Anna Quinn - The Night Child

Once they are in the kindergarten classroom, Fiona runs to hang up her coat and put away her lunch box. A very pregnant Monica in a flowery flannel dress walks over to Nora, takes her hand, and squeezes. “Nora, it’s been ages. How are you?”

Monica knows. Nora can see it in her eyes.

“I’ve been better,” she says. And for a moment, considers saying more, considers saying, “I’m losing my mind and the world is such a fucked-up place,” but Monica is young, and hope and innocence are growing inside her.

Monica lowers her voice, tucks a bunch of her long brown hair behind an ear. “I’m … umm … sorry about what happened.” Her cheeks flush pink, and she nervously runs her hand across her round belly. “That must have been terrible.”

Nora nods, turns to watch Fiona, who is carrying a red bucket of chalk over to a small easel in the corner.

“And then that girl—the girl who killed herself? God. Did you know her?”

“Yes,” Nora says in a low voice, keeping her eyes focused on her daughter. “A beautiful girl, gone.” She turns back to the young woman, looks in her wide, green eyes. “Don’t think of these things now, honey,” she says. “You’re having a baby, a perfect miracle.” She reaches out to touch the pregnant belly but quickly stops, her hand hanging there like a frozen bird, but Monica takes her hand then and places it firmly on herself, startling Nora into a panic—she doesn’t want to dirty it, the child, she doesn’t want to dirty the child, jerks the hand away again and Monica’s eyes are hurt and confused, but now Fiona is here, grabbing her other hand, “Mommy, come see the bug house!” and Nora saying to Monica, “Forgive me,” and here’s the bug house and then the bell and finally she can get out of here, but on the way home the words “ Dad’s here ” close in and she has to run, she has to run, she has to run.

The clank and bang of the ferry terminals and the waves slamming against pilings and gulls squawking so tortuously loud she covers her ears and the street’s already crowded with tourists, all of them staring at her, pity plastered across their faces, and she runs faster until she sees up ahead the old man who squats near the Starbucks doorway each day, the one with the opaque eyes who strums quiet on his guitar, a bottle of vodka lying at his side like a dazed girlfriend. When Nora is near him, she stops and leans against the brick wall, slides her hands from her ears, and allows the music to absorb her, the mauve notes and delicate arcs and spirals soften and ease her mind, and slowly she becomes more herself. The music hypnotic, carrying her back to her grandfather.

Sundays, her grandfather played his accordion on the sidewalk in front of Paddy Mac’s Bar, a hand-rolled smoke dangling from his mouth, the limestone waters of Loch Measca in the background. “La Castagnari,” he’d say in an Italian accent to tourists asking about the accordion, and he would show them how with a single button he made one note on the draw and another on the pull. And she would sit on the bench, watching, his hands yellowed and weathered from years of tilling and pulling and coaxing impotent Irish dirt to render, to yield something into his hands. His fingers skittering over buttons, notes flying fast over the loch, the bogs, the way he compressed and expanded the bellows, allowing its breath, its vibrations made sounds inside her body. Sometimes he’d lay the accordion on her lap. His huge hands guiding her small ones through leather straps, pressing her fingers on the buttons. “What do you feel?” he’d ask, and she’d shrug she didn’t know. “Do you feel green like tangled ivy or yellow as the hawthorn blossom or black like the raven?” he’d ask and wink at her and make her laugh. And when she’d tell him her color, he’d show her the buttons that created the color, and she’d play feelings she couldn’t even imagine.

A teenager yells to the old man, “Rock it, dude!” and startles Nora, but no matter, she is slightly better now. As she walks away, she floats a dollar into the old man’s guitar case, and he gives her a wink, and she smiles back. Along the boardwalk a young woman with a diamond in her nose and bleached white hair spiking wildly out of her head sells white freesias and red anemones from a little cart. Nora chooses the red anemones.

“They’re beautiful, yes?” the woman says.

“Resurrection,” Nora whispers.

“Huh?” the woman says, plucking the flowers from their metal pails with her long fingers, the word luck tattooed across her knuckles, silver rings covering half of each finger.

Quietly and slowly, because she still feels disturbed from all the emotions of the morning but is determined to work her way back to normal, Nora tells her the story of Adonis and Aphrodite, how the two young lovers had gone hunting and how a wild boar gored Adonis to death, and Aphrodite sprinkled nectar on his wounds, and crimson anemones sprung up where each drop of his blood had fallen.

The woman wraps the dripping anemones carefully in newspaper and passes them to Nora, her black eyes kind and attentive. “Thank you,” she says. “Take care.”

But then at home, James pleading on the answering machine, “ Please Nora, just talk to him. Please .” An unexpected deep ache rises within her chest. Perhaps she should talk to him—but her body tightens then . “Jesus,” she says aloud. And she goes to lie down, but there, on her pillow, a dusty pink candy heart. kiss me , it says .

She stares at it. It’s only a sweet gift from Fiona, her mind tells her. Yet—here is her throat locking up, a punch of danger to her gut. The banging of her heart fills the room. No, please, not again . Please no.

Behind her a man says, “Nora?” She turns and looks.

“Daddy!” she jumps up, so happy to see him! He enters the room, smiling, closes the door behind him, walks toward her, smiling, still wearing his work clothes, his brown suit and green tie . “ Happy Valentine’s Day, Princess ,” he says. He sits on the bed, takes her hand. “ Daddy! Look at my new red dress! From Ireland! It’s my Valentine’s dress! ” She twirls around in front of him, and he claps his hands together, smiling. But then, there is something wrong—something is wrong with his smile,

something is wrong

with his blue eyes.

His blue eyes too shiny.

And his forehead sweaty.

“ Are you sick Daddy? ”

and she loosens his tie,

the way he’s taught her,

the way she does it each night

for him when he comes home.

“ No princess .”

He pats the bed, says,

“ Sit by me .”

She climbs up next to him.

Breathing aftershave and money.

“ I have something for you ,” he says,

and he holds a pink candy heart close to her face.

Asks her

to read the words.

She looks at him,

unsure

of his eyes,

his voice.

“Say it,” he says.

“Kiss me,” she says, barely a whisper,

and he leans in and kisses her

softly on the lips.

And he pops the candy in her mouth

his hand on her leg,

stroking.

stroking.

stroking.

“ Your Valentine’s dress is so pretty ,” he says.

“ A princess in a fairy tale ,” he says.

When he lifts her on top of him things spin in her mind, his breathing goes deep, and she clenches her hands, fingernails digging into her skin. Everything is wrong.

“Say it again,” her daddy whispers,

now moving her

back and forth

back and forth slow

back and forth fast

on his lap

making sounds she doesn’t know