Stony River. Tricia Dower
specks in them like the sparkle of sunlight. Knowing from James that water flowed from other people’s pipes doesn’t make witnessing it any less thrilling. And the long-legged chair! Cian is in it, his hands and mouth happily occupied with tiny animal-shaped biscuits. Doris has given him a clean nappy (she calls it a diaper) and smeared thick white cream on his rash. Doris is so clever, Miranda wonders if she has invented her along with all else that’s happened today.
Doris chops a cabbage she’s taken from the cold box and has Miranda wash her hands before peeling the potatoes. Warm water over her fingers makes Miranda giggle. Doris opens a cabinet filled with pots and pans. What bounty. Miranda and James had only what they needed. Whenever she asked for more of anything, James would say she was indulging in wishful jam-on-your-egg thinking.
“I add onion. Do you?” Doris asks.
“When we have it, aye.”
They boil the potatoes in one pan, the cabbage and onion in another. Miranda marvels at the blue flame Doris can force higher or lower simply by twisting a knob. Living here could be as fine as living with James, perhaps finer. If he were here right now, Miranda would be worrying she hadn’t done her lessons correctly or meditated long enough. She’d be watching his eyes and the set of his mouth for what they might mean to the evening ahead.
Doris mashes the potatoes with butter, seasonings (the true art of the dish, according to James) and real milk from a bottle, not the powdered kind. She mixes it all with the cabbage and onion. “Want a bath while it’s in the oven?” she asks. “I’ll keep an eye on Keen.”
Doris fills the tub with water and bubbles so sweet smelling they make Miranda laugh and cry at once. At home, she had a tub bath once a month after her bleeding ended. The water had to be heated on the stove. Not enough to cover her chest and never, ever, bubbles. Doris brings her a spare nightgown and tells her Bill phoned to say they shouldn’t hold up dinner for him.
Since it has started to rain they eat at the kitchen table, an electric fan blowing on them with the breath of a dozen snow angels. Doris touches her forehead, chest and shoulders with two fingers and mumbles something. Miranda touches her forehead, chest and shoulders and mumbles, “Thank you, Mother, for sending Doris.”
Miranda and Cian will sleep in the small, square unborn babe’s room. Its yellow walls close around Miranda like a hug. “The crib is Carolyn’s old one,” Doris says. So a cot is called a crib. A nappy a diaper. Biscuits: cookies or crackers. Miranda has grown new eyes and ears.
Doris plugs a tiny light bulb into an outlet, pulls the sheet over Miranda’s shoulders and kisses her forehead. Crouching by Cian’s cot, she recites, “Angel of God, my guardian dear, to whom His love commits me here. Ever this day, be at my side, to light and guard, to rule and guide. Amen.” Miranda would have said “Angel of god and goddess,” but that would have spoiled the rhythm of the prayer that has lulled Cian into closing his eyes.
Doris leaves the room and returns with a white plastic figurine: a woman in a hooded robe, no taller than Miranda’s hand. Like the picture from Doris’s mirror, it could easily be Ethleen. “Our Blessed Mother will watch over you tonight and light your dreams,” Doris says, placing the figurine on the dresser near Miranda’s bed. She closes the door.
There’s too much daylight for sleep, even with the curtains pulled. Miranda retrieves the valise from under the bed. With an expectant breath, she withdraws the two parcels James had with him when he died. Only packets of powders and dried plants inside. No strawberries speaking of love and forgiveness. She removes the drawing of Ethleen and the moonstone from the valise. Places the drawing beside the figurine. Taking the translucent stone in her left hand, she whispers, “I am one with the moon” three times. The ritual often yields the sense of a wise and caring presence Miranda associates with her mother. Tonight, it’s Doris.
She tiptoes to Cian’s cot and studies his sleeping face. Now that she’s seen a picture of Doris’s daughter Carolyn, she suspects something is amiss with the lad. James claimed Danú and Dagda brought forth nothing but geniuses. But wouldn’t they give a genius a bigger head?
She returns to the bed and watches shadows skip along the ceiling. It’s her first night here yet she can almost believe this is the life she’s always had. James would be proud she’s forgotten to be afraid and allowed herself to trust. Tomorrow she will be the same and not the same as she is tonight. Tomorrow she will take Cian to a park and ask again about Nicholas.
As the longest day finally darkens, the Blessed Mother begins to glow.
Another scorcher. Waiting for Tereza in the small woods she’d dubbed The Island, Linda closed her eyes and pretended the pines were palms and their cones coconuts. Last year Aunt Libby airmailed a coconut from a real island and Daddy smashed it open with a hammer. Mother said it must be nice to gallivant around the world. A buyer for a department store in Elizabeth, Aunt Libby got to wear Tabu perfume and suits with pleated skirts.
Linda sat on the old hollowed-out log, the ridges scratchy against her bare legs under Bermuda shorts. The log stowed props she and Tereza stashed for Swiss Family Robinson: a bent spoon, acorns, some string, the silver foil from gum wrappers. Tereza saw uses for things Linda considered trash, like cigarette butts. She stripped them and collected the loose tobacco in a Wonder Bread bag. She said they could sell it for food when they escaped from The Island.
Escape to where?
Eyes still closed, Linda was listening to the ebb and flow of cars and trucks on Route 1 four blocks away, pretending it was the sound of the shipwrecking sea, when Tereza snuck up on her like an Indian scout and stomped on her foot. She laughed when Linda yelped. Her hair was wild as if she’d just gotten out of bed. She wore tiny red shorts and her arms were full of cattails.
Linda didn’t like being taken by surprise. “What are those for?” She didn’t care how grouchy she sounded.
“If we let the punks dry out they’ll be better smokes. When they turn to fluff we can make pillows. We can weave the leaves into sleeping mats.”
“The rule is we live on whatever we find on The Island,” Linda said. “Punks don’t grow here. Berries and acorns do.”
“It’s our game, right? We make the rules.”
“It’s my game. I played it a whole year before you came.”
“Yeah, and what have you got to show for it? You didn’t make a tree house. You didn’t make nothin’ we could sell when we get off The Island.”
“What if I don’t want to get off? What if I want to live here forever?”
“Why? Nothin’ to do here, nobody to see. Might as well be Crazy Haggerty’s kid, locked up in that house.” It had been a week since they’d watched the teenager and her baby leave.
“Maybe she liked it there.”
“Not a chance.” Tereza stuffed the cattails in the log and sat next to Linda. “Jimmy said her old man must’ve parked his car in her garage.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Tereza made a hand gesture Linda could tell was dirty. “I told Jimmy he tries that with me, I’ll kick him in the balls. He backhanded me for that.”
Linda sucked in a breath. You weren’t supposed to say balls. At least she wasn’t. Her cousin’s dog was always licking his. She didn’t like to think of fathers having them. “Maybe Jimmy is wrong,” she said. The way the girl walked out like she wasn’t in any hurry to leave had stuck in Linda’s head. “Maybe Haggerty wasn’t her father.”
“Nope,” Tereza said. “Ma found this.” She pulled a newspaper clipping from under her waistband and began reading aloud as slowly as a third grader, shaping each word with her lips as though tasting it. It made Linda’s jaw ache.
She held out her arm. “Here, let me.” Tereza handed her the clipping.
Linda read, “James Michael Haggerty, 48, of 2 Lexington Street passed