Mike McCormack - Solar Bones

his wife returned from paying at the counter to begin gathering up their coats and bags, bringing a quiet surge of purpose to the scene, organising and shepherding them through the narrow spaces towards the door while

over to my left a smaller, more intimate drama was unfolding between a woman in her thirties and an older man in an open-neck shirt with cufflinks, the woman leaning into him, trying to gain his attention while his whole focus was on tending to his pipe, scraping out the bowl with a little penknife and tapping it onto the side of his saucer, glancing up from his scraping and tapping to look the young woman in the eye by way of assuring her that he was indeed listening to her, giving her his full attention, or as much of that attention left over from tending to his pipe, she leaning across the table with her jaw set as if it would underline whatever it was she was saying or trying to convince him of, the whole scene so physically intimate that I wondered what their relationship was as there was obviously some close connection — professional or romantic — but it was hard to say because while the woman’s anxiety was very real, palpable to any onlooker, it could have fitted either scenario as there was not only the pleading of romantic breakdown, but also an urgent need to persuade this older man in a way which inclined me to believe that this might be a professional matter and that some workplace drama had occurred which still needed clarifying or smoothing over in some way or other because there was no mistaking the look on the woman’s face as anything other than a visible fear she was being misunderstood, the fear that some gain or position has been jeopardised, or that some reputation, hard won but fragile, had been sullied in some way or other but, whether this was the case or not, one thing was obvious and it was that the man would rather not have had to hear about it on his lunch break because there was something aggrieved about him now in the way he was bent over his pipe, scraping out the bowl and sighting through the stem, the whole rigmarole and ceremony of it reminding me that it had been a very long time since I had seen anyone smoke a pipe in public — or in private for that matter — and it was strange, a scene from another world, a memory from a recent historical epoch when a small room like this would have been blue with smoke, food or no food, clothes and hair impregnated with it and having to be washed out the same evening as

these thoughts were interrupted when the waitress arrived with my order, leaving it down neatly on the table — coffee and a club sandwich with the cutlery wrapped in a napkin — the whole thing so neatly assembled and expert looking that I sat for a moment to admire the whole ensemble, the coffee with its brassy smell sunk beneath a creamy head which I was reluctant to disturb and the tidy way the sandwich was laid on the plate beside a small green salad — angled towards me like a hip-roof and skewered at both ends by two cocktail sticks — the whole thing so complete in itself that it seemed only right to admire it before I dismantled and ate it which is what I did after letting it sit for as long as it took me to put milk into the coffee and stir it around, after which it was a further pleasure to discover that the sandwich tasted as good as it looked and that there was no disparity or margin between its appearance and its taste which was moist with crisp lettuce, tomatoes and chicken between slices of warm toast and even before biting into it

this moment here

this crowded room with its clutter of chairs and tables

these people, with their separate thoughts and lives

I was overwhelmed with a sense of what a strange privilege it was to be able to sit in this coffee shop among other people who did not wish me any harm and who would, more likely than not, be happy for me if they were to know that I was having a good day — that my wife was on the mend and that my car had started and that this was a tasty sandwich and that the sun was shining outside — none of these people would begrudge me any of this and all would appreciate the expert way this sandwich was put together and how everything about it revealed a degree of attentiveness which went beyond mere expertise and spoke something of a care and commitment which was gently humbling, so unexpected and baffling also to come across something so banal which filled me with a sense of how improbable life was and how this unlikely construct — a sandwich for Christ’s sake — could communicate such intimate grace that

I was now completely overtaken with a foolish excess of gratitude for this half hour in this coffee shop, a quiet spell among decent people, good food and the careful work of those who ran it so that for one moment in which time and space seemed to plummet through me in terraced depths which had me reaching out to grip the edge of the table, I had a rushing sense of the cosmic odds stacked against this here-and-now, how unlikely and how contingent it was on so many other things taking their proper place in the wider circumstance of the universe and exerting their right degree of pressure on the contextual circumstances so that for one moment, sitting there with a cup of coffee in my hand and the chair bracing my back I had a clear view down through the vortex of my whole being, down through all the linked circumstances that had combined to place me here at this specific moment in time and this wave of gratitude and terror swept through me with such violent force that I feared I would mortify myself by breaking down in tears, an ecstasy of joy and terror for the world and everything in it, an unbidden feeling which was so overpowering that it was as much as I could do to hold myself together for as long as it took me to get up and make my way between tables to pay the bill at the cash register where, in a voice ridiculously choked, I replied to the girl’s kind query as she totted up the bill that

yes, everything was fine, thank you very much

which drew a sweet smile as she took the ten euro note and returned the change to my hand before I headed back through the maze of tables and chairs to the door and out onto the pavement to find that a watery sun now lit the day, flaring off the passing cars, splintering off windscreens and the glass fronts on the opposite side of the street, light echoing beyond its real capacity to illumine the day, the whole world over-lit in some way or other as I stood there squinting and shading my eyes, regretting that I had not bought one of those pairs of sunglasses no matter how daft they looked on me but the chemist was now on the other side of the street and I thought it would be better to get into the car and drive home as by this time I had been away from Mairead for nearly an hour and a half which is nothing in itself but which had me feeling a bit antsy even if in all likelihood she was probably only too glad to be rid of me for a while, free of my anxious fluttering around her, that role into which I had fallen all too easily and fitted so comfortably almost before I had bethought myself, fussing over her, forever checking to see that she was all right

was there not something I could get her

did she want anything to eat

I could put something on for her

an omelette or a bowl of soup

tea

anything

this ceaseless clucking around her till it became obvious, even to myself that her welfare was not the point of it at all but that it was all symptomatic of my own need to reassure myself that I was doing a good job, proving myself to be a good husband and carer, a man who was not so stale or far gone in his most calcified habits that he could not find something new within himself, namely these caring skills and soothing gestures which were, till this, undreamt of and unlikely less than a month ago but now flowering to such light and soothing touches that I had begun to move through the house like a ghost myself, all misted light and billowing gauze, leached of so much colour and muscle I could barely leave the impress of a finger on my wife, but not