Where Old Ghosts Meet (27 page)

“Well, it's Matt I'm concerned with. I'll never allow them to take him away. Never! So don't keep on about it.” She rubbed at the back of her hand. “I knows how to handle him. I'm gettin' better all the time and Mary Anne Casey, she–”

“Sh, sh, sh.” Matt poked his head around the kitchen door, his finger to his lips. “Sh, sh, sh.”

“Sh, sh.” Peg brought her finger to her lip.

Quickly he darted to the big chair and sat down, quiet and content.

“See, he'll be all right now a while.”

“Aunt Peg.” Pat spoke in a low voice. “I've spoken to the doctor in Placentia. He explained to me how things will be later on. He'll come to be like a baby again. He'll need cleanin' and feedin' and he might even …Well, he might get out of hand.”

“I know all that, Pat, but right now I can manage. I have good friends here and if things get to be too much, I'll say. But he's not goin' to that hospital and that's the end of it.”

“I know what you're like. You get an idea in your head and there's no movin' you. But I'll be out every weekend so long as the weather's there, to check on you. There's things you'll be needin'. I'll look into that.” He threw an exasperated look in Matt Molloy's direction and then headed outside to hang the sheets back up on the line.

“Pat was right. Things got to be a whole lot worse and it happened that quick I could hardly believe. ‘Who are you?' he said to me one day. It hurt me terrible at the time. I remember thinkin', I'm nobody! It was like all the good had suddenly gone out of me. I don't know when I ever felt so lonely. Those days he'd slip in and out of my life, sometimes he'd be right here with me; more times he'd be back in Ireland or another place altogether. I couldn't go with him no more. But it was hard, girl, hard to watch, hard to keep going.”

She looked down at her arthritic hands. “I wasn't so bad as I am now, but times I'd be that exhausted I'd fall in bed at night and not be able to sleep. When he could still get about, I'd bar the door at night, so he couldn't get out, but that wouldn't stop him roamin' around the house knockin' things over. Sometimes I'd get up and guide him back to bed but other times, I'd just lie there and listen and hope that God would soon see fit to bring it all to an end.”

She looked at Nora, a long inquiring look. “By and by, he got the pneumonia and that took the good right out of him. He never got out of the bed after that.”

“He don't look too good, Peg. His breathin' is shockin' bad. Maybe we should get the doctor to come from Placentia or maybe Father O'Reilly.” Mary Anne looked from Peg to the wizened man in the bed.

“No, Mary Anne, we'll do none of that. He wouldn't want it. I'll give him a nice wash and a change of bed sheets and clothes and he'll do better then.” Peg went to the kitchen and filled a basin with warm water and reached for the towel above the stove. She pressed it to her face. It was warm and full of the sweet smell of the outdoors. She smiled tiredly and tucked the towel under her arm.

“See that the clean sheets are put to warm,” she called over her shoulder, and we'll need a few beach stones from the fire to warm the bed.” She disappeared into the front room and closed the door. He lay on his back, inert, a thin grey man in striped flannel pyjamas, his eyes closed as if sleeping. She paused a moment to look at his skeletal image and turned to place the basin on the side table.

“Who are you?” The voice, surprisingly strong, startled her. It was like some hidden demon had awoken inside of him, had mustered up the strength to be hurtful. His eyelids slipped back in a smooth mechanical movement and she was looking into two eyeballs that were pale and moist like a clam. Peg could just as easily have asked the same question. There was so little left of the man she knew: bones covered with folds of slack yellow skin, dull lank hair, a mind sucked dry like a bone cleaned of its marrow.

“Good morning, Matt. It's me, Peg. How about a shave and a wash?”

His eyes rolled open but there was no reply.

