Mary Costello - Academy Street

‘He’s a piece of work, that Zeus!’ Willa said. ‘Now Hera — she’s my kind of woman. If my Zeus ever, ever strayed, I tell you, hon, Hera’s got nothing on me in the jealousy department! My Darius — you know he’s named for a king?’ She paused. ‘ Darius, King of Persia .’ She smiled, as if a gentle memory had surfaced. ‘But, king or no king…’ She sighed, shook her head. ‘Oh, Tess, it ain’t love if it ain’t jealous.’

How odd they must look, two women in their forties, one black, one white, sitting in the park, or walking home along the streets, sharing mythological aches, trying to outwit each other with priapic puns.

‘So, which crazy god has put a stamp on you, Miss Lohan?’ They were sitting in Willa’s apartment, by the open window, drinking iced tea. Willa’s sons were grown up now too, and working; one a policeman, already married.

Tess thought. ‘Mmm…Probably Persephone.’ The sun was streaming in. She remembered a picture of Hades in his chariot, and the ground cleaving open as the chariot and team of horses dived underground with the captive girl, crying. ‘Or maybe Orpheus.’

‘No, you’ve got to pick a girl.’

‘Eurydice then.’ She remembered Orpheus’s grief, ascending from the Underworld without his beloved.

Willa shook her head. ‘You’re obsessed with the Underworld!’

Her voice trailed off. She turned towards the light and Tess was caught by her sudden calm and poise, the tilt of her face, and her eyes, in that instant, a little melancholy. A small tendril of hair curled in on her temple. The smooth curve of her neck gleaming with the heat, her small wrists, her slender fingers — all of her familiar and beautiful, and now unexpectedly sensual. Tess’s heart pounded. She looked away. The lace curtain lifted in the breeze. In the distance the city hummed. A silence fell and Tess looked at her friend again and something stirred in her and she could not tear her eyes away. The white collarless blouse, almost see-through, rested on her collar bone. Underneath, her skin, her breasts. There was something infinitely tender, infinitely delicate, about the small mound of each breast, the thin filmy cloth like a veil over them. She had a sudden longing to reach out, move aside the fabric, touch a breast, lay her head there, her mouth, ease her terrible ache for human touch, human love. The room was flooded with light and she was blinded, mesmerised. Scarcely breathing, she raised her eyes to Willa’s face, and they held each other’s look. Then Willa stood and moved away. Tess placed her hands flat on her lap and closed her eyes and came to her senses. She had almost lost her mind. She had almost lost the run of herself.

The evenings of that first winter alone, and of the winters following, had a denser darkness. In the streets she was assailed by glances, light strobes, flashing neon lights. Her working days grounded her. She was grateful for the comfort of routine, the rhythm of each day with its journey, its duties, the small news and gossip of other nurses’ lives.

Occasionally she thought about retiring, moving house, taking a trip back to Ireland, but she did none of these things. There was, in her nature, a certain passivity, an acquiescence that was ill-suited to change or transformation, as if she feared ruffling fate or rousing to anger some capricious creature that lay sleeping at the bottom of her soul.

Theo had long since separated from her, and when his college education was complete he pulled up the drawbridge to his inner life, locked his heart against her. He had been a fatherless boy and now he was a man and she accepted this, and understood. He went to work for a firm in the city, and year after year advanced in his field. A gambler of sorts, he explained, trading commodities, buying and selling gold, silver, rice, soya beans. ‘Coffee beans, too,’ he said, picking up the coffee can in her kitchen one day. An image of Africa formed — of Kenya, and Isak Dinesen, and Robert Redford washing Meryl Streep’s hair in a film she’d seen, Meryl’s head back, the water falling from the jug onto her hair, sparkling in the sun. That night they danced outside the tent. She remembered the music clearly. Lately she’d been doing this, slipping into reverie or something that resembled reverie.

She looked up at Theo. ‘How tall are you?’ She herself was growing down. He half smiled. ‘Six foot two. You know that. Why?’ She had known. Since he was a teenager and had played basketball, she had known. She did not know why she asked. She remembered buying razors when she saw the first tufts of facial hair, leaving them in the bathroom for him to find.

When he was twenty-eight he became engaged to a tall Jewish girl named Jennifer, a lawyer, who sometimes accompanied him now on his visits to Tess. A perfect couple, both blond, both beautiful. They bought an apartment on Riverside Drive. He was closer now to the girl than to anyone, ever, in his whole life. Before the wedding they took Tess to meet her parents and friends at a country club in Westchester County. Out on the lawn she watched Theo moving among them. She saw his ease, the way they embraced him, appropriated him. She could no longer hug him or kiss his head. To touch an arm was the extent of what she could do. All evening long she smiled and mingled, but she felt remote. It seemed at times that she was marooned on an island, a moat of water, wide and black, separating her from all human love. She thought of Claire, years ago, and her house and garden in New Jersey, and how all things change or end or disappear, and this would too, this day, this moment. She looked around. And you too, you will all disappear.

She returned home after midnight. She stepped inside and stood still, alone again. She had left the radio on all day. Others had people waiting. She took off her shoes and poured herself a glass of wine and sat at the kitchen table. He had been long gone but now the going was complete. She had sent him out of her house into his fate and he had grown and succeeded and become unknowable to her. She wanted to cry out, roll on the floor. She had loved him wrongly. She had become too attached. She should not have grafted herself onto him. She made a fist of her hand and bit on her knuckles. There was nothing before her now. He belonged to someone else. She remembered the couples at a party years ago, the looks, the trust, the secret signs, and a rage — an unbearable pain — pierced her and she let out a howl and flung her glass across the kitchen, hard against the wall and cried as the wine ran down, sudden and fast, in thin purple rivulets until it reached the skirting board and then parted and flowed right and left and over the top onto the floor.

She walked out into the night. The streets were warm, quiet, almost tropical. Under the sky there was nothing, no one to cling to. The paucity of her life made her unspeakably sad. She tried to put her finger on what had marred her, what had excluded her from life. Again she began to cry. What she had longed for was to be of one mind with someone. Of one mind and one body. Love. She walked along the edge of the park. Ahead of her, nothing but this longing, this sickness, this time.

She walked along Sherman Avenue, Broadway. She felt calmer. There was something about walking, steps unwinding out of the body, that brought comfort and clarity. Was there not something in her that secretly savoured this state of longing? Waiting with constant hope and everything before her, all to play for? Was not the ache sweeter, in a way, more enticing, more seductive, than the sating? Like waiting for the afterlife, she thought, but never truly wanting it to arrive. Because then, what would be left? It would spell the death of hope in the everyday, like love born dead.