Belinda McKeon - Tender

“She put her head in her hands, Catherine, and she cried and she cried. And she pulled at her hair. She took hold of her hair, and she pulled at it, as though she was trying to pull it out from the roots. Which I think she was.”

“No, no,” Catherine said, trying to soothe him, but he did not want to be soothed.

“I need you to come down here,” he said simply. “I can’t be here by myself. Please, Catherine. Please come.”

She nodded. “I can come in the morning. I can tell them I have to go to Dublin for something to do with college. I can get the train—”

“No, not tomorrow, Catherine. Tonight. The late train. Please.”

“James,” she said, his name sticking in her throat. “Tonight’s impossible. How would I explain it? They know there’s no train that late going to Dublin. They’d know—”

“I don’t care, Catherine. I don’t care what you have to tell them.”

“I just don’t know. It’s so difficult.”

And it was his silence after she had said that that had made up Catherine’s mind for her. It was the sound of his breathing, shallow and slow.

“I’m coming,” she said. “I’ll thumb a lift out from the station when I get there.”

“Catherine,” her mother said in disbelief when Catherine walked into the kitchen and told them that she was going to her friend James’s house for the night. She had not come straight off the phone; she had wanted to take a shower, first, and to wash her hair, so that she would be presentable when she got to Carrigfinn later. She had shaved her legs, too, because she had noticed, while she showered, that they needed to be shaved, and she had nicked herself in a couple of places, as she usually did, but the bleeding had stopped now, she thought. She was in her dressing gown, with her hair in a towel, standing just over the threshold of the kitchen door.

“Catherine,” her mother said again, and she looked almost as though she might laugh, so impossible was this thing that Catherine had just done. To have said it just to her mother would have been one thing, but she had come in and made the announcement while both her parents were in the room; her father had just come in from the fields, and was sitting at the table, that week’s Leader open in front of him. He was in his overalls still, and he looked tired. The paper came out on a Wednesday, but he liked to keep it for Friday evening. He liked to sit at the table and read it from cover to cover and talk to her mother about anything that caught his eye.

Now he was looking at Catherine’s mother with the same expression with which Catherine’s mother was looking at her: an expression that said that this had to change, that this idea which had come into the air of the room needed, very quickly, to dissolve.

“I need a lift to the train station,” Catherine said, tying the belt of her dressing gown more tightly. “Or I can get a taxi, if you don’t have the time to drop me in. I’ll be back tomorrow evening, or Sunday.”

“Patricia,” Catherine’s father said; Catherine’s mother’s name. He sounded like he was pleading. Still he had not looked to where Catherine stood.

“Catherine,” Catherine’s mother said again. She was standing at the counter; she was pouring tea. The teapot was old, and prone to leaking, and Catherine’s mother was the only one who knew how to use it without letting hot tea spill out of the sides, but it was leaking now, Catherine saw; her mother frowned at it, as though it was something she had not even known she was holding, and put it down.

“James asked me to come down this evening,” Catherine said. “His mother is sick. I want to keep him company.”

“Patricia,” her father said again, more insistently.

Catherine’s mother held up a hand; whether to him or to her, Catherine did not know. “Catherine, darling,” she said, gently. “It’s not a good idea for you to go to that lad’s house like this. Can’t you go tomorrow for the day? I’ll drop you off and pick you up, if that’s what you want.”

“No,” Catherine shook her head. “He needs me now. I have to—”

And that did it for her father. Need was the wrong word to have used, of course, it struck Catherine immediately — too much like desire, too much what the body did, not the mind — but it was out now. He turned to her. His eyes, the blueness of them — he had given those eyes to her. She had looked at those eyes, not five minutes ago, staring back at her from the bathroom mirror. I dare you, those eyes had said to her; and these eyes were saying precisely the same thing.

“Now listen, Catherine,” her father said, and just as her mother had done, he held up a hand. “Your mother and I cannot let you put yourself in danger. Your mother and I know things that you don’t know.”

“You don’t know anything about James,” Catherine said, and her mother gasped. This was not done, this way of talking; not in this house. This was not how conversations happened here. Her mother said her name again, not in warning this time but in shock, and her father stared.

“We know plenty,” he said slowly. “We know that Pat Burke saw the pair of you on top of each other above in Dublin.”

“Charlie!” her mother said. “Leave that.”

“No, no,” her father said, planting an elbow on the table. His jaw was working. “So you needn’t think we don’t know what’s going on between you and this fellow.”

“There’s nothing like that going on between us,” Catherine said. She kept her voice even; she kept it calm. She was determined not to do any of the things she always did when she fought with her mother; this was not a fight with her mother. This was not something she had ever done before, standing up like this to her father, and if she was going to do it, she was going to do it right. Their eyes were the same blue. Their minds went to the same places; she could see, now, where his had gone. “James doesn’t think about me that way,” she said, “so there’s nothing to worry about. Even if I felt that way about him, which I don’t—”

“Ah, for God’s sake would you stop talking nonsense, Catherine,” her father said, sitting back in his chair. He looked to her mother. “Patricia. Can you put a stop to this? She won’t even get going there in the morning if she’s not careful.”

“Catherine,” her mother said, coming around the counter towards her, her eyes full of imploring, full of the silent language that was spoken between them: Just do what he wants, and we can work something else out later. Just do what he wants now. Just say no more.

“I need to be at the station by eight,” Catherine said, shaking her head, but her mother’s attention was somewhere else, now, as she neared her; Catherine glanced down to where she was staring, and saw a thin trail of blood snaking down her bare calf.

Her mother said her name quietly, too quietly for her father to hear. She nodded towards the blood. “You need to—”

“It’s nothing,” Catherine said, irritably. “I just cut my legs shaving them.”

“Now,” her father said, nodding. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“Tell me what? ” Catherine said.

“Catherine,” her mother said, grabbing her by the elbow. “Get down to the room and clean yourself up. We’re not talking about this any longer.”

“You can’t go down to stay with that fellow and that’s the end of it,” her father said. “Sure we couldn’t allow that. Sure don’t we know well what that would lead to? What kind of idea do you think you’re going to give him, going down there like that for the night?”

“I’m not going to go like this,” Catherine said, witheringly. “I was planning to get dressed.”