She lathered the shaving brush like she had watched her father do so often. Early on, when Matt first took to his bed for good, she used to think about her father as she did this part of the job. He always hummed to himself as he shaved and usually burst into song when the job was done. It put her at ease and in a happy frame of mind to remember him. Now, sitting on the side of the bed, she thought only of Matt. She chatted to him as she scraped his hollow face and neck, telling him about the weather or any bit of news that was about and sometimes just making it up. His eyes followed her. She dampened the end of a small towel and wiped away the soapy remains, rinsed once more and then gently patted dry his damp hairline, mouth and neck. All the while he stared with blank eyes.

Bit by bit she followed her ritual: first one shoulder, then the other, his chest, thin arms, the long bony fingers of his hands. Only now, now that he was gone from her, could she touch him, look at him, feel the warm pulse of his body. He could no longer turn away. She continued, tucking the warm towels about his upper body while she washed his withered buttocks, his legs and genitals, carefully parting the slack folds of skin and wiping him clean. Her face remained serene, no flinching, no grimacing, no longing. It made no difference now; all she could do was care for him and make him comfortable. She was glad to do that.

When she had finished, she put on his fresh pyjamas. “There now, that feels better, I'll allow.” There was no reply. At this point she liked to sit on the side of the bed for a spell, hold his hand and search his eyes, hoping to see that faint glimmer of recognition that told her he was still there. Sometimes she was rewarded with what seemed like a faint ray of light behind his eyes, the very beginnings of a smile or a slight pressure from his hand. These were the private intimate moments in her day when she could be close to him. Somehow in his need, something had changed between them. The touching of flesh to flesh, the salve of fresh clean water, the cleansing, had brought to her a new feeling of love and contentment, one that she would never have dreamed possible in the circumstances. It was a feeling at once powerful and gentle, a deep tenderness that had not been there before, and it filled her with a kind of happiness that needed no explanation, a happiness that would remain with her forever, warming her soul in years to come, making her firm in the knowledge that they were steadfastly bound to each other.

She leaned over and stroked his forehead and then called out to Mary Anne. Together they rolled him over and slipped the clean sheets onto the mattress and placed the hot beach stones wrapped in wool socks between the blankets but clear of his feet.

“I'll see to the sheets now while you get him something to eat.” Mary Anne departed with the bundle under her arm.

It was a waste of time getting food for him. Peg knew that, but nonetheless she went to the kitchen and mixed up a couple of spoonfuls of the white powdery baby food that Pat had brought from Placentia. She took it in to him and sat on the bedside, spoon poised. “Just a small drop,” she whispered, pressing the spoon to his lips. She watched silently as the thin gruel, mixed with a trickle of saliva, slid along his lips and ran from the corner of his mouth. She scooped the runny liquid onto the spoon. “Look,” she said, tasting the sticky mess, “it's good.” She brought the spoon back to his mouth. “You must eat, my darling,” she whispered urgently, her eyes bright with tears. But he stared back at her with wide frightened eyes and finally she gave up and took the food back to the kitchen.

23

“
Those
days, Mary Anne was a wonderful friend to me. Every day she'd come by to help. She'd do the work about the house, mostly washin', and there was plenty of that, and I'd just tend to Matt. Pat came when he could. He laid in the wood for the winter that year and brought food and supplies from Placentia so we were well stocked up.

“Many times now, girl, I wonder why God sent him to me from halfways 'round the world. Did he mean to open a door for me so I could walk right through and have a different life? I stepped through the open door all right but there were many other doors I should have gone through instead of just standin' there listenin' and lookin' and wonderin' what might have been.”

“What would you have done differently?” Nora asked.

“I don't know. Maybe tried to get him to come out of himself a bit more. To get over the feeling that he was an outsider. But you know something, Nora? Even when you belong to a place, you can still become an outsider. For years I cut myself off from everyone and sided with him. I should never have done that. You can't live like that. It's hard to understand but you know how it is sometimes: we just go along day to day and do whatever we can to make life manageable. I wish I had found a way to say right out in plain words what was deep in my heart. In a way I thought I was preserving what we had, bottling it away like you would a few turrs or a bit of fruit, the way it would last.”

