What Are You Like Read online

He sat at the counter while she made him coffee. He looked tired. She touched the back of his neck as she set the cup in front of him.

  He said he had seen a man that day, preaching in Times Square. He was thumping a small keyboard and yelling, ‘Remember me, my God, for my happiness. For my happiness. For my happiness, my God, remember me.’

  Life slowed down again, and stopped for a while in the room.

  His hands came round from behind to feel between her thighs, like a man rooting in the pocket of a coat he had just picked up.

  He had come back.

  When he fell asleep, she closed her eyes and tried to remember him exactly. She would forget his body. When the mortuary drawer was pulled out, she would not be able to tell by the toes that it was him, or by the knees. She would be pierced to the heart by the hair on the leg of someone she did not even know. She would not be able to look at the face. She would nod and turn away, and Anton would be gone clear.

  Maria pulled back the sheet and searched every inch of him, trying to memorise the way the hair grew, the swirls and shifts, the pattern of the follicles. She took his shirt and felt the fabric and smelt it. She lifted his trousers from the floor, with their weight of keys and small change. She took out his wallet and opened it. She checked through his bag.

  It was a small bag but it was important. There were important things in it. If he left her now, he would not come back again.

  At the bottom of the bag she found a navy-blue hardback notebook, done up with an elastic band. Inside, she found a photograph of herself when she was twelve years old.

  Maria saw her own eyes. She saw her own teeth, the two extra incisors that were taken out when she was fourteen. She saw her own smile. She went over to the mirror to check if it was still there.

  She had been completely robbed.

  In the photo she was surrounded by strangers, she was wearing a blue grandad shirt tucked into a pair of white jeans, she was wearing a pair of red espadrilles. In the photo, she was wearing her own smile.

  On the Bias

  Dublin, 1971

  BUT WHATEVER SHE wears, the child is clothed in silence. Silence seems to stick to her: whatever she touches lies still under her hand. On the day of her First Holy Communion Maria wears white, and a quieter white you could not imagine. In the photographs you see her, the extra inch between her and the world. Evelyn stands apart. The ice cream will not reach. The high-wristed monkey drops his hand over his face and, in the background, a man is caught in contemplation, the double vents of his jacket splitting over his rumpled backside. Here is Jesus, in Maria, in the Zoo, so quiet the toucans forgot to shriek.

  A silent breeze lifts her veil and drops embroidered shadows on her neck. The dress is broderie anglaise, with a petticoat, so no one can look through the little holes and see her knickers, which are white and edged with lace. There is nothing special about her vest, except that it is new, but her ankle socks are stretchy lace. She can feel the pattern, pressed into her feet by her white shoes. It is a black-and-white photo so her shoes look grey – though under them, her feet might secretly be . . . the colour of feet!

  Berts smiles out of her face like an old woman, wicked and shy. And a strange pair of eyes, which don’t belong to anyone, look at the camera and dare it to guess what colour they might be.

  When Berts was called in to help make the dress he brought a paper bag with ‘Lyons Tea’ written on it and his own tape measure, which Maria prefers to Evelyn’s soft one, because of the way it runs back into itself with a whirr and a thump.

  ‘Would you look at her,’ says Evelyn. And it is true. She stands on the dining-room table in her pants and vest, with bruises slowly rising red and blue to the surface of her legs, or sinking back down in yellow and green. A big fresh graze from the garden wall runs in parallel tracks around the inside of her knee, and at the padded top of her arm there is a faint oval bite mark around a sucky welt she brought up with her teeth and tongue.

  ‘What are you like?’ says Evelyn. Maria looks at her plump sticky feet, while Berts scribbles in the waxy paper, trying to get the biro to work.

  ‘Don’t have an accident whatever you do. What would they say in Casualty?’

  Berts starts to measure her, waist to shoulder.

  ‘Go from the belly-button,’ says Evelyn. ‘Or everything will be out.’

  ‘Up to where? Armpit?’

  ‘Armpit?’ says Evelyn. ‘Where did you get armpit from? Up to her shoulder.’

  ‘Right. Belly-button,’ says Berts. ‘Where’s it gone? Oh, she’s lost it,’ and Maria sticks her finger in through her vest and laughs.

