Mary Costello - Academy Street

The next day a sombre silence fell again on the ward and all eyes were glued to the TV. Outside the cathedral the president’s small son stepped forward and saluted his father’s casket. Around Tess, everyone wept. She feared the end of the world again. Everything would be extinguished, the child inside her too. She was jolted by the gun salute at the grave. Bang. Bang. Bang. She felt the impact and put a hand to her stomach.

That night, she watched it all, over and over. The funeral procession, the marching cadets, the prayers and intonations. There is an appointed time for everything…a time to be born and a time to die… She rose and went into the kitchen. She lifted a small jug of milk from the table and carried it to the sink. She thought of Mike Connolly rising from his stool after milking a cow, then pouring warm milk from the bucket into a saucer for the cat. Once he’d put her kittens into a sack and drowned them in a barrel of water. She looked out at the night. She began to pour the milk down the sink. She paused and poured it over her hands, first one, then the other. Then she ran her milky palms down her face.

‘What have you done, Tess? Jesus, what have you done? How did this happen? ’

She was standing in Aunt Molly’s living room, her hand holding the edges of her herringbone tweed coat together against the bulge of her stomach. She looked at the floor. In the next room Fritz coughed.

‘I’ll get the blame, you know. I’m supposed to be looking after you. Your father will blame me. Jesus, Mary and Joseph , Tess, what did you do? Who’s the father? You’d better be getting married, madam.’

She vowed never again to explain herself. She did not see Oliver — he had not been in touch for months. One day she bought a thin gold wedding band and at work smiled weakly and nodded, yes, yes, she’d gotten married. Outside of work she saw few people. Anne Beckett had moved down to the main campus of the hospital soon after her marriage and, having no wish to take in a stranger, Tess kept on the apartment alone, a decision that caused financial strain for some time. She let the friendship with Anne wane, wanting no reminder of the child’s paternity. She resolved never to reveal it. She resolved to erase him from her memory, think him and reason him out of her life. She placed herself in the care of an obstetrician, a small, round middle-aged man with tiny eyes and a kind demeanour who made Tess feel so safe that, after each consultation, she wished he was the father. Evenings, boarding a bus or a subway train, her eyes involuntarily scanned the aisles for young, earnest-looking men and, finding one, she sat next to him with a familiar ease, her wedding finger on view, as if she were his, and he hers and the swollen belly theirs, and devised for that short ride an alternative life.

My darling Tess,

What you must be going through. Oh, how I wish I could be with you. I am there, in heart and mind, you know. If you would only call me, or answer the phone. There is nothing to fear, Tess. Please talk to me. I will not judge you. I will ask no questions — I want no answers, except to know that you are safe, that you will be all right. And you will, Tess. It will all come right in the end. Are you taking care of yourself? Are you seeing a doctor? Please, please, let me know how you are. And do not despair.

  I would come, Tess — I would fly there in the morning — if I could, but the children. And this problem of mine. I cannot hold a cup of tea now without spilling it, and my legs are like lead so that I stagger all the time — it looks like I have drink taken. Even my writing has gone shaky. They’ve done tests, but nothing is confirmed yet.

  Say a prayer for me, Tess, and I pray for you. And for Oliver, wherever he is. We are all orphans again.

With all my love, always,

Claire

Snow fell in December. Alone, she wept. She wrote and rewrote and tore up each letter to Claire. Everywhere on the streets carol singers, lights, scenes of joy. She worked on Christmas Eve, spent Christmas Day alone, shunning Molly and Fritz, declining an invitation from Anne Beckett. She went to eleven o’clock Mass and in the afternoon cooked her dinner and propped a book on the table, reading as she ate. Later, she watched The Andy Williams Christmas Show , interrupted by ads with families around dinner tables, rosy-cheeked children around fires. She permitted herself a brief vision of the future and a quiet hope whispered itself to her. In the evening, in the lamp-lit bedroom, she stood before the mirror and lifted her dress, and stroked the gleaming globe of her belly. She felt vast, large with life, and she was moved by her own fecundity. He had put this into her, he had filled her up. She was the carrier of his flesh and blood, his skin and bone, their co-joined cells dividing and multiplying, and the new thing ripening within her. She gazed in the mirror. She was no longer blemished, but beautiful. She wished she could remain in this gestational state for ever, live her whole life in this perfect state of waiting.

At twilight she went out and walked the streets to Inwood Hill Park, marvelling at the light fall of snow, glistening, pristine in the streetlights. In the distance, the city murmured. Above, a blue-black sky. She longed to know where on this earth he was tonight, on what continent, under what sky. She walked along the park’s perimeter, ice glittering on bare branches overhead. She felt the child stir. She walked for a long time, looking up at lighted apartments, frosted trees, the moon. The night was unbearably beautiful. How had she traversed the earth to arrive here, at this splendour?

Dear David,

I would like to talk to you. Perhaps you could call me.

Yours kindly,

Tess Lohan

She wrote it twice, on identical greeting cards, her address and phone number on the left-hand side. She posted one to the address she had memorised, the other to McGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey. Her hand hovered at the mouth of the mailbox and a second later the tiny sound of the letters dropping left a heartbreaking echo inside her.

One evening in late February, after an eight-hour shift and a subway suicide that disrupted the A Train, she trudged home along the streets in the rain. Inside, she paused on the third-floor landing to get her breath, her feet, her back, aching. A door opened and a small neat black woman, whom Tess had often seen on the stairs, stepped out and placed trash in the refuse chute, and then turned. Tess went to take a step, but faltered. Their eyes met and the woman approached.

‘Honey, are you okay? You don’t look so good.’ Eyes shining out of a dark face, black hair, wide like a halo around her head. She took a step closer. ‘I know you, don’t I? You’re the Irish girl from upstairs. You feel like a drink of water, honey?’ She put a hand on Tess’s arm. Suddenly tears came. Wordlessly, the woman led her through the open door to a lighted room, to small children eating and playing in corners, warm. Eyes shining like their mother’s. A glorious place, the hum of heaven. The woman was named Willa. Tess sat at the table and thought she was dreaming. She could not speak. A bamboo cage hung from the ceiling and inside, on a perch, sat a dark bird with a collar of yellow feathers. Willa was watching her watching the bird. ‘It’s a mynah bird,’ she said.

Under the table Tess slipped off her shoes and placed her feet on the cool floor. She drank a glass of chilled pear juice. She ate salty crackers spread with cheese. The bird gazed down at her with a benign eye. Then it opened its beak. ‘Talk to me,’ it said.