Anne Enright - The Forgotten Waltz

My adultery – I didn’t know what else to call it – lingered in my bones; a slight ache as I walked, the occasional, disturbing trace of must. I had showered that morning, but I realised I would have to go back and clean up again, and the thought made me laugh out loud. It was a vaguely horrified laugh, but still. I did not feel guilty, that afternoon in Gstaad, I felt suicidal. Or the flip side of suicidal: I felt like I had killed my life, and no one was dead. On the contrary, we were all twice as alive.

I also felt, as I went to pack and face the dreaded Seán,that the whole business was a little disappointing, let’s face it – as seismic moral shifts go. In the foyer, and on the minibus to the airport, he ignored me so strenuously I felt like writing him a note. ‘What makes you think I might care?’ It was hardly worth mentioning; not to Seán and certainly not to Conor. And though this seems hard to believe, I returned to my Dublin life as though nothing had happened; as though the lake, the mountains, the whole of Switzerland, was a lie someone had told, to keep the rest of the world amused.

HINDSIGHT IS A wonderful thing. With hindsight it was clear there was something wrong with Joan long before my hotel encounter, that she hadn’t been entirely right for some time. But there were so many reasons we could not see it, not least of which was that she did not want us to.

Our mother was a great beauty, in her day. Appearances were important to her. And because she was, in a way, too beautiful, she worked hard to keep the show on the road. She loved to be normal; to chat and to charm. When she was ‘on’, she lit up the room.

I used to be jealous of those strangers, who looked at my mother and loved her for half an hour at a time. Sometimes, it seemed as though we only got the downside: the despair in front of the open wardrobe door, the loneliness when there was no one there to admire. There were times, on the phone, when you could hear the drag in her voice; a loss of belief, as though there might be no one listening on the other end of the line.

I didn’t get my mother’s looks, but I got some of that thing she had, the lift as you walk into a crowded room. I got some of her chat too, her addiction to the phone. And her avoidance of the phone. There were days she let it ring out, for reasons too painful and absurd to explain. It always worked both ways for Joan. Her pleasures were too deep; she had to manage them constantly. So she always looked ‘a fright’ or ‘fine’, which is to say, perfect. And she was tough as hell on the rest of the world. Ruthless. What worked, what didn’t – hundreds of rules about foundation, lipstick, about whether to conceal or reveal: arms over forty, shoulders over fifty, the lines on your neck. Illness was not something she allowed herself. It was so unattractive. And terribly hard on the skin.

My mother lived forever, every time you looked at her, and she smoked like Hedy Lamarr. She was the last smoker in Dublin. She snuck out into the garden to do it, so her grandchildren would not cry.

She was at it again, at Megan’s next birthday in Enniskerry. You would look around and find her gone, then just as mysteriously back again. Megan was nine, so this party was a much more civilised affair, with friends from school and parents who dropped them at the kerb. It was amazing how much had changed. Out the back, the rowan tree was a sturdy, tall thing, and the fence had been rebuilt, to hide the new houses that now blocked their little slice of view. Shay threatened to arrive home and then did not, so it was just myself and Fiona and our mother, and it seemed a long time since we had played at being couples around Fiona’s witty formica table, with the men outside, checking the sky for rain. There was no wine. We wandered about, cooking ready-made lasagne and drinking tea, while a tight little herd of nine-year-old girls thundered about the house, trailed by one forlorn little brother.

Joan complained of being tired, took off her too-tight shoes, and fell asleep in an armchair. When she woke, she was agitated by the fact she had nodded off.

‘Did I say anything?’ then laughed at herself for her consternation.

She was right not to trust us. I had taken a photo of her, a secret one, ‘My mother, asleep’. I could not help myself.

I was worried sometimes by the fact that she was on her own in Terenure, we all were – her battalions of friends and lost causes notwithstanding – but our mother did not look lonely in her sleep, even though she was, in a way, ‘alone’. She looked like someone who is loved.

I might be biased. The picture looms on my screensaver and then cross fades but it is never as lovely as I remember her, that day. The older you get the less you dream they say but, absent as she was and utterly still, my mother looked, by some indistinguishable sweetness, very much alive.

And young. She was fifty-nine years old.

When she woke up, all fussed, we laughed and told her she had snored. Then Jack was sent upstairs for saying, ‘Granny farted in her sleep. Granny farted.’

‘You always have to push it,’ shouted Fiona at his busy little legs as they disappeared above her, while Joan, who was genuinely shocked as well as amused, said, ‘It’s only harmless. Would you leave the child.’

I had a mild interest in Evie that day – seeing as I had slept with her father, don’t you know – but I couldn’t figure out which one she was. The girls Megan had invited were ridiculously large and hard to fathom. They wore oversized party dresses, or funky tops; two at least were in tracksuit bottoms – you couldn’t even tell who they thought they were. These people had, besides, no interest in us, they had each other to love; the way they looked at each other was so passionate and shy.

I set out the plates with the real linen napkins that Fiona handed me, and the real glasses and metal cutlery. I put a jug of sparkling water on the table and another of orange juice; all of which I thought silly. These were big, uncomfortable children, not grown-ups – throw a bag of tortilla chips at them, I thought, and retire.

‘Who wants lasagne?’

One girl, a tall, soft creature called Saoirse, raised her hand. She was stuffed into a pink satin dress that a five-year-old might choose, and under her arm was a haze of golden-red hair.

I glanced at Fiona. She rolled her eyes in dread.

These children weren’t growing, so much as being replaced.

‘Come and eat!’

It troubled me quite a bit, actually – the hair. It looked beautiful, when it should have been disgusting. And it was twice as disgusting as it should have been, when you looked up from it to the big pudding-face of the child. I should get out more, I thought – this can not be as strange as I think it is. And I also thought, Something has gone wrong .

Then I saw Evie. She revealed herself with a flash of her father’s too-beautiful eyes. It happened when she looked straight at me, like the opening of a hidden door. She was still a bit puppyish around the chest, but the fat was mostly gone. And something else had changed – I mean, apart from everything, because everything had changed – but something essential had shifted. She looked happy. Or not happy so much as connected, for once. Not so scared.

It made me uneasy, the idea that she used to be afraid. I wondered what kind of man I had slept with – how many months ago now? – and would he arrive in through the door. Three months. It was three months since Montreux and I never wanted to lay eyes on Seán Vallely again. I wasn’t just mortified, I was actually averse; the thought of speaking to him was slightly soiling, like putting on used clothes after you’ve had a shower.