Weekend Reading

Time has moved on but Lucy hasn't forgotten her missing sister Deb and turns to her in a moment of crisis.

II

10 November 1986

Dear Deb

It feels funny to write that phrase again but it helps to make you real and I need to speak to you now because I have serious news. I know I know I stopped all this fantasy letter writing business a while back, telling myself it wasn’t going to bring you back and that maybe I was only making things worse for myself. Doesn’t mean I didn’t think about you, wonder where you were or what happened to you, or hope that you might turn up some day as if you’d only been mitching school for a day all those years ago. But we’re none the wiser now than we were then.

The sightings stopped after a few months and we went on living a weird sort of semi-life, keeping on doing all the usual sort of things, school, work, exams, hanging out while part of us was primed for news, starting every day with the thought maybe today . . . not that any of us – me Da or Mam – ever said it but I knew we all had the same tape running in our heads.

  Enough blather about me. Easy known I’m doing the journalism course – keep it short and to the point. No long words where short ones will do. Just because it happened to you (me) doesn’t make it interesting. And: It’s not news if it doesn’t hurt. Well, this next bit will hurt. I think. You see, the fact is that Mam is dead. I need to write all this down because my head’s a muddle. Which might have to do with whiskey and talk and no sleep for the past three nights. A lot of talk especially coming at me from all angles. The neighbours piled in to a room in the pub for the funeral feast. Good old Marge did Mam proud with stacks of sambos and cakes and Mrs. O from over the road pitched in with scones and jam. No wonder the ‘mourners’ didn’t want to leave, even if they did have to pay for their own drinks.

Of course your name came up too. You know the way one bit of bad news starts an orgy of gloom. The theory doing the rounds was that Mam was never right after you ran off or were kidnapped – and the old theories about that got an airing too – and that was where the cancer started. I don’t know what makes people so sure they know the truth about everything. It’s all just speculation – there’s a jawbreaker now but I can’t think of a short word to replace it except maybe guesswork – and people loving to be in the know or have the scoop.

Yeah, they meant well. They’ve been bringing dinners over for us since Mam went in to hospital. Nice grub. Now they want to hug me and mother me a bit to make up for Mam being gone but I really can’t take people fussing over me. It makes me feel awkward. I don’t know the moves. Mainly because Mam wasn’t like that. She wasn’t a huggy, cuddly, cosy sort of Mam sure she wasn’t?

  They were right about one thing though. Mam had changed in the last few years. She gave up on all the theatricals and playacting and let the dye grow out of her hair and stopped painting her nails. I know that all sounds kinda grim but somehow she looked younger in herself. Hard to explain. At first it was like she just wasn’t bothered with any of that after you were gone. Then it got to be a new style for her. I wouldn’t go so far as to say she went hippie but it was as if letting go of all that stuff was a relief to her.

Deep down she might have been giving up, so who knows, maybe the women were right, the rogue cells might have started their rampage in her body then. Even if she didn’t go back to performing in the musicals she still loved to watch them and asked for ‘Somewhere Over the Rainbow’ to be played at the funeral. Father Molloy (Soapy Sloane got sent off down the country somewhere) was trying to be all trendy and cool about it but he wasn’t very convincing.

Ron loved it. He was there in fine style – wearing a purple cravat and a black velvet jacket. I nearly thought he was going to say the mass! I got a wet smackeroonie from him outside the church and a load of aul gush about how special Mam was, ‘such voice control’ and the rest of it. Then he shuddered in ecstasy like he’d sucked a lemon. He’ll be shuddering this morning to judge by the state of him when he left last night. Scuttered. We had to call a taxi and pour him into it. When he was securely locked inside he rolled down the window and stuck out his head and shoulders. Marge and me were sure he was going to puke but instead he launched into a version of ‘Send in the Clowns’.  As Marge said, we’d just got rid of one. For all his fancy talk Ron never came near Mam when she was sick. Not so much as a rose or a card.

  Meanwhile, Dad gave up trying to talk to people. He sat slumped in a chair looking tired and old. I’ve counted the grey hairs gathering on his head over the past six months while he watched Mam die. He sat up with her every night for the last two weeks. Wouldn’t let me or Marge take over. He wanted to be the one holding her hand when she slipped away. I think he was hoping too for a last goodbye, a last flicker of recognition, a flash of the old Mam. Although apparently she wasn’t all that old. Everyone kept saying how young she was to be dead at forty-five.

Right now I feel about a hundred. Too tired to sleep. A few people came back here after the pub closed. Someone brought a couple of bottles of whiskey. The last of them trickled away at three a.m. Me and Marge cleared up a bit. Marge is sleeping in your bed. Dad is kipping in the front room where he’s been for the past month because Mam was in their bedroom upstairs. I came up to go to bed but next thing I knew I was in Mam’s room.

I sat on the stripped bed. The room was chilly because the windows had been open since she died but the smell of sickness and medicine still hung around. I tried to remember the room when she was really alive, not in the twilight zone. It wouldn’t come back. There was just a blank space, the bedside table cleared of the kidney dish and brown bottles and beaker, a vase of wilted freesia on the dressing table and a bin bag stuffed with sheets and nighties slumped in the corner. Suddenly, I was shaking with anger, at her and at you. For leaving us. For leaving me now to mind Dad. And if you hadn’t gone AWOL would Mam still be alive now?

  Once, in the middle of her delirium she lit up and gripping my arm said, Deb, there you are. I knew you’d be back. My lovely girl.

  I waited a minute to see would she say more and when she didn’t I asked, How did you know I’d come back?

  She looked at me for a moment as if she knew she was being fooled, then sank onto her pillows and glanced away to one side. You and me, girl. We went through a lot together. You and me. Tight as . . . Birds of a . . .

  Ticks. Feather. I supplied as she faded back into her daze.

  I saw it then in her face because she had lost weight how like you she was or how like her you were and might still be. And I felt excluded. I was outside a window looking in at Mam and you, both of you moving through a shadow world just beyond this one. I was frightened at the thought of being left behind. I grabbed Mam’s hand and called her, trying to get her back, to get her to look at me, to see me, to stay and know me for who I am.

  She didn’t return but Elsa came up at that moment and nudged me. She must have heard me calling. She’d been lying at Mam’s door ever since Mam came home from the hospital. I swear that dog has esp. But hang on. I’m forgetting. You don’t know Elsa.    

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Let me know what you think about this latest development in Lucy and Deb’s story.