California, to shack up with Martha in the desert. Thoughts of all of this
new stuff
jingled around my head like loose change. I started to sweat. Maybe, I should hang on, a day, two. I'd boasted (a lot) about the new life I was about to have with Martha and the plans we had to do music again (slight exaggeration) but still I sensed Ma did not believe me somehow. As if she could read my mind and see my conflictedness and understand it better than I could myself. Not once did she ask me to stay. And though I'd spent an entire day trying to get it out of her: was she sleepwalking or ‘acting', was it her who killed my foxes or some other, I believed her when she said she
was
sleepwalking and that she'd never kill my foxes. She was my mother for God's sake, no matter what Martha thought of her.

We were both in the shop when Josie entered. I could tell something was wrong.

‘Martha's gone, Michael,' Josie said.

‘What do you mean “gone”?'

‘She didn't wait. Went this morning. She asked me to give you this.' I took the envelope. As I opened it I could feel the tension between Josie and my mother, once pals, once passionate participants in the local am-dram scene. Ma had said terrible things about Martha's father, Josie's brother, all those years ago, and Josie had not spoken to Ma since. And Ma had maintained the moral high ground on the subject, though this had been largely conceded since she had somnambulated without a gobbet of clothing (in front of several witnesses) across the bog to Josie's.

‘Shop's looking good, Connie,' Josie said.

‘The work never ends, Josie,' Ma said, and I returned to Martha's letter, which was not strictly a letter, more a one-way ticket to LA with a Post-it note on top that read:
only when you're sure.

‘That girl's not changed,' Josie said. ‘As impulsive and flighty as ever.' I put the envelope in my pocket, carried on refilling the crisp boxes. I was at once relieved and annoyed with Martha that she had read correctly my hesitancy.

‘So what did it say?' Ma said, nodding away to Josie, both of them bug-eyed, trying to divine by my movements what Martha might have communicated to me. When I shook my head, Josie pressed her lips together and looked at Ma as if to apologise for her wayward niece and the effect she'd had on my life. On her way out, Josie turned and said: ‘Connie, guess what they're putting on in the community centre this year?'

‘What's that?'

‘
The Jailbird
.'

‘That'd be a bit dated now, wouldn't it?'

‘I hear they're looking for an actress to play Mrs Kelsey. You should give that group a call.'

‘My acting days are long gone, Josie.'

‘You were the finest Mrs Kelsey ever seen outside Dublin. They couldn't judge you unless it was by professional standards, you know that. You should call that group.'

The bell rang out after Josie and a heavy silence followed between Ma and me. I knew she was embarrassed for me, but she needn't have been. Martha had detected my uncertainty and was giving me a chance to be sure. That's how I saw it anyway. To be sure I wanted to run a bar with her in the desert, a life I might come to hate soon enough. So before Ma had a chance to grill me about the letter, I said, ‘it's a ticket. To America. One-way and open. She says I'm to use it when I feel like it.'

‘And do you feel like it?'

‘I do.'

‘Do you feel like it now?'

‘Ma,' I said, exasperated, ‘show me that postcard brochure that came in, will you?' And I could feel her step quietly, like a bird, towards the place where she kept the brochures and catalogues.

*

Days and weeks passed and I didn't hear again from Martha. Meanwhile, I established a mobile shop, two fellas driving a van selling our goods up and down the housing estates of Castlemoyne and its environs. I put chairs outside so people could sit and eat what they'd bought in the shop. I placed the carousel of postcards by the door, took charge in a way I'd never done before. And Ma let me do it. I had a one-way ticket to LA hanging over her and I could have done anything I liked with that power. She didn't resist, even seemed to enjoy
letting me have the upper-hand. She never once asked me to massage her feet and I wore what I liked in the shop. When the biddies came in they nodded. They had respect for me. They spoke quietly to Ma and didn't stay long, as if they were a little afraid of me. Coco would come in and nod so much I thought his head would drop off.

Autumn arrived, this time wet and damp. The junk from my room remained in the black bags. Though things had gone well (with the changes I had made) at first, I nonetheless began to think that Ma took no particular
triumph
from having (more or less) trounced Martha Cassidy. It was me who seemed happy, not Ma. In fact, she seemed less flirtatious with Coco, generally more distracted, a little slow and depressed in the manner she would be before she would sleepwalk, like they say the warning sign is of one who has epilepsy. One day, when we were in the shop, the rain pelting down outside, I could see Ma looking sort of dejected, a raggedy piece of paper in her hands.

