The Scattering (6 page)

‘What's wrong with Ashleigh?' Jessica asked the quick-eyed doctor.

‘I'd like her to have an MRI scan,' she replied. ‘Just routine. To rule out concussion or brain damage. Before we assess her further.'

‘You don't believe she saw what she says she saw?'

‘We need to rule certain things out.'

‘Well, what do you
think's
wrong with her?' Jessica insisted.

‘I think the child is traumatised. Quite seriously. She assumed a lot of responsibility.'

Jessica mowed in: ‘Has she been abused is what I'm asking you?'

‘I don't know,' the doctor replied. ‘It takes time to find out.'

Jessica called the hospital the following day for the result of Ashleigh's scan: all clear. Then she made an appointment for the following week for the commencement of Ashleigh's counselling. The evening Jessica got the news that there was no sign of damage or concussion, or any nascent tumours in Ashleigh's brain, Jules came home from Miami.

*

She had begun to organise excursions for the girls so they would see less of her unshaven son slouching around the house. Jules had been unusually quiet since he'd come home, broke, in debt, and deeper into the end of his bottle than ever. He didn't join them at mealtimes, and worked mostly alone in the yard.

One evening, Jessica asked Ashleigh and Olivia if they'd like to go to the theatre. The Bellevue players were to stage
Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean
at the Martin Theatre, in which her friend Doreen was playing a waitress.

‘Who's Jimmy Dean?' asked Ashleigh.

‘A famous actor who died tragically in a car accident,' Jessica replied. As soon as she uttered the words she saw Ashleigh's face light up with understanding. She realised then that Ashleigh had somehow heard the story about Tina's car being left open with the radio on by the dunes and the lack of any body, or sign of it, for the best part of seventeen years. Before the girls had come, and before Ashleigh had stirred people up with her claims of divinity, Tina's disappearance had been the only story of note ever attached to the Lawsons.

After the play, Jessica brought the girls into Panama Java for hot chocolate. She looked at the two girls so joyous in the busy café with the fan swirling crankily above their heads like some kind of predatory bird. She knew that soon she would lose them both.

That night, Jessica heard screams and thought Olivia was having a seizure. She ran quickly to the girls' room and opened the door. Olivia sat bolt upright, frightened, white as a sheet.

‘Where's Ashleigh?' Jessica asked.

‘She ain't here,' said Olivia. The moans and cries continued as Jessica walked along the corridor. She saw a light on in Tina's room. She opened the door and saw her son standing by the window, smoking. Ashleigh lay on the bed. There was blood all around the girl's groin, and Tina's sheets were stained. Jessica put on the main light. So dazed was she by the scene before her she could barely make out a word Jules was saying. All she could focus on was the blood, and Jules' foul smoke-breath filling up her daughter's room. Suddenly Jessica's voice seemed to take on a life of its own and she began to shout. She continued until she felt her son shake her violently by her shoulders.

‘Are you listening to me?' he said. ‘I said, I heard crying. I thought it was Tina.'

Jessica broke free and went to the bed. She covered Ashleigh with her robe.

‘It came just like a flood,' Ashleigh said. ‘I got so scared I came in here so as not to frighten Olivia. I'm sorry about the blood, Jessica. But Jules never touched me, not like you're saying.'

‘Why you just didn't let her have her own room, this room, I don't know. It's obvious what's happening to her!' Jules screamed.

‘This is Tina's room. And you know I don't let anyone sleep here.'

‘Well, why's that I wonder?'

‘You know damn well why. Now shut up and get me some towels.'

‘Tina's dead and she isn't ever coming back. And you know it.'

‘How in hell do I know that, huh? Am I psychic or something? Are you? They never found a body. Case. Not. Closed.'

‘Tina's case was closed the night she went out and…'

‘Shut the fuck up!' screamed Jessica. ‘She liked the nights on the beach. Just like we all did. You, me, her, your father – we often took you both out in the moonlight, you motherfucker. You know that. Now you just like the nights out drinking.'

