George Martin - Deuces Down

“One over two!” Moira roared. “One half.”

Gary applauded softly. “Hey, you got it! What if he had six fingers on his right? Could you reduce two over six?”

A pause. Then: “One over three.” Moira giggled. “I understand. Thanks, Gary.”

“You’re welcome. Now… why don’t you get to bed? Your mom and I gotta talk…” He kissed her forehead and Moira flung her arms around his neck. She ran over to Caitlyn and did the same, then scurried off to her room. Caitlyn watched Gary straighten the desk and put Moira’s notebooks in her backpack.

“You’re good with her,” she said into the silence, and his deep brown eyes glanced back at her..

“She’s a great kid. I like her a lot.” His gaze turned away as he tucked Moira’s math book in and closed the flap. His dark, long fingers tapped the blue cloth. He pushed back the chair. “I’m going for a walk. Wanna come?”

She hesitated. “I don’t know… Moira…”

“Just tell her we’re going. She’ll be fine.”

“All right,” she said finally. “Let me get my shawl…”

The night was cool but dry, a strong, high wind draping shreds of cloud over a half-moon and ripping them away again, though only a faint breeze stirred the dry leaves of the hawthorn in the yard. She envied the ease with which Gary moved in the darkness, contrasting with her own clumsy, stiff-legged gait. He slowed his own pace to hers, walking alongside her down the narrow asphalt road winding westward. He was careful not to touch her, always keeping a distance between them. They said nothing, listening to the night birds, the soughing of the wind, and the faint sound of the water. They passed Abigail Scanlon’s cottage, a quarter mile down the road-‘Wide Abby,’ they called her. The old woman was out on her porch: Caitlyn could see the outline of the misshapen body, like someone laying on their side, the legs at either end of the stretched frame, the head a bump in the middle of a log, the hand waving at either end, unable to reach each other across the huge girth between them. Caitlyn remembered how they’d had to alter her cottage, the door hinged sideways, all the furniture low and wide. Caitlyn waved to her. “A beautiful night, ’tis it not, Abby?” she called out. There was no answer, only a faint wave from one of the hands.

They walked on. She could feel Gary glancing from her to Abigail. “Moira goes to ‘school’ every day, but she’s the only one there,” he said finally. “She seems to know everyone on the island, and half the time she’s over at someone’s house. But y’know, in two months I’ve never seen anyone at all ever come to your house. I notice that you don’t go to the grocery yourself, that the person who delivers them leaves the box on the stoop and never knocks or rings the bell to say hello. I notice that your neighbors don’t say much to you.” He stopped, and she knew he was waiting for an answer. When she remained silent, walking on, he continued. “Is it me? Is it because I’m there?”

She smiled, because she must. “No,” she answered. “It’s not you. It’s… complicated.”

“I’m listening.”

“I don’t know if I can explain it to you. This isn’t your home; you weren’t sent here. You didn’t have to make the choice we made.” He said nothing; after a moment, she continued. “I came here with a mother who looked as deformed and disfigured as anyone here, who was in the same kind of pain. She lived for two decades that way, in daily pain and torment, and I took care of her. I took care of some of the others, too. That was nothing special. That was something we all did, those of us who could. And then… she died. And I left-because I could; because as far as I knew then, all the wild card had done to me was keep me forever young; because-unlike the rest of them here on Rathlin-I could get by in the normal society out there. I wasn’t ugly or horribly changed. I didn’t ooze slime or have spines or drag myself around like a slug. I was pretty and normal. Back then, when you looked at me or saw, you wouldn’t notice anything unless you watched me very carefully. I left. I left them behind. At the time, I didn’t think I’d ever come back.”

They’d reached the point where the road curved away north to Church Bay. The west side of the island around Church Bay slid gently into the water, unlike the steep cliffs that lined most of the island’s perimeter. They stood on a rise, the bay glittering below, while away over the channel, the lights of Ballycastle in Northern Ireland gleamed six miles away, tantalizingly close and impossibly far away.

“They’re jealous of you,” Gary said, “because you look like a nat, because you could blend in.”

“That’s part of it, aye. Then there’s Moira. They love her, Gary, they do. She’s Rathlin’s only child, and they all feel like they’re her aunt or uncle. But at the same time, she… She’s a slap in their faces. All of them made the decision to stay here. They made the decision that they wouldn’t bring any more children into the world to be like them, to suffer the way they’ve suffered. I left them, and I came back with Moira…”

“So they hate you.”

Caitlyn tried to shake her head. It would turn only slowly. “Hate’s an awfully strong word, and too simple. It’s… it’s more that they’re terribly disappointed in me. I’ve shamed them, and along with that they can’t quite ever forget that I selfishly abandoned them, and they can’t forget that I’ve almost certainly condemned Moira to die young and in horrible pain because of the virus she carries. What I did was selfish and it was abandonment, and it was cruel. I did it purely for me.”

“Sometimes you have to think about yourself first.”

“Maybe,” she answered. “But then you have to live with everybody else afterward.”

He gave her a contemplative hmm , leaning on the stone fence that bordered the roadway. She saw his gaze catch on the Ballycastle lights and remain there. “You really want to go home, don’t you?” she asked him.

A nod. “Yeah. I do. Arnie called earlier today, while you were bringing back the sheep. Mom’s getting worse, and their finances… My savings are gone; I can’t afford that lawyer any more. I done everything I can think of to do. I even talked to Codman Cody about trying to sneak off the island at night in his boat, have him land me somewhere on the coast and see what happens…” She saw his hand form a fist and slowly loosen again. “I left without saying goodbye to anyone. I miss my family, I miss my friends, I miss walking around the city, all the people and the sights and the food… But I ain’t going back as a prisoner.” He looked at her over his shoulder with a wry smile. “I guess there are all kinds of prisons, aren’t there?”

There was such gentle sympathy in his face, such compassion in his eyes… She wanted more than anything to lean toward that mouth, to kiss him and to feel him respond. She stared back at him, the eternal smile on her face, holding her breath. She could not move.

But he did. His head turned, he bent toward her so close that she could feel his warmth. He stopped. Pulled back, his expression stricken and guilty. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have… I’m really sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” she told him.

He shook his head. “It ain’t right, not when I’d leave here tomorrow if I could. Not after you took me in, let me stay with you. I’m really sorry, Caitlyn. I don’t want to make you feel threatened or bothered or-”

“Stop it,” she told him. “It’s fine. It’s…” … what I want too. I’m just so afraid of it and I don’t know if I can anymore, and… There were a dozen other things to say, but she couldn’t say any of them. “… forgotten,” she finished.