  Berts balances a ruler on Maria’s shoulder, ‘Hang on to that, now,’ and he runs the tape measure up to it. He looks around for Evelyn, but she is hanging on to the chair, laughing.

  ‘It’s a dress,’ says Evelyn. ‘Not a box.’ She draws a line with a finger along Maria’s shoulder.

  ‘Front half, back half. Like there’s a mirror down through her middle.’

  ‘Except that her bottom sticks out behind,’ says Berts, and Maria kicks him in the chest.

  ‘Plié, now. Plié!’ he says, catching her foot and twisting it high.

  When Berts has all the numbers, he draws the outline of a girl on the Lyons Tea bag; cut into sections and crossed with lines.

  ‘Rump steak, round steak, gigot chop.’

  Evelyn cuts it out and they pin her into it; with tissue for her front half, and newspaper for her back, so the births, marriages and deaths are all down her bottom.

  ‘I don’t know,’ says Evelyn.

  The picture on the envelope is of a blonde girl with a white patent leather handbag hanging from her elbow. She has smooth knees and her eyes are rolling blue, with a pie slice of white where the light hits.

  ‘It’s swimming on you,’ says Evelyn and pins like a maniac. She sews faster so she won’t run out of thread – and still the top is too wide. So she puts in some piping and then a lace collar to hide the seam staggering around the neck.

  ‘The hours of work’, she says, ‘I put into that.’

  ‘Lovely,’ says Berts.

  ‘Lovely,’ says everyone. But Maria doesn’t know if it is true.

  When she wakes in the morning the dress is hanging on a nail, a white cut-out girl floating up the patterned wall. Maria tries to imagine being inside it. She lies in bed and tries to tell what size she is. When she closes her eyes her tongue is huge and her hands are big, but the bits in between are any size at all. When she opens her eyes she is the size of the dress. Or she might be.

  Maria follows Emily Boles into the line of girls going up the aisle. Her soul is white after confession, and light as an ad for margarine. It floats out over her like a balloon. She walks quietly, pulling it along behind her, her solid white shoes tapping the tiles of the floor. Under her dress the scrape from the garden wall is a nice brown, lines of little beads that she wants to pick off but can’t. So she rubs one knee against the other as she walks, and tries to stop her bag banging. It is in broderie anglaise to match her dress, stuffed with a prayer-book that pokes through the satin rope that Maria threaded in herself.

  When they practised, the nun used a spoon, wiping it on the sleeve of her habit after each girl’s mouth. So the taste of the metal is still there when Maria sticks her tongue out – so far that the thread on the underneath hurts. Then she has to take it back in again to say ‘Amen’ because she forgot, even though Sr Eulalia had drilled it into them.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘The body of Christ. Amen. Tongue,’ said the class.

  ‘Amen. Tongue,’ said Sr Eulalia. ‘Amen what?’

  ‘Tongue,’ said the class.

  And even still Maria has her tongue out before the priest has finished ‘The body of Christ’, because she wasn’t expecting any altar-boys. So she is gagging on it, trying to swallow it and speak at the same time, as she says Amen.

  She walks back with her head down, her stupid tongue wrestling secretly
with the host, until her throat clutches it and she swallows Jesus straight into her heart. Jesus did not go into your stomach, which is why you couldn’t use your teeth. He isn’t a sweet, said Sr Eulalia, or a pork chop, but God, and you don’t chew God. He chooses you.

  ‘And don’t panic’, she says, ‘if He sticks to the roof of your mouth.’

  He is there in the church, hanging on the cross. He is sitting in the chalice and secretly clinging to the roofs of girls’ mouths, for fear of their hearts, and eventually He is in everyone except Brenda Quinn who is crying because she said ‘Tongue’ instead of ‘Amen’. He is watching Maria as her soul falls back into her, until she is a little vessel in the perfect shape of herself, full of Jesus. He is looking down on her as He fills her; His eyes so sad and His body all bruises and scrapes and nail marks.

  ‘Don’t have an accident,’ says Maria to him. ‘Whatever you do,’ then she eats a bit of herself to keep Him company, picking the scabs off her knee, then pretending to pray, so she can lick them out from between the base of her thumbs.