‘Come on, Mama,' Jules pleaded.

‘She left the radio on in the car! Suicides don't leave the radio on in the car!'

‘Yes they do!'

‘She met someone and took off. She was like that. Flighty. She would just take off.'

‘She's dead, Mama. I know she is.' Jules moved slowly towards his mother.

‘Why d'you rush in here if you're so sure about it, huh? You said you thought you heard her.'

‘I just wanted it to be true.'

‘You still came. You're as unsure as I am, why don't you just admit it?' Jules left the room with his head bowed. Jessica curled up around Ashleigh on the bed and held tightly to the menstruating child. After a while, Ashleigh turned to Jessica and said: ‘It seems to me you had two children and you never noticed but one. And not the one that stuck around neither. Jesus says to love all the children.'

‘I know,' Jessica replied.

‘Tina ain't coming back, Jessica May. Not ever. You jus' been clingin' to that radio.'

‘I know,' Jessica replied.

*

When Bobby Jean came to pick up the girls, Jules was out in the yard taking the lights off the Christmas tree. He hadn't had a drink in over a month and Jessica was glad to see him busy. A couple of girls from Bay City High had come to say goodbye to Olivia and Ashleigh, and Jessica was leaving them to it. Then, as Jessica tended to the last of her hellebores, their five-petal heads all drooping to one side, Ashleigh came up quietly behind her. Since the night in Tina's room Ashleigh had not spoken again in assembly and had gotten quiet all round. Cole Spencer had even called to ask what had happened to the dazzling student. Jessica was just glad that the circus that had built up around the child had packed up and left. And now that the Atlanta authorities had tracked down a relative, an aunt, Jessica had no more cause (officially, at least) to worry about Ashleigh. The girl's counselling was to continue in Atlanta, the details of which would now pass exclusively to her aunt.

‘Why do they droop their heads like that?' asked Ashleigh.

‘I guess they're just protecting themselves.'

‘From what?'

‘From things that might otherwise destroy them. The wind and cold and such like,' Jessica replied, and looked up, puddle-eyed, at Ashleigh.

‘I'm going to miss you, Jessica May.'

Jessica held her close. The scent of camomile from Ashleigh's hair hung in the air as she moved off. Jessica watched her stop by the Christmas tree and speak to Jules. Something electric passed between them, and she saw her son suddenly become younger-looking and less bound up with his own inarticulate feelings and thoughts.

As Bobby Jean's car drove off with Olivia and Ashleigh in the back, Jessica thought her heart would break. She cleared up the plates of half-eaten lemon cake and tidied up inside. When she went out into the yard to turn on the evening lights, Jules was there. He had a towel rolled up under his arm.

‘Where are you going?' Jessica asked her son.

‘I thought I'd go for a walk on the beach. Maybe take a swim.'

‘You be careful. Don't go far out. Just as far as the rock.'

‘I will, Mama,' he replied, and walked off along the side of the store in the direction of the beach.

After her evening tour of the nursery, Jessica sat on her chair on the porch and listened to the sea. In the lull between the waves she could hear the low thrum of the humming birds in the bottlebrush. She looked up to the tops of her tall bamboos. The slim, dark leaves bubbled in the breeze all along like a wave. Jessica closed her eyes and pushed her face out into the mild evening. In the darkness she felt herself rising up over all the plants, flowers and trees of her gardens into the warm sea air, becoming first part of the lapis lazuli sky, and then the whole sky that looked down on all the travelled and untravelled earth.

The Scattering

As he stood on the shore gazing at the sea, water began to seep through the eyeholes of his boots. He could feel the weight of the year that had been, and wished by wishing it would slip away from him into the tide.

The coast drew in by the green mobile home up on the cliff. He looked up at the big grasses swaying in the wind, at the wooden gate set into the cliff steps, and at the curtains inside the home tied back neatly with bows. How he'd like to have lived by the sea in a caravan or a mobile home, he thought, kicking a gold stone out of the sand. He turned and walked in the direction of the cliff face, saw the mile-long stretch to Whitestown, white and quiet, strewn with mounds of silky, walnut-coloured seaweed.

