Mary Costello - Academy Street

‘The King of Persia is dying. Oh, Tess…what am I going to do?’

She was back in her old neighbourhood, in the diner she and Willa had often sat in when the children were small. Now, together, they cried. ‘Lung cancer. From those damn cigarettes…and all those years in his underground train. It’s not natural, that…’ She shook her head. ‘A subterranean man — that’s what Darius was.’ She looked at Tess. ‘Six months, they said. Oh, Tess.’

She put an arm around her friend. She called up words to give hope. She cited new treatments, cases she’d known in the hospital that had turned out well. Willa shook her head. ‘No, Tess, it’s not good. I just know.’ She closed her eyes and sighed. ‘I’ve known him so long — since I was sixteen years old. We never spent a night apart, except when I was giving birth.’ She looked out the window onto the street. ‘How will I go on living without him?’

In the library on 179th Street, one evening in September, she found a slim book of poetry. On the front cover there was a portrait of a man with fixed haunted eyes. Years before she had thought poetry beyond her. She read the biographical note and the introduction. Then page after page — sonnets for Orpheus, the raising of Lazarus, a requiem. Her deepest nerves were touched, sudden mysteries given sanction. Outside, the light began to fade. She looked up and out of the high window. If I could just live here eternally, she thought, at this desk, in this light, with this poem. The librarian touched her arm, whispered, ‘Time.’ She checked out the book and stepped onto the street. Under the twilight the lines repeated themselves. Who, if I cried, would hear me among the angelic orders? She walked to their beat, the words in harmony with her feet, her feet in harmony with her heart.

Something brushed her arm, pressed against her. She felt a jolt and looked up. She had strayed onto the wrong street. A shadow darkened over her, and faces, all black, closed in on hers. Teenage boys loomed above her, bearing down on her. An open mouth, teeth close up to her face, roaring obscenities. She tried to speak. Cold eyes glared at her and she shrank backwards, another body, like a wall, behind her. Then her arm was tugged and her bag wrenched. No, she begged, my book. She held fast to the strap. Bitch. A violent tug and she lost her footing, and as she went down she saw a boot, black, high, being raised. She put her hands to her face and covered her head. She waited. And then it came, not a blow to the head or the stomach, but a boot on the small of her back, left there for a long moment, and then pressed. She held her breath, numb, until she heard footsteps running away.

A man and a woman knelt beside her. The woman dialled her cell phone. Trembling, Tess began to rise. Stay, stay , they urged. She pushed herself onto her knees, rose and fled. She lurched to the right, then left, along the pavement, lost. She looked up, searching for signs, landmarks. At a corner she halted, traffic whizzing by. She stepped to the edge of the kerb and raised a feeble hand and hailed a cab.

Willa took her to the hospital, stayed for the x-rays, took her home again, remained with her through the night as she drifted in and out of sleep. She heard a foghorn in the distance, dreamt of ships, rain, a burning bush. In the morning she stood before the bathroom mirror and cried.

All day she slept. In the evening Theo came. When he entered the room she struggled to sit up. ‘Shh,’ he whispered. ‘Go back to sleep.’

She lay back. In the faint glow of the night-light they were silent. She felt his presence, mightily, in the room.

‘I’ve been lying here…thinking,’ she said. She could not look at him. ‘There’s so much I regret, so much I wish I’d done differently.’

They were silent for a long time.

‘I wanted a strong mother,’ he said. ‘Like Mary O’Dowd. Or Willa.’ He was speaking into the dark. ‘I had no father and…you were always so…afraid.’

He sounded wounded, like an injured animal.

‘You were all I had,’ she said, pleading. ‘I did my best.’

She began to cry. He stroked her arm for the first time.

‘Shh, don’t cry…I didn’t understand then. I was only a kid. I didn’t know anything…and you never talked much. We never talked much.’

‘We can talk now.’

He shrugged, looked away. The past flooded back. She brightened.

‘You know, I think I got you wrong,’ she said. ‘I thought I knew you. For instance, I always thought you’d choose a career — a life — in the arts, or science. You were so creative when you were a child. And then you chose business!’ She was smiling at him, like he was a child again. ‘Does it suit you? Do you like it?’

Again he shrugged, but softer. ‘I buy and sell. It’s not really business as such…I deal in risk. Chance. The mathematics of chance. Yes, I like it.’

‘Once, years ago at a PTA meeting, your Math teacher said you could solve problems without being taught.’

He smiled. ‘I never understood why the others couldn’t! I don’t know…I probably got those things intuitively. You see… there’s such logic and truth in Math. And beauty. People don’t see the beauty. They don’t know that actually it’s in Math that beauty is told .’

She loved to hear him talk like this. ‘What do you mean? How? How is beauty told?’

He searched, for a moment. ‘Let’s take risk, chance. In Math it’s probability. In probability truth is clearly told. The beauty of probability is that truth, however vague, is logical. One outcome, that is possible out of so many, happens . People are amazed by that! Amazed by that chance. But why shouldn’t it? In the very long run everything happens. Everything is inevitable.’

The night grew dense around them. She drifted in and out of sleep. When she opened her eyes he was still there, in the chair.

‘What time is it?’ Her voice was young, like that of a girl. She remembered nights long ago, waking up when someone tiptoed into her room for something. He whispered a gentle reply. He was like a father now, watching over her.

Hours passed. In the dead of night she woke with a start, feverish, sweating. He was still there.

‘Did you ever find him? Your father.’

He looked into her eyes, and nodded.

‘When?’

‘A few years ago.’

There were so many questions. The enormity of everything, of Theo’s life, hit her.

‘How will you ever forgive me?’ she whispered.

The silence deepened. She could feel him recall it all. He leaned forward, his arms on his knees, his head down, and she grew afraid. When he lifted his head his face was soft, lighted. ‘You’re my mother,’ he said. ‘It’s easy to forgive a mother.’ She sank back on the pillow. He got up and took off his shoes and lay down on the bedcovers beside her. ‘Shh, go back to sleep now. We’ll talk tomorrow.’ She did not know if she was dreaming or living this moment. She closed her eyes. She felt his breath on her face, sweet, the promise of peace. He left his hand on hers. The night drained away and the whole world slept.

In the morning he was gone. Monkey was in his chair. He had left a glass of orange juice on the night stand beside her. She listened out for sounds in the corridor, for the ping of the elevator. She got up, fed Monkey, walked around the apartment. The building was eerily quiet. She was besieged by loneliness. She wished she were back in Academy Street, hearing doors slam, shouting in the corridors. In the kitchen she tried to be busy. She made coffee and sat at the table. The minutes passed slowly. She felt old and alone, the years yawning before her, a graceless old woman with sagging flesh and clammy skin. A woman in decline. There was nothing to be done about it. Tomorrow would be the same.