  The zoo is frill of girls in white dresses, opening and closing their little white bags, counting their money. They take off their gloves and put them back on again, sliding a finger into the seam at each fork. They push their veils back with their gloved hands. Sometimes they forget and touch things by mistake. They grab the railings at the sea-lions’ feeding time and the keeper pretends to throw a silver fish at them to make them scream and resettle along the bars. The chimpanzees throw their doings; very accurate, like boys. The clods of gick fly past your face and it would be a game except that this is the wrong day for it. Emily Boles is upset and even Maria says nothing, but walks away, her veil drifting lightly at her back. She finds Berts and stands beside him. He is talking to another man and he doesn’t even know whose father it is.

  Maria pulls his trouser leg and says, ‘Come on.’

  ‘Come on where?’

  Which is how she ends up in the reptile house by herself, dreaming of the snakes that lie there and never move behind the glass. She is looking for bats because they hang upside down. She is looking for something to stuff down her little brother’s neck, because he is whining all day, pulling out of Evelyn and getting ice cream. She is looking for Jesus in with the ring-tailed lemurs, a piece of fruit in His outstretched hand, while the lemurs bounce all over Him, landing on His head and peering down into His eyes. She is looking for the Virgin Mary in with the lions.

  When she goes into the lion house the smell makes her want to pee, so she holds the top of her knickers tight through her dress and watches a lion working at a bone with his dirty teeth. The bone isn’t really white; it has dried blood on it and is a complicated shape with bits flapping off the end. The bits are full of sawdust. Maria tries to think what part of a cow it came off, when she sees that the lion is a lioness. All the others are outside in the sun and Maria is alone with this one and her bald head and the smell. Her animal eyes meet Maria’s, and then she looks away.

  Maria is afraid that she will have an accident, but if she goes to look for Berts she might cry and wet herself at the same time. But she is having an accident anyway. She fluffs up her skirt really quick and sits in a trough full of plants. Then she watches the bald lioness. When the place is empty, she takes off her pants.

  Maria puts on her gloves and walks away from the cage; a little clot of lace left behind her in the ferns. At the door, a man she didn’t see bends over her and says,

  ‘You’re a dirty little thing, aren’t you?’ He holds on to her shoulder and roots in his pocket for something that Maria is afraid of. But when he finds it, it is a two-shilling piece, which he gives her for her bag.

  ‘Say a prayer for me, now.’

  This is her fourteenth two-shilling piece and her bag is getting so heavy, she gives Evelyn her prayer-book to carry.

  ‘What about the money?’ says Evelyn. ‘I could carry that instead.’

  They are sitting on the grass beside the big bird cage.

  ‘I thought you were with your father. What did you see?’

  ‘Monkeys,’ says Maria, and she starts to cry.

  ‘I lost him,’ she says, while Evelyn hugs her and says, ‘Oh dear. Oh dear.’ But it’s really her pants she lost and not Berts at all.

  Then a peacock walks past, and Evelyn tells her about a peacock she saw once that was all white, up to the tips of its big wide tail.

  ‘Just like you.’

  ‘When did you see it?’ says Maria. ‘Before I was born?’

  Which is when Berts walks back across the grass. There is a girl with him, and she is wearing a communion dress. Maria thinks that she must have been with him all along. Except that it isn’t her. It couldn’t be. This girl’s dress is longer and she even wears tights.

  ‘Another stray,’ says Berts, taking out a cigarette and sitting down on the grass. ‘Aren’t you?’ It must be a girl from another class. She looks at Maria’s dress and her shoes, then she waves at someone, and runs away.

  ‘Before I was born?’ says Maria again. But Evelyn only smiles and looks over at the birds.

  They go to the hospital on the way home to visit Granny Delahunty. Auntie Joan is there and some old people sitting around on plastic chairs.

  Her granny reaches up under her pillow and squashes paper money into her hand.

  ‘Say a prayer for me now,’ and Maria can see all down the front of her nightie.

  ‘Now, Maria,’ says Evelyn, and Berts says, ‘The child.’

  ‘Sometime,’ says her granny. ‘Anytime will do.’

  ‘Hail Mary,’ says Evelyn. ‘What harm?’

  Maria bows her head and joins her hands. All the old people look at her and mouth the words.