He thought of September, when they had stood on the end of Carlingford pier and scattered Gerry's ashes into the harbour. At first he had hated the idea, but Eva insisted it was what Gerry had wanted. Now, three months on, on the first day of the New Year, the thought that his brother was out there in the sea began to reassure him about the whole grisly business.

Beyond the heaps of seaweed he saw the skeletal remains of an old boat and walked towards it. He stepped into the hull, pulled at some rotting wood, and in the gap noticed two small bottles on a ledge: one, a white plastic Our Lady of Lourdes with a blue crown cap, and the other, brown and medicinal-looking, tied round the neck with coffee-coloured string. Turning the brown bottle in his hand, he guessed it had contained a tincture for wounds, though it had no odour, except of salt.

Further along the beach he saw a car parked above the dunes. A woman was standing by the edge of the dunes looking at the sea. She was holding a blue plastic bag tensely against her cream coat. He thought of turning back as he was now alone on this stretch and did not want to alarm the woman, who had begun her descent to the beach. Suddenly a dog came bounding towards him. He had seen the exuberant three-legged collie on the beach many times, always alone, absurdly oblivious to its missing limb. When it ran towards her the woman shooed it, and it carried on in the direction of Carlingford.

As he passed the woman he said hello, but she ignored him. She was familiar. He turned and watched her stop at the boat, but could not place where he had seen her before. He walked on.

Everyone had been quiet on the pier. (Even when his father had nearly fallen into the water at his turn to scatter.) They had been led by Eva along the beach rather than the pier road, and he had raged at the sight of all these people made to traipse in the dusk across stinking lobster cages, stones and dark-green pools. There they were, this mass of family and friends, stepping over stones and pools – children, women in heels – to scatter Gerry's ashes, and, miraculously, the whole thing had gone off in fine style. A blazing pink sun had come out on a day filled with rain; the muddy shore to the steps of the high-walled pier was thronged with chattering sandpipers; the evening light curled around the edge of the Mournes onto the flat black stones of the harbour beach.

He rested the shells and stones he had collected on a tuft of sandy grass and, sitting on a rock, wondered if he should leave a note. What would he say? That he had slipped out of the scheme of things? That he had looked at his life after Gerry had died and found it a frightful mess: his job, his marriage, his house, his own self? That only a few moments of his existence here and there had truly belonged to him: last year's visit to Belfast, Aisha, the black-haired Polish girl, the hotel she'd brought him to, the one night of clarity? He checked his pockets: no pen or paper. He thought he heard Gerry speak his famous aphorism,
Never waste a journey
. At first it registered as a taunt for his lack of preparedness with the note, then as a kind of plea.

The whitish light over the sea had given way to a dark anvil-shaped cloud moving in from the north. He thought of his wife and the length of time they'd been married. Here, in the bracing air, he could honestly admit the years were only a number to him – he could easily walk away. Then why hadn't he? Instead, he went round in a state of permanent uncertainty. And this being so, Gerry's aphorism gave his quickly mounting doubts about walking into the cold sea something to cling to.

As he came off the beach at Templetown and headed for his car, he noticed on the side of the road a small shrine. There was a bright red poinsettia (with a blue plastic bag skirting the pot) on the ground in front of a low marble-engraved stone, together with coloured beads, dead flowers, holy medals. The stone read:
To our mother, Jean McConville, murdered by the IRA in 1979 and believed buried on this beach
. He looked up at the big signpost for Templetown advertising its recently acquired blue-flag status. A blue flag for a clean beach. The people of the Peninsula had worked hard for it; he'd seen them on Sundays lugging rusty beds with loose springs from the rocks under the dunes, plucking canisters of farming chemicals from the shore. They had made this beach, once so full of waste and death, clean and safe. They – and the industrious tide, which was like forgiveness and made everything new.