There was a long pause before she continued. “I was always afraid that if I pushed too hard he'd be gone and I'd not see him no more.” She turned to look out across the water into the dark night. “When things turned bad with his health, it was a struggle then to keep going. It all became too much.”

The wind was from the north. It savaged its way along the side of the wood-frame house, seeking out small cracks and sending icy chills into the makeshift bedroom that had been set up in the parlour. Peg stood in the grey light by the window, alone with her thoughts. In the garden the ground lay fallow, ragged and unkempt, thick with dying weeds and grass. Inside the fence, the mounds of the potato ridges were still visible, like small waves on the landscape. The past spring, she had put down a small patch of vegetables close enough to the house to see them through the winter, but had it not been for Mary Anne's husband, Pius, they would still be in the ground rotting away. Those days, not even a year past, Matt had worked alongside of her, like a child, helping for short spurts, sometimes being a nuisance, undoing what she had done, but more times he'd be off in a corner, busy doing other things. She had to be watchful, making sure he didn't roam. When the weather was fine it was so much easier to cope. She could recall then the warmth of the sun on her back as she stooped to the earth, and hear the wind tug at the endless rows of washing on the line

They would never plant the garden again. Those days were done; the weeds around the edges would take over and the long grass would come right to the door and grow strong and tall in the rich ground. Winter was just around the corner, and with Matt and the state he was in, she knew in her heart that she couldn't endure another January on the island. Yet each time Pat came she couldn't bring herself to make a decision.

The wind came hard against the house again and she thought she felt the floor shake beneath her feet. All her life she had hated the wind, feared the force that could in a minute whip up the sea into a frenzy of rage and fling her father, his boat, and the silvery cod fish he'd caught, high in the air and then send it all crashing back down into the cold black water. She sat now, transfixed by her old nightmare. “Take away the night,” she had begged her father one time as they sat home curled up in his big chair while the storm battered the house. She had clung tightly to him, afraid that he might have to up and leave her, but he'd wrapped his great arms about her and held her all night close to his warm chest until the wind quieted and her little body relaxed into sleep. Peg wrapped herself now in her own arms and shivered.

A harsh raspy intake of breath sounded from the bed behind her and brought her back to reality with a start. She turned. A scrawny arm reached from beneath the blankets into the chilly air. She went to his side, taking his hand in both of hers. His eyes were closed, his face passive. She pressed the long fingers to her cheek; there was so little to hold on to anymore. Then without warning his eyes shot open. Wide and bright with fear, they stared at her long and hard. Terror hit the pit of her stomach. Something was happening, something she wanted but couldn't admit to. The hand gripped her fiercely. It was strong and unyielding.

The busy clanging of pots and pans came from the kitchen. Mary Anne was making such a racket.

She shivered again. It was cold, so cold … “The coldest room in the house,” her mother always said. Then it came to her, a fire, yes, like Christmas time. She would light a fire in the old grate. No matter that the wood was supposed to last the winter. They would manage. Her heart was hammering inside her chest, making her breathless. A deep sense of urgency swept over her. She lifted the blankets to put the cold hand back in the warmth. The smell rose from beneath the covers. He needed changing again and he was cold.

She rushed to the door. “The fire, we must light the fire.” Her voice was sharp.

Mary Anne straightened up from her position over the stove and looked at Peg. “A fire is a good idea,” she said, accepting without question this sudden request.

Peg nodded, looking about her, uncertain what to do next. Her father's face came to her. If only he were here. He would know what to do. He'd have the fire in and lighted in no time. Suddenly she felt helpless and confused, unable to make a decision about a simple thing like lighting a fire.

Mary Anne was in the doorway, her arms laden with sticks. “Matches, Peg?” she called over her shoulder, stacking the dry wood with expert hands.

Peg, spurred into action, hurried to the kitchen and returned with matches. The fire leapt in the grate, warm, bright. Peg watched, transfixed. Black smoke puffed back into the room from the chimney.

“Crack the window, just a small bit. The chimney's cold, we needs a draft.”

Peg sprang into action. The fire began to draw nicely and roar up the chimney.