  The hospital smells of accidents – the kind where you wet yourself, and the kind where you get knocked down by a bus. Maria is fine until the Holy Mary, when she realises that she isn’t wearing any pants. Then she is back in the middle of the first bit again and someone has to help her finish. But they all clap when she gets to the end.

  ‘What’s that you have there?’ says a man. ‘Let’s have a look at the bag. Oh, there’s a lot in there.’ He clanks all the money.

  ‘Can I look?’ He pulls open the cord with two old fingers and peers inside and says, ‘Can I have some of that?’ and Maria doesn’t know what to say so she says, ‘No,’ and everybody laughs except her granny in the bed, who has fallen asleep.

  ‘Come on so,’ says Berts.

  Maria walks down the corridor. She has had an accident. She is in the hospital. A man walks past her in his dressing gown, with a hole in his throat. She isn’t wearing any pants and Jesus is trickling out of her, all along the floor. Maria takes her veil off and doesn’t care. The man smiles at her while a nurse goes down on one knee, says, ‘Long day, huh?’ taking the veil and fluffing it out and letting it drift back down on to her head. Jesus has leaked out behind her, all along the corridor, and all the prayers she has to say, for the man in the lion house, and her granny and the old people on the chairs – none of them will work and she doesn’t care. The nurse is dressed in white, too. She smiles at Berts who says, ‘I’ll take you home again, Kathleen.’

  Evelyn doesn’t say anything when she finds her pants are gone. She says,

  ‘Who were you talking to?’

  ‘Emily Boles.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ and now Maria can’t remember talking to Emily Boles, or what they said.

  They hang the dress on the wall, even though it is finished, so Maria can look at it as she goes to sleep. Berts, even, comes in. He sits on the edge of her bed and smokes, using the cup of his hand for the ash. His palm is hard and the ash doesn’t bum it and he sits there and they both look at the dress. He doesn’t say much, he says,

  ‘Tough day?’ And Maria says,

  ‘The nurse’s name was Siobháin.’

  ‘Was it?’

  ‘It was on her badge.’

  ‘And you could read it?’ he says. ‘Al
l that b, h and a fada?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fair enough.’

  On his way out the door he says, ‘You weren’t talking to anyone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Good girl,’ and the smell of his cigarette is in the room after he goes.

  In the morning Maria puts the dress on for Mass, but it isn’t the same the second time around. When Auntie Joan comes, she runs off with her cousin Frankie. They are halfway up the road before Mrs Quinlan catches them.

  ‘Come in,’ says Mrs Quinlan. ‘And I have a look at you.’

  Maria has never been in Mrs Quinlan’s house. When she walks in she realises it is the same as their house, except it is the wrong colour. Except it is the wrong smell. Except it is the wrong way around! The kitchen goes to the left instead of the right and when you try to go into the dining room there is a massive blank wall. Maria lifts her hand as though there might be a handle in the wallpaper, then turns around in fright, because there is a door open behind her back, like a room in a dream.

  Upstairs someone comes out of her bedroom, but it is the wrong bedroom and it is not even a girl who comes out of it, but stupid Ben Quinlan.

  ‘Say a prayer for me now.’

  ‘I don’t want to.’

  ‘You do of course.’

  Maria starts to make the sign of the cross, but she does it with the wrong hand.

  ‘Turn around, sure,’ says Mrs Quinlan. ‘And try again.’ So Maria turns to face the other way, and this time she gets it right. She says the Hail Mary from start to finish and Mrs Quinlan drops on one knee in front of her. When Maria is finished, she pushes her veil away from her face and kisses her at the corner of her left eye. She goes into the kitchen and comes back with a sixpence for her bag.

  ‘What about this little heathen?’ says Mrs Quinlan, and Frankie says, ‘I have four thumbs, but they cut two of them off.’

  ‘Not off the same hand?’

  ‘No!’ says Frankie.

  ‘Well that’s all right then,’ she says, and she gives him sixpence and lets them go.

  When the photos come, Maria gets her crayons out. She colours the legs yellow and the eyes blue, even though her own eyes are brown. She does the curtains green like Mrs Quinlan’s curtains, and the carpet blue. She leaves the dress white.