Anne Enright - The Green Road

‘You know what I want?’ said Dan. ‘I saw it on my way through and I can’t believe it — because what I want, more than anything, is some Waterford crystal. Don’t you think it’s time? Some champagne saucers. I should have got some for Lady Madigan, she’d love them.’

‘You think?’

‘Or for me. I knew there was something missing in my life. I just didn’t know what it was.’

‘Champagne saucers?’

‘Champagne saucers?’ They were both, and immediately, imitating their mother.

‘Oh go ’way now,’ said Dan. ‘I’m tired of you.’

‘Actually,’ said Constance, ‘she’s in good form.’

‘How is she?’

‘She’s in good form. I mean, apart from all this stuff about the house. She’s.’ Constance could not find the word.

‘Mellowed?’ said Dan. They were at the car which, Constance remembered, was a Lexus. She did not know if she was ashamed of this fact or proud of it, but Dan did not seem to notice, as she popped the boot with the logo on it, and he lifted it high.

‘More like mood swings, I’d call it.’

Dan said nothing to this, just worked the luggage into the boot, placing her shopping carefully to one side.

‘I know,’ he said, shutting the lid.

Though he had no way of knowing. How could he know? He had not been there.

Dan was ducking towards the driver’s door, when he realised what country he was in.

‘Wrong side!’ he said, and they bumbled around each other. Constance touched his waist as they swapped over and he seemed smaller than he used to be. This was not possible, of course. It was just that everyone was fatter, these days, your eyes adjusted to it. Everyone was fatter except Dan.

He noticed the car, all right, when Constance put it into reverse and a video of the rear view came up on the dash.

‘Con-stance,’ he said. ‘What is this thing you’re driving? You’re like the doctor’s wife these days.’

‘Ha,’ said Constance.

‘Mood swings,’ he said. ‘Is she serious about the house?’

‘Yeah well,’ said Constance. ‘I think she’s just getting old.’

‘And. Not in a good way?’ he said. Constance was searching through the gears for first and then reverse, and she could not laugh until she was straightened up. Then she laughed so hard she could not find the ticket for the barrier.

‘Shut up,’ said Constance. ‘I am trying to get us out of here.’

It was seven o’clock in the morning. The sun over Limerick was fat and red, and coming in from the west, a shading in the air that was the beginnings of rain.

‘You hungry?’ she said.

‘Mmmm.’

Dan slid down in his seat, and Be like that , she thought, because he made her feel so guilty all the time, hallucinating eggs and bacon.

In fact, it was the sunrise did for Dan. He was jet-lagged. The light brought that familiar sense of wrongness (Why did Constance buy this huge, stupid car? When did she even learn how to drive?) and Dan did not catch it in time. He thought it was the smell — something like wet dog, or cheese — this sickening sense that he would rather be anywhere else but here. Dan squeezed his eyelids, trying to keep out the insistent light of home, which was the same as any other light, it was just at the wrong time.

‘Have you seen the others?’ he said.

‘Coming down tomorrow, if Hanna gets herself together. Emmet’s working away.’

‘Of course.’

‘He has a new LayDee.’

‘Does he, now?’

‘Well yes,’ said Constance, because that was always the case, with Emmet.

‘And you?’ said Dan.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Constance.

‘What are you up to these days?’

Constance tried to tease out the usual tangle of house, kids, mother, husband, mother’s house, Christmas presents, dinner for ten or maybe thirteen, her children having sex, now, except for Shauna, who was too shy. What could she talk about? Looking up Pilates on the internet, trying to manage her own stupidity, a long weekend in Pisa on Ryanair, that was three months ago now. Constance was doing everything. She was ‘up to’ damn all.

‘Oh, you know,’ she said. ‘Nothing strange or startling.’

And Dan closed his eyes, as though in pain.

‘How are the kids?’ he said.

‘Oh!’ she said.

‘How’s?’

‘Shauna,’ she said. ‘You’ve got to see Shauna.’

‘What age, again?’

‘Beautiful,’ she said. ‘If only she knew it. Sixteen.’

Dan never really got a fix on Shauna, but Constance knew that this would change as soon as he saw her. Dan would take one look at Shauna, a girl who was as pale as he was, and with the same red in her hair. He would take this child, all knees and elbows, and he would fabulise her.

‘Skinny legs,’ she said. ‘Shot up.’

‘Mmmm,’ he said.

His eyes were still closed. Dan watched the sunshine bloom on the inside of his eyelids, the way he used to as a boy but today, even this felt wrong. Purple blossoms that looked like bruises. Sick yellow clouds, with a black underbelly of shame.

Jet lag.

He opened his eyes to see tail lights, the cream and grey upholstery of his sister’s car, the beginnings of rain on the windscreen. Ireland.

Great.

Constance was talking about the boys: Donal, who was the spit of his father, putting off uni for a year to work on a building site in Australia; Rory who was out every Saturday night.

‘What about yourself?’ she said, after a small silence.

‘Toronto,’ said Dan, as though the word contained all sorts of information, some of it surprising. ‘Yeah.’

‘I always liked Canada,’ said Constance.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I remember.’ It sounded like he wanted to say more, but he didn’t. And, when she looked over to check he was asleep.

He woke from a dream of the river Inagh entering the sea — loosely, endlessly — which made him think he was wetting the bed. Even as he blinked, Dan thought he must be pissing, he could almost hear it. A deep, intimate clunking sound startled him with the fact that they were on a garage forecourt, and there was petrol pouring into the tank behind him, and it would not stop. He looked over the back of the seat to see his sister standing at the tail end of the car, in her caramel coloured wool coat. Constance was looking into the middle distance, her cream scarf lifting behind her, the wind annoying her thin hair. Dan bundled his way out of the car, hitched his — completely dry — trousers up at the belt. The fresh air was a welcome slap of cold.

‘I’ll go into the shop,’ he said. ‘Do you want a packet of crisps?’

Crisps . Such an Irish word — years since he had the taste of it in his mouth.

Constance looked across the glossy black roof at him.

‘Oh yes,’ she said.

As they travelled towards home, the landscape accumulated in Dan like a silt of meaning that was disturbed by the line of a hedgerow or the sight of winter trees along a ridge. All at once, it was familiar. He knew this place. It was a secret he had carried inside him; a map of things he had known and lost, these half-glimpsed houses and stone walls, the fields of solid green.

The road was wider than the road of his childhood and the rain felt less and less real to him as they spun along it. So much water. They were held up by it, the tyres skating over a film of rain. Aquaplaning. Flying his sister’s fancy car through the wet air. Touching nothing. Untouched.

If only he could keep his eyes open, Dan thought, everything would be all right.

Constance also dipped her lids as she spoke — they all did it, the Madigans, they blinked slow. They looked around inside themselves for a missing word, a feeling that was hard to catch or explain. They smiled into closed eyes, and shut their faces down.