‘Not that bad is it?' I said.

‘What?'

‘The weather.'

‘?'

‘The weath… look, what's wrong with you, Ma? What's with the bit of paper?'

‘Oh. Just the number for the community group.'

‘What community group?' I said.

‘Group doing
The
Jailbird
in the centre. Apparently they still haven't found their Mrs Kelsey.'

‘Oh, is that it?' I said, assuming she'd wanted to apply and hadn't.

‘Give them a call,' I said, and for a second or two her mood lifted. But the furrowed brow remained. She had the look of someone who had left something very important undone.

‘Michael,' she said, then, ominously, sort of spitting it out, ‘time is dragging.'

‘What do you mean?' I said.

‘Well, the ticket, is what I mean. You're still here.'

‘I know I am, Ma. Isn't that what you wanted?' And as I scanned her face I saw to my horror that maybe I was wrong, maybe she hadn't wanted me to be at home with her at all.

‘Well, maybe you should have gone
before
, is what I meant.'

‘Before what?' Now I was getting panicky, probably because I knew deep down that she was right. Wasn't she always?

‘Aren't we doing well now?' I said, and she nodded.

‘Michael, I've something to tell you.' She went to the door, closed it, pulled the shutter down, turned the sign to CLOSED. She stood suddenly taller than usual, her hands folding over in rapid ODS rinsing movements, and she was all breathy.

‘About the foxes.'
The mention of them hit me with force. I'd not gone up to our bog or thought of my foxes in weeks. I had only to think of them and I'd feel sick and my hands would shake.

‘What about them?' I said, unable to hide the emotion rising up in my chest. I watched the colour drain from my mother's face. Without replying, she turned and kept her back to me.

‘Ah you… don't say you… you didn't, Ma… did you…? don't say it…' and as if from nowhere I started to sob, deep hungry sobs, and from the rattling of her shoulders I could tell she was sobbing too.

‘I'm sorry, Michael. I'm so sorry. It was an awful business and I wasn't in my right mind.'

‘Why are you telling me now for fuck's sake, why now?'

‘Because I don't want you to make a mistake.'

‘Mistake about what?'

‘Martha. America.'

‘Why Ma?! Why?! I loved them cubs, the fox. I loved them.'

‘How else was I going to get you up from under my feet, Michael, huh?'

‘Doing everything to keep me one minute and the next – everything to make me go! Make up your fucking mind will you, Ma?'

‘It was a drastic step, and no doubt one too far, but I was just trying to give you a little push,' she said. I looked at her then, the paper trembling in her hand.

‘A little push?' I said. She nodded. Straight away I took off my shop-coat (which, I am ashamed to say, I'd begun wearing of my own volition), and ran upstairs. I went to the place where I kept the envelope and saw I still had time on the ticket. I lay down on the bed, scoured the room for the few things I'd bring. I'd go as soon as possible, in the morning, for I felt now that everything was ruined with Ma and me. I could never travel around Ireland on the trains with the person who had killed my foxes (whether she was my mother or not).

The next morning I was ready to leave. I was tempted to go without saying a word. I looked around the living room, at the shelves with all her plays, books, trophies, my ancient stereo, then over towards the shop where I could hear her clicking away at the calculator. The shop door was open and I could see the poster, all leathery and swollen-looking in the soft morning light. I saw for the first time, I think, that Coco was right: she had a strong, haughty look, just like Meryl Streep, and an intensity, an immersiveness in her role that suddenly reminded me of Eugene (and his turquoise ball). She was talented. As he had been. As I had been. How had the entire talent quotient in one family gone down the toilet, I wondered? How had that happened? As I looked at her, so poised and fierce and direct, I wondered if she could possibly have been
lying
about my foxes. I wasn't sure she was capable of such an act. Not really. (And not
my
foxes.) I had every intention of leaving via the front of the house but I didn't. I went into the shop. She was by now starting to get the coffee and sandwiches ready for the truckers who would be passing. The radio was off and I could tell she was deep in her thoughts. She looked up at me and smiled.

‘What time's your bus, Son?'

‘Eight,' I replied.

‘Well. Good luck. Here, have a few plums and sandwiches for the journey,' and she took up a small paper bag that she had filled, rolled it down by the cuff and handed it to me.